American Cinematographer - February 2009 - (Page 56)

Embracing Anamorphic dolly to get that shot. Subsequently, a lot of the moves from over-theshoulder into a single, or from a three-shot into a tight over, were done with that lens. How would you have shot this film before these zooms existed? Bailey: We would have had to lay a lot more dolly track, make corrections on the track, or re-mark the actors a lot more. As actors work from take to take, their natural instincts tend to bring them in closer to each other, but it’s not so easy to make a correction if you’ve got dolly moves along a fixed path on rails and are on a fixed lens, so you tend to get sloppier, looser compositions. You don’t want to change the actors’ marks because they’ve got the rhythm of where they’re playing. With the short-range zoom lenses, I just ask the operator to tighten the composition by 5-10mm. That’s been very helpful in maintaining the intimacy and integrity of the compositions we originally set up. Also, the zooms are quicker. If you’re using fixed lenses, you have to take out the matte box, take out the lens, put on another lens, change the donut and the lens rods. It’s not that it takes so much time, but at times, it can break the actor’s flow. When I want to keep the dramatic focus together, having the ability to change focal lengths without changing lenses makes a big difference. How did you approach the night scenes? Bailey: On most night street locations, I was working at a T2.8 or T3 with the 40-80mm. When I got in close for coverage with the longer lenses, I’d add a bit of supplemental light and build it up to a T3.5. Or, if I were in a real problem, I would just force-develop a stop — there are four or five shots that were forcedeveloped. My normal rating is very conservative; I overexpose by about half a stop, anyway. In the scene in the drugstore, Above: Alex (Justin Long) shares his bartender’s wisdom with Gigi. Below: Bailey (far left, in white shirt) surveys the set while Kwapis (wearing headphones) confers with his cast. On He’s Just Not That Into You, what kinds of situations were appropriate for the wide-angle zooms? Bailey: When we started production [in fall 2007], the 70200mm prototype was still being built, and it wasn’t ready for our first week. There’s a scene in which Drew Barrymore and Scarlett Johansson are wandering through the aisles in a drugstore, and Drew is checking out different sprays and talking about the hazards of dating. The camera dollies across the aisle and then does a slow push-in on her. That move — across and in to a close-up — was to be done in one shot. Ken Kwapis and I had been planning the day’s shoot to get that one shot, and we had to keep shooting around it because we were literally waiting for Phil to bring the prototype lens from Panavision. We had the dolly tracks laid, and I’d laid out the shot with my finder. As soon as Phil showed up, we slapped the lens on the camera and did the shot. That was a very specific shot I would not have been able to do with any other lens — I wasn’t able to move the camera in close enough on the 56 February 2009

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2009

American Cinematographer - February 2009 Contents Editor's Note Short Takes: Circus Production Slate: The International Reverte 2 Worlds in 3 Dimensions Dead Reckoning Embracing Anamorphic Citizen of the World Post Focus: Restoring Manhatta New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Peter Suschitzky

American Cinematographer - February 2009

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