American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 22) TECHNICAL SPECS 2.40:1 Super 35mm Arricam Lite Zeiss Ultra Primes Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 ENR Process by Technicolor Rome Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393 22 March 2009 Tokyo Sonata photos courtesy of Regent Releasing; Ashizawa photo courtesy of Flavor of Happiness Film Partners. shooting,” says Garrone. When lighting this and other interiors, Onorato strove for naturalism. “If you observe light, you realize every environment exists naturally by itself; consequently, in a film where you should be invisible, you try to make the most of the natural light sources and intervene to reinforce them when necessary, but always with discretion,” he says. Many interior scenes take place in the housing complex, a labyrinth of walkways, stairways and apartments. “I took advantage of the windows, at times reinforcing the light with some Kino Flos positioned outside, and we eventually used the practicals inside as well,” says Onorato. “Most of the time, the crew teased me about how I covered the set. They said, ‘Marco doesn’t place light; he takes it away.’” He typically relied on small units, often “Kino Flos and neon lamps. A couple of times, I projected a 4K HMI to create a moon effect, but I don’t believe I ever used more than a 10K. It just wasn’t necessary. “For night exteriors, I asked the production designer to re-establish some of the neon lights that used to be part of the housing complex, then I cut into that with warm light coming from the apartment windows facing the corridor,” adds Onorato. “Overall, it was very stimulating. Bellissimo.” Since its premiere at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, Gomorrah has won many honors, including the European Film Award for Best Cinematography. The picture was Italy’s submission for this year’s Academy Award for Foreign-Language Film. Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) languishes in a long unemployment line after losing his job. The Sorrows of a Salaryman by Chris Pizzello Few directors can conjure an atmosphere of supernatural menace like Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the filmmaker behind such uniquely disturbing, existential horror films as Cure and Pulse. With his new film, Tokyo Sonata, the director lends subtler terror to a more commonplace drama: the unraveling of an ordinary family whose complacent existence implodes when the patriarch, Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa), is “downsized” out of a job. Mortified by his loss of “face” and paralyzed at the prospect of informing his wife (Kyoko Koizumi) and sons (Yu Koyanagi and Kai Inowaki) about this development, Ryuhei decides to avoid the issue by pretending nothing has happened — he leaves home each morning in a suit and tie and spends his daytime hours searching fruitlessly for work and killing time in public parks with an old friend who has also lost his job. But the ruse eventually catches up with Ryuhei, as the strain of preserving his secret tests the fraying bonds within his family. A film with a familial theme was a new challenge for Kurosawa, and he called on cinematographer Akiko Ashizawa, JSC, who had also shot his films Loft and Retribution, to help imbue the seemingly commonplace milieu with a fresh visual aesthetic. Born in Tokyo, Ashizawa is one of the few female cinematographers in Japan. “When I was a student, I had no interest in film, but that all changed when I saw Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou,” she recalls via e-mail. “I started working as an assistant in independent film productions as a student, and then began working professionally as an assistant director of photography in TV commercials. A female assistant director of photography was an anomaly, but because it was a relatively new field, there was less sexism there than in other sectors of the film industry. However, there were times when I made mistakes, and someone would comment that it was because I’m a woman. That, of course, bothered me.” Kurosawa contacted Ashizawa after seeing her work in Kunitoshi Manda’s Unloved, and the two have since enjoyed a harmonious collaboration over three films. “I think Kurosawa and I both believe in ‘the catharsis of perfection,’” says the cinematographer. “There are numerous parts involved in a shot, from writing to art direction to camera operation, and if each crewmember made perfection the single goal, it would not necessarily be beneficial to the project as a whole. If perfection is 100 percent, then we’d
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