American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 33) Life on Mars unit photography by Eric Liebowitz and Patrick Harbron, courtesy of ABC. gle-shaped piece for the corner. That gives us the ability to light from above and still shoot from low angles. “As with the kill scenes, we go for a surreal look for Dexter’s flashbacks. We want them to feel like fragments of memory — subjective, with tight close-ups against an indistinct background. You don’t see all the details of the environment. When Dexter recalls his mother’s murder, for example, we tighten the shutter angle from 45 degrees to 11.5 degrees, depending on the intensity of the memory. “Dexter was my first intensive experience with HD. To be honest, I came onto the show a bit of a film snob, and now I’m a champion of HD for what it is. You can create beautiful images with it, but you have to understand its limitations. The biggest limitation is probably the viewfinder, which is the worst place to see what’s going on in the frame — the operators can’t use the viewfinder to determine whether their shots are in focus. We’ve worked out a remotefocus system in which both of our 1st ACs, Steve Hurson and Brad Richard, are off set, watching a monitor. As the actors move, the 2nd ACs, Warren Feldman and Paul Tilden, whisper into a radio, giving the 1st ACs the marks. We have remote stations that can be wheeled around from set to set, and that really enhances our speed. Making the day is everything in TV. “I owe everything to my crew, which also includes [gaffer] Earl C. Williman, [A-camera operator] Martin J. Layton and [B-camera/ Steadicam operator] Eric Fletcher. You may have the vision in your head, but you need a good crew to realize it.” TECHNICAL SPECS 1.78:1 High-Definition Video Sony F23, PMW-EX1 Panavision Primo lenses Life on Mars by Iain Stasukevich ABC’s Life on Mars is the story of Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara), a modern-day police detective in New York City who is struck by a vehicle while on duty and wakes up in 1973 — it’s The Wizard of Oz as police procedural. Adapted from a BBC series that was a hit in the United Kingdom in 2006, the ABC series changes few details apart from the city and the actors. Harvey Keitel, Michael Imperioli and Jonathan Murphy portray the hard-boiled officers in the fictional 125th Precinct, and Gretchen Mol, the staff psychol- ogist, plays Tyler’s closest confidant. The pilot, titled “Out Here in the Fields,” was directed by Gary Fleder and shot by Kramer Morgenthau, ASC, who notched an ASC Award nomination for the project. They studied Adam Suschitzky’s cinematography in the British series, which was directed by Bharat Nalluri. Morgenthau notes, “There isn’t a lot of coverage, which allows the actors to play in one frame. It’s a fairly graphic approach to telling the story.” Fleder adds, “I think the British series is fantastic — every shot has power. I wanted to exploit its graphic integrity, so I took something like a hundred frame Top: After being transported back to the year 1973, timetraveling detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) attempts to defuse a volatile hostage situation. Bottom: Tyler (far right) tries to make sense of his predicament during a surreal briefing set in the present day. American Cinematographer 33
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