American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 34) Cutting-Edge Camerawork in the office, a set designed by production designer Stephen Hendrickson and rigged by gaffer Russ Engels and key grip Richard Guinness Jr. Hendrickson had the ceiling built with exposed trusses, girders and fluorescent practicals, and above that, recessed muslin panels hide a permanent grid of Par cans fitted with dichroic and tungsten bulbs. The muslin works as diffusion for the lights above it and also as a false ceiling when shots are lit from the floor; Prinzi and Di Bona both enjoy shooting from low angles. Grid lights are individually patched through a dimmer board, allowing the light-board operator to easily shift the interior ambience from cool to warm. Engels used a lot of Brass, Straw and 1⁄8 and 1⁄4 CTO gels on the lamps, and, depending on the action in a scene, extreme color temperatures are sometimes mixed within a single setup. During the day, keylight is usually motivated by one of the set’s many picture windows, “like in a Vermeer painting,” says Di Bona. For the pilot, Fleder wanted heavy shafts of sunlight raking across the space, and a smoke machine was used to give shape to the light. “The idea was to make ’73 very smoky, but the network mandated that we couldn’t have anyone smoke onscreen,” recalls Engels. After some cast members had an adverse reaction to the smoke, production decided to reserve the smoke machine for occasional use. Another touch carried over from the pilot is the hot splashes of light that accent the background of many interiors. Morgenthau’s crew created these with 10K Molebeams. “Those go 5 or 6 stops over,” says Prinzi. “Sometimes I’m shooting at a T2.8 and the background light is at a T32!” New York City is as much a character as a temporal point of reference. “It’s the greatest backdrop in the world — you can’t find that texture anywhere else,” says Di Bona. In a 1973 scene, Tyler and Det. Ray Carling (Michael Imperioli) sit in as Lt. Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) attempts to strong-arm a suspect. grabs from the show as reference material.” For the present-day scenes in the pilot, Morgenthau used a new film stock, Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, with Panavision Primos and lit for a naturalistic feel. For the 1973 scenes, he used more dramatic lighting and asked Kodak for the oldest emulsion in its catalog, Vision 500T 5279. “5279 is not as perfect and sharp-looking [as Vision3],” he notes. (Kodak discontinued 5279 shortly thereafter, and the production has since shot the period scenes on Vision2 500T 5260.) Though Morgenthau considered using older lenses for the 1973 scenes, in the interest of speed and efficiency, he decided it would be better to stick with the Primos and degrade the image with Clear and Warm Tiffen Pro-Mist filters. He also enhanced grain by underexposing by 2⁄3 of a stop and force-processing the negative by 1 stop at Technicolor New York. Morgenthau stresses that he wasn’t trying to mimic a 1970s cinematographer shooting in the 1970s. “If we wanted to do that, we could’ve gotten away with snap zooms, fog filters and so on, but we didn’t do any of that. We only did zooms as very slight creep-ins on faces or to change the frame for coverage. The camerawork has more to do with what Sam is feeling, because he’s in a completely alien world. Our techniques weren’t so much vintage as story-related, character-related and emotion-related.” After ABC picked up Life on Mars, the production hired two directors of photography, ASC members Frank Prinzi and Craig Di Bona, to take turns shooting episodes. Both cinematographers say they approach the story as Morgenthau did, using Tyler’s displacement as a source of inspiration. They’re on the lookout for what the production calls “the Martian Way,” moments when Tyler gets past and present confused. For example, he might see a modern newscast on a 1973 TV set or receive a phone call from the future. “Is it Mars? Not really, but then again, it might as well be,” says Prinzi. That’s one reason the series has fairly loose visual parameters, he adds. “As long as we do it on time, make it cool and make it exciting, we can do pretty much anything we want visually.” He describes the approach as “jazz lighting” — always changing in time with the story. When Tyler and the other cops aren’t out on the street, they’re 34 March 2009
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