American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 63) wouldn’t be available in a reliable quantity.” Working in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio, Moxness aimed for a period Technicolor palette enhanced with careful use of filtration. “Modern film stocks are less saturated, and I really wanted to shift things tonally,” he says. “We used CTO gels on the lights to achieve a warm bias combined with warming filters on the lenses, primarily Tiffen corals. We also used Tiffen Classic Softs and Schneider Black Frosts to control contrast.” During filming, Moxness added subtle, playful touches to the cinematography to pay homage to the technical limitations of the era. “On our process photography, we ran some of our backgrounds slightly out sync, even though it was all done with greenscreen,” he says. “So, for example, a car pulls up and stops, and the background plate stops just a beat later. We also played with lighting cues by having the cue slightly behind the actor’s action. In one sequence that was inspired by a sequence in the original War of the Worlds [1953], you see a practical light go off onscreen, and then we go to pitch black before coming back up with dimmed lighting.” After the production wrapped, DFC scanned the original camera negative using an Arriscan. “We scan Super 16 at 3K and then downconvert to 2K for grain reduction and the DI,” explains James Tocher, DFC’s founder and DI producer. “The Arriscan’s ability to scan Super 16 at 3K really helps improve the image quality. 16mm stocks are really good these days, but a lot of people don’t realize how much resolution there is behind the grain. The ESGR process utilizes a proprietary processing algorithm specific to each film stock —7219 receives a different method than 7201, for example. We first sort the project into its specific stocks, then we begin attacking the grain directly.” “Other degraining processes typically blur and soften grain by mushing it together,” he continues. “Then they use image-sharpening similar to the Unsharp filter in Photoshop to give “At LFS each filmmaker learns to discover their “voice”. The training is second to none and the growth that I experienced in two years is really unquantifiable ” Barney Elliott, MA filmmaking graduate 2003. Barney’s short film ‘True Colours’ has screened at over 80 festivals winning nine first prizes. He was selected for the prestigious Cannes Cinéfondation Résidence and the Binger Film Lab. THE LFS TWO-YEAR MA FILMMAKING STARTS IN JANUARY, MAY AND SEPTEMBER. To find out more about training in all departments, on a minimum of six film exercises, including two 35mm projects, in a working studio with students from 30 countries visit lfs.org.uk THE LONDON FILM SCHOOL A 24 SHELTON STREET, LONDON, WC2H 9UB U.K. TELEPHONE: +44 (0)20 7836 9642 EMAIL INFO@LFS.ORG.UK TRADITION OF INNOVATION 63 http://lfs.org.uk http://lfs.org.uk http://www.bron-kobold-usa.com http://www.bron-kobold-usa.com
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