American Cinematographer - April 2008 - (Page 16)

as it allowed him to see clearly around the edges of the 1.78:1 frame in anticipation of the actors’ movements. There were two phases of principal photography, a few days in May 2006 and a few days the following October. Friesenbichler decided early on to let the main character guide his lighting and lens choices. “As a photographer, Nathaniel is a voyeur. Sitting behind the camera gives you a kind of distance from what’s happening.” He worked with Cooke S4 primes “because my goal was to achieve a rather natural look that would serve the intimate story in a subtle way. The characteristics of the S4s in combination with an occasional [Tiffen] Classic Soft filter were my recipe for that.” Most of the time, he shot wide open. “In certain locations, I didn’t have a choice because of the sensitivity of the camera’s chip, but in general, I wanted to maintain a shallow depth of field to isolate the characters from the background and allow the audience to focus on the performances.” With most of Milia set indoors or at night on practical locations, Friesenbichler was concerned to discover that the 0 gain setting on the D-20 is roughly equivalent to ISO 50; Weeber recommended a maximum gain setting equivalent to ISO 200. On a shoot as small as Milia, large lamps were out of the question, and Friesenbichler’s work with HD had taught him that with most such cameras, pumping up the gain would add a level of noise to the picture that would be unacceptable for a story like Milia. (For the second phase of principal photography, Arri provided him with a D20 Exposure Wheel that had just been developed by German cinematographer Tom Fährmann.) Friesenbichler soon discovered that when he dialed in one of the D-20’s preprogrammed user settings, the camera’s gamma curve adjusted itself whenever a gain adjustment was made. Furthermore, every user setting corresponded to a specific exposure index (50, 100, 200 and 320). “Basically, every user setting can be perceived like a different film stock, and choosing a setting will define how many stops 16 http://www.visualproducts.com http://www.visualproducts.com http://stwo-corp.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2008

American Cinematographer - April 2008 Contents Editor's Note Global Village: The Counterfeiters Short Takes: Milia Production Slate: Paranoid Park Production Slate: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane Card Sharks Temple of Doom 3-D Cinematography Sundance 2008: Mining for Movies Post Focus: Digital Film Tree Gets into Peyote Post Focus: FotoKem’s 3-D Workflow Post Focus: Technicolor Digs in at Pinewood Filmmakers’ Forum: Steven Fierberg, ASC on Searchers 2.0 New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Rodney Taylor

American Cinematographer - April 2008

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