American Cinematographer - April 2012 - 76

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Sundance Standouts

Left: Kane takes a measurement as Raedeker prepares to shoot the film’s final scene. Right: Elsayed jokes with the camera team during a break on set.

a few rigs that enabled Raedeker to achieve elegant shots in tight quarters, including the brothers’ tiny bedroom. “With those rigs I could position the camera just below the ceiling or low on the floor and still move it around,” says Raedeker. “Once I used a high-quality mirror in front of the lens to get into a corner, and Movietech mounted that to the camera with an Israeli arm. They supported us in all kinds of ways, and I owe them big-time.” The filmmakers recorded in ProRes 4:4:4 using SxS cards. “Shooting raw was out of the question financially, but we shot tests comparing raw to ProRes because we needed to show that ProRes would hold up,” says Raedeker, referring to the compression inherent in the codec. “It held up absolutely fine as long as we didn’t zoom into the image.” He was unable to utilize look-up tables during production because the edit was done on an Avid. “The Arri Look Creator had just come out, but its metadata could only be read by Final Cut Pro at that time,” he explains. “With the Avid, we would’ve had to bake the look into the rushes, and that would’ve made our workflow too complicated for our fast turnover.” “Our production office was located next to our location, and we began the assembly edit during the shoot,” adds El Hosaini. “This allowed
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for a direct dialogue with our editor, Iain Kitching, and we were able to grab pickups and make adjustments on set that directly affected the edit.” Raedeker and El Hosaini spent a week on the color timing at Technicolor London, where they worked with colorist Paul Ensby. “After an initial consultation, Paul spent about four days pre-grading before we went in,” says Raedeker. “We unified the look of the exterior night-time practicals, and Paul gave the images a great deal of depth. He did a fantastic job.” The movie was projected digitally at Sundance, and when the filmmakers spoke to AC, they were readying a 35mm print for Berlinale. My Brother the Devil ’s premiere at Sundance marked a homecoming of sorts, in that El Hosaini had developed the project in three different workshops (two writing labs and a directing lab) at Sundance Institute. Raedeker recalls his excitement upon reading her script: “It wasn’t what I expected. I was wary at first because it’s based in an urban ghetto, and it feels in the beginning like a kind of gangster story, but it very cleverly breaks out of that genre to become much more a relationship film about two brothers. It’s far from cliché. When I read it, I just knew it was my kind of thing.” — Rachael K. Bosley

5 Broken Cameras Cinematographer: Emad Burnat Directors: Burnat and Guy Davidi When the lights came up after a screening of 5 Broken Cameras , documentary cinematographer Tom Hurwitz, ASC stood up and told the filmmakers, “I’ve been making films for 35 years, and this is one of the most powerful I’ve ever seen.” It was remarkable praise for selftaught cameraman Emad Burnat, who just eight years earlier had been a farmer eking out a living in the West Bank village of Bil’in. The Sundance jury shared Hurwitz’s enthusiasm, bestowing the directing award in the World Cinema Documentary Competition on Burnat and co-director Guy Davidi. 5 Broken Cameras boasts no technical novelties, but it’s a compelling example of unwavering courage under fire and the power of images to bear witness. Over the course of seven turbulent years, Burnat repeatedly came under fire yet persisted in filming the events as an Israeli settlement encroached on land long cultivated by Bil’in’s farmers. Burnat’s life as a cameraman began in 2005 with the arrival of his youngest son, Gibreel. Burnat and his wife received a Mini-DV camcorder, a JVC GR-D54E, as a gift. He began documenting Gibreel’s first steps, birthdays and outings to the olive groves that

American Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - April 2012

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