American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 98

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6 Sundance Standouts

Left: In this unit still, Saavedra (Gael García Bernal) shares a moment with his estranged wife, Verónica (Antónia Zagers).
Right: Cinematographer Sergio Armstrong.

real challenge to use video technology
that was almost 30 years old, and he was
available for tech support throughout
our shoot. He even located an original
user guide for the camera, a big book
from 1983!”
Armstrong and his crew had no
previous experience with the cameras.
“I didn’t even know how to turn them
on!” says the cinematographer. “But I
interviewed two cameramen who had
worked with them, Pablo Valdás and
Pablo Salas, and they helped me learn
the cameras’ technical aspects.”
Henriquez designed the capture
workflow, whose goal “was to record
the NTSC analog output of the
camera as purely as possible, without
compression,” he says. He assigned an
AJA D10AD mini-converter and a
Blackmagic Design HyperDeck
Shuttle to each camera. In this way, the
Ikegamis’ analog signal was converted
to SDI. Footage was recorded in the
native 640x480i format as QuickTime
uncompressed 4:2:2 10-bit files.
Although the filmmakers
wanted to give the picture a newsreel
look, they also planned to incorporate
cinematic language such as close-ups.
Working
entirely
handheld,
Armstrong operated the A camera.
98

April 2013

When a second camera was called for,
Larraín operated it. “I handled the
more formal material while Pablo
favored a more documentary, roving
style, grabbing shots here and there,”
says Armstrong. Larraín wanted to
include zooms as part of the aesthetic,
so shots often settle into focus while
being reframed or otherwise adjusted.
“Pablo gave the actors constant direction,” says Armstrong, “but the camera
was free to improvise during the
scene.”
Because Armstrong likes working with shallow depth-of-field, he
favored a wide-open stop. He notes
that the Fujinon zoom “was faster and
had better definition” than the Canon
zoom. The widest stop on the Canon
was f2.1, whereas the Fujinon started at
f1.6. By way of comparison, he offers,
“The widest [focal length] we used was
equivalent to an 18mm when shooting
35mm film, and the longest was equivalent to a 150mm.”
Many dialogue scenes were
designed as master shots. For a conversation between René and Guzman
(Alfredo Castro), René’s boss at the ad
agency and a supporter of the “Yes”
campaign, the camera simply pans
back-and-forth between the two. A
American Cinematographer

medium-wide shot of a dozen people
sitting around a table discussing the
“No” campaign moved around to show
different individuals talking or listening. “Pablo would tap me on the shoulder when he wanted me to pan over to
another actor or to the other side of the
room,” says Armstrong.
“In general, we tried to center
the characters and, in the close-ups, to
create space above their heads. Having
headroom was important to Pablo.
Also, the eyelines were very tight; the
actors were almost looking into the
lens. With the wider shots, we were
always trying to balance the frame, so if
we were shooting a conversation, we
would have the table in the middle and
the characters on either side of the
table.”
In addition to capturing a scene
from a few different angles, the filmmakers staged and shot entire scenes in
three or four different locations. This
allowed Larraín to extend a sequence
over several scenes, starting a conversation in one location, picking it up midstream in a second location, and then
finishing it off in a third. “This gave
the impression that the same issues
were being discussed throughout the
day, which is exactly what he wanted to



American Cinematographer - April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2013

American Cinematographer - April 2013
Table of Contents
Editor's Note
President's Desk
Short Takes: 7x6x2
Production Slate: War Witch • The Darkest Day
Hello, Yellow Brick Road
Hell on Wheels
All In
6 Sundance Standouts
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Christopher Baffa
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - American Cinematographer - April 2013
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 1
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 2
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Table of Contents
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 4
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 5
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 6
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 7
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 8
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 9
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Editor's Note
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 11
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - President's Desk
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 13
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Short Takes: 7x6x2
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 15
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 16
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 17
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 18
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 19
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Production Slate: War Witch • The Darkest Day
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 21
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 22
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 23
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 24
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 25
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 26
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 27
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 28
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 29
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 30
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 31
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 32
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 33
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 34
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 35
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Hello, Yellow Brick Road
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 37
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 38
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 39
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 40
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 41
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 42
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 43
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American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 47
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 48
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 49
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 50
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 51
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Hell on Wheels
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 53
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 54
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 55
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 56
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 57
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 58
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 59
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 60
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 61
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 62
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 63
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - All In
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 65
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 66
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 67
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 68
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 69
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 70
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American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 76
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 77
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 78
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 79
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 6 Sundance Standouts
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K1
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K2
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K3
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K4
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K5
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K6
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K7
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K8
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K9
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K10
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K11
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K12
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 81
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 82
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 83
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American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 97
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 98
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 99
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 100
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 101
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 102
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 103
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - New Products & Services
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 105
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 106
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 107
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 108
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 109
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 110
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 111
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 112
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 113
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - International Marketplace
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Classified Ads
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Ad Index
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 117
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - Clubhouse News
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - 119
American Cinematographer - April 2013 - ASC Close-Up: Christopher Baffa
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