American Cinematographer - April 2013 - K5

“The 5219 is my favorite stock. I love grading it, and
seeing all the details it captures. I love big, hot practical
lights and overexposure, and contrasting that with dark
areas in the frame. And you can’t break that stock. It’s
really cool. It loves all the color.”
VISION3 500T Color Negative
Film 5219 in that situation
— handled the mixed color
temperatures well. “The
(52)19 is my favorite stock. I
love grading it, and seeing all
the details it captures. I love
big, hot practical lights and
overexposure, and contrasting
that with dark areas in the
frame. And you can’t break
that stock. It’s really cool. It
loves all the color.”
Windon and Chu leaned
toward a cyan-to-cool color
palette for the majority of the
movie. The front-end lab was
Cineworks in New Orleans.
“There was a cyan-ish base in
the dark areas and the blacks,”
notes Windon. “We kept that
in mind with the lighting and
also with the color timing
at Company 3 with Stefan
Sonnenfeld. That was fun.”
Lenses were generally
medium-wide, with the 27mm
and 21mm getting heavy
use. “That opened up the
background, and Jon really
loved that,” says Windon. “He
had not worked with the wide,
2.40 frame before, and he
really embraced it.”

Windon also made use of
a daylight-balanced stock,
KODAK VISION3 50D Color
Negative Film 5203. Prior to G.I.
Joe, his predilection in daylight
situations was for shooting
tungsten-balanced stock
without a correction ﬁlter and
adjusting in color correction.
He says the result can be an
appealingly gritty look. “But
for this ﬁlm, I wanted really
ﬁne grain, and that really clean
crispness, especially for the
beautiful sequences that take
place in the Himalayas. I’ve
used it on commercials, but
this was the ﬁrst time I’ve shot
a feature with it. I really liked it,
and Jon loved it.”

One amazing sequence
shows a number of ninja
ﬁghters hanging off the side
of a Himalayan mountain,
ﬁghting each other while
swinging and swooping from
their mountain-climbing ropes.
The sequences required weeks
of rehearsal. The scenes were
shot on the big stages against
a green screen background.
It was the most technically
complex sequence of the
80-day shoot.
“Normally, I would prefer
to shoot something like that
outside and really ﬁght with
Mother Nature because that’s
what you’d have to do in a real

environment,” says Windon.
“And that’s the way I prefer to
do daytime greenscreen. But
because we were shooting in
New Orleans, there’s always
the chance of hurricanes and
bad weather, so we decided to
do it indoors. I can’t remember
the number of 24Ks we had
in this set, but there were
many. The shots were so big
that I was using a Russian arm
on a pursuit camera car as
the dolly. That was the most
technically challenging part of
the project.”
Since he wrapped G.I.
Joe: Retaliation, Windon has
moved on to Fast and Furious
6 with director Justin Lin —
also originating on 35 mm
KODAK Film.

Photos – Left page, top Left: Dwayne
Johnson plays Roadblock in G.I. JOE:
RETALIATION, from Paramount Pictures,
MGM, and Skydance Productions. Center:
Windon (far right) on the set This page top:
Johnson (left) and Bruce Willis as Colton
(center) Bottom: Left to right: Ray Park
plays Snake Eyes and Elodie Yung plays
Jinx (Photos: Jaimie Trueblood © 2013
Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Hasbro and its logo, G.I. JOE and all related
characters are Trademarks of Hasbro and
used with permission. All Rights Reserved.)
American Cinematographer - April 2013

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