American Cinematographer - April 2015 - 28

Josh sits with his father-in-law, Leslie (Charles Grodin) - his mentor and fellow documentarian.

lot of lights on." The cinematographer also
didn't want to utilize any tricks to represent
a hallucinatory state. "We just wanted to be
there with them so that it's believable.
"With my gaffer, John Raugalis, and
my key grip, Michael Yurich, I ended up
using paper lanterns wrapped in several
layers of unbleached muslin, with a 250
diffusion frame underneath the [lanterns],
so it was very soft and very warm," Levy
continues. "In the brighter part, the bulbs
were probably at 50 percent, and in the
darker part, they were at 10 or 15 percent.
All the dark stuff was shot on a 50mm at
T1.3. I'm usually hesitant to have really shallow depth of field, because I think it can be
distracting, but in the case of the ayahuasca
sequence, I thought it was appropriate.
Super Speeds have a very sharp fall-off; the
way they render a shallow depth of field is
extreme. I feel we benefitted from that.
David Feeney-Mosier, our 1st AC, was
masterful working within these constraints
and holding focus."
The film was completed at New York
28

April 2015

post house Box with colorist Pascal Dangin;
the files were converted to DPX via FilmLight's Baselight. One of Levy's main goals in
the color correction was to retain the glistening, silver-blue tone he had conceptualized during shooting - "what light in New
York looks like on an overcast day, bouncing
off the concrete and steel and glass," he
says. "We were thinking about the colors
the way you might have seen them in a
great print from the 1970s."
Another important part of post was
integrating the various movies made by
While We're Young's multiple onscreen
documentarians. "There's Josh's documentary, which he's been making for 10 years
with different formats," Levy says. "We
made the decision that he hasn't shot any
of it with film. We did a few days of shooting on a Sony HDW-F900R, a Canon GL1
and a Panasonic AJ-SDX900. Then there's
Jamie's documentary, which he makes
within While We're Young, and for that we
decided to use a Sony PMW-200. All of the
footage is important because it appears in
American Cinematographer

the movie, but the cameras are also props.
We did a lot of testing for what they would
look like when the characters hold them."
Jamie is also seen almost constantly shooting with a GoPro camera. "There are a few
moments when we cut to that footage, so
Adam Driver actually had to be recording.
We had to archive all of that footage just in
case, and sure enough, Noah did decide to
use it.
"It really is a story about three generations of filmmakers, and how things are
changing and adapting," Levy concludes.
"The technology plays a part in the telling
of the story that we see onscreen."

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus; Sony HDW-F900R,
PMW-200; Panasonic AJ-SDX900;
Canon GL1; GoPro
Zeiss Super Speed, Canon CN-E

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American Cinematographer - April 2015

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