American Cinematographer - April 2018 - 86

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Seduce and Destroy

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Gear Spotlight:
LiteMats
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ver the years I have used many
tools to create soft lighting, from
covered wagons to Nine Light Maxis
behind large frames of heavy diffusion, from strings of Christmas lights
to China balls. I've even used [ASC
member] Harris Savides' infamous
'Bling light.'
But as the years have gone by,
I've strived to make the shooting
process more efficient, and to streamline my equipment. On Red Sparrow,
that smaller footprint was a necessity.
Director Francis Lawrence liked to
have a shooting angle of at least 270
degrees, and often we'd see 360
degrees. We needed a tool that was
easy to hide and didn't take up a lot of
space, but could still create that soft
light.
LiteGear's LiteMats brought
exactly what I needed for many
scenes in Red Sparrow, and I used
them extensively on the film. We
shot 100 percent on location, often
in small spaces and in sensitive
historical buildings where we
couldn't rig any heavy or large equipment. LiteMats allowed us to transcend those restrictions. They are
light enough to be taped to ceilings
or walls, or to be hung off long
menace arms. They provide beautiful
skin tones - equally as nice as tungsten lights. They are dimmable without color-temperature change, they
can be controlled remotely and, most
importantly, they provide a very soft
light.
It's not the only light we
carried on the truck, but LiteMats
truly have become my favorite lighting instrument for interiors. I wish
they had a little more output at times,
but hopefully that will come!
- Jo Willems, ASC, SBC

April 2018

Dominika is sent to find and engage with the target of a Russian intelligence operation.

tions to make when shooting a film on
location, so you have to go in with an
open mind."
Indeed, Red Sparrow's reliance on
real locations aided the filmmakers'
quest for verisimilitude. During the
movie's 85 days of principal photography - which began in January of 2017
and stretched from Budapest to
Bratislava, London to Vienna - all 45
of the feature's locations were practical.
"We didn't spend one day on a soundstage," says Lawrence. "Jo definitely had
some tricky challenges because we were
in real environments - like being in an
apartment for nine days on the fifth
floor of an abandoned building in the
middle of Budapest."
Gaffer Walter Bithell says that
merely getting equipment to set could
be a monumental undertaking. "Some
of the buildings were constructed before
elevators existed, and most of the elevators that were present could not handle
the size or the weight of the gear," he
recalls. "Sometimes we used ropes
and pulleys [to move equipment], and
occasionally we could use condors and
scissor lifts, but a good portion of the
camera, grip and electric gear was handcarried piece by piece up anywhere from
two to six flights of stairs."
That equipment included a broad
American Cinematographer

array of Panavision anamorphic lenses.
After working with C Series anamorphics on the Hunger Games movies,
Willems shifted to E Series and newer
T Series lenses to capture Red Sparrow's
wintry intrigue. "The C Series has a
softness and a slight period feel to it,"
Willems notes. "I love those lenses, but
for Red Sparrow I wanted the sharpest
glass I could get [in order] to achieve a
contemporary feel rather than period."
Only the 35mm, 65mm,
100mm, 135mm and 180mm T Series
primes were available when Red
Sparrow went into production, so the
package was rounded out with 40mm,
50mm and 75mm E Series primes, as
well as a handful of C Series and G
Series optics. A trio of Panavision
anamorphic zooms - a T Series
AWZ2.3 37-85mm (T2.8), an ATZ
70-200mm (T3.5) and an ALZ3 270840mm (T4.5) - were employed for
expediency in certain situations, such as
those involving crane work or car
mounts.
The Panavision lenses were
coupled with a pair of Arri Alexa XTs
and an Alexa Mini. Willems typically
rated the cameras at 800 ISO while
capturing 3414x2198 ArriRaw images
in Open Gate mode. The recorded
frame was then cropped to the desired

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2018