American Cinematographer - May 2008 - (Page 18)

Right: Sarah wrestles with her father’s history as a gangster in The Butcher’s Daughter. Below: Cinematographer Sean Stiegemeier surveys the landscape. 50D 5205 for day scenes and Vision 500T 5279 for night. The production was able to print select dailies at Deluxe Laboratories in Hollywood, providing Stiegemeier with the opportunity to properly evaluate his work. He notes, however, that the differences between the film stocks “didn’t really matter in the end because even though we were shooting Super 35, we were mastering to HD, where you can alter subtle differences in contrast. But we were able to see the difference in our film dailies, and that was a great learning process. It also gave us valuable data to bring back to the set.” Stiegemeier and his collaborators had almost a full year of prep for The Butcher’s Daughter because the film was scheduled to shoot late in the academic year. When the cameras started rolling, there was little deviance from the carefully planned schedule, though, inevitably, a few things went awry. In those cases, Stiegemeier was able to take advantage of some “happy accidents.” One such incident occurred when the production’s generator ran out of gas before a crucial day-interior setup. He recalls, “The plan was to light the bullet-ridden interior of Sarah’s living room with a pair of 6K HMIs from the outside — the location was an actual ranch house in Santa Clarita. When the generator died, I had all the gels and grippage blocking the window pulled down so that sunlight filled the room, providing us with the exact same look we’d been trying to effect with the lamps.” Stiegemeier is pleased with the final film, but he notes he is still “trying to wrap my mind around the main character. I found it difficult to relate to this girl, what she stands for, what her life has been up to this point, and how that would impact the kind of person she is. Those are things that shape how you shoot a movie like this. To this day, I can’t answer those questions fully. Maybe that’s just the pitfall of a 20minute film; it’s difficult to evolve a character in such a short amount of time.” I 18 May 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2008

American Cinematographer - May 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Global Village: The Fall Short Takes: ASC Laszlo Kovacs Short Takes: Heritage Award Winners Production Slate: Anamorph Production Slate: Fugitive Pieces Heavy-Metal Hero A Need for Speed Kink and the City Beautiful Minds A Hollywood Homecoming Post Focus: Paramount Restores The Godfather Filmmakers’ Forum: Levie Isaacks, ASC Teaches Marines to Shoot Movies New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Antonio Calvache

American Cinematographer - May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.