American Cinematographer - May 2008 - (Page 24)

Murphy (right) eyes the next setup as director Henry Miller checks the frame. Much of Anamorph takes place at night, and Murphy worked primarily with 5218. “For day scenes, we used [Vision2 200T] 5217 with an LLD filter instead of an 85,” he notes. “I pushed everything except day exteriors 1 stop in order to shoot at T4 with the minimum amount of lighting.” To recall the look of 1970s film stocks, he had to modulate the color intensity of 5218, and he did this two ways: on set with smoke, and in post during the digital intermediate (DI) at Technicolor-New York. In the DI suite, Murphy and colorist Tim Stipan first desaturated the picture by 40 percent, “which is a lot,” notes Murphy. Then, they added contrast. “When you push contrast back in, you don’t feel that desaturation — it doesn’t feel washy, flat, or soft in any way. The result is an image that is intense but lacks a wide range of color.” The question of how to handle color in flesh tones arose as soon as Miller, Murphy and Stipan began reviewing the production’s select printed dailies and Murphy’s reference stills. “We wanted to go with a really extreme look, but our lead actors, Willem and Scott, are both pale,” notes Stipan. “Once you cool off the image, their faces could look almost blue. So the challenge became how to restore flesh tones after an overall desaturation of 40 percent.” The answer, he continues, was “a lot of face work.” Going scene-byscene, Stipan and Murphy used windows to isolate the actors’ faces and then added enough saturation to make the flesh tones look normal. Adding warmth to faces in a cool environment “creates an odd separation and much more interest,” notes Murphy. “You could try to achieve that with lighting, but it would be very difficult.” Given Amamorph’s low budget (less than $8 million) and short shooting schedule (32 days), visual effects were done in-camera as much as possible. The flashbacks, for instance, have a distinct, washed-out look that was created through a combination of overexposure, a full bleach-bypass on the original negative, and an out-of-phase shutter. “There are a lot of flares and smeared highlights in this movie, a lot of extremes,” says Murphy. “On a movie like this, you feel you should go to extremes if it’s going to be interesting.” That philosophy is clearly at play in the camera-obscura tableau. Investigating the murder, the detectives enter a dark room cut by a beam of light from the camera obscura, which projects a life-sized image of the victim. When they rip down the wall to reach the body, they are met by a blinding light that illuminates the corpse. To create this effect, Murphy set six Scoop lights with 500watt bulbs in the frame and pointed them directly at the camera. “As we pulled back, the lights wiped into frame and burned into the lens,” he says. However, the beam from the camera obscura was never broad enough because of the device’s pinpoint aperture. “We tried everything to fix that: open-faced lights, Fresnels, beam projectors,” says Murphy. “A 500-watt Leko turned out to be the best, but in the end, we had Richard Edlund reshape the beam of light digitally, making it broader.” The projected image of the victim was created using a Panasonic AE9000 Projector, which “was costeffective and played seamlessly,” notes Miller. By far, the most complicated scene for all departments was the bodyparts tableau. Although the production filmed some interiors onstage at Silvercup Studios in Queens, this particular interior was shot on location, in the hull of a historic ship anchored at Chelsea Piers. Used in recent years as a bar, the ship’s engines and machinery had been removed; nevertheless, the hold presented tight quarters and a rounded floor that precluded the use of dolly tracks. “We did the scene with a lot of small moving shots that followed or watched the characters,” says Murphy. The sequence was shot with two cameras, mostly on Steadicam, all in one day. Complicating Murphy’s work was the fact that there were several major lighting gags within the scene. It begins with the detectives climbing down into the hull, their flashlights illuminating the darkness. One of them finds a light switch and turns on a light that shines into a mirror and frontlights some mysterious dangling items. When lit from this angle, the objects’ shadows combine to form the shape of a large bird. Carl discovers another switch that turns on some floodlights, which reveal the true nature of the scene: the items are human body parts (built by specialeffects artist Michael Marino). The detectives then discover a metal grid with a peephole; by peering through it, 24 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

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