American Cinematographer - May 2008 - (Page 26)

In Fugitive Pieces, shot by Gregory Middleton, CSC, Athos (Rade Sherbedgia, right) takes in the orphaned Jakob (Robbie Kay), and together they escape from Nazi-occupied Poland. 26 May 2008 Fugitive Pieces photos by N. Nikolopoulous and Alex Dukay, courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films. the body parts line up to form a threedimensional vulture eating his prey. “Lighting-wise it was pretty complicated,” says Murphy. “For one thing, there was little room for lights. Fortunately, there was a 10-by-10-foot hole for machinery directly overhead, and we used that to hang a 500-watt Leko that shined down into a mirror and a lightbox containing six 1K Redheads gelled with Full CTB.” An HMI shining down the stairs added extra illumination, and the hold was heavily diffused with smoke. “When the men first enter, there’s a low level of light coming from the overhead light box, which is probably 2 stops under, and the light coming down the stairs is probably 1 to 11⁄2 stops under. The action is mostly lit with the detectives’ SureFire flashlights, which we augmented with a handheld China ball. “When the Leko is switched on, it temporarily blinds the detectives and creates the shadow on the wall,” he continues. “The floodlights are 500watt Scoops pointed at the camera. The amazing thing was that [production designer] Jack De Govia arranged those body parts so they actually did make that shadow when the Leko came on.” In the DI, “I drew specific mattes for all those body parts, then darkened and desaturated them,” recalls Stipan. “When Carl turns on the light, we did just the opposite, adding saturation and contrast to the images so they looked more grotesque. We spent a whole day on that scene!” Overall, the digital grade took about 10 days. “The film has a lot of different looks,” notes Stipan. “Sometimes, it’s very yellow and desaturated. At other times, it’s cyan and desaturated but with flesh tones added. The look is unique, and it really couldn’t have been achieved photochemically or through lighting alone.” Murphy agrees wholeheartedly. “There’s no way Amamorph could have been finished photochemically with the same result. No, not possible.” A Path to Healing by Jon D. Witmer Based on the novel by Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces tracks Jakob from the age of 9, when he escapes Nazi-occupied Poland, to adulthood, when he struggles to come to terms with his troubled history. The path of his life takes him to Greece and Canada, and, after he fails to find comfort with one woman (Rosamund Pike), he finds peace and acceptance in the embrace of another (Ayelet Zurer). “A lot of stories [like this] only cover the first steps in healing, but this movie is about how healing carries forward and ends up affecting the next generation,” notes cinematographer Gregory Middleton, CSC. “It’s about the more complete journey, and I thought that made it interesting and unique — and very important.” Fugitive Pieces marks the sixth collaboration between Middleton and director Jeremy Podeswa, who previously teamed on the feature The Five Senses (1999; AC June ’00), the telefilm After the Harvest (2001) and three short films. Podeswa “definitely wanted this film to be different from his other work,” says Middleton, speaking to AC from his home in Vancouver. “We started off with an approach that was going to have a lot more energy, but we ended up somewhere in the middle. Conceptually, you often start in one direction, and as you create the film, it starts to develop its own life.” When he’s still a child (played by Robbie Kay), Jakob witnesses his parents’ murder at the hands of Nazi soldiers, who also kidnap his sister, Bella (Nina Dobrev). Filming the scene in a small house in a heritage park in Toronto, Middleton was unable to hang lights inside because of the structure’s low ceilings. Instead, he lit mainly from the outside, using two 18K HMIs and two 6K HMI Pars pointed through the windows. Just before the Nazis arrive at the house, Jakob’s mother hides the boy in a crawlspace. He subsequently sees some of what happens through the limited vantage of a slit in the wallpaper that covers his hideaway. Middleton explains, “We shot his POV in the doorway to a little room that was off to the side. Once we walled it all in, we had to take our gear in and out of the window, and we shot the scene through an actual slit in the wallpaper; we just made it slightly bigger than normal. “In order to see around and look across the room, we had to move the camera 8 or 9 inches off to the side,” he continues. To do that, Middleton utilized an overkeeper (a.k.a. slider or straight shooter), a linear bearing that puts the camera’s support head on rails, allowing it to slide a short distance from side to side. “It’s very smooth, and it’s a great thing to use in a tiny space to get the feel of a dolly,” he says. “When the operator’s doing it by hand with his own eye, it’s so much easier than having

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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