American Cinematographer - May 2008 - (Page 52)

A Need for Speed whopping 160 pages. To help them compress time and shoot the entire script, “we shot a lot of the dialogue at 23 fps, and layered backgrounds from adjacent scenes sometimes slide back and forth under the foreground actors [to achieve quick transitions],” says Tattersall. “There’s a bit of an animated feel to those sequences, and it’s not subtle. The whole film is very fast-moving. “The Wachowski brothers are pioneers and artists — the real thing — and I was really impressed by their way of working,” he adds. “They’re not at all interested in what’s in fashion cinematographywise; they’re not copycats.” Although the filmmakers initially planned to record to the F23’s dockable HDCam SR deck, they adopted the Codex system for direct digital recording before production began, and soon, the Codex became the primary record source and the HDCam SR became the backup. “The Codex system is fantastic,” says Tattersall. “It was really very handy, because it makes it possible to play back full-resolution HD instantaneously. You’re not watching some proxy or an NTSC down-rez; you’re looking at the full image. And throughout the day, the Codex drives could be sent directly up to editorial, and the footage was immediately ready for them. “Michael Taylor, our HD engineer, would capture stills [off the Codex] while we were shooting, and I would then go through them and pick the selects,” continues the cinematographer. “That gave us a sizable library of images we could use to communicate with the post facilities, editors, second unit and continuity, and I took them home to color-correct them in Photoshop for later reference in timing. I found it enormously helpful for color matching and lighting matching when setting up reverses or coming back to the same scene another day; we were able to put the still up on the moni- Top: The crew dollies past some action on the greenscreen stage. Tattersall notes that many other strategies were used to lend the movie energy: “It’s a very kinetic show from a camera point of view. The Wachowskis were constantly asking me to do whip-pans and crash zooms and trombone tracks. They had me chasing kung-fu stars and crashing ice sculptures.” Middle and bottom: Two views show another of the show’s driving rigs, which were later “customized” in the CG realm. 52 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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