American Cinematographer - May 2008 - (Page 62)

Kink and the City ally rated it at [EI] 400, but on a few occasions, I pushed it 1 stop and rated it at 800.” He used Expression for all soundstage material, which comprises about 30 percent of the picture. The production built sets for several offices and hotel rooms, and Langenegger recalls the advantages of working with film on one such set in particular, a Madrid hotel room where Michelle Williams plays a scene: “Dante re-created this beautiful, strong Spanish sun onstage, and there was a bit of smoke in the scene. The light was so bright, and we couldn’t really tell exactly how much of the light from the smoke was on Michelle’s face. We crossed our fingers and hoped it wasn’t overexposed. It came back, and it was a little overexposed, but when we saw it, we realized the overexposure really helped show what was going on with her character, so we left it that way. Those are the kinds of happy accidents you don’t really get when you’re working digitally to a monitor.” For a long night exterior filmed in Chinatown, 35mm proved beneficial in another way. Spinotti explains, “We found during our testing that a lot of the neon signs looked much better on film than they did with the Genesis. For our test, we shot a red neon sign, and on the edges [of the neon], both formats looked good, but in the middle, the lights looked overexposed and desaturated with the Genesis, while the film held the saturation beautifully.” For day interiors set in Manhattan high-rises, Fortune brought levels up inside to allow the skyline to play behind the action. “We used a lot of traditional units, such as HMI Pars,” recalls the gaffer. “We’d change high hats in the offices to make them into spots, and we used a lot of batten strips of R20s. By putting a lot of the strips together, you can create the effect of a single source, so you don’t get multiple shadows. You can surround a room with them and put them on dimmers, and it gives you kind of a line of light wherever you need it.” The filmmakers traveled to Madrid to shoot one of Jonathan’s liaisons (with an executive played by Charlotte Rampling), and in order to simplify the shoot, they didn’t take the Genesis. Spinotti shot mostly 5229 and strove to maintain his New York lighting approach, though more augmentation was required to get the same image on 35mm. “We had to add light through diffusion material behind the [Christmas-light] frames to beef up the stop and moved the frames a little closer to the actors,” recalls 62 http://www.k5600.com http://www.k5600.com

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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