American Cinematographer - July 2011 - 55

blood would create problems with government censors, who must approve every Chinese film for release. The cinematographer shot tests at Kodak’s Cinelabs in Beijing, starting with two Kodak black-and-white negatives, Plus-X 5231 and Double-X 5222, which were printed onto Kodak blackand-white print stock 2302. The footage was too grainy. “We didn’t want audiences to think they were watching a documentary,” explains Cao, who answered AC’s questions via e-mail with the assistance of two translators, Longlong Song and Raymond Lam, HKSC. “We wanted them to feel that they were watching something that was happening in front of them right now. We wanted a documentary feel but with a more poetic style. “We wanted the image to be sharp and fine-grained, with very even contrast,” he continues. “After testing all the Kodak color negatives, I chose Vision2 50D 5201 and 200T 5217. I found that 5201 has the sharpest, finest grain and very rich contrast, so I tried to use it as my main film stock. I used 5217 for interiors and night scenes. I didn’t want to use a 500-speed stock because the images wouldn’t have been as smooth.” During testing, his 5201 and 5217 footage was printed onto both 2302 and a black-and-white intermedi-

Unit photography by Haisheng Huang. Photos courtesy of Kino Lorber.

Opposite: Lu Jianxiong (Liu Ye, left) and other Chinese prepare for a grim fate in a scene from City of Life and Death. This page, top: The Japanese soldiers celebrate in the streets of Nanking. “I filmed this with Arri Master Primes when the midday sun was the strongest to get a hard image,” notes cinematographer Yu Cao. “The ground was very bright, almost white.” Bottom: Japanese soldier Kadokawa (Hideo Nakaizumi) falls in love with a Chinese “comfort girl.”

ate stock, Eastman High Contrast Panchromatic Film 2369. “I liked 2369 a lot,” he says. “It produced a very modern black-and-white effect; it was very sharp, with fine grain and great latitude.” At that point, however, the producers nixed the idea of releasing on any black-and-white stock, citing the high cost of doing so. Cao then tested printing on Kodak Vision 2383, and he found the stock was so sensitive it affected the RGB levels, and colors sometimes bled through. Colorist Ping Ma tried fineww.theasc.com w

tuning the look-up tables, and the lab’s production manager, Jin Xu, suggested changing the angle of the light bulb on the printer. That helped, but the images still lacked the contrast and grain the filmmakers desired. To boost the contrast, Ma and a Lustre engineer designed a special plug-in to increase the grain, and then the team did a full bleach bypass on the print. The combination worked. Lu and Cao wanted a final aspect ratio of 2.40:1, and although Cao is “crazy about anamorphic for its beautiful lens flares and shallow depth-ofJuly 2011 55

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American Cinematographer - July 2011

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