American Cinematographer - August 2008 - (Page 49) erence. So even when we’re shooting an empty frame, everyone has a good idea of what will be in it.” Duggan had eight weeks of prep on Tomb, work that included scouts to stages in Montreal and locations in and around Beijing and Shanghai. Four of his key crewmembers, 1st AC Nicholas Marion, chief lighting technician Jean Courteau, key grip Alain Masse and camera operator Francois Archambault, were hired in Montreal and later traveled to China. In order to accomplish the ambitious set pieces envisioned by director Rob Cohen and keep his camera kit mobile, Duggan chose two Arricam Lites, an Arri 235 and an Arri 435ES, and for optics, he went with a full set of Cooke S4 primes and Angenieux Optimo zooms (12:1 24-290 mm, 4.7:1 1780 mm, 14-50mm and 28-76mm). Tomb was shot in Super 35mm. “We were moving very quickly with multiple cameras and had a lot of handheld work,” says Duggan. “I also wanted to maintain a good depth of field with low light levels, so I didn’t see a need to go anamorphic.” Using Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 for day exteriors and Vision2 500T 5218 for all other material, he overexposed by 1⁄3 of a stop to retain extra shadow detail. Lens filtration was primarily limited to ND filters, grads and polarizers to control sunlight. “I decided to keep it all clean,” says the cinematographer. “I know how easy it is to soften up highlights and backgrounds in post. We used NDs and grads mostly on the larger desert exteriors in China.” As the production ramped up, Cohen divided most of the visual-effects shots — about 1,000 — between two facilities, Digital Domain and Rhythm & Hues. “Right in the beginning, I brought the heads of the two companies together,” says Cohen. “I told them, ‘We have a very short sched- ule and lots of effects to achieve, so let’s merge your software and proprietary pipelines and work together.’ I don’t believe in bringing in outside contractors as visual-effects supervisors because I believe you motivate a company to do great work by using its own internal supervisors. You can’t do better than Derek Spears at Rhythm & Hues and Joel Hynek and Matthew Butler at Digital Domain.” The level of cooperation between the effects houses was somewhat unusual, given the highly competitive nature of the field, but both welcomed Cohen’s suggestion. “I’ve been friends with Matthew Butler for a long time, and it definitely makes things easier to work with people you know and trust,” says Spears. “Visual effects tend to be farmed out [to a lot of facilities] these days because of the scale of the projects and the shortened schedules. Assignments are split up into discrete sequences, but inevitably, there’s some overlap. We went in with the attitude that assets had to be shared. We each have a complete- Frame grabs and photos courtesy of Universal Pictures. Opposite: Emperor Han (Jet Li) rules his kingdom with an iron fist. This page, above: Veteran mummykiller Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser, left) is joined by his brother-inlaw, Jonathan (John Hannah), and wife, Evelyn (Maria Bello), in his attempts to quash an ancient curse. Below: After Rick is felled, a distraught Evelyn must hope that the sorceress Zijuan (Michelle Yeoh) can revive him. American Cinematographer 49
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.