American Cinematographer - August 2010 - 26

Above: Director of photography Igor Jadue-Lillo (at camera) and his crew prepare to film a scene in the family’s backyard. Right: Paul meets Nic and Jules for the first time.

ticals were so important. In addition, you really need to balance your key lights and be careful with exposure — I was usually around f2.2 in the house.” The kitchen looks out onto the back yard, which is the site of the first meal the family shares with Paul. To soften the light and knock out unwanted shadows, the grips erected a 20'x40' muslin overhang. A couple of 18K Alpha lights were placed on the ground or atop scaffolding. “My wonderful gaffer, Dayton Nietert, introduced me to the HMI Alphas,” notes JadueLillo. Strings of small decorative lights crisscrossing the porch served as both a decorative touch and low-level fill. Despite the challenges posed by the Venice location, Jadue-Lillo notes that it “was actually the good house to shoot — Paul’s was the real challenge.” A laid-back
26 August 2010

restaurateur, Paul lives in a bungalow built into the side of a hill. The property includes a large back yard that is overgrown with native plants, and Paul hires Jules to landscape it. Once again, the filmmakers found the perfect location, this time in Echo Park, but the road leading to it was winding and so narrow that some crew trucks couldn’t make it up the hill. Like Nic and Jules’ house, Paul’s place is airy and open. Floor-to-ceiling windows and a sliding glass door look onto the back porch. And, as in Venice, the houses were built close together. “To light that house, whether night or day, was like being on the 15th floor of a high-rise,” declares Jadue-Lillo. “We didn’t have the budget for Condors or lifts, and there wasn’t enough room on the sides of the house or on the back porch to set up lights.
American Cinematographer

We ended up placing Alpha lights on the ground behind the house, at least 10 feet below the porch, and leveled them as best we could. We aimed the units toward the ceiling in Paul’s den, just inside the back door, and bounced the light that way. We didn’t need bounce cards because the ceiling was white.” Another key location is the restaurant Paul owns, which has mostly outdoor seating. “We wanted to emphasize the bohemian feeling of Paul’s character,” recounts Berghoff, “so we fabricated string lights out of old mason jars and carnival lights [and hung them] above the tables. [We added a few] chandeliers that Paul might have discovered in some funky thrift shop.” The last sequence in the film finds Nic, Jules and Laser taking Joni up to Berkeley, where she is starting college. Jadue-Lillo describes filming the family in the car as “a good challenge,” especially given the time pressure. “We only had three hours to film four people in a car on a process trailer, and we shot on a freeway in Los Angeles. Initially, we were told we couldn’t have the wings down on the trailer. How in the world were we were going to shoot this? Fortunately, the police relented and allowed us to use the wings.” Jadue-Lillo, who was born in Chile and raised in Argentina and Mexico, credits high-school friend and future ASC member Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki with introducing him to filmmaking. “Chivo was already making short films in high school, and when he started film school, he dragged me into writing, producing, acting and serving as a camera assistant,” he says. After catching the cinematography bug, Jadue-Lillo moved to England to attend the London Film School. His credits as director of photography include The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Passengers and Disco Pigs.

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1 35mm Arricam Lite, Arri BL-4 Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229 Digital Intermediate ●

American Cinematographer - August 2010

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