American Cinematographer - August 2011 - 61

Left: Damage caused by an alien craft sparks a recollection in Lonergan of his own abduction. Below: The mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde) joins Lonergan in his quest to remember who he is and help rescue townsfolk abducted by the extraterrestrials.

our third camera would typically be on the retrofitted 11:1 [48-550mm] Primo zoom so it could get an extra piece here or there.” Libatique saw in Cowboys & Aliens’ opening scene the opportunity to reference the opening shot of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly , in which a wide landscape shot abruptly shifts to a close-up as an actor steps into frame. In Cowboys, Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert, his memory gone and a bizarre contraption attached to his wrist. Libatique explains, “I put the camera on sticks, framed up terrain, and just slowly panned until Daniel popped up into frame. There’s no pushin with a crane, no helicopter, no boom up or down. I wanted it to be simple, and it works. “I wanted to keep it simple for the Western part of the film,” Libatique continues. “We tried hard to design coverage that was akin to John Ford’s and keep it patient for the first half of the film before ramping up for the third act.” For sets that required it, Libatique occasionally utilized a Steadicam (operated by A-camera operator Peter Rosenfeld), and the production also carried a 32' Chapman/Leonard Hydrascope telescoping crane. “In prep, [key grip] Tana Dubbe researched the best remote heads for 3-D work and came up with the Chapman G-3 [gyrostabilized head, which mounts on the

Hydrascope],” he explains. “We’d already booked it by the time we decided against shooting 3-D, so we put it to use, and it was fantastic. My dolly grip, John Mang, who’s phenomenal at camera movement, swore by it.” Once Lonergan finds his way to Absolution, Cowboys becomes an ensemble piece, and to accommodate coverage of multiple actors, the filmmakers regularly rolled two or three cameras simultaneously. Libatique notes, “I find value in using multiple cameras with directors who like coverage. It’s a compromise, but I’d rather get as much coverage as possible from the same setup than shoot the same scene over and over again.” It had another upside, he adds. “I
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was fortunate to have a collection of operators that represented me aesthetically. Peter Rosenfeld is super-precise, great with Steadicam and fantastic at managing the situation; Chris Moseley is probably more like me framing-wise, and a great complement to Pete; and my wife, Magela Crosignani, brought art to her choices.” Libatique also compliments the production’s “amazing group of focus pullers,” including Santoni and Bcamera 1st AC Matt Stenerson. For shots of horses, Libatique preferred simple pans, but on the rare occasion the camera traveled with the horses, he employed Chapman’s Maverick mobile-arm vehicle. “Learning to deal with the horses
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American Cinematographer - August 2011

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