American Cinematographer - August 2013 - 10

Any questions you have about the cinematography of
The Lone Ranger will likely be answered in senior editor
Rachael Bosley’s Q&A with Bojan Bazelli, ASC (“Big
Guns,” page 32). Rachael asks all the right questions,
and Bazelli provides expansive answers that should whet
your appetite for another adventure with the masked
vigilante (played by Armie Hammer) and his Native American ally, Tonto (Johnny Depp). Directed by Gore Verbinski, whose résumé includes The Ring, the first three
Pirates of the Caribbean films and Rango, the movie was
certainly a rigorous undertaking, involving a variety of
setups and locations that can only be described as wildly
ambitious. “When I first watched Gore’s 12-minute previs
of the final chase, which involves one train going full-speed in reverse and another going
full-speed ahead right behind it, I knew I hadn’t seen anything like it,” Bazelli recalls. “My
next thought was, ‘How the hell are we going to do it?’” He provides part of the answer
by adding, “This movie is an example of how strong the collaboration between the
camera department and the visual-effects team can be. We wanted to get as much incamera as we could, and a significant portion of every shot involving CGI is real.”
Guillermo Navarro, ASC also faced impressively scaled setups while shooting
Pacific Rim, director Guillermo Del Toro’s showdown between oversized alien invaders
and the giant robots humans build to repel them. “The scope of Pacific Rim is huge, way
beyond the scope of normal human imagination, but that’s Del Toro,” Navarro tells Jay
Holben (“Battle Bots,” page 46). “He does an amazing job of creating other worlds, and
I love to help him do it.”
If those elaborate productions don’t satiate your craving for summer-blockbuster
fun, you need only buy a ticket to The Wolverine, which teamed director James Mangold
with Ross Emery, ACS. In Simon Gray’s illuminating article (“Rapturous Action,” page
56), Emery describes Mangold as “a classical filmmaker who prizes story and character
over spectacle,” but it doesn’t sound as if spectacle is in short supply; major action
sequences include a hand-to-hand battle atop a bullet train and a fight that pits Wolverine against dozens of motorcycle-riding, sword-wielding ninjas.
Reality-based drama was the mandate on The Attack, the tense and suspenseful
story of a Palestinian doctor (played by Ali Suliman) whose comfortable life in Israel
unravels after his wife (Remonde Amsellem) becomes a suicide bomber. Cinematographer Tommaso Fiorilli, SBC helped director Ziad Doueiri mount a border-crossing production that shot scenes in Tel Aviv, Nablus and Belgium. Fiorilli tells AC contributor Jean
Oppenheimer that he was fortunate to team up with a director who values cinematic
style (“Shattered Past,” page 66): “Ziad is very sensitive to image quality because of his
background as a cameraman. Many European directors care more about working with
the actors, but Ziad had specific ideas about how he wanted to shoot his scenes. He
wanted a beautiful movie.”

Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor

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Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Editor’s Note
American Cinematographer - August 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - August 2013
