American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 10

Full disclosure: I am a card-carrying, old-school Star Trek fan
who grew up on the original Sixties television series. A scalemodel replica of the USS Enterprise (complete with authentic sound effects) maintains high orbit atop my office bookshelf; a furry, vibration-activated Tribble resides on a small
table next to my guest chair, where it startles visitors with
either a friendly purr or a nerve-jangling shriek; and a
limited-edition Evil Spock action figure (as seen in the classic
episode "Mirror, Mirror") stands vigil on my desk, serving as
a Machiavellian sounding board and miniature consigliere. I
keep him boxed not merely to maintain his collectible value,
but to suppress the mutiny he would surely incite if set free.
Needless to say, I've been an enthused viewer of the
recent Star Trek features, which have respected but restyled
Gene Roddenberry's sci-fi universe. The latest entry, Star Trek Beyond, was shot by Stephen F.
Windon, ASC, ACS, who helped director Justin Lin further modify the look of the series.
"Stephen and I agreed that the idea of someone [theoretically being able to] operate the
camera and shoot the action would be important on this movie," Lin explains to Michael Goldman ("Hostile Planet," page 30). "If you couldn't get the shot if you were actually filming in
space, then you can't get much emotion out of it. So we developed a feel and aesthetic from
the practical sets, and [stayed] disciplined, creating shots out of [what is real] to begin with,
even if they are full or partial CG."
A sense of realism also informs Jason Bourne, which marks the return of Matt Damon
as the formerly amnesiac superspy. Barry Ackroyd, BSC and director Paul Greengrass were
philosophically aligned in their determination to apply documentary-style techniques to the
action thriller. "If you want people to believe what you're doing when it's a fiction, you
shouldn't be trying too hard to distract them from that truth," Ackroyd tells London correspondent Phil Rhodes ("To Be Bourne," page 42). "We shot a lot, but we still used technique. Occasionally we used dollies and even cranes, but we mostly put the camera in the hand. You get
into the story by being physically there; we followed the chase and we followed the story."
On-the-spot ingenuity was also applied to Swiss Army Man, an offbeat indie that
teamed cinematographer Larkin Seiple with directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. Seiple
was tasked with invigorating the story of a castaway who befriends a corpse. "I had a lot of
questions [after reading the script]," Seiple tells associate editor Andrew Fish ("Body
Language," page 52). "How were we going to make it believable? How would we make this
relationship work between a man and a corpse? My first inclination was to fight against the
absurdity of the film by grounding it in a stark environment. But as the project evolved, we
instead focused on supporting the absurdity of the visuals and structuring them around the
emotional journey of the film."
Our August issue also offers Matt Mulcahey's coverage of the sci-fi drama Equals, shot
by John Guleserian ("Love and Dystopia," page 64); two sidebars and a Post Focus column
addressing this month's special theme of digital color correction; and ASC member David
Stump's assessment of the Lytro Cinema system, a pioneering light-field capture system introduced earlier this year at the NAB Show (Filmmakers' Forum, page 74).

Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
10

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Editor's Note

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - August 2016