American Cinematographer - September 2012 - 48F

RUSH
PREMIUM
his resume includes The Bourne
Legacy, The Bourne Supremacy,
Mission: Impossible – Ghost
Protocol and Seabiscuit.
Premium Rush is a fi lm built
around a simple idea: a New
York City bike messenger
(Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is given a
package to deliver to Chinatown.
A dirty cop (Michael Shannon)
needs to intercept the package to
pay off his gambling debts. And
years of work done by a good
woman hoping to get her son out
of China are at stake.
Director David Koepp, who
co-wrote the script with John
Kamps, has an amazing list of
writing credits that includes
Jurassic Park, Carlito’s Way,
Mission: Impossible, Panic Room
and Spider-Man.
Premium Rush employs a
complex, time-shifting structure
in which the same incident is
seen from different perspectives
at different points in the movie.
Cinematographer Mitchell
Amundsen researched the
project by learning about the
bike messenger subculture. He
discovered a world of adrenaline
junkies who “surf the green
wave,” streaking south through
Manhattan, timing the lights all
the way to Battery Park.
The bike chase material that
makes up the heart of Premium
Rush took some inspiration
from online video shot by
real bike messengers with
helmet cameras. Amundsen’s
assignment was to translate
those daredevil thrills to the big
screen. “These guys are crazy,”
says Amundsen. “The movie
is essentially one bitchin’ bike
chase.”
Amundsen began his career
as an intern at Francis Ford
Coppola’s production company,
where he had the chance
to observe top directors of
photography like Vittorio Storaro,
ASC, AIC; Stephen H. Burum,
ASC; and Stephen Goldblatt,
ASC, BSC. As a director of
photography, he has shot
many commercials as well as
Transformers, G.I. Joe: The Rise of
Cobra and Jonah Hex. As a go-to
second unit cinematographer,
Sony Studios originally asked
Amundsen to shoot Premium
Rush with a digital camera. “It’s
the streets of New York, from
Columbia University all the way
to Chinatown,” he explains.
“We would own four blocks
of Broadway at a time. I was
going to have two units working,
and three cameras on my unit.
Working with a DIT would have
been diffi cult. There was a lot
of day exterior. I wanted to do
overcranked shots, up to 120
frames. I wanted to be able to
extend moments and then ramp
it back to normal. I needed the
latitude and versatility of 35mm
fi lm.”
Amundsen points out that
while a new rule limits cars
involved in New York City motion
picture production to 35 miles
per hour, that speed is pretty
much top end for bicycles. That
ensured that chases shown from
the bicyclist’s viewpoint could be
hair-raisingly realistic. “You can’t
really do an intense car chase
in New York City anymore,”
he says. “But if you’re doing a
bicycle movie, 35 mph is fl at-out
fast. You don’t need 50 mph.
I realized that this was a really
cool way to update the New
York City chase — with bikes
swerving in and out of traffi c.”
To take audiences into the bike
messenger’s world, Amundsen
made extensive use of ARRI 235
cameras, small and lightweight
but technically sophisticated
35mm fi lm cameras, often
mounted on motorcycles or
dragged behind the bikes on
trailers, capturing shots from
kinetic angles. He also used
ARRI 435 cameras in pursuit
cars and on remote arms behind
or alongside the bicyclists, and
on a kind of improvised process
cart adapted for bikes, which
was often used for scenes that
involve dialogue — GordonLevitt’s
character carries on a
continuous conversation with his
dispatcher via radio.
“I would put a little lamp
and a small generator on the
electric cart just to clean him up
and get a little light in his eyes,”
Amundsen says.
A-camera and Steadicam
operator Dave Thompson, SOC
says that the chase scenes will
have audiences holding their
breath, anticipating a collision.
“We were pushing it every day,”
American Cinematographer - September 2012

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