American Cinematographer - September 2013 - 22

Cinematographer Thierry Arbogast, AFC supplemented the practical oil lamp visible in
these frame grabs with a dimmed and bounced 500-watt Fresnel, and used a 4K Fresnel
for the moonlight source.

was an intermediary solution to use most of
the sensor area.
Tell us about the crane shot that
appears early in the film, as the woman
leaves the house with her children.
Arbogast: We see them come out
of the house, and follow them to the courtyard door with the camera low. They disappear through a small door, and the camera
rises slowly above the wall to reveal a wide
shot of them walking in the street. Then,
there is an explosion, and a pickup truck
carrying militiamen drives by. What pleased
me was to start by seeing nothing and then
22

September 2013

to rediscover her and her kids in the city. It
was a nice way to introduce Kabul. I
suggested that shot to Atiq. It’s actually my
homage to the crane move by Tonino Delli
Colli [AIC] in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a
Time in the West where the camera rises
above the train station.
Was your technical approach
different in Afghanistan?
Arbogast: Yes. In Kabul we shot
with a Canon [EOS] 5D, because I didn’t
want to risk using a bigger camera, which
would have required a crew, in the street.
Atiq and I decided to go with a 5D, and that
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worried our editor, Hervé de Luze, who was
concerned that it wouldn’t match the Alexa.
It’s true that the 5D image has strong
compression, but we used Technicolor’s
CineStyle Profile to soften it a little. Also
Saba, my operator, provided us with [an
anamorphically adapted still lens,] a 50mm
[T2.8] Nikon with an anamorphic Iscorama
projection lens mounted in front of it. This
particular Iscorama lens was semi-anamorphic; I think the squeeze was 1.5x. I closed
the stop down a little so it would be good
quality. That lens enabled us to do very beautiful wide shots of the woman walking in the
streets of Kabul. For the bird fights and other
scenes there, we used two 5Ds with Nikon
zooms, a 24-70mm [T2.8] and a 70-200mm
[T2.8], because we had to move quickly.
Is the 5D intercut with the Alexa?
Arbogast: Yes. For example, the
crane shot we’ve discussed was done with
the Alexa in Casablanca, and that cuts to a
shot following the woman and her children
with the 5D in the streets of Kabul. I defy the
viewer to see the difference.
How did you approach the bluewalled room where so much of the film
takes place?
Arbogast: I asked for a room with
northern exposure so it wouldn’t get direct
sunlight, and, thanks to the assistant director, that’s what I got. The location was an
abandoned complex, so we could add bullet
holes and break walls as the story
progressed. Through the corner windows in
the room, you can see the courtyard garden
and a bit of the street. The windows show a
real location, not a set, so when you see the
tank through the window, it’s real.
What was your lighting
approach?
Arbogast: I used an 18K HMI outside
as sunlight, and we’d reposition the ray of
sunlight to indicate time of day. So, for
example, when the woman hides her
husband in the closet, the ray of light hit him
in the evening. I would also add a 12K and
4K with full or half diffusion and cross them
through the corner windows; the windows
formed a right angle, which allowed us to
cross the light easily. I rarely used a source
inside. Sometimes I used a poly bounce, and
once or twice we had to add a 575-watt
bounce on a poly. If the camera allows me to
capture [existing] light realistically, that’s

American Cinematographer - September 2013

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