American Cinematographer - September 2017 - 30

Left: Murphy lines up the camera.
Above: The cinematographer studies the set
from the shadows.

it doesn't look like a slick commercial."
In addition to using ellipsoidals to
create patterns of light, Murphy and gaffer
Rob White lit the studio's white cyclorama
with 2K Blondes and ground rows gelled
with a mixture of Lee 182 Light Red, 147
Apricot, 704 Lily and 794 Pretty 'n Pink.
Backlight was provided by five un-gelled 2K
Fresnels and "approximately five 1K Fresnels,
rigged in a high studio fashion at a 45degree angle, gelled with Lee 776
Nectarine," Murphy explains. Final touches
involved two Dedolight 1K Octodomes,
positioned at a distance as soft fill. "There
wasn't any real cosmetic or modern beauty
light," Murphy adds. "We could have made
it look much slicker in a very easy way, but
we didn't. We wanted to make the look
authentic, so we tried to limit ourselves to
the tools they'd have had in the Sixties or
Seventies when trying to make a studio
video."
This relatively conventional period
setup, however, was photographed using
decidedly less-conventional techniques. To
begin, Murphy details, "We pull-processed
2 stops, so in theory I should have been
exposing at 125 ASA. But I exposed at 500
ASA, so I was deliberately underexposing by
2 stops - and I put an ND 0.6 filter in the
camera and didn't compensate for it, so it
was a total underexposure of 4 stops. I then
[brought] the image up 4 stops in the
telecine. I needed to really beat up the stock
to get [the desired vintage look]."
This approach greatly reduced
30

September 2017

contrast and color saturation, though
Murphy was able to avoid excessive grain.
"Usually if we were going to underexpose
four stops and print up it would get grainy,
but the pull process softens the contrast and
tightens the grain structure. I further reduced
the contrast using a #2 Schneider LowCon
filter." Murphy also employed a 2mm Tiffen
Star Filter, "similar to what you used to find
in the filter wheel of an old Betacam," he
says.
"I usually work at T4," Murphy notes.
"I'm not one of those guys who likes to
shoot wide open. With roughly 500 ASA -
or 800 ASA if you're shooting Alexa - there
can be so much ambient light bouncing
around when you shoot wide open that it
can fill in your blacks. Working at T4 helps
control contrast - and it helps give your
focus puller a fighting chance."
Perhaps surprisingly, given the
techniques in use, there were no tests. "If I
were going to do this for a feature, I'd test
the stock, the processing, the lab," Murphy
offers. "You're asking the stock to do
something it's not designed to do; you're
asking the lab to do something unusual."
With the music video's abbreviated schedule,
though, there simply wasn't time for any
testing. "I have plenty of experience severely
underexposing film, so I was confident in the
results," the cinematographer adds. "Chris
trusted me, so we just went for it."
After processing at Kodak Film Lab
London, (formerly known as iDailies), the
footage was transferred under the care of
American Cinematographer

colorist Dan Crussell. The finished music
video surrounds its 1.33:1 image with a
matte to fill the 1.78:1 frame. Murphy
reveals that the matte "is not pure black. It's
ever so slightly blue, to make it feel like an
old transfer."
The basic compositing required was
completed by editor Mark Kendrick, with the
final grade performed by Dan Moran, who
used Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve at
postproduction facility Coffee & TV in
London. With the primary distribution outlet
for music videos now online, Murphy recalls
taking special care to ensure the subtleties of
the image remained visible. "Dan [Moran]
gave me the full-resolution version, which
was 4 or 5 GBs. I had the bit rate cranked up
to 60,000, so you have a fighting chance of
seeing the subtler details online."
AC spoke to Murphy during his first
week of shooting the opening episode for
the upcoming season of the ITV series Vera,
which shoots four feature-length episodes a
year. Since wrapping "No Good at All," the
cinematographer has also completed work
on the BBC police procedural Line of Duty
and additional photography on Yorgos
Lanthimos's film The Favourite. Next, he
offers, "I have another drama I should be
going onto almost straight after this, and in
between I try to do music videos. It's a nice
mix with short-term projects and then six or
seven weeks away on a drama."
To watch "No Good at All," visit
vimeo.com/218823059.
●
http://www.vimeo.com/218823059
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