American Cinematographer - October 2007 - (Page 20)

Above: McCandless pauses to contemplate his uncertain future. Below: Trouble begins when McCandless heads north to Alaska, where he becomes trapped by changing weather conditions. starvation. When he arrives in Alaska, the ground is already frozen and under snow. He hikes deep into the wilderness and stumbles upon an abandoned school bus, which he makes his home. He sustains himself by shooting and eating wild game, and after several months, having fulfilled his dream, he decides to return to civilization. But the frozen river he had walked across has thawed into raging waters, and there is no way to cross it. He returns to the bus and tries to survive on plants and grasses when game proves scarce. But unfamiliar with the flora, he eats something poisonous and becomes even weaker and sicker. In the end, he starves to death. When scouting locations, Penn and Gautier visited the real bus where McCandless died. “Sean didn’t want to shoot in the actual bus, of course, but we felt it was important for the spirit of the movie for us to see it,” says the cinematographer. Production designer Derek R. Hill was able to locate an exact replica of the vehicle. “Sean wanted bright sunshine for the moment when Chris realizes he has ingested poison,” recalls Gautier. “He wanted it to be very violent and aggressive. When we shot the scene, however, it was pouring rain, so I placed four 18Ks outside the bus, shining through the windows. I loved the look of the artificial light for this very specific and dramatic moment. “Emile was amazing in the scene, and we shot only a few takes. We captured the instant when Chris realizes he may have poisoned himself with a zoom through a bus window, but the main shot, when he is rolling around on the floor, is a tight shot from inside the bus. I used a long lens, but I wasn’t even 2 centimeters from his face. I was rolling around on the floor with Emile, and Sean was pushing me to get tighter. It was incredibly intense, and everybody was exhausted afterwards.” The final shot starts tight on McCandless and pulls back out of the bus and up into the air. “We started the move with an Akela crane and finished it with a helicopter shot,” notes Gautier. “We used video assist to obtain the same point of view.” Gautier has high praise for his crew and singles out 1st AC Chris Reynolds, whom he had worked with on A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (see AC Oct. ’06), and B-camera/Steadicam operator Jacques Jouffret. He met the latter by chance just two days before the shoot and hired him on instinct. “Jacques was just great, and he proved a really good partner,” says Gautier. ¢ 20 October 2007

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American Cinematographer - October 2007

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