American Cinematographer - October 2008 - (Page 17)

Arguelles (gesturing at center) is joined on the Panama jail set by (from left) dolly grip Phill Fulton, video engineer Robert Meacham, camera operator Rick Anderson, dolly grip Dan Clear, director/executive producer Kevin Hooks and gaffer Juan Romero. a long corridor lined with glass blocks. To light the scene, our gaffer, Juan Romero, had five or six 18K HMIs coming through the glass blocks. The combination of the rain, the dark shadows, and light coming through glass was very effective. “We also had the actors sweating continuously — they were always being spritzed,” he continues. “In a typical scene, we’d have a combination of hot source light, created with 18K HMIs gelled with 1⁄2 straw and 1⁄4 yellow Lee gels, and some low-level light inside the cell that came from 2K Baby Juniors gelled with 1⁄8 straw. We had about 256 of those 2Ks wired to dimmers and positioned on every side of the cell and both sides of the hallway so we could shoot every angle or follow the characters with Steadicam or handheld cameras. In the cells, we sometimes had candles in the background, too. Add to that the green/bluish/yellowish light coming through the windows and a chocolate filter on the lens, and you have a very unique look. “We used different gradations of chocolate filtration on the lens — they make for rich facial tones. Inside, we used a 1⁄4 or 1⁄8 chocolate. Outside, we used a 1 or 2 chocolate, depending on the time of day and the location, combined with an 85 or 81EF. We slightly overexposed the negative and desaturated the image in post, which we do at Riot in Santa Monica.” By contrast, in Los Angeles, the goal is neutral colors. Working with Vision2 Expression 500T 5229 and, more recently, the new Vision2 500T 5260 (rated normally), Arguelles and Mygatt use an 81EF on day exteriors and an LLD on day interiors. “There is no correction on the tungsten lights, and we put 1⁄2 CTO on the HMIs,” notes Arguelles, who collaborates with gaffer Randy Glass this season. To enhance communication with the dailies colorist, Jason Altman, and the final colorist, Ken Van Deste, Arguelles shoots stills on the set with a Nikon D300 and e-mails them to Riot. “The Nikon is very accurate and has a tremendous range of color adjustments,” he notes. He changes the color temperature setting on the camera to match the color temperature of the scene. “The stills and the final colorcorrection are very close. It’s a really great tool for color consistency.” One of the cinematographers Arguelles most admires is French cameraman Raoul Coutard. “His name is synonymous with the handheld camerawork of the French New Wave, and he didn’t use many lights. He made the most of the tools at hand, and you have to do the same in television. Also, lighting is not just about light, it’s also about the angles. Coutard understood that. “There is a joke on our set about ‘Fernando’s dolly’ — it’s a dolly shot that moves across the room on a diagonal, from far to close or vice versa. As you move, the perspective of the background changes from the beginning to the end of the shot. That creates a certain oddness in the frame, especially with the backgrounds, and it also helps us avoid changing the focal length on a http://www.sachtler.us http://www.sachtler.us

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2008

American Cinematographer - October 2008 Contents Editor's Note Short Takes: DirecTV's "Fourth Wall" Campaign Production Slate: Prison Break Production Slate: Need for Speed: Undercover Middle East Intrigue Kingdom of Light Memoirs of a Spook Landmark Gains Post Focus: An Overview of the ASC CDL Filmmakers' Forum: Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Ross Berryman

American Cinematographer - October 2008

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