American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 23

2.40:1 release, and the camera's ArriRaw files
were recorded to an external Codex recorder.
"The Drop is a small story, on a small human
scale," the cinematographer explains, "and
the Alexa doesn't need a lot of light, so you
don't have to spend hours putting up
fixtures."
In his native Belgium, Karakatsanis is
as acclaimed for his still photography as for
his motion-picture work, and he prefers using
Leica lenses for both. "Leicas give a certain
organic look with their subtlety and bokeh
that makes things feel more human," he
posits. "They produce an [especially] human
feeling in close-ups, without going super-soft.
Their falloff is really smooth."
On The Drop, the cinematographer
carried a set of Leica Summilux-C T1.4
primes: 18mm, 21mm, 25mm, 35mm,
40mm, 50mm, 75mm and 100mm. The
40mm was used most frequently. "I'm not
saying I never use wide [or telephoto] lenses
on a film, but, if I can, I stick with standard
ones," he comments. "And I always shoot
wide open!" With the exception of NDs, he
never used lens filtration.
In order to show Karakatsanis an accurate image while he was operating, digitalimaging technician Charlie Anderson notes,
"I ran two BNC cables together, one from the
camera [to my workstation] and one from me
back to the camera, so that Nicolas could see
any changes I was making in his on-board
monitor. Sixteen19 was our post house, and
when I took my monitors to get them calibrated, I also took Nicolas' on-board monitor.
"The base LUT I made was about a
stop darker than Rec 709," continues Anderson, who dialed in the look using Blackmagic
Design's DaVinci Resolve 10, then exported
the look-up table into Pomfort LiveGrade.
"Nicolas likes a moody image, but he also
wants to protect the 'negative' so that we
never run into an issue with the blacks or
whites clipping. I can adjust the lift, gamma
and gain based on what Nicolas wants, yet
still keep the [digital] negative clean and properly exposed."
The interior of Bob's house was built
onstage to help the production qualify for tax
incentives, but everything else was shot on a
practical location, including a recently closed
pub that served as the bar. Everything inside
the bar had been torn out except the countertop, which had a beautiful sheen to it that

Top to bottom: Cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis employed an array of Lee gels to create a mixture
of warm and cool light for a scene in which Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini) awaits an accomplice; warm
tones predominate inside Bob's home; red signals danger in a bar scene with Nadia (Noomi Rapace) and
Eric (Matthias Schoenaerts).

the filmmakers wanted to preserve. "Things
come alive when they have sheen," asserts
Karakatsanis. "I had [the art department]
put down an additional layer of varnish to
make the counter even shinier." The
wooden walls around the bar were painted
a dark brown and a layer of gloss was
applied. The ceiling was a dark, glossy
green, except for the section directly above
the bartenders; that area consisted of large
black-and-white plastic squares. "Production designer Thérèse DePrez did a fantastic
job," raves Karakatsanis. "I loved working
with her."
www.theasc.com

Nine days were spent shooting the
bar interiors. Karakatsanis shot plates of
cars driving at night, and this footage was
projected onto a rear-projection screen put
against the outside of the bar's single
window, "which was tented so we could
shoot day-for-night," the cinematographer
notes. "It really works well for backgrounds.
With shallow depth of field, the projection
perfectly melts together with the real
world." Ambient light for the few day interiors was provided by three 12K HMI Pars
placed outside and bounced into frames of
Ultrabounce.
➣
October 2014

http://www.theasc.com

American Cinematographer - October 2014

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