American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 24

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visit AC's October-issue articles at
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TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Sony CineAlta F65, Red Weapon 6K
Leica Summilux-C, Cooke Speed Panchro

24

October 2016

Hip-hop overtakes disco's position of prominence in the South Bronx of the late 1970s in
the Netflix original series The Get Down.

I

Rhythm Revolution
By Jean Oppenheimer

Disco was king in the late 1970s,
when a revolutionary new musical art form
started taking root at street gatherings and
block parties across the South Bronx - a
community mired in poverty, neglect and
crime that neither state nor federal officials
seemed interested in addressing. Hip-hop
incorporated new styles of artistic expression, most famously rap, graffiti, deejaying
and breakdancing. Part entertainment and
part protest, hip-hop spoke to the frustrations and sense of exclusion felt by young,
urban African-Americans and Hispanics.
Almost overnight it transformed into a
cultural identity.
The demise of disco and the rise of
hip-hop is chronicled in The Get Down, a
Netflix original series that streamed six
episodes in August and will soon follow
with another six. Baz Luhrmann, the
project's mastermind, presents the story
through the eyes of a fictional group of
teenagers: gifted poet Zeke, a.k.a. "Books"
(Justice Smith); philosophy-spouting Ra-Ra
(Skylan Brooks); and Ra-Ra's brothers BooBoo (Tremaine "T.J." Brown Jr.) and Dizzee
(Jaden Smith). Then there is Shaolin Fantastic (Shameik Moore), the mysterious graffiti
artist in red suede Pumas whom the
younger boys revere.
"When I first met Baz and [executive
producer] Catherine Martin, we spoke of
music and dance of the 1970s and the
American Cinematographer

history of New York," says director of
photography William Rexer, speaking to AC
by phone in New York, where the series is
shot. "I am a New Yorker and both my
parents and grandparents grew up in New
York City. My dad had been a child
performer, then later a music producer and
agent. I grew up with my dad producing
Cab Calloway, the Hines Brothers, the Spinners and many more. This history was
important to Baz.
"Hip-hop is a collection of different
elements and techniques - beats and
breaks, spinning, sampling, and scratching
- that form a kind of collage, and that's
the feeling Baz wanted for the show,"
Rexer continues. "He also wanted The Get
Down to be as far away from a documentary feel as possible. The story needed to be
grounded in reality, but rather than gritty,
Baz wanted a sense of myth. He wanted
epic, in the form of long tracking shots,
sweeping camera moves, high and low
angles, and wide pullouts. He also wanted
the camera to be an active participant with
Zeke and his friends - to make the viewer
one of the kids, discovering things as they
do."
An arsenal of lights, lenses and
camera supports was required to accomplish these goals. To place viewers alongside
the characters, Rexer chose to use a Freefly
Movi M15 three-axis motorized gimbal
stabilizer. More than half of the series,
which commenced production in June
2015, was captured on Movi and

The Get Down unit photography by Myles Aronowitz and David Lee, courtesy of Netflix.

images of himself, the mystery woman and
the chilling fate of all four missing people.
Shot on a dark, smoke-infused stage with
the F65, portions of the sequence were lit
exclusively through a single stained-glass
window, creating eerie shafts of light.
Förderer explains that the light through the
window was produced with 4K xenon
units, and represented the only significant
shots where he did not rely primarily on
LEDs. "I realized in a test that we had to use
traditional xenon fixtures to get the most
parallel beams shining through the
window," he says.
"The [cave set] is really a black box,"
Förderer continues. "With high dynamic
range you get so much more detail, and
because there is always some light bouncing off the actor, you have to create a really
deep black background. I used extreme
backlight [with Arri M18s] so that I could
stop down and underexpose the black
duvetyne as much as possible. [We also
used] as little smoke as possible to protect
our blacks. You always have to be way
more precise with lighting and exposure
with higher dynamic range."
"I'm a big believer in high resolution
and enhanced depth of field," Clark
concludes. "That helps with decisions
regarding image composition, and what is
needed to better facilitate an immediate
emotional impact that creates a sense of
allure, mystery or seduction. When the
images organically relate to each other, the
more options you have when expanding
dynamic range and color palette. These
things just add to the possibilities in creating
images for the maximum storytelling
impact. To me, the film must always be visually driven."
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2016
