American Cinematographer - November 2007 - (Page 48)

Deconstructing Bob Dylan Jude’s confrontational posture reaches its apex in England, where she provokes catcalls from the audience — and a game of cat-and-mouse with the British press. ation of the Dylan story in I’m Not There concerns the famous outlaw Billy the Kid (Gere). This storyline, shot in color on Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 and 250D 5205, shows the outlaw living in quiet exile in a small rural town. Soon he discovers that a corrupt politician is intent on exploiting the locals, and in his attempt to confront this injustice, Billy jeopardizes his carefully guarded reclusion. The visual inspiration for this story came from the aforementioned revisionist, anti-hero Westerns of the late Sixties and early Seventies: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 48 November 2007 McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (in which Dylan played a supporting role). “Many of the cinematographers and directors working at that time were well-versed in commercial techniques,” says Lachman. “They used longer lenses and made creative use of flares, backlighting and foregrounds with chocolate or coral filters.” For this section of the film, he used his Moviecam in conjunction with several-decades-old zooms from Angenieux and Cooke, as well as 300mm and 600mm Canon lenses. “Those cinematographers also exper- imented with a lot of zooms in their shots, and we really wanted to go for that visual grammar,” Lachman adds. Though he used some of the latest stocks for the color portions of I’m Not There, Lachman found himself using older lighting techniques to give these sections the desired feel. “I started this shoot in black-and-white, and I got into a rhythm of lighting for that with Fresnel and harder light. You tend to edgelight black-and-white for separation and contrast. You have to use harder and more directional light. Also, I used a bit of light for fill because of the narrower latitude of Plus-X and Double-X negative. “It took some time for me to make the transition back to lighting for color. Our approach became emblematic of the way color was shot in the period we were trying capture. With today’s emulsions, like 5218, I might just use a bounce card or no fill card at all; I can just let light fall off and still retain information in the shadow areas. But I was getting used to bouncing a bit of fill light in, and that subtly gives those scenes a look that’s similar to a lot of what was being done in color cinematography

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2007

American Cinematographer - November 2007 Contents Editor’s Note Global Village DVD Playback Production Slate Deconstructing Bob Dylan Honoring a Lost Friend Night Terrors Losing Control TV’s Top-Rated Short Takes Post Focus New Products & Services Points East International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

American Cinematographer - November 2007

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