American Cinematographer - November 2007 - (Page 57)

although power went out occasionally at the hotel.” To keep things simple, Schaefer worked with only three film stocks, all from Kodak’s Vision2 family: 100T 5212, 200T 5217 and 500T 5218. “It wasn’t easy to get the film sent out to us,” he says. “Occasionally we’d run out of stock at 11 a.m. and have to wait for our shipment to come in from the airport!” For 1970s Kabul, “the color palette was driven by the real colors in Kabul: they wear and decorate their interiors with bright colors, but the exteriors are all sand-washed,” says Schaefer. “So we decided the boys’ childhood would be rich and saturated, very normal-feeling. Amir’s whole adult life is less saturated, less colorful. When he goes back to Afghanistan, the same places you saw when he was a child are noticeably brought down, an effect we achieved with production design and in the DI at LaserPacific. We decided to differentiate the periods mainly through camera movement and color grading, because we wanted the differentiation to be subtle.” Throughout the shoot, production “was extremely good with the camera department,” he states. “We had 30-foot MovieBird, which is like a Technocrane, the whole time, and it came with a technician.” The production also carried a Felix crane, which the crew ably transported to difficult spots, including a hilltop cemetery outside of Tashkurgan, an 11,800' elevation. “The Chinese crew will take anything anywhere,” says the cinematographer. “They carried the Felix up those steps, assembled it overnight, and laid down track so we could dolly it. “The only thing I compromised on was construction cranes and Condors,” he continues. “There was a dearth of Condors in China. Instead, they had one-man buckets, like cherry-pickers. That restricted our lighting a bit, especially on high floors. And since we didn’t have con- struction cranes to fly big silks, we tried to work the schedule around the sun and used smaller silks — 20bys, 12-bys and negatives. On the bigger exteriors, there’s nothing you can do; you just try to plan your day in an intelligent way to get the right light at the right time.” A few key items were brought from the States, including a Hustler dolly and an electric dolly car made by Grip Trix, a small ATV loaded with plates and mounts. The latter proved particularly effective in Kashgar’s narrow alleyways. Various scenes have children running through the ancient streets of Kabul and its outdoor markets. For tracking shots there, a Steadicam was attached to the electric dolly. “Because we were shooting sound in those narrow alleys, we didn’t want noisy gas motors running through there,” says Schaefer. The All-Terrain E-ATD electric dolly was also used to track Baba driving his Mustang with the kids hanging out the window. “It’s the size of a golf cart but can go a lot faster,” notes Schaefer. “It has off-road tires and super-strong suspension. It worked great.” Kashgar’s maze-like center was the location for the kite tournament, an all-day affair in which children fly their kites like weapons, using the glass-coated kite strings to cut down their opponents. “Kite runners” dash to retrieve the felled kites, and the final defeated kite is considered the ultimate prize. In the film, the competition comes down to a duel between Amir and Hassan and another duo. The scene was shot over two days — one for each team — and, as it happened, the first day was sunny with dappled clouds, and the next was cloudy throughout. “It was extremely complicated,” recalls Schaefer. “We tried to arrange it chronologically so there would be a logic to the sun’s position. Because the competition is supposed to take place over an entire day, we didn’t worry so much about the light changing in the square.” Thanks to that bit of sun on the second day, he adds, the matching ended up being “fairly close.” In addition to ground action, the kite tournament includes aerial perspectives of the city and spectators — the kites’ POV, in effect. This involved a number of elements, including three days of greenscreen photography of kite flyers and spectators on rooftops, taken at extreme angles. To capture plates for the visual-effects department, the producers brought in a Flying-Cam, partly because the Chinese government The adult Amir (Khalid Abdalla) shares his kite-flying expertise with his old friend’s son, Sohrab (Ali Danish Bakhtyari). American Cinematographer 57

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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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