American Cinematographer - November 2008 - (Page 14)

Short Takes A Dystopian View of the Future by Iain Stasukevich whose loyalties are tested in the face of infidelity and infection. One of the skills Mayén picked up from Prieto is the ability to interpret a screenplay in visual terms. “Rodrigo takes so much time to visualize a script in terms of color, lenses, stock and texture,” Mayén notes. “For him, everything’s in the script; that gives him all the answers as to how the movie’s going to look. “That was a big lesson for me,” Mayén continues. “Even if the audience doesn’t specifically notice the cinematography, they’ll at least feel something happening with it, and that’s very important. The cinematographer’s work shouldn’t be evident; it should tell the story.” Upon reading the Singularity script, Mayén thought about utilizing the anamorphic format and exploiting its inherently shallow depth of field to create a sense of increasing separation between the characters. He first experimented with anamorphic while shooting lens tests for Prieto for the Tokyo sequences of Babel (AC Nov. ’06), and he fell in love with the results. “There is something inherent in the anamorphic lens that just makes it stand alone,” he says. Mayén decided to shoot Singularity with a vintage set of Panavision CSeries lenses and a Panaflex Millennium XL. “My plan was to use the anamorphic lenses to place the actors at opposite ends of the frame,” he explains. “I also wanted to use depth of field to underline their relationship. At the beginning, I photographed them at T4 or T5.6, and as the friendships start to fall apart, I began to open up the stop on the lens until we got to the point where if there was a shift in focus at 14 November 2008 Photo by Jo Lederer; photo and and frame grabs courtesy of Eduardo Mayén. Guardians patrol the plagueridden, nearfuture world of Singularity. Cinematographer Eduardo Mayén and director Sean Stone found inspiration for the film’s visuals in The Conformist and Gattaca. nless your name is Quentin Tarantino, the local video store may not sound like the best place to start a career as a filmmaker, but the strategy also worked for cinematographer Eduardo Mayén. In 1998, Mayén was studying at the Escuela Monica Herrera, a college in El Salvador, while working behind the counter at Mr. Video to make ends meet. What he really wanted to do was make movies, and it just so happened that one of his regular customers, David Pinto, was a prolific commercials director who agreed to hire Mayén as a production assistant on a job for a Central American airline. While working on the commercial, Mayén found himself captivated by the work of the project’s then-unknown director of photography. “I remember being so impressed with him,” Mayén recalls. “His name was Rodrigo Prieto.” After meeting Prieto, who later became a member of the ASC and AMC, Mayén shifted his focus from directing to cinematography. Once he finished his classes at Monica Herrera, he moved to the States to study film at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Throughout his U studies, Mayén kept in touch with Prieto, and after graduation, he joined the cinematographer’s crew; since then, they have worked together on such films as 21 Grams, Alexander and Babel. During the five months of production on Alexander (AC Nov. ’04), Mayén shot reference stills for color correction and developed a friendship with Sean Stone, the son of director Oliver Stone. “We started hanging out and talking about movies, and we got along,” says Mayén. “We joked around that if we ever did [a project of our own], we would call each other, and that’s what Sean did.” Stone offers, “I knew there must be something to this guy because Rodrigo trusted him, but I didn’t actually know how good he was until I got to work with him.” The young Stone had written a short screenplay titled Singularity, which was based on one of his father’s student projects, Michael and Marie. Set in the near future amid a neo-fascist society ravaged by a deadly plague, Singularity tells the story of three friends — Michael (Jonathan Charis), Marie (Sinta Weisz) and Wells (Wyatt Denny) —

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American Cinematographer - November 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Letters Short Takes Production Slate Forging a Bond The Making of a President Thunder Down Under Habitat for Inhumanity Saluting Television’s Top Talents Post Focus New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

American Cinematographer - November 2008

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