American Cinematographer - November 2008 - (Page 20)

Above left: Director Clint Eastwood (left) uses a handheld monitor to check the shot as Acamera/Steadicam operator Stephen Campanelli films Jolie running for the trolley. Above right: Certain the boy returned to her is not her son, Christine turns to Rev. Briegleb (John Malkovich) for help. Below: Cinematographer Tom Stern, ASC, AFC checks Malkovich’s light. behind the lens. “You’ve got to whack 3 stops off it at least just to get started outside,” notes the cinematographer. “We felt the blacks seemed more informed with 5279 — the toe was of interest to us — so we stuck with it.” Changeling required more built sets than recent Eastwood projects, and as a result, the lighting rigs were a little more extensive than usual. “There were a number of sets where we used bleached-muslin ceiling pieces to create a constant soft, warm toplight,” says Dunkerley. “It’s a subtle warmth that isn’t quite antique or sepia, but it pushed us toward a period feel. Each ceiling piece was lit from above with up to four 6K space lights, and the grips skirted each cluster with Duvatyn from top to bottom to prevent stray light from falling on the neighboring ceiling piece. All of the toplight was run to a dimmer board, and if any of the various ceiling pieces was seen by the camera, we simply turned the corresponding lights off at the dimmer board, and that piece would go dark. Because we had that soft, warm base level, we ended up using more soft lights for keylight, including 2K and 4K Zips.” Dunkerley notes that he and Stern, who worked together with Hall on pictures such as American Beauty (AC May ’00) and Road to Perdition (AC Aug. ’02), now use projected rain shadows as part of their visual vocabulary. “In Changeling, the rain effects are often seen during the day, which necessitated a slightly different approach,” says the gaffer. “We started using Skypans in those situations; the single source gives you hard shadows, while the white reflector through the water fills things in a bit and gives the images a less contrasty look. We were using 5K, 10K and even 20K Skypans, which you rarely see used as a keylight.” Aerolight Hybrid balloons came in handy for scenes taking place in the City Council chambers, which was actually a large room on the third floor of the Park Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. “In those conditions, it would have been very difficult to go strictly with HMIs or daylight,” says Dunkerley. “The room had a lot of chandeliers and practicals, as well as natural daylight coming through the windows. The wood walls and tungsten practicals gave the room a warm feel. These hybrid balloons have two 1,200-watt HMI globes and two 1K tungsten fixtures, all dimmable. We could dial in the color we wanted. I think it worked well.” Stern says that overall, the period setting had very little effect on his on-set photography choices. “[The look] was mostly achieved in production design and in the digital-intermediate [DI] timing,” he says. “My impression from my years as a gaffer is that cinematographers used to do a lot more gelling and things like that, and I find we do hardly any now. If I want to shape the images in terms of chroma and contrast, I do it all in the DI.” Stern carried out that work at Technicolor Digital Intermediates with colorist Jill Bogdanowicz; he viewed reference images via e-mail in Russia and was present in person for a day or two of finishing touches. “I’ve done five pictures with Jill, and we understand each other completely,” he says. “I didn’t have to do too much to the grade except sort of thematically.” Stern feels strongly that becoming obsessed with equipment is a crucial mistake. “Working in Russia reminded me that what has legs, what lives, is the idea. Very few of us probably know what the film stock was on Vertigo, yet it’s a tremendously important artistic work. Talking about this toy or that toy takes me away from what really interests me about the whole process: telling a story ¢ through a visual medium.” 20 November 2008

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American Cinematographer - November 2008

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