American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 22

Production Slate

I

Internet Whistleblowers
By Mark Dillon

The Fifth Estate chronicles the rise of WikiLeaks, the website
that has leaked millions of anonymously sourced documents and
gained notoriety as one of the world's most polarizing organizations.
The feature dramatizes the first meeting in Berlin between WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Daniel
Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), who becomes the site's spokesman.
They and their colleagues proceed to post revelations about banks,
churches and, most notably, U.S. government war logs from the
conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Written by Josh Singer from Domscheit-Berg's Inside
WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website and WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy
by The Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, the movie
opened the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
The project reunited director of photography Tobias
Schliessler, ASC, and director Bill Condon, who had previously collaborated on the Academy Award-winning musical Dreamgirls (AC Dec.
'06) and the 2010 pilot for the HBO drama The Big C. Schliessler
knew that their latest feature called for a different approach. "On
Dreamgirls we spent a lot of time storyboarding; it was a much more
controlled and stylized movie," he says. "The Fifth Estate is a depar22

November 2013

ture because it's a true story that's still happening right now. It had
to feel realistic."
The 53-year-old Schliessler was born in Baden-Baden,
Germany, and schooled at Vancouver's Simon Fraser University. His
cinematography career began in Canada on documentaries and
low-budget features. Condon says he wanted Schliessler to shoot
The Fifth Estate because of the cinematographer's experience with
unconventional features such as Friday Night Lights, which shunned
the traditional approaches of coverage: masters, two-shots and
close-ups. "We blocked The Fifth Estate naturally to create the sense
of 'you-are-there' reality in this look at events that are just a few
years old, with well-known characters," says Condon. "Tobias lit for
all possibilities, and [then we let] up to three operators roam through
a scene - sometimes through each other's shots - to tell the
movie in a kinetic way."
Another whistleblower film provided inspiration: The Insider,
directed by Michael Mann and shot by Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC
(AC, June '00). "We said, 'That's it - that's our bible,'" says
Schliessler, who adds, "Not necessarily lightingwise, but [in terms of]
the feel of it. The movie has a stylized sense even though it always
feels real."
Also useful were YouTube clips of the film's subjects, including footage of Assange on TV, at conferences and even dancing
beneath strobe lights at Reykjavík's Glaumbar nightclub. The film-

American Cinematographer

Photos by Frank Connor, courtesy of Walt Disney Studios and DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC.

Text dances
across the face
of WikiLeaks
founder Julian
Assange
(Benedict
Cumberbatch)
as he taps out a
private message
in The Fifth
Estate.



American Cinematographer - November 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2013

Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 1
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 2
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 3
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 4
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2013 - 6
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