American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 53

Gary Holmes and key grip Eddie
Evans came as a team off The Walking
Dead, and understood our time
constraints - which were major in
terms of making our days and moving
between disparate locations. They were
great at being creative but fast."
When shooting digitally,
McGarvey enjoys huddling with the
director by a monitor, but finds looking
at the video-tap from a film camera
"dispiriting." So, in this case, he
watched the action from beside the
camera.
Framing for widescreen 2.39:1
felt right, with spherical lenses and the
3-perf Super 35mm format deemed
best for the night-heavy shoot.
"Anamorphic lenses do not perform
well wide-open at night on the edge of
exposure," McGarvey opines. With a
chuckle, he adds, "It's just not fair to
the focus puller, either."
Though the crew made use of
Panavision's 24-275mm Primo Zoom
(T2.8), and for crane work would
throw on a 19-90mm (T2.8)
Panavision Primo Compact Zoom,
The Accountant was shot primarily on
Primo Primes. "I wanted the precision,
contrast and resolution I knew they
would bring," McGarvey says. This
sense of physical order helped emphasize Wolff 's obsessive-compulsive
personality - seen, for example, in
overhead shots depicting the exacting
way he stores his cutlery and prepares
and eats his meals.
"Shooting Life now, I'm either
extremely wide or long," McGarvey
notes. "But The Accountant needed a
sobriety to it, so it was the 21mm,
27mm, 75mm and 100mm. It was
quite straightforward.
"I'm not fastidious about shooting with one stop," the cinematographer continues. "I don't have to shoot a
picture all at T4. If I want to shoot
wide-open for effect, I'll do it, and the
contrary for shooting deeper. The start
of this film is quite conservative. We
were going for a photographic rectitude to show nothing was awry; everything was in place. That matched the

Cast and crew work in and around the set for Wolff's Airstream trailer.

content, but it gradually unravels.
Toward the end we went low-key and
underexposed dramatically by three or
four stops."
If there's one aspect of
McGarvey's style he sees as consistent
through most of his work, it's a
penchant for naturalism, achieved in a
minimalistic yet highly controlled
manner. "This is a film that did not
require bombast in terms of lighting
www.theasc.com

style," he says. "It had to feel true."
The most pronounced looks
come in flashbacks to Wolff 's childhood, when a young Chris (Seth Lee)
and his brother are shuffled around the
globe with their military father (Robert
C. Treveiler). Among these sequences
are vignettes about Chris' psychological
assessment, his martial-arts training in
Thailand, a funeral, and his father's
driving him to confront bullies in
November 2016

53


http://www.theasc.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2016

Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - Intro
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 1
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 2
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 4
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 5
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 6
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 7
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 8
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 9
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 10
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 11
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 12
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 13
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 14
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 15
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 16
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 17
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 18
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 19
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 20
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 21
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 22
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 23
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 24
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 25
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 26
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 27
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 28
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 29
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 30
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 31
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 32
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 33
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 34
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 35
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 36
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 37
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 38
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 39
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 40
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 41
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 42
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 43
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 44
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 45
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 46
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 47
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 48
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 49
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 50
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 51
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 52
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 53
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 54
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 55
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 56
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 57
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 58
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 59
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 60
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 61
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 62
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 63
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 64
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 65
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 66
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 67
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 68
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 69
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 70
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 71
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 72
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 73
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 74
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 75
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 76
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 77
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 78
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 79
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 80
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 81
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 82
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 83
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 84
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 85
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 86
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 87
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 88
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - November 2016 - Cover4
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