American Cinematographer - December 2010 - 94

Filmmakers’ Forum
I
The Rubber Hits the Road on Faster By Michael Grady Faster, my latest collaboration with director George Tillman Jr., stars Dwayne Johnson as Driver, an ex-con who steps out of prison ready to avenge the murder of his brother. Over the course of the film, Driver is pursued by a cop who’s ready for retirement (Billy Bob Thornton) and a young hit man (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). It’s a modern-day noir that recalls some of Charles Bronson’s great 1970s films. With a title like Faster, you know there will be a lot of highspeed car chases to go along with the guns. Our principal cars included Driver’s 1970 Super Sport Chevelle, a muscle car with an upgraded engine and nitro booster, and the hit man’s car, a silver Ferrari GT. Because of the amount of action and smash-ups, there were four Chevelles and three Ferraris on set. From the beginning, George wanted to avoid a lot of CGI. He preferred the realism of “old school” car chases, and wanted to use practical methods to bring the audience closer to near misses and collisions as much as possible. He also wanted each character to be shot using a certain style and palette. It’s a mostly rural story, and for Driver, who grew up in a remote desert location, the look is almost sepia, with a harsh, skip-bleach feel and deep blacks. For the hit man, we used cleaner light and colder tones, and a lot of reflective surfaces. The cop’s look shifts between the harsh desert and the harsher city, which has almost no color. Shooting with two Panaflex Millennium XLs, two Arri 435s and an Arri 235, we used Fujifilm Eterna Vivid 500 8547 and Vivid 160 8543 and Kodak Vision 500T 5218. We used 5218 mostly for a climactic scene in which the three central characters meet, to show the nature of collision and explosion in their different worlds, and for a night sequence set on a fairly isolated stretch of road involving stunts with a tractor-trailer. For the night sequence, we pushed 5218 one stop and used very minimal lighting, augmenting the existing streetlight with Kino Flos, LitePanels and LED lights rigged on and in the vehicles.
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For lenses, I like all the Panavision Primo primes and zooms. To recall that ’70s style, we did a lot of zooms. We created the skip-bleach look in the digital grade, going for heavy blacks and warm tones. I did the color correction at Company 3 with colorist Siggy Ferstl, an incredible talent. We’d done some tests beforehand to establish our visual concept, and Siggy and his team did a great job managing our dailies, keeping our concept in mind and letting us know what we needed to do on set in order to be able to go so harsh with the color correction on the back side. It’s rare for a first unit to get the opportunity to shoot a lot of the stunts — the fun stuff. Most of the time, this work goes to the second unit. For Faster, first unit covered a tremendous number of the stunts on a tight schedule; we only did eight or 10 second-unit days. It was probably the only chance I’ll ever get to play with so many toys! Stunts and stuntmen always amaze me. Their work is controlled chaos. Stunt coordinator Darrin Prescott is the best, with a huge credit list that includes Public Enemies and The Hangover . He made sure we never got stupid. Putting the camera in dangerous places needs to be thought out very well beforehand. George had pretty specific ideas for the action, and Darrin’s team would tweak them based upon their expertise and knowledge. For many driving scenes, we used traditional process trailers, which were pulled behind a vehicle to give us enough of a platform for lights and dollies. We used these for close-up work with Dwayne or Billy Bob. We also used ATVs outfitted with arms. But for the sequences that were fast or that had to feel fast, we used the Biscuit, a super-fast version of a process trailer, like a race car, with everybody strapped in and wearing helmets. The Biscuit’s driving platform can be moved to any space— in front of, behind or to the side of the prop car. For instance, there are several shots of Driver speeding in reverse during a chase following a bank robbery. An empty Chevelle chassis, including a full interior, was fastened onto the Biscuit. The driver of the Biscuit was facing forward, while it appears Dwayne is driving in reverse. The Biscuit gave us whatever

American Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - December 2010

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