American Cinematographer - December 2016 - 60

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Love and War
Visual-effects
supervisor
Kevin Baillie
(left) and
Burgess discuss
the shooting of
a love scene in a
car in the
Moroccan
desert. The
cameras would
circle the setup
to create the
feeling that the
audience was in
the car with the
characters.

with "multiple 360-degree Steadicam
tracks to the point of dizziness. As
Marianne becomes intoxicated by the
moment, the Steadicam moves faster
and faster around her to emphasize that
moment."
Later, when the characters are in
London, the Steadicam becomes even
more pronounced, particularly for
action-oriented scenes. One example
would be a scene shot on a hospital set
on the Gillette stages, in which
Marianne gives birth in the midst of an
air raid. "Bombs are dropping and debris
is flying everywhere," Cavaciuti says.
"We shot the scene mostly on Steadicam
to make it feel as though [the audience]
were inside the action, so there was
flying debris and air movers for me to
contend with. We used a brand-new
prototype of an auto-leveling device on
the Steadicam called the Wave1 [from
Munich's Betz-Tools]. It helped
wonderfully, since it kept the camera
platform on the Steadicam level even if
the Steadicam post was taken off level by
the force of wind or cork debris hitting
it."
Cavaciuti adds that there were
different kinds of challenges for the
camera crew to grapple with on the
small set built at Gillette to represent the
cramped, period London home that
Max and Marianne live in during the
war. "We used the [Chapman/Leonard]
PeeWee Dolly on track or boards there,
and nine times out of 10, it was almost
60

December 2016

scraping along a wall, very often with an
offset or 2-foot slider mounted to get
further back or extreme left or right," the
operator explains. "We used the Mini
Libra, often on a 12-foot Technocrane
or Key Head when I could physically
not get close to the camera on that set.
But generally, Steadicam and handheld
were used in situations to emphasize the
energy of the moment, or to draw the
viewer into a pursuit - and each time,
handheld or Steadicam were chosen
very specifically by Bob and Don."
Another sequence features a
bomber getting shot out of the sky and
crash-landing close to Max and
Marianne's London home. The action
was filmed at the Gillette stage and later
supplemented with visual effects.
Zemeckis explains that the airplane "has
an engine on fire, looks like it is coming
right toward our heroes' house, and then
misses it by a couple of feet. We created
this effect using [LED Sunstrip] panels
where firelight comes from one direction
through windows, and then the plane
moves over the top of the house, and the
firelight continues over the house, and
then away from it. We create a tracer
effect [with the panels] - a high-tech
way to create light motion."
Evans adds that Burns "worked
with the visual-effects guys [to get
precise data] from the digital look of the
bomber exploding out the window. They
gave us the timing of it and where the
plane would be in the shot. The desk
American Cinematographer

operator's menu then linked to their
timing in the image they gave him.
Then they later put the chase of the
lights around the house, and they timed
the two together [in post]. So wherever
the camera pointed, our lights would
run in that same direction. Even if they
moved the imagery a bit in post, our
lights moved with it."
LED technology was also put
into play for a love scene - set in a
1930s-era Citroën automobile - that is
meant to take place in the Sahara desert
as a sandstorm approaches. "The problem with doing love scenes, I always
find, is how do you pace them and how
do you end them?" Zemeckis offers.
"The trick was to use the camera and the
speed of the camera movement to evoke
the feeling of passion building - that
was our mission."
The director therefore opted for a
constantly moving camera in the tight
space, while light becomes murky
around the lovers as the looming sandstorm closes in. The filmmakers came
up with a 360-degree, 100'-long, 8.5' tall
LED-paneled room to surround the car
and provide what Zemeckis calls
"animated light" - controlled by an
operator using TouchDesigner Pro software - to illuminate the actors. Baillie
adds that this approach "allowed Don to
interactively sculpt light from the panels,
fly in 'virtual bluescreens' [i.e., setting
LED panels to solid blue] when they
were needed, and give Bob the power to
have important action beats happen on
cue." Evans notes, "The light panels
used to surround the car and create a
video wall were supplied by VER
- each Panel being 600mm by
1,200mm, and we used the 7mm LED
spacing."
Cavaciuti and B-camera operator
Luke Redgrave shot the scene using two
Red Weapon cameras mounted on Mini
Libras on dolly tracks. "The Libras were
placed on two motorized sliders, [which
in turn were] placed at 90 degrees to the
dolly track so the cameras were able to
move toward or away from the actors at
will," Cavaciuti explains. "Using this
method, we were always able to stay as



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

Contents
American Cinematographer - December 2016 - Cover1
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American Cinematographer - December 2016 - 1
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American Cinematographer - December 2016 - 4
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