American Cinematographer - December 2016 - 86

Above:
Cinematographer
M. David Mullen,
ASC lines up the
camera for a
spell. Right:
Mullen measures
the light on
Robinson for a
bedroom scene.

One thing that concerned me once
we left the stage was the location shooting,
because I had some daytime locations where
I could not gel the windows to 3,200K. I
dislike using HMI Pars as hard key lights
unless they are very far away, like outside a
window. Up close, they produce an odd
shadow pattern that can only be improved
by softening the light. The daylight-balanced
solution was to use the new Mole-Richardson LED Fresnels, which allowed me to keep
the classic hard key-light look that only a
Fresnel lens can give you. They also have a
number of modern advantages, pulling less
power and putting out less heat than tungsten lighting does.
Biller had done a number of color
illustrations of her set designs, and one idea
I had was to reinforce the colors by using
colored lighting in the background, sometimes splashing pink light onto pink tablecloths, blue light onto blue curtains, etc. In
keeping with classic aesthetics, I avoided
colored light on the faces whenever possible.
86

December 2016

There were some drug-induced
visions in the story that we created incamera - for example, I used a kaleidoscope lens for one shot, and for a number
of others, a plastic diffraction filter that
created rainbow streaks around practical
light sources in frame. I also created a red
vignette by cutting out an oval in a red party
gel that was then taped to the matte box.
The combination of Zeiss Super
Speeds, hard lighting and 200T stock
created quite a sharp image that needed
some diffusion to achieve the romantic
close-ups we desired. I had some nets
stretched onto filter frames; the lightest
effect was from a black tulle material I found
in a fabric store. I had some Dior and Fogal
nets as well, but they were only used on very
tight close-ups, as well as for a few fantasy
moments and flashbacks. I sometimes
combined the light black tulle with a Schneider Classic Soft filter. For a separate story arc
involving a police investigation, I mostly just
used a mild Tiffen Soft/FX filter to take the
American Cinematographer

edge off so the sharpness didn't jump out
compared to the romantic look of Elaine's
scenes.
We shot for a couple of days in
Eureka, Calif., to establish our small-town
setting, along with gathering footage to be
rear-projected on stage when we got back
for some process driving shots. The plates
were just shot with a little Sony NEX-6
camera - which records to the AVCHD
codec using SD cards - and then on stage,
the files were fed from a laptop into a 15Klumens LCD projector. The rear-projection
screen was 12'x6', and I ended up with
enough exposure to shoot at T2 using 250D
stock (chosen because of the color temperature of the projector lamp). I didn't feel that
it was important to shoot the plates on
35mm film since the image on the screen
would not be in sharp focus behind the
actress in the car.
FotoKem performed the processing;
their dailies colorist was Christian Soleta,
who delivered hi-def ProRes LT files for editing. The final print timer at FotoKem was Jim
Williams, and the lab work was supervised
by ASC associate Mark van Horne. FotoKem
made a color-timed interpositive after
answer printing was finished; this IP was
scanned at 2K for the DCP by Cinelicious
using their Lasergraphics ScanStation.
During the answer printing, Biller was
a stickler about getting the color right, and
though she has done this before, I think it
was hard for her to be limited to simple RGB
printer-light corrections - sometimes we
and the timer talked about whether a singlepoint correction was going to be too much
or not enough to get the color just right.
I think the main thing I rediscovered
in post was how much contrast there is
- how dense the blacks are - when you
print a movie from the original negative at
high printer lights. The look is much richer
than what most digital projection can
achieve today. We did find that in the photochemical prints, maybe the greens weren't
as saturated as with the digital version, and
the deeper blacks came at the expense of
some loss of shadow detail, but in general I
think the 35mm print that is playing in festivals is closer to the Technicolor feeling that
the movie wanted to express than the DCP
●
will be.

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