American Cinematographer - January 2017 - 28

Elmes frames an
exterior shot
while Jarmusch
(wearing blue
cap) and crew
study the action.

walks into deep shadow in another. With a
combination of diffusion overhead and soft
bounced lighting, I think we handled it
pretty effectively.
Sometimes we lit the actors with
bounced 18K HMI lights to imitate sun
hitting a nearby building, but other times I
could plan our shooting day effectively
around the direction of the sun and simply
control the natural light we had. Often this
meant making the most of the beginning
and end of the day to take advantage of the
low angle of the sun.
What lenses did you use?
Elmes: For the most part, I used
[Arri/Zeiss] Variable Prime lenses. They are
available in three sizes and the middle one,
from 29 to 60mm focal length, is my
favorite. The lenses are kind to faces and
look very good shot wide open. It's also easy
to change the focal length between takes
without having to move the camera or the
dolly because it's a short zoom lens.
Did you or Jim have a preferred
focal length?
Elmes: I don't like to concentrate on
the technical aspects too much, but around
29mm was a good feeling for most of the
film.
How would you describe the
specific look of Paterson, the city?
Elmes: It's early 20th century, red28

January 2017

brick industrial. Paterson has a manufacturing history and a great immigrant population. Over the years its economy has gone
up and down, so even if there was some
decay, next door was a brand-new business
just starting up. Those are the parts of Paterson we chose to emphasize.
We liked the look of Paterson, but
because New Jersey has no tax credit, we
shot much of the movie in New York state.
Did you have any stage days?
Elmes: We built a bedroom set on
stage in Brooklyn and shot there for a
couple of days. This gave us better control
of the light and the ability to place the
camera higher than most locations would
allow.
Where did you film the bar
scenes?
Elmes: The bar was in Queens. We
were looking for a low-key neighborhood
bar, and when Jim and our production
designer, Mark Friedberg, found the location, they thought it was just perfect.
Where did you do the color
grade?
Elmes: I did the color with Joe
Gawler at Harbor Picture Co. in Manhattan.
Joe is a fantastic colorist and I've known him
for years.
I usually work with a DIT - on this
film it was Abby Levine - to find a CDL that
American Cinematographer

pinpoints the color and density I'm looking
for in the scene. This way, Jim could edit
dailies that looked like what we saw on set,
and [were] very close to what the final color
correction would be.
What was your capture format?
Elmes: We shot 2K 12-bit ProRes
Log, 16:9 for 1.85:1. Even though there's a
little more quality with the raw image, on
our modest production it's a huge expense
to handle all that data.
How will the film be distributed?
Elmes: Our principal distribution is a
2K DCP. I saw it at the New York Film Festival
in Alice Tully Hall, and I thought the subtle
things we tried worked very well. I had used
a bit of diffusion on the lenses - some very
thin silk netting on the front - to take a bit
of edge off the sharpness of the camera.
We also made a couple of film prints from
our DI files at Labodigital in Mexico and they
did a good job. It's a little different than the
DCP in contrast and grain, but I like the look
a lot.

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Alexa Studio, Mini
Arri/Zeiss Variable Primes

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American Cinematographer - January 2017

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