American Cinematographer - January 2017 - 64

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City of Stars

Top: R&B singer Keith (John Legend) persuades Sebastian to join his band. Bottom: The camera
angles into position for a performance scene.

like to work with colored lights and
often use contrasting colors in lighting.
Outside of Mia's theater, for example, in
a very emotional single-take scene
between Mia and Sebastian, we leave
Sebastian alone in front of the theater
entrance - which David and Sandy
Wasco designed in pink - and we lit
with additional pink fluorescent light,
as if it was the 'heart,' centered in frame,
and had [Sebastian] surrounded by the
harsh pool of cool white-blue streetlight, lit from a 6K HMI and Plus
Green gel under a blue night sky. We
wanted to add a surreal and romantic
look to this otherwise dull building."
64

January 2017

The filmmakers shot with
Panavision C Series Anamorphic
Prime lenses. While the 50mm and
75mm saw some action, the 40mm was
the go-to. "The 40mm offered a good
mix of being able to be wide on location
for head-to-toe shots and still being
able to go close up," Sandgren explains.
"We felt a 30mm or 35mm would
distort too much." The cinematographer generally shot at T2.8 and used no
lens filters save for NDs.
For the shots that required focusrange flexibility, Panavision vice president of optical engineering and lens
strategy Dan Sasaki - an ASC associAmerican Cinematographer

ate member - constructed an additional 40mm 2x anamorphic lens with a
close-focus distance of 19", so that, as
the cinematographer says, "We could
go in very close, such as starting in on
Ryan's hands at the piano, and then pull
out wide."
Chazelle
and
Sandgren
embraced the "flaws" of anamorphic, as
in a daytime shot in which Sebastian,
alone in a bland, beige-brown apartment, plays piano to a record he's spinning. The white curtains are drawn and
the 4K Arri M40 HMI "sun source"
outside created a blue flare across the
screen. This was no happy accident; it
was accomplished with very careful
light and lens positioning. "We did our
best to make the moment a little
romantic because he's doing the thing
he loves," Sandgren explains. "It's fun to
add that to gritty, dodgy places and try
to make them beautiful."
The dance number that opens
the film, shot on a closed-off freeway
ramp leading to downtown L.A., is a
tour de force of staging. It starts with
the camera tilting from the sky and
traveling alongside cars stuck in a typical L.A. traffic jam. The camera pushes
into a driver who, instead of being frustrated, gets out of her car singing along
to a tune on the radio called "Another
Day of Sun."
It catches on, and other drivers
abandon their vehicles to join in, with
the camera tracking along to capture
the moves of various dancers, acrobats
and traceurs, and a band that magically
appears in the back of a truck. Per the
preferred method, the production first
rehearsed the sequence in a parking lot
to block camera moves, and then had
access to the freeway for one weekend
for a full run-through - an idea
pushed by 1st AD Peter Kohn - and
another weekend for shooting. The
filmmakers audaciously thought of
capturing the entire sequence in one
shot, but that proved impractical.
"We would have shadowed the
entire set a few times with our crane,
and it would have been terrible work to
clean up that type of shadow in the

American Cinematographer - January 2017

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