American Cinematographer - January 2019 - 42

Power & Glory

know it until long after the fact. The
Cookes were a much more reliable
choice that I knew I could count on, and
then I could work in the Todd-AOs for
more ancillary moments."
Fraser also carried a set of spherical Arri/Zeiss Super Speed Mk II
primes, as well as an Angénieux HR 25250mm (T3.5) spherical zoom - and,
for the production's Super 16mm
footage, which was shot with an Arriflex
416, the cinematographer opted for
Arri/Zeiss Ultra 16 primes. "We used
the [35mm-format] spherical lenses
for visual-effects shots and, every once
in a while, for found-footage-type
sequences," the cinematographer
explains. "There's a moment in the film
where it's said that Rumsfeld was a
master of the butterfly knife, and we cut
away to an old 1980s-style instructional
video of a guy using a butterfly knife.
That was shot spherical, and we opened
[the aspect ratio] up to 1.33:1 for that
sequence."
The production's lighting package included a broad assortment of
modern LED fixtures. "We simply could
not have made the schedule without
using the LED technology," says gaffer
Michael Bauman. "We shot in 40 locations on a 50-day shoot, including two
January 2019

weeks on stage at Sony. That's a lot of
moving and doing it fast, with multiple
locations in a day. We really didn't have
the time or manpower to work with
traditional HMI and incandescent
sources.
"When we got into the stage
work, the LEDs really saved us,"
Bauman continues. "We needed to
create large daylight ambience outside
the windows of the White House. A
standard approach would be to create
large soft boxes, using space lights or
coops as the light engine, but that's
time- and labor-intensive - grips are
hanging truss and motors, cable is
heavy, external dimmers and air conditioning are required, etc. Using LED
sources, we could switch to much
lighter cable, we could use pipe instead
of truss due to the lower weight load,
and it took half the labor and time to
rig."
"With traditional tungsten space
lights, you only have one color - or you
have to gel them, and then you have to
constantly replace the gels because they
melt," Fraser adds. "At the same time, I
never want to be the one to say that you
can't use a 6K space light or you can't
use a 20K. That's taking paintbrushes
away from cinematographers, and
ASC 100th Anniversary

that's not my intention. I do, however,
believe that LEDs are as good, if not
better, than tungsten or HMI, [and] I
think the future is definitely in RGBAW
LEDs. But I don't want to see tungsten
lights go the way of carbon arcs - I still
want cinematographers to have choices
and to use what they feel is best."
Instead of employing 6K space
lights above their stage-bound sets,
Fraser and Bauman opted for LiteGear
LiteTiles, which are large, flexible,
textile-like LED panels that can be
rigged via tie-line and grommets to
standard soft-good frames. The rigging
crew lined the entire ceiling of Stage 30
at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City
with these fixtures, allowing for instantaneous selection between daylight,
tungsten or any color in between, and
with full dimming capabilities without
color shift. "LiteGear produced many
custom 10-by-10-foot panels for us,"
Bauman notes. "Each was 1,200 watts of
hybrid [bi-color] LED light, but each
panel gave us the equivalent output of
five diffused space lights - so, essentially, 30,000 watts of incandescent
[light] was replaced with 1,200 watts!"
The overhead LiteTiles created a
soft and extremely realistic "daylight"
ambience that the crew could then

Digital Sputnik photo courtesy of Bauman.

t: Gaffer Michael Bauman checks the light on Bale.
u: A crewmember positions a Digital Sputnik array in order to extend the sunset for an exterior scene on the campaign trail.

American Cinematographer - January 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2019