American Cinematographer - February 2011 - 14

Left: The crew follows Ray and Kelly’s date to an outdoor ice rink. Above: Webster checks the Red One’s framing for a setup inside a jazz club.

in, and we could add to it when we found something new.” Webster shot God of Love in 16x9 with a Red One (Build 17), which enabled him to do the color timing on his own computer with Adobe After Effects. “.r3D files have more information than you need for the final image,” he notes. “As with 35mm film, there’s all this information you can pull back. For the exterior scenes, I didn’t worry too much about the sky blowing out; if you see detail in the RAW image, you can use a luma key to pull the sky back in.” Nevertheless, some day exteriors did challenge the Red’s dynamic range. In particular, Webster found he was getting too much unwanted bounce off of Manhattan’s sidewalks. To combat that, he positioned upside-down ND.6 and ND.9 grad filters in front of the lens. Throughout the shoot, he rated the camera at ISO 320 and judged his lighting with a histogram and a calibrated high-definition monitor, which allowed him to switch back and forth between Redspace and RAW. (They knew their final image would be black-and-white, so they could cast color-temperature cares to the wind.) A number of scenes take place in the smoky jazz club where Ray and his band perform. Webster and gaffer Lydia Sudall took advantage of the overhead lighting grid and other practical fixtures at the location, Hello Brooklyn in Red Hook, and set an ambient level with two 1.2K HMIs through a 12'x12' silk. Dimmable 1K and 650-watt tungsten sources were used for key lights,
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and Kino Flo Diva-Lites were used for fill. “Our key lights all had diffusion on them, and the smoke helped to give a broad, soft light,” says Sudall. “Then we used hard overhead sources as kickers, which the smoke picked up to create shafts of light. The idea came from the 1950s photography, but it also came from Bobby. I’ve come to learn he really likes backlighting.” Webster adds, “One of the nice things about a heightened look is that it’s easier to get away with unmotivated light. In the jazz-club scenes, we had the freedom to light for dramatic effect rather than motivation. We didn’t do much overall lighting [of the location] because we knew exactly what shots we wanted.” God of Love also includes a few night-exterior walk-and-talks with Ray, Fozzie and Kelly, following their performances at the club. For these scenes, Webster and Matheny scouted a long, wide stretch of sidewalk at West 4th Street and 6th Avenue, one of the few places in Manhattan where the light from the windows is bright enough to expose a 60' dolly shot. Webster used a dolly-mounted Diva-Lite for fill. When the actors stopped at the corner, they were lit with a 1.2K HMI through an 8'x8' silk frame. Webster shot with a set of Zeiss Super Speed primes in order to make the most of his small lighting package. “We knew we’d have scenes that didn’t have a huge amount of light,” he says. “They may not be the sharpest lenses in the world, but for the 1960s-ish look we were going for, I was happy to have a bit less clarity. We mostly
American Cinematographer

shot wide open, but we wanted to be able to see the backgrounds clearly whenever possible. We lit the jazz club so we could shoot at T4.” No film prints of God of Love were made. “All of our exhibition has been on HDCam struck from a 1080p lossless Animation-codec master file output directly from the original .r3D footage from After Effects,” says Webster. “Using the Animation codec gives you a very big file, but it’s definitely my preferred master format. “I think that the Red’s .r3D files are transformative for low-budget filmmaking,” adds the cinematographer. “It’s the first and, at this point, the most affordable digital camera that records substantially more information than your release format, like film, and the availability of tools that allow you to access that information opens up a lot of possibilities. Low-budget filmmakers are typically cash-poor but time-rich, and with the Red, you can make up for lack of money for extensive post work by spending your own time to do it. It took me two weeks to do the work on God of Love that a skilled colorist probably could have done in a few days, but at least that was an option.” In addition to marking the successful conclusion of Matheny’s studies, God of Love won a 2010 Student Academy Award. “Everything on the screen is exactly how we wanted it to be,” says Webster. “It’s the only film I’ve made where I can say that’s the case.” ●

American Cinematographer - February 2011

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