American Cinematographer - February 2013 - 45

Top: The squad
takes aim in an
impromptu firing
range beneath the
California sun.
Bottom: Conwell
Keeler (Giovanni
Ribisi, far right)
and the squad
discuss what
they’ve learned
from a wiretap;
this garage interior
was lit with 1,200watt Pars through
the windows, with
Kinos, Dedos and
covered wagons
supplementing the
practicals inside.

display at the color station,” he says. “It
can be frustrating because it often takes
me off the set, but I’ve also tried to train
myself to make decisions off the
camera-mounted monitor so that I’m
not completely tied to the DIT tent.
[The Alexa presents] a different latitude
than film, but the more you use it, the
more you understand it, and the more
you can respond intuitively to what
you’re shooting, just as cinematographers have always done while shooting
on film.”
Beebe adds that he and DIT
Gregson Gabrio “worked with
Technicolor’s DP Lights to set our
look-up tables in prep, and we kept the
DP Lights system with us through
production. When shooting digital, and
particularly when shooting raw, the time
spent defining your look in prep is critical. The LUTs you create determine the
color palette and affect the dynamic
range you’re going to be working in, and
that, in turn, affects your lighting ratios
and whole approach to the project.”
The Alexa’s ArriRaw footage was
captured to Codex Onboard S
recorders. It was standard throughout
the shoot to run two cameras simultaneously, with Peter Rosenfeld serving as
the A-camera/Steadicam operator and
John Skotchdopole operating the B
camera. “Coming from comedy, I’m a
huge fan of using two cameras,” says
Fleischer. “Most of the time, both
would shoot in the same direction, like a

wide and a tight or a three-quarter and
a straight-on, but occasionally, we’d do
opposing angles. I don’t know if it’s
necessarily any cinematographer’s preference, but Dion accommodated that
— having worked with Michael Mann,
I think he’s used to it!”
The filmmakers occasionally ran
the Alexas above 24 fps, but for certain
sequences that required especially high
frame rates, a Vision Research Phantom
Flex was brought in for the day, accompanied by Phantom technician Jamie
Alac. Gangster Squad opens with some
Phantom footage that shows Cohen
battering a punching bag in super-slow
motion as daylight filters in through a
nearby window. The scene was shot at
1,000 fps in a set built on location in
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Bellflower, Calif. Because of scheduling
constraints, Beebe recounts, “We had to
fit this inside an existing location, so we
found an area in an old department
store that we were using [for other
scenes]. The art department built the
window and layered on paper and paint
to create a patina on the window and
the existing walls. We had an 18K
streaming in through the window, and
we had a 4K bouncing off unbleached
muslin on the floor.”
Much of Gangster Squad takes
place in night exteriors. When working
away from city lights, Beebe typically
created a moonlight source “with HMI
fixtures. I take some of the blue out of
them, usually with ¼ or ½ CTO, and
add a little Plus Green. We used 18Ks
February 2013

45
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American Cinematographer - February 2013

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