American Cinematographer - February 2014 - 32

Govoni (left) and Reggio plan a high-speed shot of seagulls.

T2.3 zoom and 12mm, 24mm and 50mm
Ultra Primes. Reggio monitored the images
(with a LUT applied) on set via a DCpowered HD monitor. The production
projected dailies in a rented downtown
New Orleans mansion at the end of each
shooting day. "Our editor, Chris Besecker,
also functioned as our 'dailies facility,'
handling the dailies with a Red Rocket card
and a Mac Pro throughout the shoot in
New Orleans," notes visual-effects supervisor Max Blecker of Opticnerve.
One of the movie's key images,
featured in both the opening and closing
shots, is a gorilla looking into the camera.
Reggio says he sought to explore the notion
that "we human beings have not seen
ourselves until we've been seen through the
eyes of another animal." Berry made several
unsuccessful attempts to film gorillas in the
Bronx Zoo, where he contended with
weather and uncooperative apes, and
several months later, the production
returned to the zoo for another round of
tries, this time with New York-based cinematographer Govoni at the camera, which
was now a 5K-capable Red Epic.
Govoni used the Epic at frame rates
and compression ratios ranging from 48 fps
at 7:1 compression to 96 fps and 120 fps at
13:1 compression, recording to 128GB and
256GB RedMag SSDs. She used the 24290mm Optimo with a doubler to shoot
the gorillas, which were 30 yards away
behind protective glass. In the final attempt,
the crew arrived around 7 a.m., and one
32

February 2014

ape eventually complied, enabling them to
get the shot by 4 p.m. Govoni had the
camera on a spreader with wheels and shot
with natural light. She recalls, "I was trying
to find the one gorilla sitting the longest,
and there were six people behind me
saying, 'There's one on your right looking at
us! There's one on your left!' When we
finally got it, it was incredible. It was a shot
Godfrey had wanted for so long, and he
was so happy!" A black background was
added to the shot digitally at Opticnerve.
Govoni shot more human portraits
at Brooklyn's Nut Roaster Studios, and this
time, the subjects were adults whose gaze
was fixed by having them play video games,
and children who were asked to watch a TV
screen to keep their eyes from wandering. A
similar technique was used to capture a
group of sports fans reacting to a televised
basketball game. "Basically, we built a kind
of Teleprompter with a 63-inch flat screen
that was rigged flat/tabled and then tilted
up to about a 30-degree angle," she
explains. "A half-silvered glass was rigged
vertically and then tilted down to reflect the
image on the flat screen, which had been
flipped. I was behind the glass with the Epic
and the Optimo, shooting the reactions of
the people watching the screen. We used
that size television because that was the
largest piece of half-silvered glass we could
find."
Govoni also captured close-ups of
hands that appear to dance as they operate
digital devices such as a mouse or tablet.
American Cinematographer

(The devices were removed from the final
shots.) The crew lit the hand models from
above or below, depending on the action.
They used 5K Fresnels through multiple
layers of diffusion overhead and bounced
2K Mighty Moles into bead board from
underneath through frosted Plexiglas, creating small pools of light.
Govoni captured a studio shot of a
crowd walking toward the camera at
300 fps with a 2.5K Phantom Flex and a
Hawk 150-450mm T2.8 zoom lens. She
also used the Phantom Flex at speeds ranging from 300 fps to 1,500 fps for shots of a
dancing crash-test dummy, and cascading
garbage at a New Jersey dump. She also
shot seagulls at 1,200 fps. "We went to the
Phantom when we wanted to shoot higher
frame rates than the Epic could handle,"
Govoni notes. This raw footage was
recorded to 256GB and 512GB Phantom
CineMags.
At New York's Harbor Pictures,
colorist Joe Gawler handled the final grade,
working in DaVinci Resolve. "[Footage] shot
below 4K was upscaled to make it blend in
with the higher-resolution material,"
explains Blecker. "Things shot above that
threshold were cropped and scaled down to
various degrees, depending on the final
framing decisions."
The post team made ProRes proxies
of the material and off-lined in Apple Final
Cut Pro 7 and Premiere Pro CS6. Most of the
effects work was done in Adobe After
Effects or Nuke with proxies, but also often
JPEG sequences that were slowed or
composited and rendered out in ProRes for
editorial. Final deliverables were both 4K
and 2K. The film's premiere screening at the
Toronto International Film Festival was 4K
and included a live orchestral performance
of Glass' score.

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Red One, Epic; Canon EOS 5D Mark II;
Vision Research Phantom Flex
Zeiss, Angenieux, Cooke, Hawk
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American Cinematographer - February 2014

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