American Cinematographer - February 2014 - 38

◗

Allies of Art

Top: Clooney watches special-effects supervisor Gerd Nefzer torch a painting. Middle:
Crewmembers work amid bombed-out ruins for a scene staged in Siegen, Germany. Bottom: The
filmmakers prep a scene depicting Nazi soldiers on Lisieux Road.

38

February 2014

American Cinematographer

love the look of it," Heslov notes. "We
know it's dying and we're definitely
swimming upstream. We figured this
could be our last shot." However,
Papamichael wanted them to be open to
shooting digitally, and prepared tests
comparing the Arri Alexa Plus to
35mm for day exteriors in open sky and
snowy conditions with white smoke.
"We had scenes set at Patton's camp in a
winter forest, with snow everywhere and
white smoke coming from dozens of
tents, and that, in combination with the
white sky, seemed to render better on
film," says the cinematographer.
"In all day-exterior situations,
digital is very sensitive toward secondary
bounce sources, especially green trees
and green grass," Papamichael continues. "This creates a tricky balance with
skin tones, which still feel more natural
on film. But when we shot tests of lowlight interiors lit by lanterns or flashlights, or big night exteriors, it was
pretty hard to distinguish digital from
film. It gives you a great advantage to be
able to shoot at 800 ASA or 1,000 ASA
with the Alexa. Plus, George likes to
work extremely fast. We never did full
night shoots; sometimes we only did
five hours of shooting, with minimal
setups or coverage, and the Alexa helped
facilitate that."
In the end, most interiors and all
night exteriors - about 60 percent of
the picture, according to Papamichael
- were shot on the Alexa. Day exteriors were shot on 35mm using an
Arricam Lite. Digital footage was
captured simultaneously in ArriRaw (to
a Convergent Design Gemini 4:4:4
recorder) and in ProRes 4:4:4:4 (to Sony
64GB SxS cards). Joshua Berkowitz, the
production's digital-imaging technician,
explains, "The Gemini mags were sent
to the lab, and we downloaded the
ProRes material on set as backup. We
did not use it, though, because the
ArriRaw was really stable."
From the get-go, Clooney liked
the idea of shooting with anamorphic
lenses. Papamichael usually works with
a Panavision package, but because he
was gearing up out of Berlin, he instead



American Cinematographer - February 2014

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American Cinematographer - February 2014 - Cover1
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American Cinematographer - February 2014 - 1
American Cinematographer - February 2014 - 2
American Cinematographer - February 2014 - Table of Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2014 - 4
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