American Cinematographer - March 2014 - 48

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A Fight to the Death

The SEALs try to evade heavy gunfire from Taliban fighters in these frame grabs.

handheld documentary approach
wherein the operators could change
angles and reframe at any time. "We
wanted to make this movie feel like it
was being shot by a documentary
cameraman in the middle of combat,"
Schliessler says. "The focus pullers never
had marks because they were constantly
moving. If the focus was a little behind,
that was okay, as long as they did find
focus."
Lightweight zoom lenses were
paired with the cameras. "I wanted to use
zooms because Pete likes to change the
shot between takes - for example, he
might want to go tighter on the second
take - and I didn't want to change
lenses," Schliessler explains. Fujinon had
just released the 19-90mm T2.9 Cabrio
48

March 2014

Premier PL Zoom, and when Schliessler
tested it, he liked the results. Only one
Cabrio was available at the time, and it
became the A-camera workhorse. (A
second was made available to the
production midway through the shoot.)
The B and C cameras were given lightweight Angenieux Optimos: 15-40mm
T2.6, 28-76mm T2.6 and 45-120mm
T2.8. A Fujinon 75-400mm T2.8-3.8
Premier PL Zoom was used for longerlens work. "The Fujinon and Angenieux
lenses matched pretty well," Schliessler
observes. "There were small differences,
but we could adjust things like contrast
in the DI to get them to match."
Much of the picture was shot on
the wider end of the focal-length spectrum but in close to the actors, offering
American Cinematographer

an intimate view of the characters and
action with enough space in the frame to
show how they are positioned in relation
to each other, to their surroundings and
to their enemies. "That came from the
photos in Hetherington's book,"
Schliessler says. "All of his pictures seem
like you're right there with wider lenses.
It was important to establish the geography of our story; we wanted the audience
to see and understand how the soldiers
were moving in one direction and then
another while trying to escape. We didn't
want [the action] to be completely
chaotic. We used the long lens for certain
shots where we wanted to compress the
foreground and background a little
more, and we used a long lens for the
soldiers' POVs when they're looking
through their scopes."
The mountains of New Mexico
- the alpine region above 12,000' -
stood in for northeastern Afghanistan.
"We had to hand-carry all our equipment up mountainsides for most of the
shoot," Schliessler recalls. "We used the
location's ski lifts and then hiked from
there to the peaks. My key grip, Mike
Anderson, crewed up with very physically strong people. Being up that high
really takes the wind out of you, but there
was not one person on the crew who
wouldn't carry a case. Everyone worked
extra hard - it was the hardest-working
crew I've ever had. We also were very
American Cinematographer - March 2014

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