American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 50

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Spirit Awards Salute Cinematography
recalls. "But how do you motivate the
light at night? Ultimately, we realized
that motivation didn't matter - it just
had to look different. So we put a pool
of light overhead, keeping the wall in
the background in deep shadow."
Giving due credit, he notes, "My longtime gaffer, Ted Maroney, was integral
to the lighting process and to our experimentation in black-and-white."
Throughout the shoot, the cinematographer tried to find unexpected
places to put the camera - often
coming up with special rigs, or with
unique solutions to challenges like
capturing a complex action in one
unbroken shot. "The flexibility and
precision of my first ACs, Cory
Fraiman-Lott and Ben Dewey, made it
possible to rig the camera in all the
unusual ways we did," he says. "In one
long take the camera started with key
grip Andrew Naugle operating it, then
he handed it off to another grip, Mike
Kim, who lowered it onto my shoulder
so I could walk into the house from
outside and do an exposure rack. Shots
like that are a lot of fun to figure out
with my crew, and really rewarding to
execute."

Right:
Cinematographer
Zach Kuperstein
checks the frame
on the set of The
Eyes of My
Mother. Below: A
young Francisca
(Olivia Bond, left)
learns to be
unfazed by death
from her mother
(Diana Agostini), a
former surgeon.

confuse the audience temporally,"
Kuperstein says. "It could be the Fifties,
or the Nineties, or the present. I felt that
shooting in black-and-white while using
a sharp digital sensor with new Cooke
anamorphic lenses would both disorient
the audience and make the main character feel more isolated - we're never
quite certain of where or when she is.
"Black-and-white did a nice job
of softening the gore," he continues,
"which fit well with the 'less is more'
aesthetic we were going for." Kuperstein
notes that during shooting he captured
all the color information, but used a
black-and-white LUT, emulating
Phedon Papamichael, ASC's monochromatic work on Nebraska. "The idea
was to isolate the colors of the production design in post to manipulate the
brightness values," Kuperstein explains.
"It's similar to the idea of using a yellow
filter on a black-and-white negative to
darken a blue sky."
50

March 2017

Kuperstein adds that after an
initial bit of adjustment, shooting in
black-and-white was a liberating experience. "Not having to worry about color
just gives you one less element to think
about," he says. "Gels weren't a thing;
you save a lot of time not worrying
about tungsten or daylight, and you can
get away with light being a lot harder,
which also saves time on set because
hard light is easier to control. We could
use a 1K Chimera soft box as our key
light and it looked great - whereas in
color, I think just a soft box would
appear unnaturally lit to my eye."
The cinematographer reports that
it was also interesting to create depth
and contrast using light and shadow as
opposed to color - though this also
created challenges, particularly in some
night interiors set in a barn. "The slats in
the wall made it easy to shoot the day
sequences, because we would just simulate sunlight peeking through," he
American Cinematographer

Free in Deed
Director: Jake Mahaffy
Cinematographer:
Ava Berkofsky
A powerful film about the role of
spirituality in marginalized lives, Free in
Deed tells the story of Melva (Edwina
Findley), a single mother who turns to
the church for help in dealing with her
young son Benny (RaJay Chandler)
who is challenged with extreme autism.
Abe (David Harewood), a well-intentioned but troubled faith healer, tries to
help, but his efforts end in tragedy. For
cinematographer Ava Berkofsky, the
key to visually interpreting the material
was finding a way to express a point of
view for the story's spiritual forces.
"In my early conversations with
director Jake Mahaffy, he said he
wanted it to have a 'relentless driving
force towards the inevitable tragedy of



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2017

Contents
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 1
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 2
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - Contents
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 4
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 5
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 6
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 7
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 8
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 9
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 10
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 11
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 12
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 14
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 15
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 17
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 18
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 19
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 20
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 21
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 22
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 23
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 24
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 25
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - A
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - B
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 26
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 27
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 28
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 29
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 30
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 31
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - I1
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - I2
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 32
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 33
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 34
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 35
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 36
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 37
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 38
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 40
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 47
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 48
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 49
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 50
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 51
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American Cinematographer - March 2017 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - March 2017 - Cover4
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