American Cinematographer - April 2014 - 16

Short Takes

"Neverlands" Showcases Arri Alexa XT B+W
By Iain Stasukevich

When I asked my cinematographer friend Alexander Galt to
shoot the music video for Night Flowers' "Neverlands," I described it
as an homage to the Kinetoscope films of Thomas Edison and
William K.L. Dickson, with dancing and performances and feats of
strength. We'd be shooting with the new Arri Alexa XT B+W
camera, and Arri wanted to screen the video at the 2014 Sundance
Film Festival, which meant we had about two weeks to pull it
together. "There were two ways we could approach it: as a technical exercise for the camera, or as a film that used the camera's unique
abilities for the purpose of telling a story," says Alexander.
Like the Alexa Plus, the B+W is capable of recording ArriRaw
internally in 4:3 or 16:9 to 512GB Codex drives, but it uses a sensor
without a Bayer color filter, optical low-pass filter and infrared blocking filter. This means that each photosite on the sensor captures the
full spectrum of visible light as well as infrared, improving the
camera's spatial resolution, raising its native ISO to 2,000, and
extending its dynamic range to about 15 stops. The B+W also
features an Internal Filter Module, facilitating a BG39 shortwave pass
filter for black-and-white photography and an 87C infrared pass
filter for infrared photography. Our IFM kit also came with a set of
full spectrum NDs up to 2.4.
Alexander and I decided to prioritize black-and-white photography, and we wanted to find interesting ways to build contrast into
the costumes and art direction. "Shooting color and converting to
black-and-white might give you more control over contrast, but
16

April 2014

when you shoot black-and-white, you have to commit to what
you're doing, and I like that," Alexander remarks.
The camera's increased spatial resolution was most helpful in
seeing the differences between our two main sets of lenses. The
Cooke S4 primes were sharp and contrasty, whereas the "Uncoated
Classic" set of Zeiss Superspeeds (so called because CSC is in the
process of chemically stripping their coatings) had a softer, flatter
look and produced ghostly reflections whenever a flaring source
entered the frame.
Our tight schedule gave us one day to shoot, two days to edit
and one day to grade the picture. Alexander and I created a shot list
of about 32 setups to get in a 12-hour day. We avoided coverage,
combining adjoining shots into single takes. By that time, the Kinetoscope concept had developed into a loose narrative: a Young
Witch (Leah Krauss) conjures a Black Knight (Cassandra Burrows) to
do battle with the Man in White (Quince Marcum).
We shot the first part of the video under gray, rainy skies in a
backyard in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. In addition to Alexander, our crew consisted of focus puller Gary Bardizbanian, grip/electrician John Pyatt, media manager Cecilia Chien and art
director Claire Ensslin. These scenes were captured at 24 fps in both
visible and infrared light. We kept the camera rated at the optimum
ISO 2,000 and used a standard 1.8 ND to bring our exposure down
to a T4 - our target for the whole film - but still let the infrared
light through. Our original plan was to use the Uncoated Classics for
this scene, but because infrared light had a softening effect on the
image, and because we were also using a Tiffen 47 Blue filter to
bring the contrast down even more, we ultimately decided to get all

American Cinematographer

Unit photography by Aylon Ben-Ami. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.

This frame grab
shows a scene
between the
Black Knight
(Cassandra
Burrows) and
the Man in
White (Quince
Marcum) in the
music video for
Night Flowers'
"Neverlands."

American Cinematographer - April 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2014