American Cinematographer - April 2016 - 18

Top: Merrell paints at night, using the full moon, a headlamp and two small LEDs for illumination.
Bottom: Cinematographer Ryan Carmody readies the camera, while Jesse Merrell
provides a source.

For those wide shots, Carmody typically opted for the 18mm Super Speed. For
close-ups, he preferred the 35mm. Most
shots were achieved on a tripod, a concession to the camera's issues with rolling shutter. "We tried to find out all of the camera's
weaknesses during our test shoot and avoid
them," Carmody says. "Aesthetically, we
wanted to shoot a lot of the piece on sticks
and be very still and quiet; so, creatively, not
moving the camera much fit the film. It was
the perfect little camera for this shoot."
Avoiding rolling-shutter issues was
easier than avoiding the perils of the desert,
particularly Joshua Tree's abundant cacti.
"At some point all of us got cacti stuck in
18

April 2016

our shoes," Carmody says. "Alec seemed to
get it the worst for some reason. Every time
we turned around, Alec had some bit of
something stuck to his leg or in his foot."
There were no such hazards on
Nocturnes' one additional day of shooting
- an afternoon of b-roll and a sit-down
interview with Merrell in the artist's garage
studio. For the interview, Carmody used the
garage's skylight as a key and softened the
sunlight with a 4'x4' frame of 250 Half
White Diffusion. He also employed 4'x4'
floppies for negative fill. For a montage of
Merrell's paintings, Carmody set the a7S to
stills mode and shot raw; the paintings were
suspended in front of a background of
American Cinematographer

Duvetyn and lit with a 650-watt Arri Fresnel
adorned with 250 Half White Diffusion and
1⁄ 2 CTB to create the feel of moonlight.
In post, the original 4K camera files
were transcoded to ProRes LT files for offline
editing in Final Cut Pro 7. Chavez then
performed his color grade in Blackmagic
Design's DaVinci Resolve 11 for a final
output of 1080p ProRes 4:4:4:4.
"The main thing that Alec was
concerned with was marrying all the
footage together," Chavez says. "We had
to connect scenes that were shot at different parts of the night and had different
levels of light into a seamless piece."
A film emulation LUT and minimal
noise reduction were added, but only a
slight lifting of the shadows was necessary.
"We didn't really end up lifting the levels
much," Ernest says. "In fact, there were
discussions of having to actually darken
things artificially because we wanted it to
feel dark and the camera was exposing too
well."
Carmody was impressed enough by
the a7S to re-enlist the camera a few
months later on a commercial for McLaren,
shot in Spain. Again, the task was to collect
footage in the desert under the watchful
eye of a full moon. This time, the a7S
worked alongside an Arri Alexa.
"I had the Alexa attached to a Flight
Head, and I just mounted the a7S on top of
the Alexa," Carmody recounts. "We were
driving through the desert at night, and we
had the Alexa at 6 fps at 1,600 ISO so that
the image would be really blurry and
streaky. Then we shot the a7S at 24 frames
and 12,800 ISO, and a few shots from the
a7S made it in [the final cut]. I wouldn't
have even tried that if I hadn't experimented
with the a7S on Nocturnes. The camera
definitely has its niche."
To watch Nocturnes, visit lareviewof
books.org/essay/nocturnes-the-paintings●
of-eric-merrell.

http://www.lareviewofbooks.org/essay/nocturnes-the-paintings-of-eric-merrell http://www.lareviewofbooks.org/essay/nocturnes-the-paintings-of-eric-merrell http://www.lareviewofbooks.org/essay/nocturnes-the-paintings-of-eric-merrell

American Cinematographer - April 2016

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