American Cinematographer - May 2009 - 58

A Friend in Need After years of living on the street, Ayers struggles with moving back indoors. For the apartment set, which was constructed onstage, McGarvey created a sense of being on location by motivating light through the window and open door and not flying the walls. Graphic artist Sean Daly served as the “hand of Nathaniel Ayers,” creating the illustrations on the wall. beneath awnings and other pieces of set dressing. “If we were walking up or down the street, I’d augment the light with a China ball or even just a little Litepanels LED,” McGarvey says. The cinematographer notes that when Ayers leads Lopez to the alcove where he sleeps most nights, the camerawork and lighting become more “lyrical.” An overhead close-up of a supine Ayers gave McGarvey the chance to “start dimming the lights on his face so the passing car headlights become the only source — I had a light on a moving boom so you could see the shift of light on his face.” The view from Ayers’ alcove allows Lopez to see his surroundings from a fresh perspective. To suggest this new set of eyes, the filmmakers mounted a 50' Technocrane on a Chapman Maverick, a.k.a. Mobile Arm Vehicle. Although the move was originally executed as an uninterrupted fourminute take that traveled up and down Anderson Street, it appears in two parts in the film. First, the camera tracks past a homeless encampment, rising up over a food line and looking down over a row of outhouses in which people are trying to sleep; then, after a cut, the camera tracks left past a neon sign proclaiming “the gift of God is eternal life” and presents a wide shot looking down upon row after row of sleep- ing bags whose inhabitants try to make do for one more night. “Before the crane shot, what you see is the representation of the fears one normally feels [on a visit to] Skid Row,” says Wright. “But at the moment of [the crane shot], you begin to see the humanity of the place.” McGarvey adds, “Johnny Mang, our dolly grip, deserves special mention because he masterminded that shot with [key grip] Herb Ault. “We were shooting wide open for a lot of the night stuff,” the cinematographer adds. “I love that shallow depth of field because you really get into Nathaniel’s head; you sense his subjective relationship to music. The anamorphic format tested the focus pullers’ mettle, but Bill Coe [A camera] and Harry Zimmerman [B camera] are worldclass.” As Lopez’s understanding of his friend’s situation comes into sharper focus, flashbacks from Ayers’ childhood and his days at Juilliard punctuate the film. McGarvey used ¼ and ½ Tiffen Black Pro-Mists to lend these scenes “the feeling of being half-remembered through a gauze of all the things that have happened in between. I knew we’d enhance the look of the flashbacks in the digitalintermediate suite at EFilm.” When he spoke to AC, McGarvey was at work on the DI. “I’m working with le maître, [colorist] Yvan Lucas, and we’ve played with evoking those eras — the ’60s in Cleveland and the ’70s at Juilliard. Yvan looked at Kodachrome and Ektachrome stocks and noticed that there’s a lot of magenta and blue in the shadow details.” By adding such touches to the shadows, McGarvey and Lucas also gave the flashbacks an overall low-contrast look. “Once we knew we were going the DI route, I knew [Kodak Vision3 500T] 5219 was the perfect stock for this picture,” says the cinematographer. “Although it’s a little bit flatter than I would normally like, there’s more detail in the toe of the negative than you get with 5218.” For day exteriors, McGarvey used Kodak Vision2 200T 5217; both stocks were rated normally and overexposed by about 1⁄3 of a stop. The production spent a few days in Cleveland to capture winter exteriors, but scenes set in Ayers’ childhood home were filmed in a warehouse-turned-stage in Culver City, Calif. The scenes called for both day and night looks, and while both were achieved with tungsten units, the daylight scenes featured “large sources outside the windows — 20Ks and 10Ks — but very little inside,” says McGarvey. “Randy Woodside and [rigging gaffer] Chris Napolitano built these little coop lights, which were basically six Photofloods in a soft box, to help create a patch of ambience. For the night scenes, we used much smaller sources scattered all over the house. Sarah Greenwood and [set decorator] Katie Spencer gave us lots of practicals, and I just filled in with smaller sources: China balls with #1 or #2 Photofloods inside, 650s or Pups through frames, or 1Ks through Chimeras.” The set comprised two stories: the main floor, where Ayers’ mother runs a beauty salon, and the basement, which serves as the boy’s 58 May 2009

American Cinematographer - May 2009

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