American Cinematographer - May 2010 - 51

Opposite: Three stories depicted in Mother and Child concern (clockwise from left) Paul (Samuel L. Jackson) and Elizabeth (Naomi Watts), attorneys who become lovers; Joseph (David Ramsey) and Lucy (Kerry Washington), a couple eager to adopt a child; and Karen (Annette Bening) and her invalid mother (Eileen Ryan). This page, left: Elizabeth interviews for a job at Paul’s firm. Above: Director/writer Rodrigo Garcia (left) and Xavier Pérez Grobet, ASC, AMC plan a shot.

moving the camera very little and very precisely. So when we came to the shoot, our work was about blocking the scene and then trying to find a frame that would capture different moments of the scene without requiring a camera move. Did that discipline ever feel too limiting? Grobet: Well, the difficult part is taking it all the way through the shoot! By week three, if you’re not careful, you start going back to what you usually do, and you can get lost. But I actually think that when you limit yourself that way, you open yourself up to new possibilities, and you come up with ideas that might never have occurred to you [otherwise]. It’s very easy to slip into the modes you’re used to — to think, ‘Oh, it’s this kind of scene, so I can use #37. I know it by heart and it works.’ But when you force yourself into a new way of doing things, I think it opens up some other part of your brain. On this film, it was a real learning experience to find the exact right spot for the camera each time. What do you want to see? What’s important in the scene? We found some frames that I don’t think we would have found if we hadn’t had our specific visual concept in mind. What made you and Rodrigo decide to shoot digitally?

Grobet: Shooting hi-def came up for budget reasons, and Rodrigo was concerned about it initially because he wanted this movie to look elegant. We talked about achieving a gentle image, one that wasn’t too harsh in terms of lighting, contrast or color. After we shot tests with the [Panavision] Genesis and took them to a filmout, we agreed HD would work for us. In fact, I think the Genesis was perfect for this movie. We captured a single shot with the Red [One] because it came up at the last minute, while we were in prep, and we could get a Red quickly. Naomi was actually pregnant, and we were able to fly to New York, find a location and get that shot. [Ed. Note: The shot, captured with an Angenieux Optimo 28-76mm zoom lens, is a day interior that shows Elizabeth contemplating her fully pregnant belly.] Was this your first HD project? Grobet: Yes, and getting used to the format, especially the way it handles highlights, took a few days. On the first day, the windows were too blown-out, and we wanted to capture the detail outside, so I changed my exposure accordingly. I was also able to bring some [highlights] down in the digital intermediate, which we did at EFilm in Hollywood. It was a good
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experience to see what you can accomplish in a DI when you shoot HD as opposed to film. With HD, you definitely want to have a thick ‘negative,’ because if you’re down a bit, it’s really hard to bring it up. If you’re 1⁄3 of a stop over, you have lots of room to play with, but if you’re down by one stop, you’re in trouble. I always used the Genesis on the overexposed side, rating it at 320 ASA. Did you use any of the look-up tables EFilm has developed to emulate specific film stocks? Grobet: No, because I didn’t think any of them were right for this film. We came up with a base LUT through testing. EFilm applied that to our dailies, and we were also able to see its effect with the large HD monitor we had on set. Hector Moreno, our digital-imaging technician, sometimes did minor tweaking, but I didn’t really want to play with the color timing on set. I didn’t want to get distracted, so I’d go to the base LUT and try to stay there. I knew that from there, I could go in different directions in the final timing if I wanted to. The final look is actually very close to the look of the dailies, because I realized that by applying the LUT and looking at the HD monitor, I could build the look I wanted into some scenes with my
May 2010 51

Unit photography by Ralph Nelson, SMPSP, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

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American Cinematographer - May 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2010