American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 30
From left: First
AD/co-producer
Matt Miller,
Fernandez,
camera operator
Joseph Arena and
writer/director
Dennis Hauck plan
out a scene for
act one.
Sampson had to be visible in his office over
half a mile away in the city below. Fernandez recalls, "We scoured the Earth for the
zoom with the widest and longest range"
- one that could go wide for Dorothy's
encounters with other characters on the hilltop, but zoom in sufficiently to capture
Sampson's expression when he hears her
voice on the phone. Finally, the cinematographer landed on the Angenieux Super Tele
Zoom 40x11 with an AbelCine B4/PL optical
adapter. "The adapter has an inherent 2.7x
magnification, so the zoom range ended up
being about 30-1,200mm," says Fernandez. A second unit, headed-up by George
Reasner, was stationed closer in and
captured a medium shot of Hawkes via an
Arriflex BL-4 with a Clairmont/Canon 150600mm (T8/45) zoom and Angenieux
Optimo 1.4x extender. This footage plays as
a split-screen in the final film.
"This one took all hands on deck,"
Fernandez says of this act. In addition to
second unit, a team of nine - "including
the gear-head/camera op, crane op, telescope op, first AC on focus, second AC on
zoom, gaffer on iris, and dolly grips," the
cinematographer notes - worked the 45'
MovieBird telescoping crane. Act-one key
grip Will Hall manually guided the front end
through portions of the woods, bushwhacking with a machete as needed.
Each act posed its own lighting challenges. The most intricate was the strip club
and bar, where the Steadicam circled the
actors - first a pole dancer, and later Sampson and Dorothy as they slow-danced.
Shadows were a constant danger, both
from the camera and the cavalcade of
people traveling with it. While gaffer Mike
Gioulakis helped provide bounce, he also
30
May 2016
performed the most essential task: giving
lighting cues to the dimmer-board operator
in an upstairs office. "Mike was walking
along with a headset saying a number -
one through 60 - which corresponded to a
number for the dimmer-board op. He
always had to stay one step ahead of the
camera crew so we never shadowed talent.
Mike was really a ninja, getting around tight
locations, staying out of frame, and having
the wherewithal to call lighting cues."
Fernandez cites two examples. "As
Jill [Dichen Lachman] first approaches
[Hawkes], a light dims up through a cut-out
section on the lower level of the bar," he
explains. "There's also a flattering, diffused
overhead light that keys up as she closes in
on the bar. We actually unfurled a large
diffusion frame in front of that light, like a
sail; a grip let it down from the rafters as she
approached. We unfurl the diffusion, then
the bar light and overhead key dim up on
her simultaneously.
"The cues continue when Sampson
exits the strip club and walks down the
street to the bar next door," he adds. "In the
bar, we have Sampson and Dorothy dancing
in close confines with the camera circling
them from 2 feet away. That could have
been another nightmare shadowing situation, so we built in more lighting cues.
Directly above where they're dancing, we
had about eight Leko fixtures. They acted
like a central node, pointing out. We boxed
these fixtures in with four 4-foot-by-8-foot
beadboard bounces that were all angled at
45 degrees down toward the ground,
providing a nice soft key. As the actors
danced and the camera circled them, we
cued the bounce to chase this action -
always having three of the four sources on,
American Cinematographer
but never the one directly behind camera."
A different set of challenges
confronted the filmmakers at the drive-in,
including gravel that tripped up the rickshaw, narrow stairs leading to the projection
booth, and unusably dim drive-in-movie
projection (solved by replacing the projector
bulb, boosting the rectifier, and getting
permission to print a new and much brighter
copy of the 1962 horror film Carnival of
Souls). The elaborate choreography also
included in-camera effects. When Sampson
is wounded, a dream sequence is projected
onto a car's side window. For this, a projectionist had to run over carrying a 16mm
projector and sawhorse and hit his mark
exactly, while makeup squirted blood over
Hawkes. Then there was the matter of lighting the drive-in. Fernandez triangulated the
space with three Condors holding an array
of LRX 18K robotic fixtures underslung from
the baskets. These had two advantages:
They were operated via DMX remote from
the ground, "and they came with proprietary Extreme Temperature Correction
Filters," Fernandez says; those filters slipped
in front of the fixture and posed no danger
of burning, or flying away in the windy
desert.
"There were so many built-in layers of
potential hazard," Fernandez sums up. His
advice for anyone attempting a similar feat:
"Be ready for a lot of creative problem-solving, a lot of adaptation. It's all about the
team. Everyone's role matters to an
enhanced degree, and that makes it exciting.
By the time you're two minutes into the
take, there's a certain level of tension. By the
time you're at 22, everyone at video village is
jumping out of their seats. To get to 22
minutes as perfectly as you can, where everyone has pulled off their piece of the puzzle,
is an experience that's tough to match."
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
2-perf 35mm
Panavision Panaflex Lightweight PFXLW-II,
Arricam Lite, Arriflex BL-4
Panavision Primo, Lightweight Zoom;
Fujinon Cabrio; Angenieux Super Tele Zoom
Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate
●
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2016
Contents
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 1
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 2
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - Contents
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 4
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 5
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 6
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 7
American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 8
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