American Cinematographer - May 2016 - 69

Before preproduction, Wages
"went around Atlanta at night with [a
stand-in for Gyasi] and no additional
lighting," he says. He shot with the
VariCam 35 to demonstrate to the
producers its extreme latitude and lowlight capabilities. "I knew this was the
best camera for this series," he attests.
Smith also praises the camera's
wide dynamic range. "I love the way the
sensor looks," he explains. "It has a
gentle roll-off on highlights, and it feels
as much like film as any digital camera
I've used. The Alexa might be a touch
stronger down at the bottom end of the
exposure, but this camera has 15 stops
of latitude, so it's not an issue. It also has
more latitude than any film stock I've
used."
The production used four
VariCam 35s. Two of the cameras were
used for studio and handheld mode, one
for Steadicam, and one as a backup for
the splinter unit. Both Smith and
Wages typically paired the A and B
cameras with Fujinon Cabrio Premier
PL zooms: a 19-90mm (T2.9) and an
85-300mm (T2.9-4.0).
Smith says one of the rules in
shooting the series was to not bring in
heavy equipment and to keep the lighting package as minimal as possible. To
accomplish this while tackling the
series' large number of night exteriors,
the filmmakers chose locations where
they could use streetlights. Working
with the city of Atlanta, the cinematographers were able to turn off some
streetlights and use "pillowcases" as soft
diffusion for lights that were not in
frame. Wages notes, "These pillowcases
were actually soft bags I had specifically
made to fit over the fixtures so that we
did not eliminate all of the light, but
subdued and softened it quite a bit."
Smith adds, "With the 5,000 ISO of
the camera, we were able to shoot night
exteriors with just a few Kino Flos or a
couple of Par cans - no big guns."
The mandate for smaller fixtures
also carried through to the production's
stage-bound sets, which were
constructed in a warehouse space in
Atlanta, about a mile from Downtown.

Cinematographer Nelson Cragg (left-center, holding the railing) and crew ready a scene
inside a subway car.

For the set of a digital-information security facility called Bitscan, "we had a
daytime city backing that was 120-feetby-20-feet, and normally to light that we
would have used 10 or 12 5K Skypans
and a ground row of 1Ks on the floor,"
explains Wages. "We lit this with 19
2Ks. That's cutting in half what we
usually would have done, and it was still
so bright that we had to dim it most of
the time. That's a huge savings in air
conditioning, power and rigging.
Shooting at 5,000 [ISO] instead of 800
changes your lighting setups quite a bit,
and it probably took us a third or fourth
of the time to set it all up.
"Also, because the set was in a
warehouse, we couldn't hang anything
and I had to light from the floor," Wages
continues. The cinematographer often
likes to employ ETC Source Fours, but
for Containment, he went with Source
Four Mini LEDs, which are one-third
the size. "I could grab one to get an eye
light and use batteries so I didn't have to
run cable," he says. "I'd use them at 800
[ISO], but they weren't as effective
because they aren't that bright. But at
5,000 they were plenty bright."
Many of the office and hospital
scenes were shot on stage and built with
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drop ceilings. Instead of using standard
fluorescent bulbs in the sets' practical
fixtures, Smith and Wages opted for
dual-temperature Quasar LED tubes
that were put on dimmers. "With the
Quasars and their dimming capabilities,
we could dim them down to the point
where we had enough light but [the
actors didn't] have raccoon eyes, which
saved a lot of time," says Wages.
Still, Wages cautions, "Going to
5,000 ISO can be a double-edged
sword. I run every light through a
dimmer to save time, and at 800, if I
dim a light 10 volts, it's maybe 1⁄4 stop.
At 5,000, if you dim a light 10 volts, it
could be a full stop. So the precision of
lighting at those high ISOs presents a
different way of thinking, although it
didn't take me very long to adapt."
The VariCam 35s captured 2K
ProRes 4:4:4:4 files internally to P2
cards using Panasonic's V-Log gamma
curve. Bling Digital Atlanta, a division
of the Sim Group, provided dailies
services. Sim Digital Atlanta, also a
division of the Sim Group, provided
cameras and support for both the pilot
and the series. Wages used two Rec 709
LUTs, one each for 800 and 5,000 ISO;
for both, he essentially opened up
May 2016

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2016
