American Cinematographer - July 2009 - 12

Right: Jarnagin strove to keep the actors in backlight and expose for the highlights whenever day exteriors couldn’t be staged in the shade. Below: Jarnagin (standing on dolly) and director Amy B. Harris (center) plan their next move. into a beadboard and through a diffusion frame between the bounce and the actor. For low-key night interiors, she used 4-by-4 Kino Flos and Fresnels with Lee 250 or light grid diffusion in front of them to give the light more directionality. “Famke can take directional light very well,” she notes, “and I like using light grid because it diffuses the most with the least loss of light.” She recalls that the Red One’s extended dynamic range really came in handy for shooting outdoors during the day; she shot these scenes in the protective shade of trees and buildings, or backlit her actors and exposed for the highlights. “The Red’s range meant I could bring up the shadow areas. I asked our Red technician, Sam Kretchmar, to do a curve in the RedAlert software that would bring up the faces, so in the QuickTime dailies, we could see the image the way we intended it to look.” “We didn’t always have the guns to match the exteriors,” adds gaffer Meg Schrock. “We tried to augment sunlight rather than try to beat it. We’d soften it up with a 1.2K HMI and light grid.” Sometimes, the only way to get light into an actor’s eyes was to walk next to the actor with a bounceboard. The core production crew on the series comprised Jarnagin, Kretchmar, Schrock, key grip John Shim, two best boys and two camera assistants. Jarnagin often did her own operating and came to rely on Shrock’s ability to anticipate the next lighting setup. “Meg and I had a good understanding of each other’s taste,” says the cinematographer. “Most of the time, I’d outline what I was looking for and trust her to figure out how to do it.” Schrock adds, “Jendra is really good about communicating. She allows me to do my own thing, and if she doesn’t like it, she’ll tell me. There were very few situations where we didn’t get what she wanted.” One thing Jarnagin found herself wanting was an optical viewfinder, the absence of which is inherent to most digital cameras. Even at 720p, the Red’s monitoring output is only a fraction of the resolution of the 4K image, which makes judging the image quality difficult. This led to a few surprises at the color-correction stage, when Jarnagin noticed that the image tended toward the sharp side. “I think it plays into the level of detail you’re capturing,” she says. “With film, you get random, organic grain patterns that average together for a smooth look. With digital, you have very precise points of light and color that are repeated frame by frame, leading to a harsher and sharper look.” To counteract this, she used a ½ Tiffen Soft FX filter in front of the lens for close-ups. “Soft FX filters look natural — they don’t give themselves away,” she observes. “They don’t diffuse the light as much as the detail.” Puppy Love was graded on a Scratch system at Offhollywood Digital in Manhattan. With colorist Robbie Renfrow at the controls, Jarnagin supervised the color-correction of the entire series. “We took a pretty straightforward approach,” she says. “Our main goal was to use Power Windows to finesse the things that were rushed on set. We never put a heavy hand on things. The look is supposed to feel natural but bright and happy.” The series was shot at 4K in 16x9 using the Redcode 28 setting. Even though the Redcode 36 codec is less compressed, Jarnagin decided 28 would be more flexible. “At the time we shot the series, you couldn’t shoot 4K in the 16x9 aspect ratio to compact flash cards at 36. If you wanted that, you had to shoot directly to the Red Drives. “Every camera and format has its strengths and weaknesses — there is no such thing as a perfect camera,” she adds. “But in terms of the evolution of digital cinema, Red is on the right track.” I 12 July 2009

American Cinematographer - July 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 2009