American Cinematographer - July 2011 - 16

Near right: Rousselot lines up a shot on location in Los Angeles. Far right: One of the cinematographer’s signature Chinese lanterns helps illuminate a scene with George Takei.

lanterns, Rousselot stayed true to form on Larry Crowne, creating a look he describes as “gentle.” He elaborates, “This is a film where all the characters are nice — even the villains aren’t that bad. All the characters are facing some kind of problem in life, and you empathize with them. To me, that suggested a gentle approach, and by that I don’t just mean contrast or quality of light, but also color. Sometimes, when you want to be more dramatic or harsh, it isn’t always just hard light or shadows that can do that, but also a kind of dissonance that you can create through combinations of colors. Larry Crowne was really much more about creating a visual harmony. “I don’t do what people call ‘comedy lighting,’” he continues. “I didn’t flood every set with light so you can see every detail. Actually, I don’t really think about the genre of a movie when I’m lighting; I approach each scene and consider that specific situation and mood and what it should feel like. “The characters aren’t always smiling in a comedy, so the lighting doesn’t always have to be ‘funny’ or bright. I tried to approach some locations, like Larry’s apartment, a little more moody than you’d normally see in a comedy. I keep a fair amount of shadows, especially in the moments after Larry has lost his job and isn’t sure what he is going to do. “I do everything I can to pay respect to the actors’ faces — that’s really what it’s all about,” he continues. “My number-one rule is to photograph the actors as well as I can. You start to learn how to light people from the moment you meet them, and as
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you work with them, you see them in different light and different situations — at meetings, in the hallway — and you start to make mental note of what works for their faces and what doesn’t. You store away all that information and then decide how to apply that within the film.” Although much of the production shot on location in and around Burbank, Calif., and the campus at California State University-Dominguez Hills (which doubled for the fictional East Valley Community College), three primary sets were built onstage at Paramount Studios: Crowne’s apartment, Mercedes’ apartment and Mercedes’ classroom. Rousselot attests that his approach to stage lighting is very simple. For daylight outside windows, he uses a combination of direct light from Nine-Light Maxi-Brutes and ambient light from 6K Spacelights. He uses tungsten sources for both daylight and night looks and prefers to not utilize a “moonlight” feel on night interiors. “I don’t usually like to have light coming from the windows at night,” he explains. “I think it is in conflict with any interior lighting. In real life, when you have a lamp lit inside a room, you don’t seen moonlight inside as well, so I usually never mix one and the other. “For day and night interiors, I’ll start with lighting the location. If it’s daytime, it’s sunlight coming through the windows and maybe a little fill, created by bouncing into white paper on the ceiling or on stands out of frame. Then I’ll think about the actors, and I often help to refine their faces by putting a Chinese lantern on a Fisher boom, like a microphone boom, and moving around the set as they move.
American Cinematographer

“Night is the same. It always starts with a logic of what practicals are on, what would the light be in this situation, and then I take care of the faces,” he adds. Larry Crowne went through the digital-intermediate process at EFilm in Hollywood, with Rousselot supervising from Deluxe Laboratories in London. With the facilities linked up, Rousselot could collaborate with EFilm colorist Mitch Paulson via speakerphone as they watched identical 2K footage in real time. “It was just like being in the same room, except I couldn’t hit Mitch on the head when he went in the wrong direction!” Rousselot laughs. “Actually, I wouldn’t do that, anyway! “Tom [Hanks] and [producer] Gary Goetzman originally wanted to warm up the overall look and brighten the picture a bit, but I showed them that look and then a much more natural look, the way we’d shot it, and they agreed that the natural look was much better for the film.” Rousselot concludes, “As simple as the movie may sound, the shoot was never boring. I get bored when I’m sitting around and waiting for people who can’t make up their minds. On Larry Crowne , we were always moving, always shooting. It was a wonderful energy and environment.”

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1 Anamorphic 35mm Panaflex Millennium XL Panavision G-Series Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, 250D 5207 Digital Intermediate

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American Cinematographer - July 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 2011