American Cinematographer - August 2014 - 22

Fosheim (in white shirt) lines up a shot with Fisch and Michelle Nunes while employing a
lightweight dolly rig and a Turtleback SLR Jacket lens adapter.

unpredictable ways. Additionally, the
amount of vignetting is affected by the
focal length of the lens. To give myself
complete control over this effect, I opted to
shoot with f1.4 Nikon Nikkor AI-S F-mount
lenses, and I shot the majority of the movie
with 35mm and 50mm lenses, which
produced a medium vignette. The 18mm
was extremely vignetted; I had to shoot
wide open with that lens or it looked like I
was shooting through a black hole.
Shooting wide open also allowed
the actors to move in and out of focus. I
embraced this shallow depth-of-field, placing the camera right in the middle of the
action, where the actors would literally
22

August 2014

bump into me at times. Again, this added to
the atmosphere of disorientation and claustrophobia I hoped to achieve.
I recorded directly to the iPhone 5
while using the Filmic Pro app, which
allowed me to control the color temperature, frame rate and bit rate; I elected to
shoot at a bit rate of 50 Mbps instead of the
iPhone's native 24 Mbps. Filmic Pro also
allowed me to adjust the capture frame rate
and output frame rate, the effect of which
is akin to adjusting the shutter on a conventional camera. I shot a number of the more
abstract sequences at 6 fps and played
them back at 6 fps within the 24 fps video
file, resulting in incredibly blurred moveAmerican Cinematographer

ment and a watercolor-like look. As these
abstract scenes progressed, I continued to
adjust the recording and output rates to
further deteriorate the images.
When recording while the iPhone is
plugged into a charger, an electrical pulse
affects the image - every couple of
seconds, you get a quick flash from a single
frame that is slightly overexposed. When I
discovered this bizarre and unexpected
effect, I of course fell in love with it. After all,
what better way to represent a dying man's
fragmented memories than to have
random electrical pulses uncontrollably
changing the exposure of the image?
The small iPhone camera rig allowed
me to place the camera anywhere I wanted.
We mounted it on sleds going down ski
slopes, in small cubbies on set, in the
kitchen sink and even directly on the actors'
bodies. The iPhone is so unobtrusive and
simple to use, it freed me to move and react
to the actors, who in turn appreciated the
camera because it allowed them to stay in
character for longer periods of time.
Principal photography took place
over four weeks of extreme winter weather
in Mammoth Lakes, Calif., where we shot
in the beautiful cabin home of a family
friend. Inside the house, I rigged 6' covered
wagons fitted with six 250-watt incandescent globes and draped in muslin; we
attached hooks to the 15'-high ceiling so
we could hoist the covered wagons up or
American Cinematographer - August 2014

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