American Cinematographer - August 2015 - 21

redesigned many times.
How did you decide on the
camera and lens package?
Ihre: Knowing that we wanted to
shoot the entire film on Kodak Vision3
500T [5219], even for bright, sunny days in
the snow with a shallow depth of field, I
realized that the rear ND slot of the Panavision cameras would help me to see clearly
through the viewfinder - as I operate
myself - in comparison to having thick
NDs in front of the lens. I also like that you
are almost 'getting into character' with a
Panavision camera when you're shooting in
America. That's a fun aspect of it, but most
of all it was the rear ND slots.
How was the decision made to
shoot on film?
Ihre: I always prefer the way film
looks, and I think James also comes from
that background. It just looks more pleasant to the eye. The other reason was that
[this project] is so much about memory and
nostalgia, and the texture you get from
shooting [on film] captures those feelings
from the start. In that sense, it's much more
true to the story to use film. We shot on 3perf Super 35mm.
You shot on the same stock
throughout the entire shoot?
Ihre: We wanted to maintain
consistent grain structure throughout the
film. Days, nights and even the different
time periods - as the film is bookended
with scenes that take place more than 10
years after the road trip - were treated
with the same grain and lenses. We
wanted the two time periods to melt
together, and to still feel the presence of
the absent David Foster Wallace in the later
era. If the audience understands the time
jump - through the use of title cards or
aging through makeup, for example -
there is not always the need to invent a
'flashback look,' which can be quite tiresome and distracting.
Did you maintain a particular Tstop?
Ihre: The stop was around 2 or 2.8
throughout. First AC Michael Dzialowski
did an amazing job. The whole point was
to express that these memories and experiences of Lipsky's are enhanced. They're
almost romantic in a way, and there is a
certain beauty when he thinks back on

Top: Lipsky struggles to keep his cool as Wallace chats with Lipsky's girlfriend. Bottom:
Cinematographer Jakob Ihre, FSF (left) and director James Ponsoldt (with viewfinder) line up a shot.

those days. Shooting fully open can
support that idea, illustrating this through
the diffused/shallow-depth effect - signifying memories.
What did your lighting package
consist of?
Ihre: For a [night-interior] scene in
[Wallace's] living room, for example, we
would work with very small units. We often
had 1-by-1 Litepanels, and especially an
Arri LoCaster fitted with a custom Chimera
cone with Lee 129 diffusion. That worked
for us in those tiny locations, but what you
saw through the windows - the big,
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snowy fields of [Grand Rapids, Mich.,
which stood in for Illinois] - was lit with
18Ks mounted on cherry pickers. Above
the house we built a soft box out of four 6K
space lights rigged by the excellent key grip
Matthew Bulleri. On day interiors we often
let the sun bounce off the snow outside,
[and sometimes supplemented with] 18K
Arrimaxes.
Did you have an overarching
strategy when shooting the conversations between Lipsky and Wallace?
Ihre: Because they do spend a lot of
time in conversation, we could have slipped
August 2015

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American Cinematographer - August 2015

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