American Cinematographer - August 2016 - 57

ing a stunt double; the double was dragged
by a motorboat that was later removed in
post, along with its wake. "We were about
50 yards away," Seiple says, "doing crashzooms in and out, trying to get the shot.
There's a really fun zoom shot [that made
it to the final cut] that was actually us
doing a zoom-in to reframe - but we did
it slow enough that the Daniels said, 'That
was amazing!' There's a zoom-out that
they kept in the movie as well. The directors had never talked about using zooms
in the movie, but they ended up being
wonderful."
The slow-motion footage for the
Jet Ski sequence was generally shot at 48
and 60 fps, though frame rates as high as
96 fps were employed.
A day-exterior LUT was designed
for the production to boost contrast and
bring out "richer colors in the shadows,"
Seiple says, while not clipping the highlights. "Because of the green ambience
from the deep-woods foliage, our dayexterior LUT also helped suppress highlevel green saturation, which can cause the
image to feel overly digital."
A slightly lower-contrast LUT was
employed for night shoots for better visibility. "We had a wonderful [on-set] DIT
named Matt Conrad, whom I've worked
with for a long time and have brought
onto every project I can," the cinematographer enthuses. "We baked the look into
the dailies so that everyone had a reference, and when we went to work with
Sofie, she re-graded it to her look. The
biggest thing that we changed was the
green. We wanted the forest to have more
of an emerald vibe, so we had to do a
specific key just for that. Now the forest
feels really lush and idyllic."
Borup adds, "We made sure things
didn't go too neon, and that all the greens
and yellows in the trees didn't get too saturated. That made a big difference in
making it more filmic. [In that regard,
adjusting] grain also helped." The production used a Company 3-created grain
image, which was derived from actual
35mm 500T stock.
"I think it's really important for the
cinematographer to be involved [in the
grade]," she continues. "It's Larkin's vision

Left: Kwan helps
secure vines to
Radcliffe's wrists so
Manny's limp body
can be puppeteered
by Hank, who
teaches his blankslate buddy what it's
like to go out to
dinner. Below: The
crew readies the
"restaurant" scene.

of how the movie is supposed to be. If he
couldn't capture certain things on set, we
would try to solve those problems
together and possibly save what he
couldn't get on [camera]. It's a collaboration." Borup performed the grade in
2288x1716 resolution with Blackmagic
Design's DaVinci Resolve - first with
version 11, then migrating to 12 toward
the end of the sessions when the facility
upgraded - for a 2K DCP final deliverable.
The directors and Seiple agree
that the Swiss Army Man shoot saw few
easy days. "Most of our locations were
remote, so every 12-hour day ended up
being 10 hours due to travel," the cinematographer notes. "We had wire work,
www.theasc.com

water work, a child, pyro, stunts every
day, night exteriors, live animals, a bear.
[Seemingly simple] scenes in the woods
were complicated, with body gags and
water shooting out of people's mouths.
Every day was a unique challenge."
Manny's ability to dispense drinking water from his mouth was a liveactor gag devised by special-effects artist
Jason Hamer, who was also responsible
for the construction of several different
Manny bodies for widely varying
purposes throughout the production.
The water-fountain effect is first
demonstrated in a cave, in which the
only interior light was a "LitePanels 1x1
Bi-Color as an eye light," Seiple says.
(The scene was shot in Hollywood's
August 2016

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American Cinematographer - August 2016

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