American Cinematographer - October 2008 - 80

Those wet location shots would be a whole lot easier if you’d just use our head. HydroHead ® that is. , Call us or visit our web site to see our specialty H2O products and to find out where you can get HydroFlex equipment and accessories worldwide. tion at different apertures, and the optical manipulation of certain images — were quite apparent. What, I wondered, would Gregg Toland, ASC think of modern film stocks, the T1.3 Arri Master Prime lenses, the Steadicam and the remote head, let alone digital compositing? With all our modern inventions and innovations, there are few films that manage to achieve the “quality” of Citizen Kane, though there are many that have far less grain and considerably higher resolution. I would not for a moment suggest that a Super 35mm image scanned at 4K or even 6K would approach the resolution of an anamorphic image produced photochemically today. It might be interesting, though, time when the cinematographer’s craft was less transparent, something of a mystery known only to a few. Today, there are many more toys and more people who want to play the game. A majority of films are probably finished digitally, 4K has become something of a standard, and 6K imaging is no longer an impossible goal. Yes, the DI is a powerful tool, but it holds no threat to the filmmaker, only opportunities. How quickly we forget that when fast lenses and film stocks were introduced, some producers said lights were no longer necessary! Since then, I’ve managed to overload and blow out the transformer at Wilmington Studios, and we’ve seen the development of the 18K HMI, the 12K Par, the 100K SoftSun and so on. 301 E. El Segundo Blvd. El Segundo, CA 90245 Tel: 31 0/301-81 87 Fax: 310/821-9886 www.hydroflex.com Every shot I have ever made has been a compromise in some way. to compare the resolution of a release print of an anamorphic film from the ’60s or ’70s generated from an internegative with a release print of a contemporary film shot in Super 35mm on Kodak Vision2 200T 5217 using an Arri Master Prime or a Cooke S4 lens and scanned, timed and recorded out at 6K/4K. So much for resolution, as well as history! But what do we mean by “quality”? Isn’t that what we’re concerned about? Was There Will Be Blood (2007) a stunning achievement in cinematographic “quality” because it was shot in anamorphic, or did its exceptional shot conception and exquisite sense of composition and the meticulous execution of it all by the camera operator play a part? Is the current nostalgia for the “look” of the films of the ’60s and ’70s due to their picture quality (and here I do mean resolution) or to the direct and simple way their visual construction helps tell the story? There is nostalgia, too, for a O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) could well have been shot in anamorphic and finished photochemically. Would it have been a better film? Would its images have been of a better “quality”? It certainly would not have looked the same. Contrary to popular belief, the manipulation of images in the digital world takes a great deal of skill. It offers no easy fix for those who are careless with their exposures, and there is no software that can compensate for poor lighting or shot conception. The closer the photographed image is to the filmmaker’s intent, the more control the DI suite avails the cinematographer. I have just completed the digital timing of a scene that involved covering a long walk-and-talk over two days of variable weather last January. On the first day, the forecast promised us the cloud cover we wanted, but we arrived to find a bright blue sky. So we waited, and then we waited some more! As is often the case, the light began to fade as we began shooting 80

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American Cinematographer - October 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2008