American Cinematographer - October 2012 - 16

Clockwise from top left: Reflections play a key role in Aexis; H.R. McDonald (left) talks over a shot with director Eric Chang (center) and 2nd AC Lei Tao; McDonald sets up a shot.

Aexis Cinematographer: H.R. McDonald The main character in Aexis, directed by Eric Chang, recalls a succession of enigmatic memories as he tries to figure out how he died. The possibility of separate realities is indicated, and an advanced technology, along with an assassin in pursuit of it, is hinted at. Throughout the film, the main character jumps around in time, and the filmmakers designed the images to reflect
16 October 2012

Language of the Unheard Cinematographer: Travis LaBella Directed by Jacqueline Reyno and Matthew Litwiller, the documentary Language of the Unheard focuses on four members of the Oglala Sioux Nation who live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which borders the Badlands in South

American Cinematographer

Aexis photos and frame grabs courtesy of Eric Chang.

miniature and real worlds together in a very romantic way.” Horan wasn’t entirely satisfied with the battery-powered miniature lights he used in the miniature set, but a remote slider from Innovision helped him create a clean plate for the visual-effects team, which had to remove rods from the roach puppet. “Working with puppeteers in such a tight miniature set was definitely a big learning curve,” says Horan. “Shooting at T5.6 on a miniature set and being able to control the light in a believable way was a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

his confusion and paranoia. “The script had a temporal ambiguity that suggested the story could be taking place in the future,” says McDonald, a native of New Orleans, La. “To suggest this, I arranged my compositions to give the architecture a knife-like sharpness, putting the character in a hostile environment. I was always looking for a composition that would further that idea and suggest a kind of fascist control. We limited camera moves to keep the emphasis on the compositions. We also used reflections in mirrors to suggest the multiple lives this character seems to be living.” The script included a sequence in which the actors had to perform a scene and then play it again while reversing their actions. A subsequent scene then presents vaguely similar actions but a different outcome. Similarly, the camera move, a slow dolly combined with a pan/tilt, had to be performed three times: once normally, once in reverse, and once forward again but slightly different. McDonald shot with a Red One MX in 4.5K 2.40:1 Widescreen mode, using Red

Pro primes and an Angenieux 12-120mm zoom. “I usually prefer to use older zooms on the Red to soften the image a bit, but we wanted sharpness for this film, so the primes were appropriate,” he says. “I also used a Canon [EOS] 5D Mark II for the underwater shots and a brief shot with a Lensbaby. I’ve found that the 5D intercuts pretty well with the Red on close-ups, but I wouldn’t use that camera on wide shots.” With one exception, the entire picture was lit with Kino Flos, including 4bank systems and Single Selects, all with daylight-balanced tubes. The exception was a 1K tungsten-balanced accent light. “The environment was so sharp, rigid and angular that I felt it would have been a poor decision to use hard light,” says McDonald. “The soft light balances out the look and keeps it from becoming too theatrical.” McDonald says that all of his cinematographic decisions are informed by the available time and gear. “I typically work with rushed schedules, limited crew and only as much equipment as will fit in my Subaru Forester,” he says. “I guess you could say that at the moment, my specialty is doing a lot with a little, and Aexis was no exception. Fortunately, Eric gave me near total freedom in crafting the look and finding the shots that worked best.”

American Cinematographer - October 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2012