American Cinematographer - October 2013 - 32

Top: Jon joins his
father (Tony
Danza), mother
(Glenne Headly)
and sister (Brie
Larson) for a meal
after church.
Bottom: Barbara
(Scarlett
Johansson)
catches Jon’s eye
at a club.

matographer cast his hat in the ring when
he heard Gordon-Levitt was hiring for his
feature-directing debut. They had met once
before, when Kloss shot a spot for (500)
Days of Summer. But during the interview,
Kloss made it clear that traditional comedy
was not his métier. “I said to Joe, ‘Looking
at my work, you can see I’m not a bright-litcomedy kind of guy. I like contrast. I like
working out of the dark. I like to separate
faces from dark backgrounds.”
That was music to Gordon-Levitt’s
ears. “I didn’t want to make a movie that
looked like the standard contemporary
American comedy,” says the director, who
also wrote the script. “A lot of those movies
don’t have much visual style; they tell the
story with dialogue and performances, and
32

October 2013

the camerawork stays very formulaic. I
didn’t want to do that. I had lots of ideas
about how to use the camera to help tell
this story, and I wanted a cinematographer
who was excited by that. Thomas definitely
was.
“I also wanted to hire Thomas
because he has so much experience shooting beautiful women,” adds Gordon-Levitt.
“That’s a whole cinematic language unto
itself: how to make someone look like that
traditional image of a woman.”
The director explains that he had
three looks in mind: “In the first act, we’re
in Jon’s normal routine, and I wanted to
make that very flashy, so our references
were Michael Bay movies and MTV — that
sort of high-gloss, high-octane filmmaking
American Cinematographer

with lots of movement, lots of whipping
around. It was mostly camera on tripod,
long lenses, and trying to get that whip-pan
motion into every scene.
“In the second act, he gets involved
in a very traditional relationship with
Barbara, so I wanted traditional Hollywood
camera language. We were referencing
Frank Capra and Steven Spielberg — slow,
smooth movements, mostly on dollies.
“In the third act, Jon’s beginning to
break out of his mold and find a more
organic way of relating to the world. That
was almost exclusively handheld, and we
were referencing John Cassavetes and
French New Wave.”
That progression is mirrored in the
lighting, he adds. “We talked about a lot of
hard, bold light for the first act; soft sources,
like China balls and muslin bounces, for the
second act; and organic-looking lighting for
the third act.”
Gordon-Levitt also knew from the
beginning that he wanted to shoot on film.
“I wanted it to look like a classic movie,” he
says. “Also, my experience on set as an
actor is that when you roll film, something
happens; I think the whole crew feels it.”
Kodak supplied the production with
two Vision3 negatives, 500T 5219 and
200T 5213, which Kloss rated normally.
Shooting 4-perf Super 35mm, he chose a
camera package comprising two Panaflex
Millenniums and a Lightweight (for
Steadicam), Panavision Primo prime lenses
and two Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm
T2.8 zoom lenses.
Principal photography took place
over 27 days in Los Angeles, New York City
and Hackensack, N.J., with a mix of stage
and location work. The most elaborate
lighting setup was the nightclub Jon and his
friends frequent, a practical location that
offered just a few strobes and some lighting
at the bar. “We wanted a cool, ambient
look,” says Kloss, who deployed Full Blue
gels on fixtures throughout the space. Fill
was provided by Nine-Light Maxi-Brutes
through a 12'x12' Half Grid, and more Pars
were pre-rigged to backlight Gordon-Levitt
on the dance floor. For close-ups of the
actor, Kloss positioned a Kino Flo directly
above him. “Joe wanted to look chiseled
and three-dimensional,” he notes. “He
wasn’t so interested in looking good.” ➣
American Cinematographer - October 2013

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