American Cinematographer - October 2013 - 34

Kloss (in white
hat) watches
playback with
Gordon-Levitt
and Julianne
Moore. GordonLevitt notes, “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.”

Kloss veered away from this toplight
formula for the women. “When we had
women in the frame, I usually went with
a backlight or three-quarter-backlight
scenario, then had a front light that was as
soft as possible. That’s always the simplest
way to do beauty lighting. We always had
one or two 12-by frames [with Nine-Light
Maxis gelled Full Blue] on wheels that could
make soft sidelight.”
The cinematographer took extra
measures for Johansson because of her
character’s significance. When Joe first spots
Barbara at the bar, she wears a cherry-red
dress and is standing in orange light. “She’s
the only person in the club who has warm
light on her,” says Kloss. “That’s one of the
more distinct lighting setups we created.
We used three 650-watt Fresnels; two were
gelled with Full CTO for a warm sidelight,
and one was diffused with Opal and
provided frontlight at a particular moment
in the scene. With the rest of the club lighting being Full Blue, she stood out quite a
bit!” For subsequent shots of Johansson in
the club — for instance, when she takes her
turn on the kissing couch — “we just gave
her a warm edgelight and a bit of warm
front fill,” says Kloss.
Gordon-Levitt, in turn, got special
treatment for his “porn-mode” close-ups,
when his face is supposedly lit by the
computer screen. Kloss tested various
options and ultimately arrived at four Kino
Flo tubes, two above camera and two
below camera. “We toyed with LitePanels
[LEDs], but the Kino Flo tubes were a bit
broader and looked a little more over-the34

October 2013

top, which is what Joe wanted. He didn’t
want it to look too real because at those
moments, Jon is lost in his imagination.”
The same principle applied to closeups of Johansson’s rapturous face as she
loses herself in romance movies. Kloss
created an enhanced replica of light bouncing off the cinema screen and onto her face,
softening four 575-watt Arri HMIs with an
8'x8' Half Grid that the camera poked
through.
But as Jon and Barbara’s relationship
sours, Johansson’s beauty light slips away.
When her character confronts Jon about his
cache of porn sites, for instance, “she is very
toplit,” says Kloss. For her final appearance,
at an outdoor café, she is lit only with available light.
Likewise, for the scene showing Jon
finally entering into a healthy relationship,
sunlight illuminates his and Esther’s faces in
tight close-ups. For this, Kloss used 4'x8'
foamcore to bounce sunlight onto Moore,
who was in the shade.
The authentic porn footage and
other media clips that had to be integrated
into the picture created a few challenges for
the post team at Modern VideoFilm in
Burbank. “The challenge was creating a
consistent look, because the footage came
in almost every possible resolution, as well
as different frame rates,” says Craig Price,
Modern VideoFilm’s DI editor. Zara Park, the
facility’s senior DI producer, elaborates, “We
typically did a clip pull from DVD to a bridge
dub DigiBeta, ran it through an Alchemist or
Teranex box to HDCam-SR, ingested into
the Quantel Rio or Pablo, did some processAmerican Cinematographer

ing, graded the material and then sent it
back to the Quantel Rio or Pablo box for
more processing.”
“Joseph Gordon-Levitt wanted a
treatment for the porn that would make it
feel as if it were being viewed on a laptop,”
says Price. “We up-rezzed it to 2K, did some
resizing [to achieve an R rating instead of an
X], and then used the Pablo to ‘Quantize’ it.
For footage that had fields, we ran it
through the box to combine the fields, and
then used Twixtor to change the frame rate
to 24 fps. The less degraded the footage,
the less pre-processing had to be done.
Finally, I used a solarization effect to make
the contrast transitions a lot less smooth, as
if you were looking at a low-resolution
QuickTime movie. At that stage, I applied a
lot more of the effect to the better-quality
footage, trying to balance its feel with the
feel of the most degraded material.”
Modern VideoFilm also handled the
DI process for Don Jon. The negative was
scanned at 2K (on a Thomson Spirit 4K or, if
it was footage that would incorporate CGI,
a Northlight); colorist Gregg Garvin did the
color correction on DaVinci Resolve 9; and
the result was filmed out at 2K to Kodak
Vision3 2254 on an Arrilaser Film Recorder.
ModernVideo Film created a 2K DCP, and
FotoKem created release prints.
Kloss says he relished the opportunity Don Jon gave him to tell a story with
cinematography. “My reel proves I can do
polished photography, but this movie was
an exercise in making the photography part
of the storytelling. Having shot music videos
and commercials for 30 years, I really
enjoyed this experience. I was able to work
with a talented, open-minded director who
had a vision from the very first minute, and
I was able to shoot truly amazing actors. It
made me want to shoot more features.”

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
4-perf Super 35mm
Panaflex Millennium, Lightweight
Panavision Primo, Angenieux Optimo
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, 200T 5213
Digital Intermediate
●
American Cinematographer - October 2013

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