American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 95

Smolan looks
for an angle as
he documents
Davidson's trek
for National
Geographic.

comforting light," says Walker.
For other day scenes in the location, Walker instructed the crew to lay
Full Grid Cloth across the remaining
ceiling beams to create a soft ambience.
"Mandy also had us pull back parts of
the Grid Cloth to reveal hot sunlight
patterns on the background walls,"
Shelton recalls. The sunlight that
permeated the house's nooks and crannies was further shaped by bounce and
negative fill.
During Davidson's stay, several
friends, along with Smolan, come to
visit. An impromptu party with a roaring fire continues through to dusk. The
sequence was shot during the day on
tungsten stock with no color correction,
with Full Grid Cloth completely covering the beams overhead to keep the
exposure down and reduce the ambient
light, while allowing Walker to retain
the color of the special-effects flames
and match her exit to the exterior, which
they shot at dusk.
Davidson next goes to work for
the kindly Sallay Mahomet ( John
Flaus), an Australian-born Afghan
camel driver. To get the camera in close
to the action for the mustering
sequence, key grip Geoff Full and his
team used their modified four-seat

Polaris RZR 900 ATV. Full explains,
"We stripped the Polaris, built rigging
bars, modified the suspension, set the
camera on our Nettmann Mini-Mote
head and off we went! The Mini-Mote
was also used for crane shots."
Walker enthuses, "Geoff was my
key grip on Australia and he's a very
good problem-solver. Normally when
you have just five grips as we did, there
aren't two dollies on tracks going all the
time, and a crane being built around the
corner. He did a lot of work in preproduction to ensure we didn't compromise
the style John and I were going for."
As Davidson's journey continues,
Curran and Walker wanted to use
natural light and specific locations
framed in classically styled compositions, with a painterly rendering of the
arid Australian outback, to pursue a
meditative impressionism. For inspiration, they looked to Freddie Young,
BSC's elegant compositions in Lawrence
of Arabia and the use of light in
Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira's
watercolor landscape paintings, as well
as the work of Fred Williams and
Russell Drysdale. Judicious scheduling
was also an integral part of Walker's
strategy. "During preproduction," she
says, "a lot of time was spent at each
www.theasc.com

location to establish the best time of day
to shoot. Apart from the obvious
aesthetics of location shooting, we
wanted to use the specific qualities of
the light at each location to visually
delineate Robyn's emotional journey.
Scenes that were rugged and harsh were
shot in the middle of the day, whereas
scenes of Robyn quietly enjoying the
simple company of her animals were
shot at magic hour."
The filmmakers reinforced
Davidson's intimate relationship with
the land through semi-abstract details,
"using the high helicopter landscape
shots cutting with the macro earth," says
Walker, such as the cracked claypan,
which they filmed with a camera
mounted to a "chariot rig," designed and
built by Full and the grip department.
"Mandy required 'aerial' shots of different outback terrain to link particular
locations and show how remote,
parched and yet beautiful the country
Robyn covered was," explains Full. "The
chariot is a three-wheeled, manpowered vehicle with a two-axis vibration isolator. The camera was mounted
on rigging bars and tilted a couple of
degrees off vertical to give the feeling
that the shots are moving forward." The
chariot was also used with a seated operOctober 2014

95


http://www.theasc.com

American Cinematographer - October 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 2014

Contents
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 1
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 2
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - Contents
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 4
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 5
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 6
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 7
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 8
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 9
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 10
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 11
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 12
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 13
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 14
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 15
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 16
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 17
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 18
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 19
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 20
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 21
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 22
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 23
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 24
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 25
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 26
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 27
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 28
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 29
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 30
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 31
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 32
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 33
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 34
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 35
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 36
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 37
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 38
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 39
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 40
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 41
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 42
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 43
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 44
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 45
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 46
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 47
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 48
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 49
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 50
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 51
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 52
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 53
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 54
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - I3
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - I4
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 55
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 56
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 57
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 58
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 59
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 60
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 61
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 62
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 63
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 64
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 65
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 66
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 67
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 68
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 69
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 70
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 71
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 72
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 73
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 74
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 75
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 76
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 77
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 78
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - I1
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - I2
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 79
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 80
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 81
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 82
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 83
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 84
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 85
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 86
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 87
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 88
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 89
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 90
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 91
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 92
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 93
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 94
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 95
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 96
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 97
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 98
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 99
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 100
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 101
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 102
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 103
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 104
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 105
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 106
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 107
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 108
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 109
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 110
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 111
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 112
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 113
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 114
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 115
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - 116
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - October 2014 - Cover4
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