American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 22

Top: The crew prepares to shoot car interiors onstage at Red Studios Hollywood. Bottom: Elyse
Levesque awaits the call of action for a scene in which her mysterious character's countenance
suddenly appears in the rearview mirror of Sullivan's car.

and primarily features carefully composed
shots with little or no camera movement, a
technique designed to "convey the kind of
emotional impact I wanted, in order to
more empathetically engage the viewer
with the narrative," Clark says. In addition
to Förderer, Clark points to the work of
editor David Sconyers and production
designer Mari Lappalainen as being key to
ensuring that his visual agenda went
according to plan. Clark also makes special
mention of composer Alex Kovacs, "whose
excellent original score further amplifies the
emotional resonance of the images
- along with Dolby sound designer Erik
Foreman, at Dolby who did the final sound
mix using Dolby Atmos." Clark also compliments the work of producer Malcolm
22

October 2016

Duncan, "who efficiently managed the
production process."
The movie essentially centers around
three sequences. The first features a meeting at police headquarters between Mack
and Jake, as the former tells the latter about
the disappearances. This scene is the most
evident example of "the impactful film-noir
feel that we wanted," Förderer notes. And
as it immediately followed the opening
archival footage, "I thought [the Leicas]
might result in too harsh a contrast," he
says, "so I brought up the idea of using
Panchros for the office scene to [provide] a
smoother transition from older glass to
newer glass, and to digital cameras [shooting] 60 fps and high dynamic range."
The second sequence involves Jake's
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car ride to the scene of the disappearances,
during which the sunny California weather
inexplicably transitions to a threatening
storm front as Jake suddenly sees the
woman in the rearview mirror of his vintage
1947 Ford. The vehicle, shot with the
Weapon on a greenscreen stage, was
flanked by Digital Sputnik DS 6 and Arri
SkyPanel S60 LED units - one of each on
either side of the car. A DS 1 fixture was
placed in front of the car to serve as an
eyelight for Scott. Kino Flo 4' four-banks
fitted with green lamps were aimed at the
greenscreens from above and below.
The SkyPanel and DS 6 units were
operated through a dimmer board, allowing
the filmmakers to create a sunlight effect
with the SkyPanels and then dim them to an
overcast look on cue, and to provide a variety of lighting effects with the Digital Sputniks as the weather radically changes. "The
Sputniks started off as a sun backlight and
then they faded off," Förderer relates. "And
then, later in the sequence, they flashed at
a very cool temperature to mimic lightning
flashes. We were able to use the same
fixtures; we didn't need special-effects lighting instruments. That makes things efficient
and keeps the footprint small on set."
Levesque had her reflection shot in
close-up under low light for several takes, in
what Taylor calls a "double-greenscreen
shot. It's an interesting shot because we are
looking at the rearview mirror, and in it we
see the mystery woman as well as the rear
window of the car, [behind which] is a
greenscreen. And because the rearview
mirror does not fill the frame, we are looking out [the front window as well], onto
another greenscreen. One of the things we
discovered was that the mirror soaked up a
lot of light - a [full] stop - so even though
the two greenscreens were an exact match,
we had to beef up the screen behind the car
to ensure that the two greenscreens were
recorded at the same level. After that,
Markus lit the actress cleverly with a variety
of sources, mostly through the windows,
and then he had a [small custom LED eye
light] stuck to the backseat, which brought
just enough fill light into her face."
In the third sequence - the movie's
climax - Mack enters the cave in which he
has reason to believe his colleague may be
located. Once inside, he sees strange
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