American Cinematographer - November 2015 - 14

Short Takes

Sweet Revenge
By Neil Matsumoto

Best Man Wins, directed by Stéphane Dumonceau, is based
on a short story of the same name by Frederick Waterman, and stars
Tim DeKay as Edward Stiles, a famous New York City chef who cooks
up a revenge plot against his best man, Jean-Louis Vachon (François
Vincentelli), after discovering that the latter had an affair with his
wife, Caroline (Nadia Farès). The ambitious 20-page script was shot
in just three and a half days by cinematographer Wes Cardino, who
was introduced to Dumonceau by the film's production designer,
Justin McClain.
The film is set at JFK Airport in New York, Charles de Gaulle
Airport in Paris, on a Boeing 767, and in the kitchen of a Manhattan
restaurant. Like most short films, Best Man Wins had a limited
budget, so instead of flying cast and crew to each location, the filmmakers worked entirely in Los Angeles and took advantage of
virtual-set technology.
"To my disappointment, we weren't going to France,"
Cardino says with amusement. "One of the major things in prep we
did was to figure out how to pull off Charles de Gaulle and JFK. A
lot of our time was spent discussing greenscreen elements and what
our virtual sets were going to look like. From there, it was me building a lighting scheme and [planning] camera movement within that
virtual world. I had worked on virtual sets before and I had seen
mixed results. It was really important for me to make sure we could
pull this off."
With an MFA in cinematography from the American Film
Institute, Cardino has a number of shorts, commercials and feature
credits under his belt. For Best Man Wins, he found particular inspiration in the work of cinematographer Robert Elswit, ASC, especially
Michael Clayton and The Town. "Elswit has a stylized naturalism,"
Cardino observes. "It still feels very real, but it's also very immediate.
His lighting style is very moody. We found a lot of inspiration in that
14

November 2015

[style and] in the way he moves his camera.
"We definitely wanted [Best Man Wins] to have elements of
naturalism in terms of not feeling like a slick commercial, but we also
wanted it to have a punchiness and darkness based on the arc of the
story," Cardino continues. "Stéphane really wanted to make a film
where people are not good or bad, right or wrong - everybody has
a little responsibility in all of it. There are a lot of gray areas where
these characters live their lives, and we wanted the lighting to reflect
that. We wanted to build off of that sense that people are never
[fully] in or out of the light."
Cardino shot the film with two Red Epic Mysterium-Xs, framing for a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, and capturing 5K files with 5:1 compression. The cinematographer notes that he doesn't like to go above 5:1
with the Epic, especially for a film with a lot of visual-effects work. "I
thought it was really important that the color fidelity was at the maximum capacity we could accommodate in terms of running time for
the cards," he says.
Cardino rented all of his camera gear from Panavision Hollywood, with the help of Mike Carter, and used Super Speed and Ultra
Speed lenses, which are part of Panavision's Legacy Primes series.
Having used them on previous projects, he felt their softness would
take some of the edge off of the Epic's sensor. He generally stuck with
wider lenses - "I mainly used the 24mm, 29mm, 35mm and
40mm, but occasionally went wider to the 20mm," he says. "A
wider lens for close-ups and mediums adds additional character, and
you feel closer to [the actors], especially if you're shooting nonanamorphic 2.40:1. It also adds a little bit of flavor and texture to
their faces."
The airplane interior was shot on a traditional airplane set at
Air Hollywood in Pacoima, Calif., but the creation of the airport interiors was spearheaded by visual-effects supervisor Elliott Jobe and his
company There in Los Angeles. (Additional effects work was
performed by ArsenalFX and Cosmo Street in Santa Monica, and
Moondog/Hectic NY and Significant Others in New York.) "I went in

American Cinematographer

All images courtesy of the filmmakers.

Edward Stiles
(Tim DeKay,
left), a famous
New York City
chef, cooks up
a revenge plot
against his
friend JeanLouis Vachon
(François
Vincentelli) in
the short film
Best Man Wins.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2015