American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 42

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Rising Up

Above: The
Savannah, Ga.,
property chosen
for the Turner
plantation was
the production's
main shooting
location. Right:
The crew preps
a dinner scene
inside the
Turner
plantation
home.

wise a nod to modern sensibilities. In
addition to accommodating more
people in the frame, the widescreen
aspect ratio "is the modern graphic,"
Davis states. "If you go back to 1.33, you
could say it's the oldest compositional
framework we have, while 2.40 is the
newest framework. On top of that, the
filming technique is almost all handheld,
with Steadicam and the occasional dolly
shot. This was to ensure the feeling of
modern immediacy."
The crew deployed two cameras
whenever possible, mostly handheld,
operated by Davis and Billinger.
Cineverse in Atlanta supplied two Arri
Alexa XT Plus cameras, which shot
ArriRaw 2880x1620 in 4:3 sensor mode
and recorded to internal Codex XR
42

November 2016

Capture Drives, as well as a lighterweight Red Epic Dragon, which shot
Redcode Raw 5120x2700 and recorded
to RedMag 1.8" SSDs. "I wanted to
save George Billinger's back!" says
Davis. The Epic wound up staying
mounted on the Steadicam for quick
access, and also came out for a few highspeed shots.
"I distilled the lens package down
into 'less is more and less is faster,'"
Davis says. "We had a set of lenses for
each camera," which included three
workhorse Angenieux Optimo zooms:
15-40mm (T2.6), 28-76mm (T2.6) and
45-120mm (T2.8). Also included in the
total package were a 12:1 Angenieux
Optimo 24-290mm (T2.8), and Cooke
S4/i 14mm and 27mm primes. "This
American Cinematographer

allowed maximum flexibility for
Steadicam, handheld and formal shooting," says Davis.
The dailies workflow began with
DIT Nick Pasquariello creating a base
look and generating an ASC CDL. He
also managed media, backing up with a
Pomfort Silverstack to the on-set RAID
and OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual shuttle drives. Raw footage, sound files, CDLs
and reports were sent to the dailies suite in
the production office, where on-set colorist
Steven Sherrick had set up a Blackmagic
Design DaVinci Resolve suite outfitted
with a 24.5" Flanders Scientific CM250
OLED monitor. "We had full desktoplevel color grading," Sherrick says.
"Working in Resolve allowed me to do all
the really specific things that Elliot
wanted: get into secondary colors, power
windows that needed to be tracked, and
skin softening. That's stuff you can't do in
[normal DIT apps]. Secondaries can be
performed in a tool like Pomfort
LiveGrade to a limited extent, but not
with the control of Resolve, and in this
particular scenario we needed the fullblown toolset."
Once Sherrick received the shuttle
drives, he backed up data onto a 64TB
Maxx Digital ThunderRAID2, which
stored the entire movie through the duration, as well as a 12TB OWC Mercury
Elite Pro Dual drive for insurance. Media
was also backed up to LTO tape; once the
tape backup was verified, the 12TB drive
was wiped clean.
Sherrick color-graded each and
every take so all would be available for the
Avid edit. After finishing that work,
Resolve generated what he calls an "intermediate file" in ProRes 1080p, which
would go into FotoKem's NextLab dailies
software, together with sound files. "From
there," Sherrick says, "I would sync sound
and generate deliverables, which were Avid
DNxHD 115 files for editorial, as well as
compressed H.264 QuickTimes for online
viewing for the producers and director,"
who used Scenic Drive's online dailies
viewing system. "I also used those files for
Nate Parker's iPad." Finally, drives
containing Avid DNxHD 115, sound
files, H.264s and dailies reports were
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