American Cinematographer - December 2013 - 10

Editor's Note

Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor

10

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

The first trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street grabbed everyone's attention when it hit the Internet this past summer.
Set to the bacchanalian drumbeats and yelps of Kanye
West's "Black Skinhead," the teaser surprised everyone
with its coke-rush cavalcade of brokers behaving badly.
Perhaps everyone was expecting director Martin Scorsese
to take a more business-oriented approach to the story of
stockbroker Jordan Belfort (embodied with antic gusto by
Leonardo DiCaprio), but the backdrop of big-money excess
called for bold visual strategies that would emphasize
Belfort's bull-in-a-china-shop lifestyle. Working with Scorsese for the first time, cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, ASC,
AMC was up for the adventure, mixing a variety of optics,
lighting styles and color schemes to take viewers on a wild ride of steep rises, sharp turns
and dizzying drops. Calling Wolf "a movie of extremes," Prieto details all the techniques he
used "to capture the energy Scorsese wanted" in Michael Goldman's coverage ("Boom and
Bust," page 38), which also offers the director's insights.
Elegant cinematography counterbalances stark scenes of oppression in Steve
McQueen's period drama 12 Years a Slave, which dramatizes the life of another real-life
figure: Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a professional violinist living as a free man in
New York State who was abducted in 1841 and sold into slavery. In John Calhoun's article
("A Soul Suppressed," page 54), Sean Bobbitt, BSC reflects upon his ongoing partnership
with McQueen, noting, "Steve is always looking for a truth, a reality, and although it is never
the reason for making a film, it's always the undercurrent."
A tale of warring titans offered Kramer Morgenthau, ASC an expansive canvas on
Thor: The Dark World, a sequel to Thor and The Avengers shot with anamorphic lenses and
Arri Alexa Plus 4:3 cameras. "We were one of the first films to shoot anamorphic on the 4:3
sensor, and it's really hard to get those lenses now because everyone's doing it," Morgenthau tells European correspondent Benjamin B ("Grand Battles," page 68), who paid a visit
to the production's London set. Adds director Alan Taylor, "Mythology depends on a grand
scale, and in going for an epic vista, anamorphic is a natural choice. It gives you sweeping
scale."
Eric Steelberg, ASC would have enjoyed a bit more elbowroom while working on the
drama Labor Day with his longtime collaborator Jason Reitman. The pair found themselves
shooting most of the movie on location at a house in Massachusetts where the main floor
measured less than 1,000 square feet. "It's a hundred-year-old house with no walls that we
could move, low ceilings, creaky floors and smaller-than-standard doorways," Steelberg tells
Mark Dillon ("Love on the Lam," page 84). "The logistics of putting the crew, actors,
cameras and dollies together in the same physical space made it the most challenging movie
I've ever done."
American Cinematographer - December 2013

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