American Cinematographer - December 2013 - 92

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Love on the Lam

Top: Reitman plans his coverage as crewmembers build a camera platform for a scene on a riverbed.
Bottom: A crane arm facilitates a shot of Frank toiling next to a barn.

After testing colors and contrast
on faces and backgrounds at Reitman's
house, they chose the Epic. They
ditched the idea of anamorphic lenses,
however, because they felt it would limit
their lens choices in the small main location. Instead, Steelberg chose Arri
Master Prime lenses and a Fujinon
Premier 18-85mm zoom for the main
storyline, using them without filtration.
"I shot many scenes with low light -
most night scenes were shot at T2 - so
I wanted a zoom that could handle that
as well as the Master Primes could," he
says.
92

December 2013

For flashbacks to Frank's past,
which reveal why he landed in prison,
Steelberg used old Bausch & Lomb
Super Baltar lenses, a Cooke 20-60mm
T3.1 zoom and, occasionally, an
Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm T2.8
zoom. "The Baltars are beautiful and
take the edge off [digital] without
requiring a filter," he explains. "The
Epic's [MX] sensor is so sharp you can
see aberrations in the optics much more
than before. So, you can create unique
looks by utilizing older or unusual
lenses."
For flashbacks depicting Adele's
American Cinematographer

increasingly unhappy marriage (in the
early 1980s), Steelberg used the Master
Primes with either a Tiffen Soft/FX 1 or
a Schneider Hollywood Black Magic 1⁄8
filter; sometimes he combined the two,
depending on light levels.
The biggest daytime lighting
setup Steelberg could have managed
inside the principal location was hanging a Kino Flo, but he mostly avoided
doing so because he had no room to flag
the lights. So, his crew positioned HMIs
around the exterior of the house in what
they dubbed a "ring of fire." They
considered where the sun would be for
each scene and shifted the lights accordingly. Usually, there were 18Ks with
bounces on one side of the house and
one or two 18Ks shining straight
through the back windows, sometimes
suspended off the bottom of a Condor.
Then, on the other side of the house,
4Ks were positioned to shine through
diffusion or bounce off the floor in the
house. "I tried to keep our lights out of
the house as much as possible to make it
look tonally correct, to allow for camera
moves and wide shots, and to provide a
little flexibility with the blocking," says
Steelberg. "If the lighting couldn't get to
where we originally blocked a scene,
we'd often re-block it for the light. It was
a great team effort, and the actors were
very helpful in that regard."
To cool light temperatures to
differentiate times of day, Steelberg used
½ and ¼ strengths of Rosco CTS gels
on the HMI lamps. Night interiors in
the house, meanwhile, involved many
tungsten practicals on dimmers. The
crew used Chimeras on small fixtures
such as Tweenies and 1Ks with eggcrate grids to control the light and limit
spill.
The arc of Steelberg's lighting
scheme hews to that of the drama, in
which Frank seems threatening until
Adele and Henry get to know him. "It
starts out with high contrast and deeper
shadows inside the house," the cinematographer says. "It's a bit unsettling
when they bring Frank home, and then,
as everything becomes a little more
comfortable, it lightens up a little on one

American Cinematographer - December 2013

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