American Cinematographer - December 2014 - 28

Top: Bernal and writer/director Jon Stewart (right) consult with the real Maziar Bahari (center).
Bottom: Stewart and cinematographer Bobby Bukowski discuss a scene.

person had to be searched and every piece
of equipment had to be X-rayed. And they
weren't really allowing us to bring in any
lights." In a particularly intense scene, the
interrogator drags Bahari out into a courtyard and holds a gun to his head. Bukowski
recalls, "We never scouted that [courtyard]
at night before we shot it, and I tried to ask
the prison guards, 'When the lights go on at
night, are they green? Are they blue? Are
they gold?' One guy was like, 'Oh, it's very
green,' and another said, 'It's very warm.'
They all had a different story." But then
Bukowski showed one guard a picture of
28

December 2014

the light from a sodium-vapor lamp, "and
he said, 'This is very much what it is.'" Luckily, he was right, and the scene is made
more striking by the harsh yellow glow of
sodium vapor.
Also in Amman, Bukowski shot a
variety of street scenes leading up to
Bahari's imprisonment. For the journalist's
tour of the city on the back of a motorcycle,
the director and cinematographer needed
to mask the reality that Tehran and Amman
are very different-looking cities. "Tehran is
surrounded by mountains, Amman is a
desert," says Bukowski. But Stewart had
American Cinematographer

some connections in Tehran, and he found
a cameraman there to shoot scenes of the
city from a motorcycle with a Sony PD170.
These point-of-view shots were smuggled
out of Iran, and intercut with shots of Bernal
and his guide on the motorcycle. "I reduced
the depth of field in the reaction shots so
the background wouldn't become so prevalent," the cinematographer says. "The
difference in the [footage from the two
cameras] was fine, because often the shots
were meant to represent Maziar shooting
from the motorcycle."
Shooting night exteriors in Amman
was often very improvisational, but the
Alexa held the cinematographer in good
stead. For example, Bukowski recalls, "We
were shooting a demonstration from a roof
because it was too dangerous, but we
hadn't lit for actors being on the roof looking down. The crew bounced a 1K tungsten
Par off a building half a block away, and it
was really the only light on them. It's beautiful; it completely looks like ambient street
light. The Alexa excels in those situations by
being able to capture low light levels. It's a
constant lesson of not doing too much."
Rosewater's digital grade was
conducted at Company 3 in New York,
under the supervision of DI producer
Rhonda Moore and colorist Tom Poole, who
worked with Blackmagic Design's DaVinci
Resolve. Bukowski says the DI was useful for
modeling light in some of the prison
sequences, and creating a contrast in saturation between prison and non-prison
scenes. "It was this idea of deprivation, even
being deprived of the element of color,"
says the cinematographer. "That's what
Maziar kept talking about - the tedium
and the sameness is part of being in prison,
and that wears you down. Every day, you
have no sense of the time, and it's the same,
the same, the same. And then you have the
contrast with the exterior, which pops with
color and life."

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus
Angenieux Optimo, Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime

➣

American Cinematographer - December 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2014