American Cinematographer - December 2016 - 40

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Cutting-Edge Clarity

Top: Shroom talks to Dime as the Bravos enter the village of Al-Ansakar. Bottom, from left:
Marks, John Toll and Chris Toll stand beside a camera rig, which was mounted on a Humvee
borrowed from the Moroccan army. The rig was employed for a visual-effects plate shot.

A and B cameras when possible and had
a MovieBird 35-45-foot crane, a 50foot Technocrane, and a Grip Trix
Shadow Tracker with an Aero Jib arm.
The size and weight of the cameras and
3D rigs all but eliminated a Steadicam
- although we did do one Steadicam
shot that camera operator Greg Smith
pulled off with great determination. In
reality the cranes and the Grip Trix
became our substitutes for dolly and
Steadicam shots. Camera operator Kim
Marks and key grip Al Laverde and his
team did an amazing job of bringing
this all together and making it work.
40

December 2016

We also used condors and
construction cranes for lighting. We
used the house lighting in the stadium
as a base starting point and then supplemented with four 16K HMI lighting
balloons from Skylight. We also added
6K metal-halide bulbs to the balloons to
help match the color temperature of the
house lights. I was also doing on-set
color correction with DIT Indy Saini, so
we could easily shift overall colortemperature issues for dailies.
What was the approach for the
combat scene set in Iraq?
Toll: The concept for this scene
American Cinematographer

was to treat the combat as realistically as
possible while also staying emotionally
connected to the characters. Photographically, we stayed mobile and did
very little light control. We shot the
combat scene in Morocco in very harsh
overhead sunlight with very little artificial lighting. We tried taking advantage
of different times of day for the direction of the light, but the schedule
required shooting all day long every day.
Light control was primarily based on
exposure. I exposed for the parts of the
frame that were most important and let
the rest of the frame go uncontrolled.
We used the MovieBird 17-20 and 3545 cranes, and a Grip Trix Shadow
Tracker almost exclusively.
The halftime show has a different look than the rest of the film.
Toll: The halftime show and the
combat scene are intercut in the final
film. In the story, the combat scene
attempts to re-create the hard reality of
an Iraq-war combat environment, in
contrast to a superficially theatrical celebration of military heroes during the
halftime show. During our production,
the [halftime] show was like a special
event in itself. It was designed to be as
visually extravagant and as over-the-top
as we could manage. Marching bands,
drill teams, dancers, elaborate lighting
effects and fireworks were all elements.
Ang Lee had an association with
Don Mischer, a longtime producer of
football halftime events. Don came in as
an advisor and made recommendations
for the show and for people who could
work with us. As part of his team we
had two lighting designers who worked
with us, Noah Mitz and Bob
Livingston. They worked with gaffer
Jarred Waldron and me and helped
plan, install and use the huge amount of
special rigging and lighting we needed
for the show.
How did the DI go?
Toll: It went well. We had the
advantage of getting a head start
because all during production we had
done on-set color correction with DIT
Indy Saini [using Pomfort LiveGrade].
We had established basic looks for vari-

American Cinematographer - December 2016

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