American Cinematographer - December 2019 - 38

Lap of Honor

The camera gives viewers a driver's-eye perspective as Miles races at Daytona International Speedway.

Large Format, Custom
Performance
Papamichael: I decided to shoot
larger format and to try Arri's Alexa LF.
I liked the falloff quality of the mediumformat lenses and the Sphero 65s when
I had used them with the Alexa 65 in
the past. I was looking for that quality,
but I also wanted the characteristics of
Panavision's C Series anamorphics,
which I have come to love over the
years. I was looking for that Super
Panavision 70 feel, and it seemed to me
that the LF, which had just come out,
could achieve the same large-format
look - or close enough, at least!

2.39:1

TECH SPECS

Digital Capture

Arri Alexa LF, Mini (for 2nd unit and certain
hard-mounted car shots)

Panavision C Series (expanded for large
format), T Series (modified and expanded for
large format), H Series (for 2nd unit, not
expanded)
38

December 2019

I asked [ASC associate and
Panavision's senior vice president of
optical engineering] Dan Sasaki if he
could adapt the B, C and T Series to
cover the LF's larger sensor. He said
that he could expand them, and somehow he managed to get them to us a
day before our shoot! That meant no
testing, but I instantly loved the result.
Dan also modified the T Series slightly
to take the edge off their usual sharpness, and to match them to the C
Series so we could cut smoothly from
one lens series to the other. The Bs
were pretty much abandoned, since
the expansion made them too soft and
[prone to flares] for this project.
The close-focus capability of the
T Series was especially valuable given
the way Mangold embraces being
physically close to the actors. With this
combination of lenses and sensor,
even if you're in tight, you're not
isolating your actors; you always feel
the environment and are able to
compose with their surroundings.
And you feel the proximity of the
other cars, which were all being
driven and were precisely choreographed by Robert Nagle, who was
cuing the drivers via radio for every
beat.
ASC 100th Anniversary

The main unit only had
anamorphic lenses. If a spherical
zoom was used, it was a 2nd-unit shot
for the purposes of mimicking ABC's
Wide World of Sports TV coverage.
Everything that the audience sees on
the [in-frame] TV screens was generated and treated for the period by us.
No archival footage was used.
Colorful Livery
Papamichael: We didn't do any
color filtration - I just embraced the
colors that were coming from the
period, which production designer
François Audouy beautifully reproduced. The cars have such amazing
colors to begin with!
Our inspiration came from the
Super Panavision 70 and Metrocolor
look of John Frankenheimer's Grand
Prix - the blue skies are popping,
and the contrast and the whites are
very distinct. Jim asked if I was okay
with all the hard sunlight in the desert
scenes. I thought it was terrific and
that we had to embrace it.
For the Willow Springs racetrack sequence, I was inspired by
[ASC member] Caleb Deschanel's
work in The Right Stuff. There's a
scene in that film when Sam Shepard,

American Cinematographer - December 2019

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