American Cinematographer - December 2019 - 56

No Escape

Cameron confers
with his crew
regarding a camera
move captured with
the assistance of a
Steadicam and
rickshaw.

lenses are a positive step forward in
digital capture."
Cameron notes that he wasn't
always shooting wide open for 21
Bridges. He explains that he would
often light wide shots at a higher stop
and then incorporate internal ND
filters to shoot with a shallower depth
of field; then, for close-ups, he would
pull the internal NDs in order to stopdown the lens and increase the depth
of field. "In the past four or five years,
there's been a rush on anamorphic
movies, and cinematographers are
shooting wide open quite often. I try

2.39:1

TECH SPECS

Full-frame 6K digital capture

Sony Venice,
Arri Alexa Mini (drone work),
DJI Zenmuse X7 (drone and handheld work)

Servicevision Scorpio full-frame 2x
anamorphic lenses
56

December 2019

to be mindful with long-lens closeups to avoid that feeling of the actor
floating in an out-of-focus environment. You have no idea where the
characters are or what their spatial
relationship is to each other.
"I try to be conscious of managing that depth of field and keeping
the characters grounded in their environment - making things feel much
more real," Cameron continues. "I'll
shoot at a deeper stop on a close-up,
even at night, so that we get a sense of
the background and it feels like a
closer match to the wider shot. I'll
usually shoot my [nighttime] wide
shots with an ND 0.6 and open up as
wide as I can, and then I'll pull the
ND 0.6 on the close-ups and stopdown two stops. The background is
still out of focus, but I'm managing
layers of focus. This is something that
is very personal and important to
me."
While 21 Bridges takes place almost
entirely on the island of Manhattan,
the production chose to shoot the
majority of the movie in Philadelphia.
ASC 100th Anniversary

"That was probably the biggest challenge of the film," Cameron recalls.
"We only had four days in New York
to make a New York movie, and the
rest was in Philadelphia. How do you
tie it in? In the beginning of prep, you
have a script and you're scouting;
you're getting your main New York
locations, and back in Philadelphia
you're finding locations to match, and
you come up with lighting ideas and
tie them together. But then, as the
movie gets closer and pages change
and the New York locations change,
you're trying to redo the same puzzle
with new pieces. It's quite a challenge.
"The key to mixing locations is
to tie the fake location to the real one
with careful planning," Cameron
asserts. "We might know that for [a
particular] portion of a scene, we're
driving this way in Philly, and then
we cut to a shot in New York. When
you shoot the reverse in a different
location, you bring in a set wall that
matches the exterior location, and
then when the characters go out the
door it ties in perfectly. You go
American Cinematographer - December 2019

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