2016 08

AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER AUGUST 2016 STAR TREK BEYOND JASON BOURNE SWISS ARMY MAN EQUALS VOL. 97 NO.
AU G U S T 2 0 1 6
An International Publication of the ASC
On Our Cover: First Officer Spock (Zachary Quinto) of the starship Enterprise wields
his Federation-issue phaser while exploring alien terrain in Star Trek Beyond, shot by
Stephen F. Windon, ASC, ACS. (Photo by Kimberley French, SMPSP, courtesy of
Paramount Pictures.)
FEATURES
30
42
52
64
Hostile Planet
Stephen F. Windon, ASC, ACS takes a beloved franchise
in new directions with Star Trek Beyond
42
To Be Bourne
Barry Ackroyd, BSC grounds high-stakes action with
documentary realism for Jason Bourne
Body Language
Larkin Seiple embraces a bold style for the Sundance
standout Swiss Army Man
52
Love and Dystopia

John Guleserian envisions the emotion-shunning society
of Equals
DEPARTMENTS
10
12
18
72
74
78
82
83
84
86
88
Editors Note
Short Takes: Jessica
Production Slate: Hell or High Water The Infiltrator
Post Focus: The BFG
Filmmakers Forum: Shooting Life with Lytro Cinema
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Lisa Wiegand
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM
64
ACCESS APPROVED
New digital outreach by American Cinematographer means more in-depth coverage for you.
INSIDE THE 2016 INTERNATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHY SUMMIT

During this four-day event, the American Society of Cinematographers
invited peers from more than 20 countries around the world to meet at the
ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood, where they would discuss professional and
technological issues and help define how cinematographers can maintain
the quality and artistic integrity of the images they create.
As the ICS was not open to the general public, we have prepared an exclusive
10-part series of reports on the program, with topics including:
The Future of the Cinematographer

Who Is the Author of an Image?
The Continuing Relevance of Film
Understanding ACES
Cinematography in Virtual Reality
CINEMATOGRAPHERS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE ICS INCLUDED:

Richard Andry, AFC (France)
Mehmet Askin, CAT (Turkey)
Predrag Bambic, SAS (Serbia)
Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC
(U.S./Brazil) Bill Bennett, ASC
(U.S.) Richard Bluck, NZCS
(New Zealand) Oliver Bokelberg, ASC, BVK (U.S./Germany) Natasha Braier, ADF
(Argentina) David Burr, ACS
(Australia) Federico Cantini,
ADF (Argentina) LouisPhilippe Capelle, SBC (Belgium)
Len Chiprout, AMC (Mexico) Curtis Clark, ASC (U.S.)
Rolf Coulanges, BVK
(Germany) James Chressanthis,
ASC, GSC (U.S./Greece)
Richard Crudo, ASC (U.S.)
Yiannis Daskalothanasis, GSC

(Greece) Angarag Davaasuren,
MSC (Mongolia) Mu Deyuan,
CSC (China) Carlos
Diazmuoz, AMC (Mexico)
Nathalie Durand, AFC
(France) Lauro Escorel, ABC
(Brazil) Harold Escotet, VSC
(Venezuela) Eduardo Fierro,
SVC (Venezuela) Edvard
Friis-Mller, DFF (Denmark)
Mohd Filus Ghazali, MySC
(Maylasia) Michael Goi, ASC,
ICS (U.S./India) Frederic
Goodich, ASC (U.S.) Rasto
Gore, ASK (Slovakia) Timo
Heinnen, FSC (Finland)
Christian Herrera, CRSC
(Costa Rica) Tahvo Hirvonen,
FSC (Finland) Cheong Yuk

Hoy, MySC (Maylasia) Casper
Hyberg, DFF (Denmark) Ron
Johanson, ACS (Australia)
Nina Kellgren, BSC (Britain)
Oli Laperal, PHSC
(Philippines) Jacek Laskus,
ASC, PSC (U.S./Poland)
Pascal Lebegue, AFC (France)
Rob Legato, ASC (U.S.)
Anssi Leino, FSC (Finland)
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC
(U.S./France) Du Yan Li, CSC
(China) Alex Linden, FSF
(Sweden) Elen Lotman, ESC
(Estonia) Emmanuel Lubezki,
ASC, AMC (U.S./Mexico)
Roberto Mancia, SVSC (El
Salvador) Stephanie Martin,
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ADF (Argentina)
Ricardo Matamoros, SVC
(Venezuela) Suki Medencevic,
ASC, SAS (U.S./Serbia)
M. David Mullen, ASC (U.S.)
Guillermo Navarro, ASC,
AMC (U.S./Mexico) James
Neihouse, ASC (U.S.) Anders
Holck Petersen, DFF (Denmark)
Claire Pijman, NSC (Netherlands) Bill Pope, ASC (U.S.)
Steven Poster, ASC (U.S.)
Tony Richmond, ASC, BSC
(U.S./Britain) Paul Ren
Roestad (IMAGO) Roberto
Schaefer, ASC, AIC (U.S./Italy)
Yang Shu, CSC (China)

Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC
(U.S./Italy) Vittorio Storaro,
ASC, AIC (U.S./Italy) David
Stump, ASC (U.S.) Luks
Teren, ASK (Slovakia) David
Torres, AMC (Mexico) Malte
Udsen, DFF (Denmark) Kees
van Oostrum, ASC (U.S.)
Martim Vian, AIP (Portugal)
Fernando Vilanova, SVSC (El
Salvador) Nigel Walters, BSC
(Britain) Jan Weinke, DFF
(Denmark) Massimo Zeri, AIC
(Italy) Zhao Xiaoding, CSC
(China)
A u g u s t
2 0 1 6
V o l .
9 7 ,
N o .
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

Stephen Pizzello
WEB DIRECTOR and ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

David E. Williams
EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Fish
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
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PODCASTS
Jim Hemphill, Iain Stasukevich, Chase Yeremian
BLOGS
Benjamin B; John Bailey, ASC; David Heuring
WEB DEVELOPER Jon Stout
ART & DESIGN

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer
PHOTO EDITOR Kelly Brinker
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SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 96th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by
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American Society of Cinematographers

The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer a mark
of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2016/2017
Kees van Oostrum
President
Bill Bennett
Vice President
Lowell Peterson
Vice President
Dean Cundey
Vice President
Levie Isaacks
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich
Secretary
Roberto Schaefer
Sergeant-at-Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Curtis Clark
Richard Crudo
Fred Elmes
Michael Goi
Victor J. Kemper
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Woody Omens
Robert Primes
Cynthia Pusheck
Owen Roizman
John Simmons
Kees van Oostrum
ALTERNATES
Roberto Schaefer
Mandy Walker
Karl-Walter Lindenlaub
Oliver Bokelberg
Dean Cundey
MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
8
Full disclosure: I am a card-carrying, old-school Star Trek fan

who grew up on the original Sixties television series. A scalemodel replica of the USS Enterprise (complete with authentic sound effects) maintains high orbit atop my office bookshelf; a furry, vibration-activated Tribble resides on a small
table next to my guest chair, where it startles visitors with
either a friendly purr or a nerve-jangling shriek; and a
limited-edition Evil Spock action figure (as seen in the classic
episode Mirror, Mirror) stands vigil on my desk, serving as
a Machiavellian sounding board and miniature consigliere. I
keep him boxed not merely to maintain his collectible value,
but to suppress the mutiny he would surely incite if set free.
Needless to say, Ive been an enthused viewer of the
recent Star Trek features, which have respected but restyled
Gene Roddenberrys sci-fi universe. The latest entry, Star Trek Beyond, was shot by Stephen F.
Windon, ASC, ACS, who helped director Justin Lin further modify the look of the series.
Stephen and I agreed that the idea of someone [theoretically being able to] operate the
camera and shoot the action would be important on this movie, Lin explains to Michael Goldman (Hostile Planet, page 30). If you couldnt get the shot if you were actually filming in
space, then you cant get much emotion out of it. So we developed a feel and aesthetic from
the practical sets, and [stayed] disciplined, creating shots out of [what is real] to begin with,
even if they are full or partial CG.
A sense of realism also informs Jason Bourne, which marks the return of Matt Damon
as the formerly amnesiac superspy. Barry Ackroyd, BSC and director Paul Greengrass were
philosophically aligned in their determination to apply documentary-style techniques to the
action thriller. If you want people to believe what youre doing when its a fiction, you
shouldnt be trying too hard to distract them from that truth, Ackroyd tells London correspondent Phil Rhodes (To Be Bourne, page 42). We shot a lot, but we still used technique. Occasionally we used dollies and even cranes, but we mostly put the camera in the hand. You get
into the story by being physically there; we followed the chase and we followed the story.
On-the-spot ingenuity was also applied to Swiss Army Man, an offbeat indie that
teamed cinematographer Larkin Seiple with directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. Seiple
was tasked with invigorating the story of a castaway who befriends a corpse. I had a lot of
questions [after reading the script], Seiple tells associate editor Andrew Fish (Body
Language, page 52). How were we going to make it believable? How would we make this
relationship work between a man and a corpse? My first inclination was to fight against the
absurdity of the film by grounding it in a stark environment. But as the project evolved, we
instead focused on supporting the absurdity of the visuals and structuring them around the
emotional journey of the film.
Our August issue also offers Matt Mulcaheys coverage of the sci-fi drama Equals, shot
by John Guleserian (Love and Dystopia, page 64); two sidebars and a Post Focus column
addressing this months special theme of digital color correction; and ASC member David
Stumps assessment of the Lytro Cinema system, a pioneering light-field capture system introduced earlier this year at the NAB Show (Filmmakers Forum, page 74).
Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
10
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
Short Takes
Car Trouble
By Derek Stettler
With the tense, six-minute short Jessica, writer-director Jack

Bradley and cinematographer Tobias Marshall sought to tap into the
instinctive human response to being chased the adrenaline rush
that fuels a sense of panic and paranoia. In the short, a man (David
Pibworth) appears to be driving home after a long days work when
a white van speeds out of nowhere and begins to follow him. The
ensuing game of cat and mouse plays out as sunset gives way to
dusk, mirroring the audiences growing suspicion that the driver
whos being pursued has a dark side.
Marshall got his start in the industry as a 2nd AC in 2003 and
eventually notched credits on features such as Skyfall, shot by Roger
Deakins, ASC, BSC (AC Dec. 12). He has worked on several action
units with Alexander Witt over the years, and he recently worked as
2nd-unit director of photography on location in Morocco for NBCs
American Odyssey. Working with great cinematographers and crew
is very inspiring, he says of his experiences. Im just trying to
emulate the people Ive worked with and climb up to their level.
For Jessica, Marshall and Bradley had the chance to experiment with tone and mood, telling the story with visuals and almost
no dialogue. With echoes of Steven Spielbergs first studio feature,
Duel, the U.K.-based production was shot entirely with natural light
in a gritty, minimalist style. Bradley says the idea for Jessica came to
12
August 2016
him when I was driving back from a shoot one day and I accidentally cut off a white van. I was convinced the driver was following
me home, turn for turn, and I found myself constantly glancing in
my mirrors. The next day, I wrote the script for what would eventually become Jessica.
To keep viewers engaged, Marshall made a point to avoid
recycling shots inside the car, where the majority of the movie takes
place. In doing so, the cinematographer devised a plan to begin the
short with wider lenses on stabilized rigs, creating a feeling of calm
and normalcy; as the story unfolds and the drivers panic increases,
the images get progressively tighter and the camera goes handheld.
Marshall operated the productions single Red One
Mysterium-X camera, and he selected Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes
because he was looking for a colder image than an S4 and something sharper than Super Speeds, he explains. To maximize image
quality, he shot at 4K onto 128GB RedMag 1.8" SSDs in Redcode
42. The highest-quality compression available on the Red One,
Redcode 42 is equivalent to a 7.5:1 compression ratio on newer Red
cameras; the 42 refers to the data rate 42 MBps.
Marshall also opted to utilize Tiffen soft-edge graduated NDs
to enhance the darkness of the cars interior while keeping a
brighter golden-hour exterior, visually hinting at the main characters
dark inner world. At the same time, the cinematographer was
aiming for a lot of flares. The sun is going down and his secret is
coming out, Marshall notes. For me, that was the whole journey
American Cinematographer
Photos by Sacha Phillips and David Marshall. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.
An ominous white van engages a seemingly unassuming driver in a panic-inducing game of cat and mouse in the short thriller Jessica.
As daylight fades to dusk, the driver (David Pibworth) notices the van in his rearview mirror.
14
August 2016
of the film. I really wanted to have that

reflected with flares coming through into
the car.
The production was able to lock off
one road in the town of Kent, just outside
London, where the filmmakers had only a
short period of time to shoot the climactic
set piece, as the two vehicles race down a
single-lane road during magic hour, with
the driver trying desperately not to be overtaken by the van. All involved had to be efficient and agile to get the sequence right the
first time; knowing this would be the case,
Bradley cast actors who are in fact precision
drivers, and who ably executed the requisite
maneuvers.
In order to get all of the desired
shots as daylight ostensibly fades to dusk,
the production shot during both sunrise
and sunset over the course of two days.
Working in the British countryside, Jessica
was shot without the aid of any storyboards. Instead, the team used Matchbox
cars to orchestrate and communicate the
vehicles maneuvers a technique
Marshall learned while working on Skyfalls
complex opening stunt sequence, which
called for a truck to be flipped.
Given Jessicas low budget, the team
shot without any camera rigging on the
vehicles exteriors, and instead utilized a
flatbed truck as a tracking vehicle, with a
tripod set up in the back. A bit of stabilization was applied in post, and the end results
belie the low-tech approaches employed on
set.
When it came to the grading of the
project, Marshall wanted a cold, slightly
desaturated look that started bright and
then descended into darkness, he
explains. The cinematographer realized this
look with colorist Chris Francis, who
worked on the grade at Company 3 in
London. Luckily, Todd Kleparski [head of
production at Company 3] came on board
as associate producer and got Chris to
grade the film, Marshall notes. Once we
had Company 3 grading, I knew it would
be in great hands and it would look fantastic.
Given all of the foliage in the movies
exteriors, Marshall wanted to pay particular
attention to the tonality of the greens.
Green foliage is always something I try to
capture in a way that looks real, with a
Top: Director Jack Bradley (left) and cinematographer Tobias Marshall line up a shot inside
the car. Bottom: Colorist Chris Francis and Marshall finesse the visuals in a grading suite at
Company 3 in London.
darker quality, the cinematographer says.

Its easy to overexpose green on digital,
and it can look nuclear it becomes
distracting.
When Marshall and Francis met to
begin grading Jessica, they spoke for about
an hour, examining the look of the short
and considering how it would evolve over
the course of the story. Francis, Marshall and
Bradley then completed the grade in a
single afternoon, viewing the footage
projected through Barco 2K projectors.
Working in DaVinci Resolve with the
original Redcode Raw files deBayered into
16
August 2016
RedLogFilm, Francis began by applying one

of Company 3s in-house LUTs as a neutral
starting point before dialing in the look. He
notes that he wanted the story to be more
of a focal point than the color. We didnt
want to push things too far; we tried to be
very gentle with it and tasteful, pushing the
saturation more than the contrast to give it
a more cinematic log look. Francis considered applying a grain filter to give Jessica
even more of a film look, but he ultimately
decided to eschew both a grain filter and
noise reduction, instead letting the minimal
noise present in Marshalls well-exposed
shots remain, providing the imagery with a

touch of grit.
While Francis focus was on preserving the integrity of the images, he nevertheless employed certain tricks to alter shots for
narrative purposes. For example, even
before the sun sets, the headlights of the
pursuing van appear very bright, with a
pronounced flare. To achieve this effect,
shots of the vans headlights at night were
passed through Autodesks Flame and
composited into the shots of the van during
the earlier sequences. Francis explains,
Flame [was used to] create grading mattes
and add minor lighting effects, which I
enhanced depending on how much wed
pushed the look of the particular shot
some of the effect shots were graded to
look later in the evening, while some were
just coming into dusk. For the darker ones,
I blew out the highlights more, and used
mist and blur on the edges of my windows
to simulate flaring. The mattes from Flame
complemented the power windows that I
had tracked to finesse the realism of the
effect.
The bright headlights make the van
more threatening when it suddenly appears
behind the main characters car. Francis
recalls, Without the bright headlights, it
didnt quite work. But once we added the
headlights, it made a huge difference. To
make the van even more mysterious and
menacing, Francis also employed power
windows to darken the view of the vehicles
interior. Indeed, the viewer never knows
whos following the main character or
why until the credits roll.
Bradley notes that Jessica was an
experiment in tension trying to create it
within the camera, edit, sound design and
post. Editor Edward Cooper and I spent
long evenings trying to create these waves
of tension without ever boring the audience.
Marshall is proud of his work on the
short and feels that it went really well. To
be able to replicate some of the work that I
had done with the action units Id worked
on in the past, and bring some of that experience to this film, was great.
To view Jessica online, visit:
https://vimeo.com/156399394.
Production Slate
Toby (Chris Pine,
far right) enlists
his brother,
Tanner (Ben
Foster), in a
desperate plan
to hold onto
their familys
farm in the
feature Hell or
High Water. The
movie was shot
on location in
New Mexico,
standing in for
the screenplays
sunbaked Texas
backdrop.
Desperate Measures
By Jon D. Witmer
Mexico, standing in for the storys Texas settings. Nuttgens spoke

with AC in the weeks following the movies premiere at this years
Cannes Film Festival.
Brothers Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster) have a plan
to save the family farm and turn it profitable for Tobys children. That
their scheme comes at the expense of the Texas bank thats set to
foreclose on the property only makes it that much sweeter. But when
the brothers put their plan into action and embark on a series of
armed bank robberies, people inevitably get hurt some even die
and a Texas Ranger (Jeff Bridges) becomes determined to stop the
boys in their tracks, come hell or high water.
Written by Sicario scribe Taylor Sheridan, Hell or High Water
marks the sixth feature collaboration between director David
Mackenzie and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, BSC. David felt a
massive obligation to the script, to be able to give the background to
motivate the actions that start this terrible chain of events, Nuttgens
tells AC via Skype from his home in Spain. The narrative is that the
farmlands dried up, so David was absolutely obsessed with the idea
that we should feel the heat, [the characters] pain, and the sense of
abandonment and desperation that drives them to go on this bankrobbing spree.
Principal photography spanned 35 days in the summer of
2015, with locations in and around Clovis and Albuquerque, New
18
August 2016
American Cinematographer: Did you know from the

outset that youd be shooting in New Mexico?
Giles Nuttgens, BSC: It had been determined that we
would be shooting in New Mexico because the state has greater tax
incentives than Texas. But David had this idea in preproduction to
travel to the places in Texas that are written in the script. So David,
location manager Jonathan Slator, production designer Tom
Duffield, line producer Kate Dean and I spent a week together to
understand both the visual and sociological environments we were
trying to create for the film.
What camera and lenses did you shoot with?
Nuttgens: We shot ArriRaw with an Alexa XT Studio, which
is basically a film camera with a digital backend; Im used to judging
lighting through the optical viewfinder. We shot anamorphic with
[Vantage Film] Hawk V-Lites. They are very gentle in terms of contrast
and relatively sharp at wide apertures, with a very gentle [falloff] in
terms of depth of field. Most of the exteriors were shot with the
Angenieux Optimo 56-152mm [T4] A2S lightweight zoom, which is
probably the sharpest Scope zoom ever built, and with a focal-length
Hell or High Water photos by Lorey Sebastian, courtesy of CBS Films.
Left: Texas
Rangers Marcus
(Jeff Bridges, left)
and Alberto (Gil
Birmingham)
follow the trail of
the brothers
crime spree.
Below:
Cinematographer
Giles Nuttgens,
BSC (center)
works out his
approach to one
of the
productions bank
locations.
range that covers almost all requirements,

particularly when the camera is mounted on
a Technocrane or Russian Arm.
A small amount of spherical material was shot during the shootout on the 24290mm [T2.8] Optimo zoom, but everything else was anamorphic, and we used
only very light diffusion 18 or 14 Tiffen
Digital Diffusion to take the edge off the
Alexa images without getting bleeding from
the hot windows.
Were you shooting at the
Alexas base 800 ISO?
Nuttgens: No, most of the [movie]
was shot at 400, with the exception of the
day exteriors, which were shot at 800
because it was very important to retain all
the detail at the top end of the exposure
curve in the desert. One of the downsides of
400 is that you sometimes subjectively feel a
slight muddiness in the lower shadow
detail, and its difficult in the DI to pull that
down to a perceivable black with current
digital projectors. But its a very comfortable
rating for me to work at because Im used
to 500 on film, so looking with my eye and
understanding how much light is there
means that I dont really need to refer to a
monitor, just occasionally check my light
meter and I often dont work with a DIT
on set. I feel that I can light an interior by

eye and with T2.8/3.5 on the lens, Ill have
all the information I need.
For the digital grade, you
worked with colorist Corinne
Bogdanowicz at Light Iron in Hollywood. [Ed. note: Bogdanowicz used
Quantel Rio to grade the native ArriRaw files at the 2880x2610 anamorphic
native raster. The final deliverable for
theatrical release was a 2K DCP.] Had
www.theasc.com
the two of you worked together previously?

Nuttgens: I knew of Corinnes
work because shed done a very good DI on
What Maisie Knew, where she had to work
without my presence. Corinne can look at
the raw image and know how it was
exposed and where it was intended to sit, so
its a great time with her.
What did you focus on in the
digital grade?
August 2016
19
Top: Nuttgens frames a high-angle shot with the productions Arri Alexa XT Studio camera.
Bottom: The cinematographer mans the wheels of an Alpha Stabilized remote head thats been
rigged to a motorcycles sidecar in order to capture some fast-paced car work.
Nuttgens: One of our intentions

for creating this feeling of heat had been to
keep the image slightly overexposed, with
the blacks slightly light, so we initially timed
it that way. David came in and we went
through it together, and he wanted a little
more aggression out of the images to
match what was going on with the boys. So
we increased the saturation and contrast
slightly, took mid-tones down, and
accepted that our top end was going to
blow out a little bit. Sometimes thats the
trick to let the whites just tip over the
edge.
Did you shoot with multiple
cameras?
Nuttgens: David wanted a
thoughtful approach to the way the camera
20
August 2016
developed, and you can only really achieve

that if you concentrate on one camera. So it
was a mainly single-camera shoot, with the
exception of the big shootout that was
basically a two-camera shoot for four days.
David and I work in a space where
the camera often sees 360 degrees. Wed
spend the time to get a long, developing
movement with dolly or Steadicam, with
the intention of using it as a single shot, but
then I would put the camera on my shoulder to get coverage in case he would need
it to pace the film in the edit.
We only had Chris for 10 days, and
we had all of the banks to rob in the first
week. David and I knew that in order to give
us the time to do those long shots and
experiment in the way we wanted, we
needed to set off at pace. So David banned

video village. He then went even further
and said no chairs, no iPhones, no clapper
boards. Everythings brought down to a
point where anything thats happening on
the set is for a very specific reason, and we
can just turn around and nobodys saying,
Ive got to move video village or Im just
marking up the board. You start working at
a real speed, and you end up with more
flexibility and more material at the end of
the day.
The other great move from David
was on our fifth day, in the evening, when
he showed edited material, which included
four bank robberies and an escape
sequence in a car. And so the whole crew,
who probably thought we were out of our
minds, suddenly saw 25 minutes of cut
action sequences and were like, Hold on
now, how did that happen? And then
everybody was with us.
How did you approach the
movies day interiors?
Nuttgens: I ended up trying a
certain amount of hard lighting. There was
a scene early in the schedule with Chris and
Ben in a diner; Ben goes off and robs a bank
thats visible outside the diners windows.
Because of the way the scene was
constructed, I had to light them across the
depth of the restaurant, from the parking
lot. We werent carrying many big heads,
but we had two Arri M90s. So we put up a
12-by-20 Grid Cloth, and [gaffer] Jeremy
Oliver took out every single HMI we had
and even some tungsten and pushed
them through there. But I still couldnt
balance the interior with the exterior,
despite NDs on the windows.
So I hit Chris with a direct light
an M90 with a bit of Half CTS on it. Obviously it was backed up by a lot of soft light
behind it, which softened the effect of the
hard light, but Chris face took it really well.
And suddenly he and Ben were in a very
high-contrast situation, sort of highlighted
among the rest of the scene. That pleased
me enormously. It wasnt really my original
intention, but the important thing is to be
able to recognize that it can work with an
actors face. So with the exception of the
Texas Rangers office, which is Kino Flo-lit
almost every other scene I used hard light.
The car work in the movie is
Right: Nuttgens
operates the
camera for a shot
looking past
Foster as an
exploding truck
gives cover for
Tanner to flee the
police. Below:
Hell or High
Water marks the
sixth feature
collaboration
between
Nuttgens and
director David
Mackenzie.
incredibly dynamic. I was particularly

struck by an early shot in which the
camera chases the brothers stolen
Camaro. The Camaro makes a sharp
turn, the camera does the same and
then moves in for a two-shot through
the drivers-side window. How did you
execute that move?
Nuttgens: We were on a motorcycle with a sidecar, with [an Alpha Stabilized
remote] head. Unfortunately what
happened was after we turned to come
alongside the Camaro, there was a joint in
the road, and every time we hit that bump
the camera would hit the edge of its yoke
and jam at 45 degrees, and we couldnt
release it during the take. So, in post, we
22
August 2016
used all of the latitude we had to push into

the image to correct the horizon. We probably did about eight takes of that, and then
David ended up cutting between takes in
the edit.
For shots of the boys, we never
wanted to side-mount [the camera] directly
onto the vehicle unless it was going to be at
crazy speed. We used mounts for Jeff
because his sequences are much more
sedate. [This differentiation underscored]
two sets of lives going at different paces.
Everything else that was on the cars was
Russian Arm. The Russian Arm guys were
beyond belief. Its a really amazing tool.
The final shot of the film is also
remarkable. It starts from a high angle
as Bridges walks away from Pine

outside of the farm, then pans across
the property and cranes down into the
dry grass as Bridges drives away, with
the sun low in the sky flaring the lens.
Nuttgens: That was our one day
with Jeff and Chris, and there was a whole
preamble to shoot thats not in the final
film, plus seven pages of dialogue. So were
coming to dusk and David says, Lets go to
the Technocrane. Weve still got to do the
final shot. The final shot was done in 20
minutes, from setting it up to getting the
two takes.
The Technocrane guys were fantastic, and the guy on the arm was our dolly
grip, Eli Schneider, whos a complete natural
and just has an innate sensibility for moving
a camera. They knew we werent going to
rehearse. Watching people work instinctively to achieve something [and] catching
the perfect light makes filmmaking a really
joyful process. And thats whats fantastic
about working with David. Hes super-intuitive, and I can tell you, until the bell rings,
hes going to get something.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT Studio
Vantage Film Hawk V-Lite;
Angenieux Optimo, A2S
Deep Cover
By Neil Matsumoto
The Infiltrator directed by Brad

Furman, shot by cinematographer Joshua
Reis, and based on the autobiography of the
same name tells the story of federal
customs agent Robert Mazur (played by
Bryan Cranston), who worked undercover to
build a case that led to the indictments of 85
drug lords and the bankers who assisted
them, and the collapse of a massive moneylaundering syndicate. At the center of this
criminal empire targeted for demolition was
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, one of
the most storied criminals of our time.
A graduate of USCs fine-arts
program, Reis minored in film and had a
knack for design and motion graphics,
mastering programs like Adobes After
Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator. After
graduation, he found work at a small post
house, where he introduced himself to
Furman, who was trying along with cinematographer Lukas Ettlin to resolve an
issue with keying a piece of greenscreen
footage. We had been up all night trying to
fix the problem, Furman recalls. It was like
4 a.m. and we had to meet a 7 a.m. dead24
August 2016
line and this kid came out of the shadows, super shy, and said, I can help you. He
takes the computer, starts punching
buttons, and within three minutes he fixed
the whole thing and saved us.
Reis was soon brought on to work
as camera loader and then 2nd AC on a
handful of Brads projects, the cinematographer says. He eventually moved up to
operate on two Furman-directed features,
The Take on which Reis also served as
2nd-unit cinematographer and The
Lincoln Lawyer, both photographed by
Ettlin. Reis also went on to shoot short films,
more than 100 music videos, and lowbudget features such as the Furmanproduced City of Dead Men. I threw him to
the wolves on a small feature to see how he
did, Furman recalls. He not only passed
the test, he surpassed it. When Furman
was ready to prep The Infiltrator, the director
approached Reis to be his cinematographer.
In developing the features look, Reis
and Furman broke down the script,
discussed their locations, and met with the
real Robert Mazur to hear his stories and
comb through his archives. Reis assembled
multiple detailed look books with stills and
color palettes from more than 20 movies,
The Infiltrator photos by Liam Daniel, courtesy of Broad Green Pictures.
U.S. customs agent Robert Mazur (Bryan Cranston, left) and his partner Emir Abreu (John Leguizamo)
go undercover in an effort to collapse Pablo Escobars money-laundering syndicate in the
feature The Infiltrator.
including period gangster films like Scarface

(1983), the dark comedy True Romance,
contemporary crime films Man on Fire
(2004) and Biutiful, and the documentary
Cocaine Cowboys.
Reis envisioned the movie to be laid
out like a triptych, in that it employed three
different cinematic styles, based on the three
distinct roles that Bob Mazur played in his
own life. For the first look, you have Mazur,
who is struggling with his career, wife and
money, so those scenes are mostly lit with
low-light incandescent practicals in his
home, explains Reis. Its very un-stylized,
naturally lit and minimalist, with traditional
dolly and mild handheld movement. The
second look was employed when Mazur
was involved in gritty, streetwise undercover
work, often alongside his partner Emir
Abreu (John Leguizamo). We went with
lightweight snap zooms for kinetic energy,
delivering a more frenetic look, Reis says of
this aesthetic which he named
Mangione, after Mazurs undercover
identity that he adopts briefly at the beginning of the movie. The third look was used
for scenes featuring [Mazurs primary undercover identity], Musella, a man of wealth
and excess, and the broker between Escobar
and the banks. We shot those scenes glossy
and anamorphic, with flares, so the movie
takes on a different aesthetic more colorful and vibrant. There was also classic Hollywood movement with dollies, cranes and
Steadicam throughout the film.
Of The Infiltrators myriad complex
production challenges, the most significant
was shooting almost entirely in London for a
story set in 1980s New York, Paris and Miami
with a firm resolve not to eschew exteriors. For the Florida scenes, we just prayed
for sunshine, Furman says with a laugh. In
the scene with the Miami bankers it was
freezing out. Cranston was wearing six
layers of clothing!
Reis shot The Infiltrator with Red
Epic Dragon cameras, framing for a 2.39:1
widescreen release and capturing 6K
Redcode Raw files with 5:1 compression to
RedMags. Noting that Furmans preference
for location shooting meant the crew often
had minimal space in which to work, Reis
offers, The Red Epic Dragon camera is
compact and modular, so we could pick it up
and shoot run-and-gun with EF glass or build
it out in studio mode with PL glass.

The cinematographer generally
rated the Dragon between 500 ISO for
daylight and 800 for night, but for low-light
shooting he would go as high as 2,000 in
some scenes. One of his favorite features on
the camera is its interchangeable optical lowpass filter system. For any night scene, Reis
would mount the Low Light Optimized OLPF,
which would increase the cameras sensitivity
by about a stop. For day exteriors or shooting
inside Mazurs home, Reis would use the
Skin Tone-Highlight OLPF, which would give
him more latitude in the highlights. In addition to the Dragons, Blackmagic 4K Cinema
Cameras were used for crash cams.
Approximately 40 percent of the
movie was shot with Zeiss Compact Prime
CP.2 lenses, which are rehoused Zeiss still
lenses and are significantly less expensive
than typical cine primes. The production
used the 15mm, 21mm, 28mm, 35mm,
50mm, 85mm, 100mm and 135mm CP.2
focal lengths. Ive used the CPs on
hundreds of videos, says Reis. They have a
beautiful bokeh, and they pulled back the
crispness of the 6K image while maintaining
decent contrast. It may have [seemed] risky
to use prosumer primes for such a film, but
artistically it was the right thing to do. They
were really appropriate for a 1980s period
film that was being acquired with a digital
camera. Sometimes sharper and more
expensive glass isnt always better. We also
employed a Lensbaby Composer Pro PL as a
means to really push the visuals of some
abstract scenes.
For the Mangione scenes, the cinematographer employed five Zeiss Compact
Zoom CZ.2 lenses: one 15-30mm, two 2880mm and two 70-200mm zooms (all T2.9).
The great thing about these lenses is that
they really match the CP.2s, and they are
extremely lightweight, sharp, provide excellent contrast and offer minimal breathing,
Reis enthuses. Theyre also relatively affordable.
To lend a more vintage and classiccinema scale to the highly stylized Musella
scenes, Reis went with Vantage Film Hawk
V-Lite anamorphics. He also tested Arri/Zeiss
Master Anamorphics, but he preferred the
Hawks flare quality and felt the Master
Anamorphics looked too perfect and pristine, he says. Lastly, for run-and-gun setups,
Top:
Cinematographer
Joshua Reis (left)
lines up a shot
inside Mazurs
office. Middle:
Director Brad
Furman (left)
guides a scene
with actor Yul
Vazquez
(wearing white).
Bottom: Reis and
Furman grab an
angle from
behind Cranston.
26
August 2016
The
cinematographer
and director
discuss a setup.
Reis worked with Canon EF L-series USM II

16-35mm, 24-70mm and 70-200mm
zooms (all f2.8); and 24mm, 35mm, 50mm
and 85mm primes. It was about making
bold artistic decisions and breaking rules,
he says, which is why I love the Epic
Dragon, because its easy to change the
mount from PL to EF.
To further shape the movies look,
Reis used Tiffens Black Diffusion/FX, Black
Pro-Mist, Low Contrast, 80C and ND filters.
He explains that he might use a 14 Black
Diffusion/FX for day scenes and then bump
it to full 1 BD/FX for night shooting. BD/FX
will have an even glow in the highlights, [or]
a Low Con will help lift the blacks, giving you
a low-contrast look.
On set, Reis worked with look-up
tables inspired by the look book he and
Furman had created in prep. I think there
were 16 LUTs, and each LUT would go back
to the triptych everything goes back to
the story, the cinematographer explains.
Reis and digital-imaging technician Keir
Garnet-Lawson managed camera settings
via a wireless network with the Foolcontrol
application, and the DIT used a Light Iron
workstation for all on-set data management.
We had five iPads synced to a cloud dailies
database, Reis says.
According to Reis, The Infiltrator
called for a wide range of lighting setups,
from scenes requiring only small LEDs to a
large-scale wedding that involved days of
pre-rigging and the use of 20 18Ks. The
cinematographer credits gaffer Alan Martin
for helping him realize the productions big
Hollywood lighting setups. Alan lit
Gandhi and Alien3, Reis marvels. He was
really good at the big setups, such as lighting
28
August 2016
a 20-foot greenscreen with HMIs and a truss.

I was probably more knowledgeable about
new technology like LED panels with DMX
Wi-Fi control. It was a harmony of new- and
old-school lighting.
Furman adds, The culmination of
the education that Alan gave Josh and that
Josh gave Alan was one of the most inspiring
things Ive seen in my career. Alan was just so
open.
The Infiltrator was graded at LipSync
Post in London, where colorist Sam
Chynoweth worked with a FilmLight Baselight system, grading 2.5K EXR files in 16-bit
linear for a final 2K output. The Redcode
Raw source files were recorded full-gate at
6K resolution, while framing for a 5K extraction, giving the filmmakers the flexibility to
reframe and stabilize the image, if necessary, Reis says. This became particularly
useful when you had a dialogue scene with
numerous cast, [as] we were better able to
match different cameras by zooming in or
out of the image. According to the cinematographer, roughly half of the movies
look stayed true to what he had established
on set. For a few run-and-gun montage
sequences, he and Chynoweth created a
color-reversal aesthetic.
During preproduction, Reis met with
Chynoweth and did a few film-grain passes
and tests. Together, they devised a system in
which they would place each scene on a
scale from one to five, with five being the
grainiest and one being clean. In general,
they left the anamorphic footage cleaner,
like a 250T film stock. For night scenes across
the board they often pushed for a 500T look.
[Nighttime] anamorphic was generally only
a one or two on the grain scale, Reis says,
while nighttime sequences that featured

undercover operations or scenes in Mazur
and Emirs surveillance-rigged apartment
would be a four or five.
I found that a lot of the time when
youre stretching the digital negative, the
filtration comes through more, and that
worked out great, he continues. It amplifies the blooming, or it magnifies the imperfections that the filter introduces. The quality
of the filters character and sensor noise
pattern is enhanced through a more stylized
approach in post, which I thought was really
interesting. Brad wanted a filmic and organic
image for his movie, so [on this particular
project] my instinct was to push the technology [to generate] adverse lighting through
the color grade, to enhance the imperfections, to amplify the optical flaws because
the beauty is in the imperfections. To me, the
organic flaws are what make digital cinema
filmic.
With his post and digital background and his understanding of the
production workflow from point A to point
Z, Furman says, Josh is the new wave of
cinematography. The work he did in prep
really acclimated the producers, the foreign
buyers and everyone else to a particular look.
It was very important for Josh and me to
preserve the vision we ultimately wanted for
the film, and we knew that you can really get
turned upside-down in the final color timing
when you dont establish this vision up front.
What inevitably happens when you shoot in
a manner meant to be manipulated later is
that the higher-ups get comfortable with the
shoot look, and then when you take it into
a color-timing session, push the envelope,
and kick it back to the powers that be,
theyre like, What the f--- is this? But when
you have a LUT that looks as close to the final
image as possible, it makes everyone more
comfortable from the jump.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Red Epic Dragon,
Blackmagic Cinema Camera
Zeiss Compact Prime, Compact Zoom;
Vantage Film Hawk V-Lite; Canon L;
Lensbaby Composer Pro PL
Hostile
Planet
Stephen F. Windon ASC, ACS
joins director Justin Lin to bring
digital acquisition, ambitious
in-camera effects and frenetic
action to Star Trek Beyond.
By Michael Goldman
|
30
August 2016
irector Justin Lin and cinematographer Stephen F.

Windon, ASC, ACS faced a significant question upon
stepping aboard Star Trek Beyond, the latest cinematic
adventure of the starship Enterprise and its intrepid
crew. With a mere 312 months before the start of production
when they inherited the project, the new recruits had to decide
quickly whether to retain the visual template established by
director J.J. Abrams and cinematographer Dan Mindel, ASC,
BSC on Star Trek (AC June 09) and Star Trek Into Darkness
(AC June 13), or to move into undiscovered country.
The feature sees our heroes stranded on an alien planet
where they find themselves at the mercy of the villainous Krall
(Idris Elba), who hisses at Capt. Kirk (Chris Pine) that this
is where the frontier pushes back. Expressing no interest in
making nice with the United Federation of Planets, the reptilian humanoid proceeds to hunt down the Enterprise crew.
Since Beyond was the first in this series of rebooted Star
Unit photography by Kimberley French, SMPSP,

courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Trek features to take place entirely in

deep space, the director and cinematographer with Abrams blessing felt
empowered, from a visual standpoint, to
do their own thing. Our interpretation
of Star Trek was a bit different for this
chapter, Lin affirms. [The crew has]
been in space for more than two years, so
we felt a different feel was appropriate.
Specifically addressing the outerspace imagery, the director continues,
Stephen and I agreed that the idea of
someone [theoretically being able to]
operate the camera and shoot the action
would be important on this movie if
you couldnt get the shot if you were
actually filming in space, then you cant
Opposite, from left: The crew of the starship Enterprise including Sulu (John Cho), Chekov
(Anton Yelchin), McCoy (Karl Urban), Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Scotty (Simon
Pegg) find themselves perilously outmatched in Star Trek Beyond. This page, top: The
villainous Krall (Idris Elba) threatens Kirk. Middle: Jaylah (Sofia Boutella) lends welcome aid to
Kirk and co. Bottom: Cinematographer Stephen F. Windon, ASC, ACS (right) and director Justin
Lin find their frame.
www.theasc.com
August 2016
31
Hostile Planet
Windons crew outfitted the Enterprise sets almost entirely with LED lighting, enabling quick and highly
controllable changes from the normal look (top) to red alert (bottom).
get much emotion out of it. So we developed a feel and aesthetic from the practical sets, and [stayed] disciplined, creating
shots out of [what is real] to begin with,
even if they are full or partial CG.
32
August 2016
Lin adds that Windon knows

me so well, [and] speaks the same
language as me. I needed someone I
already had shorthand with on this kind
of timeline, and Stephen is brilliant at
coming up with solutions.

Longtime collaborators on the
Fast and Furious franchise, Lin and
Windon opted to shoot their sci-fi
adventure on Arri Alexa XT cameras in
open-gate mode, recording ArriRaw
data to Codex XR Capture Drives
along with a limited amount of
drone-based imagery on Red Epic
Dragons, recording 6K Redcode Raw
to RedMags which solidified Beyond
as the first digitally captured feature in
Star Trek movie history. I felt we had to
shoot digital, Windon relates. I liked
the idea of having the immediacy of
seeing what we were going to get while
still on set. It was also a result of the
short prep time; there was not a lot of
time to do tests, and [I had] just shot
Furious 7 with the Alexa. I had great
familiarity with the Alexa sensor, and
given all of the visual effects and what I
had read of the story, I felt it would be
the right choice. Justin readily embraced
it, even though it was his first time
shooting a feature with 100-percent
digital acquisition.
In terms of camera style, the
primary overlap between the previous

two Star Trek films and Beyond was the
use of anamorphic lenses. The filmmakers opted for two sets of Arri/Zeiss
Master Anamorphic (T1.9) lenses,
ranging from 35mm-135mm, and shot
in the 2.39:1 aspect ratio. I really liked
the Master Anamorphics, Windon
says. We have a lot of specular lighting
in this movie; I wanted lights to smash
the lens, especially on the bridge of the
Enterprise before the emergency redalert look kicked in. Shooting at a Tstop of around T2.8, I really liked the
shallow focus, and the bokeh and oval
shapes when the backgrounds were defocused behind our characters closeups. The production also tested the
19-36mm Arri Anamorphic Ultra
Wide Zoom (T4.2) prototype. A set of
Zeiss Compact Primes was employed
for drone work.
First AC Gregory Irwin praises
the Master Anamorphics for their
perfect optical qualities, adding that
we were slinging the cameras around
left and right and not very tenderly
Gimbaled, rotating sets referred to as shaker decks by key grip Kim Olsen were built onstage at
Vancouver Film Studios and used to great effect for scenes of the Enterprise under attack.
but the lenses held up perfectly,

without one issue. It meant we would
not be going with the well-known
Panavision anamorphic look, so those
lens flares [that were featured in the
www.theasc.com
previous movies] werent going to

happen. Irwin further notes that
Windon chose Arri/Zeiss Master
Prime spherical lenses in the 12mm21mm range, as well as the Arri/Zeiss
August 2016
33
Color as Through-Line
t press time, Star Trek Beyond

was hurtling toward a deadline of its own, and colorist Tom
Reiser of Deluxes EFilm had
just launched full-bore into the
projects digital intermediate.
Since many of the visual effects
were still in the works, Reiser
was starting out by color-grading dramatic sequences. He
wasnt particularly worried about
the inevitable scramble he would
experience alongside director
Justin Lin and cinematographer
Stephen F. Windon, ASC, ACS,
because Reiser had already participated
in establishing the foundation for the
movies color palette up front. Working
closely with EFilms color-science
department over the years, Reiser has
developed many basic show LUTs, as
he did here on Beyond. Dailies colorist
John Hart of Deluxes EC3 dailies
department had in fact used the look
throughout production, and that same
LUT was being employed as the foundation of the DI process.
The LUT was developed based
on Stephen Windons style, says Reiser,
speaking from years of experience
working alongside Windon on Fast and
Furious movies. Knowing he is a film
guy, we wanted to keep that film DNA
even though this movie was shot
with the [Arri Alexa XT]. I describe the
LUT as almost like film, but pushed a
little, with more colors to choose from
and stronger contrast. Having that
LUT already developed helps a lot
going into the DI.
Windon adds, My main goal for
color timing in general is to smooth out
certain production shots that came from
different environments and different
countries, making it all gel and then
paying a lot of attention to detail, [especially on this movie] with all the action,
visual effects and interactive light. We
might be making a window or hallway
darker, adjusting color temperature a
little bit here or there [with] material
34
August 2016
coming together that was shot on

different days, where lights might have
been dimmed slightly differently. We
have to spend a lot of time on those
little things.
Reiser is performing the color
grade with FilmLights Baselight
version 4.4. Because Windon had
already begun shooting Fast 8 in
Atlanta when the DI commenced, the
cinematographer and colorist have
opted to use Deluxes remote collaboration system. Windon is working from
Deluxes Atlanta facility on the weekends, viewing material streamed to him
in real time and conferencing with
Reiser and Lin to give notes and
comments. Baselight is employed on
this production by EFilm conform
editor Amy Pawlowski as well.
According to Reiser, another goal
of the final grade is to maintain a
connectivity to the two earlier Star Trek
movies directed by J.J. Abrams and shot
by Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC and
colored at Deluxes Company 3 by ASC
associate Stefan Sonnenfeld even
though Beyond s overall visual style is
different. The challenge is to [create] a
naturalistic feeling of grain, he offers.
If you imagine Star Trek fans watching
all three movies in a row, you dont want
them to feel radically different. So I
expect well be adding grain to lend the
whole movie a more organic feel. I dont
add grain to a lot of movies I [grade]
that are set in modern day, but I think
|
that organic feeling is really
important to Justin and I
now have grain tools that are
really nice and precise for doing
it a number of different ways.
We can sometimes composite
grain and do generated grain;
there are a few plug-ins out
there that are really great.
Another subtle element of the
process will involve ensuring the
color accuracy of the famous
Starfleet uniforms. We liked
[the color schemes] of the first
two movies, Reiser says, and I noticed
from watching them that a lot of it
came out of the production design and
costumes. The fans really know those
tones they know exactly what color
the shirts should be. So I expect on a
final pass, Ill be doing plenty of
windows to make sure we have just the
right blue and just the right red. That
can actually be a big challenge in timing
a movie like this to get that stuff
consistent throughout because they
shot from so many different angles,
with different light, and with so much
action going on.
Reiser knew that he would face a
major grading challenge with a
sequence featuring a swarm of ships
attacking the Enterprise, and the corresponding red-alert emergency-light
effect that was achieved on-set by way
of complex LED techniques. He notes
that difficulties arise because such
sequences involve so much atmosphere, and atmosphere doesnt
behave. Sometimes you get a lot of
atmosphere and sometimes you get
none. When they go to red alert, the
lights drop and the ship is damaged.
Im sure Ill be doing some keys to
match practicals on cuts for that
sequence, and creating plenty of
windows to help out the atmosphere,
[adding] contrast here and there.
Michael Goldman
Hostile Planet
Kirk and
Chekov find
themselves
separated from
their
crewmates
after
abandoning
ship and
landing on the
enemy planet.
Ultra Prime 8R, for ultra-wide shots.

Steve felt it was fine to shoot spherically at times if we had to go wider,
Irwin says.
Working in collaboration with
digital-imaging technician Chris
Cavanaugh, Irwin also benefited from
the Arri Lens Data System (LDS),
which permitted him to see real-time
focal distance and depth-of-field data
on screen, along with other metadata
such as lens size, T-stop and distance, for
greater exposure control. That helped
Greg, Cavanaugh says, but it also
helped visual-effects wranglers to see
information for their notes. Plus, that
information is stored in the ArriRaw
files, giving everyone access to it in the
post pipeline.
A custom four-channel fiberoptic system designed by a team from
Otto Nemenz connected cameras to
Sony PVMA250 25" OLED monitors.
Cavanaugh monitored Log C imagery
at his station, and used a combination of
Pomforts LiveGrade and Blackmagic
Designs DaVinci Resolve 11 to apply a
show LUT developed in partnership
with EFilm colorist Tom Reiser, who
would later perform the final grade. (See
sidebar, page 34.)

I also used [Blackmagic
Designs] UltraStudio hardware to
capture screen shots on my cart
throughout the day, for lighting and
camera reference, Cavanaugh says.
Since we had LDS on screen, those
stills served as reference for T-stop, shutter and white balance, and they came in
handy when shooting a scene over
several weeks, on second unit and on
reshoots. We would then generate a
www.theasc.com
custom look for each scene using CDLs,

ensuring Steves intention was passed to
dailies and the post pipeline. For our
dailies workflow, [Deluxes EC3 location
unit] set up a [pop-up] facility at
Vancouver Film Studios [where the
productions stages were located]. The
editorial team was also working in the
same space. Since that was our primary
shooting location, our loader would
simply walk camera media over for
downloading, backup and archiving.
August 2016
35
Hostile Planet
Jaylah works alongside Kirk and his crew to come up with a plan for defeating Krall.
Star Trek Beyond was shot primarily in and around Vancouver. Remote
dailies systems with John Hart serving as dailies colorist were set up in
Vancouver and Dubai, the latter location having been used to shoot exterior
and stage sequences for scenes set
aboard the immense space station
Yorktown. Dailies were timed with
Colorfront On-Set Dailies.
Opting for a constantly moving
camera, the filmmakers shot most of the
movie via handheld, Steadicam and
cranes, making use of specially rigged
remote heads. We used cranes for big
36
August 2016
sweeping moves through and around

sets, but there is a ton of Steadicam in
this movie, Windon says. Justin and
I agreed that the operator should not
just be someone running a camera; he
needs to be a real storyteller. The
cinematographer makes special note of
the filmmakers collaboration with
Steadicam/A-camera operator Geoffrey
Haley, whose expertise they enlisted
while blocking scenes and framing.
From the beginning, the productions moving-camera style meant that
Irwins focus pulling would be
performed with the help of small 7.7"
SmallHD OLED monitors. Thus,

when the 1st AC broke his leg on the
second day of production, he never lost
a step. Everything was on one little
stand and I was able to sit right in front
of it, Irwin says.
In a pivotal sequence, the
Enterprise comes under surprise attack
by Kralls forces, who then board the
vessel, forcing the crew to abandon ship.
Among the most technically complex
endeavors on the project, the scene
inspired Lin to introduce another new
element to this Star Trek series:
gimbaled and rotating sets. Such
dynamic environments granted the
director his wish to realistically portray
the unfolding disaster and its physical
impact on the characters.
These shaker decks, as key grip
Kim Olsen calls them, were housed on
stages at Vancouver Film Studios. The
decks were built by the productions
special-effects team, led by Cameron
Waldbauer, and sometimes rotated a full
360 degrees. To facilitate the ability to
mount cameras and secure dollies to the
deck area on the bridge set, we had
construction
place
steel-backed
receivers into the floor in a pattern that
fit the overall aesthetic of the set, Olsen
explains. When mounting cameras to
the set wasnt on the agenda, we would
poke a 50-foot Technocrane through
the view-screen area.
In other cases, the operators
themselves were strapped down to the
spinning sets. A lot of these sets were
[employed] for frenetic fights, chases or
evacuations, Haley notes. The challenge we had was to build camera rigs
that were energetic and dynamic, but
also [functional on] a set that was going
to literally be challenged gravitationally.
For some of it, we did a fair amount of
old-school handheld by just strapping
ourselves in, putting the cameras on our
shoulders, and essentially going with the
flow as action was happening around us.
But that was not physically going to
work for certain shots, and for those we
had to go more high tech.
The high-tech rig that Haley
refers to was a tracking system built into
the ceiling of a long, curving hallway set,

where crucial scenes take place during
the attack. It was built into the rotating
set with super sliders, Irwin says, so
we could zip-line it along corridors
while the set was rotating 180 degrees,
like a big rotisserie. The rig made use of
a compact, gyroscopic Alpha Stabilized
remote head supplied by Aris G Films
in Vancouver. Irwin had previously used
the head with Imax cameras when
working on Interstellar, and he recommended it to Windon, who quickly
decided to make it the default remote
head for the entire movie, the 1st AC
notes. The Alpha Head is robust,
small, and can take that abuse for action
photography. And its easier for this
kind of work because it is a smaller
package than some of the other heads
we might typically use [and has]
outstanding stabilization.
Haley was also a big fan of the
Alpha head because I could happily
operate from outside the gimbaled set
with a remote set of wheels, and yet
make the camera move extremely fast,
The production crew shoots a large day-exterior scene in which Kralls forces round up the
Enterprise crew, including Uhura (Zo Saldana, bottom left) and Sulu.
he says. We were using the third axis of

the Alpha head, sometimes just to stay
level with gravity and allow actors to
seem like they were climbing walls,
essentially giving us the ability to create
different effects. When one has to do
whip pans and other precise, quick
www.theasc.com
movements [with a remote head], there

can be a slight, built-in delay in the
transmission. Ive learned from experience [on the Fast and Furious movies] to
anticipate the action so I will not be late
to the party.
Also central to the illusion was a
August 2016
37
Hostile Planet
Right: Scotty
assesses the
situation
alongside
Keenser (Deep
Roy), his
long-suffering
fellow engineer.
Below: Jaylah
eyes Scottys
progress on a
console.
new lighting scheme for the familiar

ships interior. Referring to the sets
Abrams team had previously used,
Windon says the Beyond crew basically
rebuilt them so we could utilize LED
lighting. With all the movement and
shaking of the sets on the gimbals and
motion base, we removed all the fluorescent lighting and fixtures behind the
consoles that had originally been on the
bridge set. It was a conscious effort to
have more movement and blinking light
38
August 2016
on the bridge deck when the systempower failures and emergency lights
kick in. My rigging gaffer, Jarrod Tiffin,
was very clever in designing all that new
lighting, which we could wirelessly
control.
Older versions of the consoles
were built to be on or off, Tiffin says.
They came with [LED bulbs] for
backlight, but it was per console on [a
single] line, with no separation for
movement, and the LED elements that
did move were just on and had no

control. For this movie, we mapped out
each console and isolated all the different gauges and elements, so that each
one could now dim on its own. When
the crew got hit, you could now have
some great effects happen, instead of
the whole console just flickering.
Gaffer David Tickell adds that
shooting digitally with the Alexa
provided additional incentive to make
liberal use of LED lighting technology. The challenge with a digital
camera is finding a balance to the
levels of light, he says. That is where
LED can play an important role. With
the products available, you can run
from 100 percent down to almost 0
without it affecting the quality of light.
In fact, other than a few traditional
movie lights on the bridge, the
Enterprise was almost entirely lit with
built-in LEDs. The production used a
wide range of LED sources including panels, tubes, lanterns and tape
from multiple manufacturers.
Tiffin created a sophisticated
networking method, consisting of both
wireless and fiber-based transmission
systems for LED lighting on all sets,
giving the filmmakers full creative

control over light movement and other
subtleties. We designed nodes
throughout the set to max out certain
areas due to the high volume of DMX
slots needed for LED, Tiffin says. It
was all brought back to Gigabyte
switches, where we could drop Cat5e
lines down so the board could be moved
and plugged into the full network. We
also ran a Wi-Fi signal from the console
so that we could see what our program
was doing, due to the many factors that
could change, which would have been
impossible to accomplish from the desk.
We used Wireless Solutions W-DMX
G4 series BlackBox F-2 G4 MK2
transmitters and Micro F-1 Lite G4
transmitters for wireless transmission.
For receivers, we used the Micro R-512
Lite G4. The Enterprise bridge alone
had 11 wireless universes, and 66 with
the hard-wired elements.
The curved hallway of the ships
saucer section was built on 80'-long
rotators capable of tilting 180 degrees
left or right. For the enemys attack on
the ship, red-alert lighting was generated in this hallway with an interactive
LED scheme that complements the
iconic, haunting audio alarm that Star
Trek fans have come to know. Tiffin
explains that the red-alert lighting was
accomplished with RGB PixelPro strip
technology and complex programming
techniques, which allowed light to
move directionally down the hallways,
helping to create a sense of depth while
also adding to the confusion of the redalert situation.
Windon adds, We literally go to
black, and then a red wave of light
moves through the hallway, giving the
sensation of movement, rather than
simply having red lights flashing. They
are like a warp or waves of red
light, about 6 feet long, that travel all the
way around the hallway, disappear, and
are then followed by another one a
second or two later.
The attack on the Enterprise also
required a great deal of CG work,
created by Double Negative under the
supervision of Peter Chiang. For this
sequence, as well as many others, extensive previsualization was performed by a

split team of artists from vendor Proof
Inc. and production company Bad
Robot, with oversight by previs supervisor Alex Vegh. Previs work was imperative to ensuring that Windons camera
style was seamlessly reproduced when
CG elements and sequences were introduced.
Lin emphasizes that he applied
the same basic approach to designing

Beyond s set pieces that he has for years
on Fast and Furious movies. But instead
of talking to a second-unit director, he
notes, Im talking to the visual-effects
supervisor, and using all the same terms
and language. The camera lens, the
camera moves it is all designed. And
to make that work, Alex Vegh got
involved very early in the process, when
we first began writing the script, to help
Hostile Planet
A crane-mounted
camera tracks a
wire-rigged
Boutella for a
scene in which
her character
plummets
toward the
ground.
us design it correctly.
Previs was an ongoing collaboration, Vegh says, with different iterations based on adjustments they might
make while shooting that could help us
be more precise or new ideas we
might come up with that could help
them during shooting.
A CG element essential to the
40
attack sequence was Kralls squadron of

swarm ships, each carrying a small
group of invaders, which the villain
dispatches to swarm, latch onto and
breach the Enterprise. We had a really
great team that helped develop certain
[visual effects], including the swarmship effect, Vegh enthuses. We studied
starling murmurations [as the birds fly]
in a group across the sky, and schools of

fish. [We examined] their behavior,
how they move, how it looks graceful
and yet when you are in the middle
of it, it is just madness. The swarm-ship
assault was based on that idea.
Practical effects also played a
significant role in creating elements for
the assault. At one point, for example, a
swarm ship crashes through the hull of
the Enterprise, bursts into a hallway, and
exits through the opposite wall, sucking
crewmembers out into space. Windon
explains that the sequence was executed
by pulling an actual swarm-ship
which was the size of a shipping
container! through a set wall. The
ship had a steel reinforced beak and
was constructed on a mechanical rail,
driven by a large ratchet system. The
filmmakers shot the stunt with an Alexa
that rotated 180 degrees around the
swarm ship, with the camera on a
motion-control rig to enable them to do
multiple passes.
It went through much like a

torpedo would, Windon says. We did
a lot of that kind of in-camera stuff. We
would put multiple cameras on a stunt
like that and then clone it digitally so
that it could be reused or turned in
another direction and put way down in
the background of the hallway. Peter
Chiang and his team could then use all
those elements to build the big-scale
shots that Justin was after.
Beyond also features its share of
action on solid ground, including a
tricked-out, Fast and Furious-style
motorcycle chase on the alien planet.
The highly choreographed sequence
was shot on a large set representing
Kralls lair, built on top of an abandoned
quarry outside Vancouver. The production used various camera-rig combinations from a 50' Technocrane on a
Taurus base, to a 73' Chapman/Leonard
Hydrascope on an Ultra Maverick base,
to wire-cam rigs, to cameras mounted
on dirt bikes and electric and gas-
powered ATVs. One particular ATV

carried a Libra Head to get close-ups of
Chris Pine as he tore up the track on the
quarry set. We also had a 40-by-60
overhead on a 200-ton crane for sun
control, Olsen says, as well as eight 20by-40s on 12-ton Pettibones for traveling greenscreens. Drones captured
aerial POVs for the motorcycle
sequence as well.
According to Olsen, such
sequences were so numerous throughout the production that innovation
became a daily occurrence. For example,
to save time working with greenscreen,
the crew made extensive use of Aircover
Inflatables Airwalls, which won an
Academy Scientific and Technical
Achievement Award earlier this year.
Camera-traveler [powered camera sliders] were also cool rigs that we used, he
adds. Mechanical effects designed and
installed them into the rotisserie hallway set, and my rigger, Dave McIntosh,
devised them for other sets as well.
Specifically, they were used on a 200ton crane for the saucer-section slide
sequence. With that rig, we could position the 140-foot slider anywhere we
needed to over the set, beside it or on
it, and leading, following or in profile
as the scene required and within just
minutes. This allowed Justin and Steve
to get many angles quickly, and reset
extremely fast.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT, Red Epic Dragon
Arri/Zeiss Master Anamorphic,
Master Prime, Ultra Prime;
Arri Anamorphic Ultra Wide Zoom;
Zeiss Compact Prime
41
To Be
Bourne
Barry Ackroyd, BSC brings a
documentary sensibility to the
action-thriller Jason Bourne.
By Phil Rhodes
|
f you want people to believe what youre doing when its

a fiction, you shouldnt be trying too hard to distract
them from that truth, begins Barry Ackroyd, BSC. The
cinematographer is speaking with AC about Jason
Bourne, his latest collaboration with director Paul Greengrass.
The feature sees the return of Matt Damon as the titular hero,
putting him alongside co-stars Alicia Vikander and series-stalwart Julia Stiles to explore the dark secrets of Bournes difficult
past.
42
August 2016
Ackroyds approach will be well known to anyone familiar

with his previous work alongside Greengrass: United 93 (AC
June 06), Green Zone (AC April 10) and Captain Phillips (AC
Nov. 13). Paul and I are so much on the same wavelength,
theres hardly any conversation necessary, the cinematographer
offers. The reason we get on so well is that we have a very
straightforward kind of creed, which is to keep it simple. We
both come out of a documentary-style background.
Documentary is our inspiration.
I was shooting documentaries and some music videos
in the Seventies and early Eighties, and Id assisted on many
documentaries, Ackroyd says of his own background. In his
documentary work, he found himself confronting difficult
subjects. One project covered the 1972 Bloody Sunday
massacre, during which members of the British Army killed
unarmed civilians in Northern Ireland; another examined the
Hillsborough disaster, in which 96 people were killed in a
human crush at the eponymous football stadium in Sheffield,
England.
My break into [narrative] filmmaking was Ken Loach
Unit photography by Jasin Boland, SMPSP; Melinda Sue Gordon, SMPSP; and Dawn Jones, courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Opposite and this

page, top: The
CIAs most lethal
former operative
(Matt Damon) is
drawn out of the
shadows to
uncover hidden
truths about his
past and crosses
paths with agent
Heather Lee (Alicia
Vikander) in the
latest chapter of
the Bourne
franchise, Jason
Bourne. Bottom:
Cinematographer
Barry Ackroyd, BSC
(left) and director
Paul Greengrass
(center) discuss
a scene.
social realism, natural ways of

capturing things, simplicity of style,
Ackroyd adds. I tended towards British
documentary camera style, which
means long lens, very observational,
with a kind of intimacy were good at
getting, [and Loach] knew my
background with social conscience.
Preparatory work on Jason
Bourne began in early June 2015.
Despite the scale of the film, Ackroyd
and Greengrass worked hard to
maintain their documentary style,
trying to rein everything in, to stop
thinking its a huge film, the
cinematographer recalls. Paul asked me
to write a piece to send to Universal,
which would be our mission statement
about how the film would look.
The
resulting
document
referenced films such as The Parallax
View and The French Connection.
However, Ackroyd feels that these
features had in turn been influenced by
the work of documentarians Richard
Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker.
Ackroyds favorite films include
Pennebakers Dont Look Back, the 1967
Bob Dylan tour documentary; and
Robert Drews 1960 political
documentary Primary, with cinematography by Leacock and Albert
Maysles. These were the first films to set

the camera completely free in terms of
movement, and that in itself is a political
statement, Ackroyd enthuses. Once
they put the camera on their shoulder,
they walked into this world of truth.
For Bourne, the cinematographer
notes, We shot a lot, but we still used
technique. Occasionally we used dollies
and even cranes, but we mostly put the
camera in the hand. You get into the
story by being physically there; we
followed the chase and we followed the
story.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bourne
was shot with three and sometimes four
www.theasc.com
cameras, says Ackroyd, who operated

one of them. He avoids formally
designating A, B and C cameras, with
the idea that every frame of footage from
every camera is potentially a contribution
of equal value. I have a mind-set that
were shooting 100 percent. Every
moment, every frame is crucial to this
film. People say, Why are you doing this
running around? Theyre only going to
use six frames. The answer is, if you
know which six frames they are, well, you
can shoot six frames!
Principal photography began on
Tenerife in August 2015, with the
Spanish island doubling for Athens,
August 2016
43
To Be Bourne
Top: Bourne reunites with Nicky (Julia Stiles). Middle and bottom: Ackroyd and crew shoot
scenes for an action sequence set in Greece.
44
August 2016
Greece. Moving to the U.K., the

production proceeded to shoot locations
in London and interiors at Warner Bros.
Studios Leavesden, then moved on to
Berlin and Washington, D.C., all before
the end of the year. Sequences set on the
Las Vegas Strip went before the camera
in January 2016, with some final
photography in the U.K. in February.
Throughout this schedule, the
production maintained predominantly
British crew wherever we went, notes
Ackroyd. Core collaborators included
Greengrass regulars such as editor and
co-writer Christopher Rouse, and coproducer and 1st AD Chris Carreras.
Ackroyds team of operators
included Christopher TJ McGuire, who
also operated Steadicam; longtime
collaborator Oliver Driscoll; and Josh
Medak, an American who was brought
on for the Las Vegas shoot. The operators
frequently switched out camera positions
in order to bring a fresh approach to each
angle. Often you rotate around,
Ackroyd explains. [Greengrass] might
say, Barry, take that position and do it
your way. One memorable piece of
direction, however, came toward the end
of the shoot at the end of a long day; the
cinematographer remembers the director
saying, I can see just what youre thinking
when I look at the shot. Youre not
thinking the right thing.
The filmmakers inevitably
embraced the happy accidents of
handheld camerawork, but without
making any attempt to cause them
deliberately. The first thing I tell people
is, Dont get hung up on right and wrong.
Just try, says Ackroyd. Its often the
time youre trying hardest when you get
the magic. If you f--- it up on purpose it
will look like that, but if you really try
hard and its on the edge, thats when its
exciting. Thats the stuff that Chris
[Rouse] will pick.
Regarding formats, Ackroyd says
the original intention was to shoot
entirely on film, but with the final script
it became clear that there would be
significant night exteriors with complex
stunts and physical effects. Bourne was
therefore shot approximately half-and-
half on film and digitally. For the film

portions, the production shot both 4-perf
35mm and Super 16mm, using Aaton
Penelope and XTR Prod cameras,
respectively, and framing for the 2.39:1
aspect ratio; Ackroyd shot with Kodak
Vision3 500T 5219/7219 for interiors and
250D 5207/7207 for day exteriors. The
16mm stock was used for flashbacks and
some elements of the Athens riot
sequence, Driscoll notes.
Arri Alexa XT digital cameras were
employed for the night stuff, the
cinematographer explains. It comes from
the second unit wanting to shoot digitally
so they could have instant replay on the
technical stuff, and multiple cameras.
The Alexas recorded ArriRaw files
to internal Codex XR Capture Drives.
Film negative was processed at I Dailies
and scanned at Pinewood Digital, the
latter of which provided dailies in Pix
format. Clive Noakes served as dailies
colorist.
Second-unit cinematographer Igor
Meglic, ZFS whose history with
Ackroyd began on the 2012 crime thriller
Contraband added other cameras
beyond the Alexa. The reason I usually
have to go to different cameras is because
we either need a lot of them or theyre in
harms way, says Meglic. Once you start
to bring in six or eight additional cameras,
its a cost thing. Red Epic Dragon units
were used mainly for plate photography in
vehicles, with Canons Cinema EOS
C500 used for other vehicle and handheld
work. For applications requiring an ultralightweight camera, such as helmet
mounting, Meglic opted for Blackmagic
Designs Pocket Cinema Camera fitted
with Kowa 8.5mm glass. Its a pretty
amazing little camera, he notes. Weightwise, it was little more than an iPhone!
The 2nd unit often recorded
internally particularly in the case of the
XT and Dragon while external Codex
recorders were sometimes used for the
Dragon, C500 and Pocket Cinema
Camera. When needed, we did it both
ways, says Meglic. We did vibration
tests, [and] I was a little nervous, but it
turned out we never had a problem.
For large sequences such as the Las
Top: Agent Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones) and Lee discover that Bourne is back.
Middle: Ackroyd, Greengrass and crew line up the camera for a scene with Vikander aboard a
plane. Bottom: Bourne confronts Dewey.
www.theasc.com
August 2016
45
Keeping It Real
ith their dim ambience and absence

of natural light, many
color-correction facilities
feel subterranean. The
rooms at Goldcrest in
Londons Soho district
actually are underground,
however, and its here
that AC finds colorist
Rob Pizzey working
with cinematographer
Barry Ackroyd, BSC on
the final grade for Jason
Bourne. Pizzeys credits
alongside Ackroyd and
director Paul Greengrass
include both Green Zone
(AC April 10) and Captain Phillips (AC
Nov. 13).
Pizzey sits at the familiar
hardware console of the DaVinci
Resolve color-correction system. The
image currently under discussion is
projected onto a screen approximately
20' wide by a Barco DP4K-P projector
in 4K resolution, and depicts Matt
Damon, as Bourne, moving down what
looks like a public street, although the
response to that idea is that most of the
people in frame are extras. Pizzey calls
up a vertical ellipse and expands it to
encompass Damon, confirming the
choice with the cinematographer. Is that
all right, Barry? asks Pizzey. I just
darkened the outside so he stands out a
bit more.
The apparent simplicity of the
situation belies a lot of work behind the
scenes. I had two weeks prep before
Barry came in, the colorist relates. But
being such a big film, some of that went
out the window. Much of Jason Bourne
was acquired on film, using two different
film stocks, each in two different gauges.
Additionally, specific scenes were shot
digitally, with several types of digital
cameras. For this reason it was decided
to use the film color space as the
common DI color space. The film
material was scanned at 4K resolution on
Goldcrests two Arriscan film scanners,
which were calibrated and set up to
46
August 2016
capture the extended density range of

the Kodak Vision3 stock. The digitally
originated material is kept in raw format
throughout the DI process to give
Pizzey and Ackroyd the maximum
flexibility during the grade. With the
right color science and grainmanagement tools, the Goldcrest team
notes, the film- and digital-originated
shots match very closely.
During preproduction, Pizzey
recalls, Barry came in and we did some
extensive tests on the grade, with each of
the different formats, and with de-grain
and re-grain. Given Ackroyds tendency
to stay away from complex on-set
monitoring strategies, Pizzey offers, we
set an overall look, trying to keep things
simple. Barry and the team just get on
and shoot it, and they know how much
we can change if we need to later on.
As the edit has been moving at
full speed, the colorist continues, well
grade a scene, and when we go over it
the next day, certain shots will have been
trimmed. At press time, final visualeffects delivery is due on June 17. Thats
going to be a manic 24 hours, Pizzey
admits. All the background plates
should be tweaked already, but until the
final shots are there, you cant make your
final grade.
Theres one scene toward the
end, the colorist adds. It was shot quite
warm, and I think when Paul first saw
it, he said, No, I want it

grittier. Lets have it
cooler. Obviously, if its
warm and then they want
it blue, we take all the
warmth out of it and
theres not a lot of light
it gets very dark. To cut a
long story short, it stayed
dark like that for about
three weeks while we
were doing screenings. It
was too dark. So we
decided, Lets go back to
how it was shot, how
Barry intended it. Paul
saw it today and loved it.
One of the most
challenging sequences in terms of
matching, Pizzey notes, is a chase scene
set at night. Theres smoke and fire, and
there were a number of shots where the
continuity of smoke wasnt as even as it
could have been due to the multiple
cameras, he explains. Rectifying this
situation, Pizzey recalls, required him to
find a way of using the grading kit to
balance up the shots, to help them feel
as if the smokes there a few tricky
little windows and messing around with
contrast. It works pretty well. We might
have a bit of help from visual effects
toward the end, but we ran it this
morning and it looked pretty good.
AC s visit came halfway through
the main work of grading, Pizzey says.
We had Paul in the suite yesterday.
There are a couple of scenes remaining
to change, but the color base is looking
good.
The colorists approach seems
well matched to that of both Greengrass
and Ackroyd. I listen to the directors of
photography, what theyve exposed, and
how theyve shot and lit it, Pizzey says.
Ill always do my first pass the way they
intended it to look. Then, if anyone
wants it differently, we use all the tools.
I try to be a traditional, old-fashioned
color timer, to keep it real.
Phil Rhodes
To Be Bourne
Bourne fights
his way
through Athens
and escapes on
a motorbike.
Vegas car chase, up to 28 camera bodies

were available for use although that
many never rolled simultaneously
predominantly fitted with the same kind
of lenses used by the main unit. Meglic
notes, A couple of times [during the
London portion of the shoot] we did ask
if we could borrow a lens or two, and they
were always very nice about that!
Given the chosen style, its perhaps
no surprise that Ackroyd describes
himself as a zoom person. He singles
out the beautiful Angenieux Optimo
24-290mm (T2.8) zoom, noting, Its
like my eye, my brain. When something
takes your interest from across the street,
you dont see it in the same way as when
youre close to something. You can
exclude things and concentrate.
The extensive lens package also
included Angenieuxs Optimo 15-40mm
(T2.6) zoom; Fujinons 19-90mm (T2.9)
Cabrio zoom; True Lens Services 80200mm (T2.8) Morpheus, a rehoused
Nikon stills zoom; and Panavisions
Primo 135-420mm (T2.8) zoom. The
35mm-format prime-lens package
comprised Arri/Zeiss Ultra Primes
ranging from 20mm up to 180mm (all
T1.9) as well as Zeiss Super Speeds from
www.theasc.com
August 2016
47
To Be Bourne
A camera
vehicle fitted
with an Edge
Arm is
employed to
capture a
car-chase
sequence
through
Las Vegas.
18mm up to 85mm (all T1.3). The

productions Super 16mm cameras were
paired with Canon 8-64mm (T2.4) and
11-165mm (T2.5) zooms.
Any concerns about matching the
various cameras and lenses were
subordinate to ease of handling, Ackroyd
says. Ive never been one to get too hung
up on the technical side of what the lens
may or may not do. Of course, if you were
making a movie that was highly glossy
and intentionally stylized, youd have to
pay more attention to that.
Ackroyd refers to the widescreen
48
August 2016
aspect ratio as the best-looking format

for this type of film. It fills the screen;
when they open up the curtains in the
theater, you know youre going on a
journey. Its about immersion.
When AC visited the grading suite
at Goldcrest, Ackroyd was working
alongside colorist Rob Pizzey (see sidebar,
page 46). Referring to a shot of Damons
character ascending an escalator from an
underground railway station, Ackroyd
details his on-set working method. I
would be shooting this, he says. My left
hand is [positioned as though to play] a
trumpet: Ive got my thumb on the iris,

index finger on the zoom and ready to
grab onto the focus if necessary. The focus
pullers in charge, but I might want to
touch it.
Ackroyd prefers the focus puller to
remain beside the camera with a
mechanical follow focus. If you do a
remote focus, youve got less relationship
with the distance, the cinematographer
opines. If youre all together, youre not
trying to triangulate the position; the
focus puller neednt be looking at the
focus ring or marks. If youre using lots of
cameras and one is using a remote focus
5 feet from the camera, you start taking
up space for the story. Similarly, Ackroyd
avoids bulking the camera out with more
than the minimum accessories. I dont
use the big handles, the bullhorns. I have
three points of contact, as I would in
documentary: shoulder, handle, and eye
to the eyepiece.
Gaffer Harry Wiggins, another
veteran of Green Zone and Captain
Phillips, describes the crews overall
approaches for day and night work on
Bourne. We would light our day interiors,
but on our day exteriors, we would run it
pretty much as a commando unit.
The second unit captures Bourne driving a Dodge Charger in Vegas.
Conversely, he continues, a night

exterior over a big part of a city requires a
lot of lighting. Flexibility was key. We
had to have a plan that wouldnt tie us
down, he attests. We had to put
everything on rooftops, but we couldnt
own the rooftops, or the spaces for
cabling and generators, all the time, and
we werent quite sure what streets would
work for us until we [arrived on location]
and started shooting. We had to have a
system that meant we could move quite
quickly from one roof to another.
Lighting equipment for night
exteriors in Tenerife was almost
exclusively tungsten, supplied by Panalux
London. The company was able to
supply traditional filmmaking equipment
in the form of 5K Fresnels and, via its
broadcast and entertainment division,
large numbers of Par cans up to 200.
We had another 80 short-nosed Par
cans, Wiggins recalls. Wed put a pair
on each lamppost; generally wed run
those at about 66 percent.
We gelled [the Pars] with a straw
tint or a half CTO, the gaffer continues.
I love using Par cans because they are
lightweight, robust, [and] they have a
dirty beam with a lumpy shape to it,
[which] feels more authentic. If you use
a Fresnel, sure you have a lovely falloff on
the beam, but its false.
When more firepower was
needed, the production used the LRX

Scorpion, a 23.4K cluster of 36 650-watt
DWE bulbs with remotely controllable
robotic pan and tilt; these were mounted
on cherry pickers to provide backlight as
required. Additionally, Wiggins notes, an
LED Flyer a boom-mounted bi-color
LED soft light manufactured by BBS
Lighting was used on the ground,
close to camera, with a couple of
California Sunbounce swatters to take out
ugly shadows from street lamps we
couldnt turn off.
The main unit used up to six
generators on the Tenerife portion of the
shoot, with two at 200K, two at 110K,
and another couple of Spanish ones that
were probably 60s, the gaffer recalls.
Including lighting-desk operators and
standby scaffolders, Wiggins crew totaled
12. It was lean, he says. My guys ran a
lot of stairs at night.
A riot sequence set in Athens
presented its own special requirements.
Panalux built some LED cubes, says
Wiggins. They over-cranked the LEDs
so they were super-bright. We ran them
on V-lock batteries, put them down in the
crowd and fired them from a remote
trigger via the desk. This and other
applications used wireless DMX control.
Also, the production had to generate fire
effects for burning cars, explosions,
Molotovs, Wiggins adds. For those
49
To Be Bourne
The crew readies a

scene in which
Bourne searches for
digital information.
effects, he notes, we had a set of Howie

battens with MR16 bulbs in a frame.
Light from a helicopter was either
performed for real, using a Nightsun
searchlight, or simulated with MoleRichardson 4K daylight beam projectors
on rooftops.
The CIA hub seen in the film
was built onstage at Leavesden, where
Warner Bros. lighting services supplied
50
the equipment. Wiggins describes the set

as a shell-shaped room with a tiered roof,
a bit like an old cinema. On each of the
three tiers of the ceiling, there was a
Perspex up-stand about 9 inches high;
behind those we had a crescent of about
50 fluorescents. The set was installed in
October and would stand until
January; we wouldnt be able to get up
onto that roof [once shooting began], so
it made more sense to pay for the bits and

build our own Hipster Flos, rather than
rent fixtures to build into the set for four
months.
Commercial dimmable ballasts
were used with both tungsten-balanced
and blue tubes in the space. The
references we had of similar CIA
installations tended to have a blue feeling,
Wiggins notes. When we were on
Captain Phillips, the combat-information
center of the battleship was lit with blue
tubes something to do with
maintaining night vision or keeping you
awake.
The majority of Las Vegas interiors
were shot at Aria resort; the hotels
conference center was used for scenes at a
trade show, with rigging work facilitated
by the availability of CAD drawings that
indicated the location of flying points.
You can plot out where you want stuff,
then a crew will come in and put trussing
in, Wiggins relates. The final
configuration involved a rig of about 16
20-foot truss bars with Par cans to liven up

this [large] space, he adds.
For another scene involving a hotel
room on the 58th floor at Aria, the crew
used two Digital Sputnik DS 6s 840watt color-mixing LEDs on a nearby
rooftop to suggest lighting from the strip
below. The DS 6s could be run
conveniently from a nearby 60-amp supply,
avoiding the inconvenience of running
high-power cables from a generator located
52 floors below.
Wiggins adds that for a scene set in
a Las Vegas storm drain but actually
shot in an underground parking lot in the
U.K. we used 32 Arri S60-C Skypanels
and a couple of Kinos to light the storm
drains in a warm, sodium-ish light. The
Skypanels are fantastic; theyll give you
what a color-gelled 5K with a Chimera
will, or more.
AC spoke with Ackroyd during his
last few days of direct involvement with
Jason Bourne, before he would move on to
reteam with director Kathryn Bigelow
with whom he had collaborated on The

Hurt Locker (AC July 09) for her asyet-untitled project about the 1967
Detroit riot. The cinematographer and
his Bourne collaborators remember a
well-run production that demanded hard
work but resulted in minimal stress, with
a team long-experienced in working
together. Theres a group that makes this
core, and we understand each other,
Ackroyd opines. Communications are
kept to a minimum. We all understand
what were trying to do what were
trying to capture in each moment of the
film.
Recalling the discouragement he
faced early in his career when trying to
bring documentary elements into
narrative projects, the cinematographer
adds, I worked early on with directors
who were actually kind of afraid to make
the film better. I remember an editor
saying, Your camerawork and my editing
will look s--- unless, when you do a
track, you come to the end and hold it.
[Otherwise] I wont be able to cut it. I

said, Have you not seen the films of JeanLuc Godard? What the cinematographer
needs are directors who dare you to break
the rules. Luckily, I have rarely had much
trouble with that.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
4-perf 35mm, Super 16mm,
Digital Capture
Aaton Penelope, XTR Prod;
Arri Alexa XT; Red Epic Dragon;
Canon Cinema EOS C500
Angenieux Optimo, Fujinon
Cabrio, TLS Morpheus,
Panavision Primo, Arri/Zeiss
Ultra Prime, Zeiss Super Speed,
Canon, Kowa
Kodak Vision3 250D
5207/7207, 500T 5219/7219
Digital Intermediate
Body
Language
Cinematographer Larkin Seiple infuses

outlandish scenarios with raw beauty
and vibrant color for Daniel Kwan and
Daniel Scheinerts Swiss Army Man.
By Andrew Fish
|
52
August 2016
Unit photography by Joyce Kim, courtesy of A24. Additional photos courtesy of Larkin Seiple.
tranded on a deserted island and

about to do himself in, Hank (Paul
Dano) spots a body (Daniel Radcliffe)
thats washed up on shore. Upon
investigation, Hank discovers that the
corpses unremitting gas can propel it
through the water and, when properly
harnessed, allow Hank to leave the island
astride the cadaver. Back on dry land, the
ostensibly deceased man whom Hank
dubs Manny begins to show signs of
life, and progressively reveals that the
parts and functions of his decaying carcass
in fact comprise a treasure trove of survival
tools.
Beneath its sophomoric surface, the
crude, chimeric comedy Swiss Army Man
which won the U.S. Dramatic
Directing Award at last Februarys
Sundance Film Festival is a visually
striking film about love, friendship, secrets
and loneliness. What is home? asks
Manny. What is life? With an abject
lack of memories, Manny absorbs all that
his socially awkward companion has to
teach as the two journey through verdant
vistas, musing upon humanitys fixation
on isolation and shame.
Written and directed by Daniel
Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively
known as Daniels, Swiss Army Man was
shot by Larkin Seiple. Graduates of
Emerson College, the three have been
working together since 2011 on such
projects as the decidedly strange short
film Interesting Ball and the surreal, frenzied music video for DJ Snake and Lil
Jons Turn Down for What.
The initial thesis [of Swiss Army
Man] was, What if we made a movie that
had the stupidest premise ever, and made
it the most beautiful thing we possibly
could? Scheinert says. We wanted this
to be a celebration of beauty and life, and
meanwhile the content would be
constantly subversive, weird and unpredictable. We gave Larkin that openended assignment, and that led to our
concerted effort to location-scout more
intensely than we ever had before, and get
the nicest lenses wed ever shot on.
I had a lot of questions, Seiple
recalls of his first look at the Swiss Army
Man script. How were we going to make
Opposite and this

page, top: On a
deserted island and
desperately lonely,
Hank (Paul Dano)
befriends a corpse
he dubs Manny
(Daniel Radcliffe),
who turns out to be
just the right
multipurpose tool
to free them both
from their physical
and emotional
predicaments in
Swiss Army
Man. Left:
Cinematographer
Larkin Seiple (right),
Dano (left) and
Radcliffe ready a
scene in which
Manny prepares to
launch a makeshift
grappling hook
from his mouth.
www.theasc.com
August 2016
53
Body Language
Top: Hank attempts to get a cell-phone signal. Bottom, from left: Dano, co-directors Daniel Kwan and
Daniel Scheinert, and Radcliffe prep a scene in which Hank and Manny have tumbled down a hill. Dayexterior forest scenes throughout the production were lit almost entirely with natural light.
it believable? How would we make this

relationship work between a man and a
corpse? My first inclination was to fight
against the absurdity of the film by
grounding it in a stark environment,
using hard sunlight and desaturating
most of the colors so it wouldnt lean
toward fantasy. But as the project
evolved, we instead focused on supporting the absurdity of the visuals and structuring them around the emotional
journey of the film. We started bleak and
54
August 2016
minimalist, with flat and locked-off

camera angles and very blunt framing
and then, as the story unfolds and
Manny comes to life, we introduced
more dramatic dolly pushes, whip-pans
and handheld. The scenes soon become
lit with rich amber fires, moonlight and
flares.
Ultimately, the approach to avoid
the feeling of a slapstick comedy was to
let it be raw and underexpose it, Seiple
continues, and to shoot anamorphic to
break it up and give it a texture. We love

the work [cinematographer] Tim Orr did
on All the Real Girls [AC April 03]; theres
a beautiful naturalism with anamorphic
lenses. For the more fantastical sequences,
we referenced the vibrant colors and
dynamic camera movement of Dean
Cundey [ASC] on earlier Spielberg films
like Hook or Jurassic Park.
Swiss Army Man was shot primarily
with an Arri Alexa XT, which was set to
4:3 sensor mode and recorded ArriRaw to
Codex XR Capture Drives for a 2.39:1
aspect ratio. The XT was most often fitted
with Cooke Anamorphic/i prime lenses;
Seiple preferred a 50mm focal length, and
75mm for close-ups. On anamorphic,
50mm is great because its intimate but
wide at the same time. Especially shooting
in the forest, you want to be able to see the
environment and really take in where you
are. Even on the close-up work, we
wanted the backgrounds to be visible, as
opposed to a longer-lens, dramatic doc
vibe. We tried to stay around T2.8. It
helped with edge sharpness on the Cooke
anamorphics, but still kept some of the
beautiful aberrations. That didnt make it
easy on first AC Matthew Sanderson, as
2.8 on anamorphic is quite shallow.
Cameras were provided by Eastside
Camera Services.
The production limited lens filtration to Mitomo True NDs, which are
Seiples preferred choice, he says. When
you stack most ND [filters], they tend to
shift magenta or green, but True NDs
shift the color cooler or warmer if you
stack them, which is much easier to
correct.
Shooting on a tight schedule
predominantly on practical forest locations, the filmmakers had little time for
lighting. The plan was to try to control it
to a degree, Seiple says. The entire scout
was overcast, which was completely workable, but by the time we started shooting,
we had beautiful, vibrant sun every day.
Trying to control that would have slowed
us down too much, so we just picked our
angles and went for it. We had several
[Arri] M90s, but by the end of week one
we decided to dispense with them for the
most part and try to time it out so every-
thing was backlit and if the sun went

away, it wasnt the end of the world. We
tried to add negative fill when we could, or
an eye light for crucial moments, but the
pace was so breakneck that we tended to
embrace the locations we chose. The
movie was shot almost entirely with
natural light.
I did not appreciate enough, until
we started shooting, just how important
scheduling weather would be, Scheinert
notes with a laugh, but Larkin did. He
worked with our first AD [ Jesse Fleece]
intensely, scheduling and rescheduling
each day because he knew that his
main light source was out of his control
and that paid off a lot.
With inherently variable light from
scene to scene and even shot to shot,
Company 3 colorist Sofie Friis Borups
assistance in post was another essential
element in maintaining lighting continuity. Borup offers, When the sun hits a
face and in the next shot the face is in
shadow, we had to bring the shadow up a
bit and the sun spot down, and make it as
consistent as possible.
Sofie is an amazing colorist,
Seiple enthuses. We spent ages coloring
this movie because of all the visual effects
that had to be dropped into it. We colored
three times [at Company 3s New York
facility], and then she flew out to L.A.
twice. It was this hopscotch of a coloring
session that [proceeded periodically] over
the course of a month.
Day exteriors were captured at
1,600 ISO to provide latitude in the highlights. In that way, Seiple explains, you
have 8 stops above exposure and 5 stops
below, which helped us out a lot. For the
night work, we went back to 800 [ISO], as
I tend to expose night scenes quite dark
but wanted the latitude to print up, which
we did end up doing. I could [expose
normally] but know that I still had information there for the worst-case scenario.
For the bulk of the predominantly
single-camera shoot, Seiple served as
operator on dolly, slider, jib and handheld
work, with Dana Morris traveling in to
operate Steadicam when required. The
productions preferred dolly was the J.L.
Fisher Model 11, as it was small enough to
Top: Hank and Manny share one of many candid moments, in this case aboard their makeshift
commuter bus, which the productions art department built primarily with objects found in the
forest. Middle: Scheinert offers direction to Dano for a scene aboard Hank and Mannys sprucedup discarded golf cart. Bottom: Kwan, Seiple, Scheinert and 1st AC Matt Sanderson (peeking
from behind) have some fun on set.
www.theasc.com
August 2016
55
Body Language
Right: Hank
dresses up as
Sarah to help
super-charge
Mannys powers, a
scheme that
ultimately results
in a quiet
exchange of
private thoughts.
Middle: The crew
readies the oddly
poignant nightexterior scene.
Bottom: Manny
tears it up at the
duos dance party.
fit into narrow ravines and riverbeds.

What might be the movies signature image Hank riding Manny
across the ocean was shot with the
XT on open water in a fishing bay just
south of Los Angeles. For the close-ups,
the actors were on a wide knee-board,
Seiple describes. Our key grip, Nick
Kristen, rigged truss off of the front of a
flat, bottomed-out picture boat, and then
dragged the line and connected them to
it, [pulling] them parallel to the camera,
which was mounted to a stabilized
Filmotechnic Flight Head 5 on a J.L.
Fisher Model 23 Sectional Jib. We shot
most of [the close-ups] 34 frontal and
34 back, he says. We could swing the
jib in front and from behind to get those
angles. Bill Boatman was the operator on
the wheels for the crane shot as I worked
the zoom.
Indeed, as time constraints and
logistics would not allow for lens changes
during this so-called Jet Ski sequence,
the filmmakers opted to use an
Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm (T2.8)
12x zoom an unusual choice for a
production shot nearly entirely on
primes. The lens worked particularly well
during the sequences wide shots, which
were again captured from a boat with a
jib-mounted camera, but this time track56
August 2016
ing a stunt double; the double was dragged

by a motorboat that was later removed in
post, along with its wake. We were about
50 yards away, Seiple says, doing crashzooms in and out, trying to get the shot.
Theres a really fun zoom shot [that made
it to the final cut] that was actually us
doing a zoom-in to reframe but we did
it slow enough that the Daniels said, That
was amazing! Theres a zoom-out that
they kept in the movie as well. The directors had never talked about using zooms
in the movie, but they ended up being
wonderful.
The slow-motion footage for the
Jet Ski sequence was generally shot at 48
and 60 fps, though frame rates as high as
96 fps were employed.
A day-exterior LUT was designed
for the production to boost contrast and
bring out richer colors in the shadows,
Seiple says, while not clipping the highlights. Because of the green ambience
from the deep-woods foliage, our dayexterior LUT also helped suppress highlevel green saturation, which can cause the
image to feel overly digital.
A slightly lower-contrast LUT was
employed for night shoots for better visibility. We had a wonderful [on-set] DIT
named Matt Conrad, whom Ive worked
with for a long time and have brought
onto every project I can, the cinematographer enthuses. We baked the look into
the dailies so that everyone had a reference, and when we went to work with
Sofie, she re-graded it to her look. The
biggest thing that we changed was the
green. We wanted the forest to have more
of an emerald vibe, so we had to do a
specific key just for that. Now the forest
feels really lush and idyllic.
Borup adds, We made sure things
didnt go too neon, and that all the greens
and yellows in the trees didnt get too saturated. That made a big difference in
making it more filmic. [In that regard,
adjusting] grain also helped. The production used a Company 3-created grain
image, which was derived from actual
35mm 500T stock.
I think its really important for the
cinematographer to be involved [in the
grade], she continues. Its Larkins vision
Left: Kwan helps

secure vines to
Radcliffes wrists so
Mannys limp body
can be puppeteered
by Hank, who
teaches his blankslate buddy what its
like to go out to
dinner. Below: The
crew readies the
restaurant scene.
of how the movie is supposed to be. If he

couldnt capture certain things on set, we
would try to solve those problems
together and possibly save what he
couldnt get on [camera]. Its a collaboration. Borup performed the grade in
2288x1716 resolution with Blackmagic
Designs DaVinci Resolve first with
version 11, then migrating to 12 toward
the end of the sessions when the facility
upgraded for a 2K DCP final deliverable.
The directors and Seiple agree
that the Swiss Army Man shoot saw few
easy days. Most of our locations were
remote, so every 12-hour day ended up
being 10 hours due to travel, the cinematographer notes. We had wire work,
www.theasc.com
water work, a child, pyro, stunts every

day, night exteriors, live animals, a bear.
[Seemingly simple] scenes in the woods
were complicated, with body gags and
water shooting out of peoples mouths.
Every day was a unique challenge.
Mannys ability to dispense drinking water from his mouth was a liveactor gag devised by special-effects artist
Jason Hamer, who was also responsible
for the construction of several different
Manny bodies for widely varying
purposes throughout the production.
The water-fountain effect is first
demonstrated in a cave, in which the
only interior light was a LitePanels 1x1
Bi-Color as an eye light, Seiple says.
(The scene was shot in Hollywoods
August 2016
57
Body Language
Right: Hank and

Manny take a selfie
together while on an
imaginary vacation.
Bottom: Seiple
captures the moment
with an Arri Alexa XT.
Bronson Canyon, at the same rock

tunnel from which the Batmobile
emerged on the 1960s Batman show.)
The cinematographer explains that he
obscured the discordantly arid Southern
California exterior that appeared
through the caves entrance by utilizing a
blown-out look for day interiors, and
supplemented bounced sunlight with an
Arri M90 and two 800-watt Jo-Lekos.
Realizing that Mannys powers
are enhanced when he experiences hope
for a romantic relationship of his own,
Hank sets out to help him visualize what
58
August 2016
it might be like to court the woman

of his dreams. To set the scene, Hank
gathers up tree branches, vegetation and
assorted garbage from the surrounding
woods to build a mock-up of a
commuter bus a contrivance crafted
by Daniels longtime production
designer, Jason Kisvarday, and his team,
primarily from items found on location
in a private forest outside of San
Francisco.
We tried to keep consistent light
for the bus sequence, Seiple says, so we
shot the majority of it in the morning,
with sun coming in from the left, and

supplementing that with an M90. Our
gaffer, Matt Ardine, built his own 2-by4-foot light units we called them
Matty Pads which are small light
boxes with LiteGear Hybrid VHO
LED LiteRibbon inside that can do
tungsten or daylight, with a layer of 14
Grid Cloth and an Image 80 egg crate.
They used a Kino backing [plate], and
we could fly them around and instantly
dim them up or down without color
change.
For the magical moments on the
bus, as Seiple describes, we switched to
these really funky old JDC [Cooke] Xtal
Express 35mm, 85mm and 100mm
lenses. Kwan relates, The bokeh was all
[distorted] on the edges; it felt a lot more
alive and organic. I think that was something we wanted to really push forward
with this film to make a lot of the
imagery and sound design evoke very
primal and human physical feelings,
almost evoking sense memory.
I prefer to use older glass as
opposed to a filter, Seiple adds, because
theres much more of an innate, otherworldly feel to it. There was a real glow.
The dreamlike imagery on the bus
began with a slow, dramatic, sliderenabled pull-out on Dano, who is
Top: Hank and

Manny each share
an important piece
of news by
firelight. Bottom:
Firelight on the
production was
enhanced by a
custom-made fire
pie fitted with
24 MR16 100-watt
bulbs and covered
with chicken wire,
diffusion, and red
and yellow gels.
Attached to the
bottom of it was a
Doug Fleenor 24channel dimmer
pack, Seiple
explains. Each
bulb could be on
its own dimmer to
add more
animation to the
fire.
revealed in his makeshift Sarah outfit

and wig. With daylight fading, an M90
was used to backlight the actor in brilliant sunlight and trigger horizontal
flares, yielding a stylized beauty shot that
leads into a lovingly crafted homage to
Spielbergs Jurassic Park, complete with
the classic dinosaur films iconic melody.
I didnt think we were going to get the
song, Seiple marvels. I was like, No
way will they give us the rights to use
this amazing song for a movie about
farts.
The bus was ultimately required
to explode, creating an ideal opportunity
for Kisvarday, who specializes in practical gags. We scored all the supports of
the bus and tied ropes and strings to
them, and we had an air-mortar filled
with sawdust and baby powder,
Kisvarday relates of the lo-fi effect. At
the count of three, several people hiding
off-camera tugged on their strings and
pulled [about half of ] the set over, as we
set off the air mortars and Larkin flashed
a few lights to make it look like there
was some sort of pyrotechnic explosion.
Kisvarday also designed an effect
that provided the backdrop to Hank and
Mannys nighttime, airborne escape
from a bear. The footage was a nightwww.theasc.com
August 2016
59
Body Language
exterior pickup shot in my backyard,
the production designer says. A couple
friends and I built this miniature 6-foot
tree and attached a cable to the top of it,
and led that to a pulley attached to a
branch high up in the real tree [above it].
The camera secured on a tripod and
facing up captured the fake tree as it
was lowered. Small lengths of pipe were
in place to break miniature branches as
the tree descended. They later composited in the two guys flying through the
tree, Kisvarday adds. The tree was lit
with ETC LED Source Fours to serve as
moonlight. The sequence was shot with a
Red Epic Dragon 6K fitted with Zeiss
Super Speed Mark 3s.
I love miniatures, Kisvarday
continues with a laugh, and I always try
to work them into projects usually
unsuccessfully. Its become a joke that
thats my first solution to a lot of things.
Hank and Mannys subsequent
descent through the trees necessitated the
use of a chest mount in order to fit a Red
Epic Dragon shooting 6:1 Redcode
Raw to 256GB Red SSDs onto
Radcliffes body, with a Cooke S4 25mm
lens facing the actor. With the camera in
place, Radcliffe stood in a darkened room
surrounded by a circular rig of LED
pixel tubes, which simulated moon-
Hank rides Mannys corpse like a Jet Ski. The scene was captured on open water with an Arri Alexa XT mounted to a stabilized Filmotechnic
Flight Head 5 on a J.L. Fisher Model 23 Sectional Jib. While Swiss Army Man was shot primarily with prime lenses, this sequence employed an
Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm (T2.8) 12x zoom.
60
August 2016
Scheinert and Seiple plan the next move.
light circling around him as though he

were falling head over heels, Seiple
explains. The tubes are RGB, have 16
pixels per meter and take DMX directly.
There were six people hitting [Radcliffe]
with branches, and [there was] someone
behind him with a tree so that when he
landed, the tree would end up against his
back. We shot him against a 20-by-20
solid, as we were trying to pull it off practically.
Particularly useful for the bearattack scene were three Condors, each
fitted with a theatrical moving-light rig
comprised of two Vari-Lite VL4000
Spots, two GLP Impression X4s and a
wireless DMX receiver that Ardine
controlled via a GrandMa2 lighting
console, and remotely via iPad or iPhone.
We never had to extend a lift up or down,
Seiple notes, or even put a [crewmember]
in it. They were all unmanned Condors,
which made it a lot quicker.
Ardine notes, The Condors were
placed as a straight backlight and two kickers at 45-degree angles. The Vari-Lite
4000 Spots have a large zoom range and a
long throw to light specific parts from far
away. The X4s were used to wash parts of
the background.
Also used for the bear scene, Seiple
relates, were two Matty Pads mounted on
[a single] stand with a wireless DMX
receiver so that we had a large mobile soft
source.
Sheinert credits Ardine with

another night-exterior lighting array,
which was used throughout the production. The co-director describes the
rigging as a lo-fi lighting grid with
complex lighting setups all [linked] to a
board, so that we could switch lighting
cues and tweak things really
quickly, after very brief dialogue with
Larkin which allowed us to shoot a
pretty ambitious amount. It was a lighting grid like you would have in the
studio, except he was doing it out in the
woods, using speed rail or whatever we
had around, or attaching [fixtures] to
trees in non-invasive ways. If we had a
gap in time, like a costume change, Matt
could put on a little disco show to keep
us all entertained.
Seiple adds that Ardines rig
comprised ETC Source Four Series 2
[LED] Lustr units, which were [hung]
in trees or used to hit bounces that were
rigged in trees. These lights have a
seven-color light engine, which allows
us to use it as moonlight fill for one shot
or fire-flickers for another without the
need to change gel. By putting a wireless
DMX receiver on each light, they could
float around the set and be quickly
utilized anywhere.
Further, Seiple supervised the
construction of a rig dubbed a fire pie
to supplement firelight. It was like a
covered wagon, he says, but we built a
61
Body Language
Right and bottom,

left: For a nightexterior scene in
which Hank and
Manny are
attacked by a bear,
the production
employed three
Condors, each
fitted with a
theatrical movinglight rig and a
wireless DMX
receiver. The fire
pie and two
custom-made LED
light pads provided
illumination as
well. Bottom, right:
A crew member
works on a
Condor rig.
circle like a pie and we put [24]

MR16 [100-watt] bulbs in there, and
covered it with chicken wire with diffusion and red and yellow gels. It has a kind
of violent flicker effect to it, but because
there are so many sources, its also soft.
Seiple notes that an Arri Alexa
Mini was used for pickup shots, including
a flashback sequence of Hank on the
bus, and that a Sony PMW EX3 was
used for a news-footage sequence and the
movies final shots of Manny in the ocean.
When the duo suffer a perilous fall
into a river, Manny reveals his ability to
serve as an air tank, which obliged the
filmmakers to shoot an underwater
sequence in an outdoor pool about an
hour north of Los Angeles. A flyswatter
62
August 2016
was mounted on a Condor over the

water, and M90s on stands were aimed
toward the submerged actors.
We had to make it feel like a
riverbed, says Seiple, but we couldnt
get the pool dirty because it would have
required a massive cleaning fee. Instead,
we layered it with black tarp [and added
bits of plant material]. Underwater
operator Ian Takahashi employed an
Alexa XT and 25mm Cooke S4 lens
encased in a HydroFlex housing for the
sequence.
In a comically stirring segue back
to dry land, Manny launches himself and
Hank above the waters surface in a series
of slow-motion shots, which were
captured at the same swimming pool
with a Phantom Flex4K fitted with a

Cooke S4 25mm lens recording
Phantom .cine raw files to CineMags at
2,000 fps and 2040x1152 resolution.
Two stunt doubles on a wire rig were
pulled upward at speed against a greenscreen and beneath lighting designed to
match a plate that was shot with a Red
Epic Dragon in Eureka, Calif., during
initial location scouting. Contending
with bright daylight at the pool, the
production employed a 20'x20' Full Grid
Cloth on a flyswatter over the water, and
aimed two M90s diffused through an
8'x8' 14 Grid Cloth from just off
camera, to give it a little bit of glare,
Seiple notes.
Following this initial burst from
the water, the production then captured

the two actors themselves cascading in
slow motion over camera, relates Seiple,
who captured the shot under natural
light. Seiple adds, Its really beautiful
with the water dripping off them and
falling past camera, and theres a sun flare
peeking right through them. Shooting
Phantom is always a blast.
Reflecting on an arduous production that nevertheless, and by all accounts,
had a distinct summer camp vibe,
Kisvarday notes that the productions
ambitions were always bigger than what
we were actually able to do which is a
great way to [work], because you never
settle and never stop trying to make
things better, right up until we shoot. A
whole team of people was excited about
finally making this movie that wed been
talking about for years, and everyones
enthusiasm, energy and adrenaline
carried us through the project.
Kwan further opines that Swiss
Army Man is about how shame keeps us
alone, isolates us and creates lonely
people, and this film deals with that on
the most base level. If it boils down to one
thing, its about shame keeping us from
love, and how every act of making this
film is a way of us fighting back, and not
being shamed by creating these characters who have so much to be ashamed
of, but allowing them to be celebrated.
To read an extended Q&A with
Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, visit
www.theasc.com beginning in August.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT, Mini;
Red Epic Dragon;
Phantom Flex4K; Sony PMW EX3
Cooke Anamorphic/i, S4;
Angenieux Optimo;
JDC Cooke Xtal Express;
Innovision Probe II
Love
and Dystopia
Cinematographer John Guleserian

crafts a subtle cinematic landscape
for director Drake Doremus
sci-fi romance Equals.
By Matt Mulcahey
|
he first sparks of attraction between two people can be

stoked by the slightest of nonverbal cues sometimes
just a glance. But in the future posited by the sci-fi
feature Equals, human emotions have been all but eradicated for societys greater good. Thus, the task of expressing
the burgeoning yearnings of graphic designer Silas (Nicholas
Hoult) and his colleague Nia (Kristen Stewart) fell to cinematographer John Guleserian, with subtle shifts in focus,
color and camera movement replacing furtive looks and secret
smiles.
64
August 2016
Equals marks the fifth feature collaboration between

Guleserian and director Drake Doremus, who were once
classmates at AFI. Each of their projects has featured romance
as a thematic core, though their newest production ventures
into unfamiliar terrain for Doremus, who is not particularly a
fan of sci-fi but was drawn to the genres potential for
metaphor. To be totally honest, the genre at times comes
across to me as being very cold, and thats why I wanted to
make a film that was ultimately very warm, the director says.
To me the allegory is that technology pushes us further away
from each other. This is a film about two people who find love
and have to fight to remember how and why they feel that
way. I think that relates to todays age of dating and how many
choices there constantly are.
Exploring a new genre didnt mean abandoning
Doremus and Guleserians penchant for low contrast and
slight desaturation. As Equals colorist Aaron Peak notes, that
aesthetic plays perfectly for a movie that expresses its characters emotions through subtle visual fluctuations. Once youre
in that low-contrast world and theres no black and no white,
you become hyper-aware of those changes, says Peak.
Changes for Silas begin early in the movie when he
develops a mysterious ailment known as switched-on
Unit photography by Jessica Forde and Jae Hyuk Lee, courtesy of A24.
syndrome, or SOS, which causes

dormant emotions to bubble to the
surface. The disease is initially treated
pharmaceutically, but those who dont
stabilize are checked into the Den, a
treatment facility where they are ultimately terminated. Citizens of the
utopian society, which is known as the
Collective, are expected to self-report
the malady. Those who dont are likely
to be informed on by coworkers, neighbors and friends; thus, even when Silas
and Nia become switched-on, they
must hide their nascent feelings for fear
of being exposed. Instead, those desires
are expressed through subtle aesthetic
shifts for example, handheld invades
the previously static camerawork, and
the cool palette makes way for warmer
tones.
Its a fine line, Guleserian notes.
You dont want to make it an obvious
thing like shifting from color to blackand-white. You dont want the audience
to see it; you want them to feel it.
At the films outset, the
Collectives tranquil yet sterile environments are presented in static, wide
frames. But as the connection between
Silas and Nia deepens, the depth of field
becomes shallower, often stretching
only a matter of inches in close-ups. To
achieve that transition, Guleserian
switched from the Arri/Zeiss Ultra
Primes used in the early scenes to a set
of uncoated Zeiss Super Speeds. Even
when shooting the Super Speeds at a
wide-open T1.3, however, the depth of
field sometimes wasnt shallow enough
for the cinematographer. In those
instances, he employed a set of +1, +2
and +3 Tiffen 138mm diopters.
We wanted this film to feel
almost like a dream an ethereal experience that you can feel and almost wear
as the viewer, Doremus says.
Everything is in deep focus to begin
with, and then as Silas world becomes
all about Nia, everything else just kind
of fades away.
Guleserian opted to shoot Equals
as a one-camera show with the Arri
Alexa XT Plus, recording 3.4K
ArriRaw files in Open Gate mode to
Opposite: In the feature Equals, Nia (Kristen Stewart) and Silas (Nicholas Hoult) fall in love
despite their societys strictures against emotions. This page, top: Silas worries that he and Nia
will be discovered. Middle: Cinematographer John Guleserian frames a shot. Bottom: Hoult
works through a scene with director Drake Doremus.
www.theasc.com
August 2016
65
Love and Dystopia

Top: Nia spends
her days as a
writer, a few
desks over from
where Silas
works as a
graphic designer.
Middle and
bottom: As he
begins to feel the
symptoms of
switched-on
syndrome, Silas
notices that Nia
also isnt entirely
in step with their
coworkers.
Codex XR Capture Drives. The decision to shoot raw rather than ProRes
met with the approval of Peak, as it
allowed the colorist additional flexibility
in post when incorporating the films
700 visual-effects shots. The look of
this futuristic society is so clean that the
lack of the slight noise you get from
shooting ProRes made sense, and also it
gave us a little bit more resolution for
reframing and visual-effects work, Peak
says. It was also nice to be able to go
back a few times to the raw and adjust
the white balance and the ISO for
certain shots. Sometimes that yields a
better result than just grading those
changes into a pre-baked clip.
For
on-set
monitoring,
Guleserian largely stuck with a simple
1D LUT created by Peak to approximate the desired low-contrast, slightly
desaturated look. Occasionally a situation-specific LUT was called for, as in
the case of a sequence set in a tunnel
that leads to the Den. I wanted the
light in that tunnel to be this certain
cyan color, but the existing lighting,
which we couldnt change, was actually
orange, says Guleserian. So I had
[DIT Ivan Kovac] create a LUT that
would make everything look cyan so we
could monitor it that way on set.
66
August 2016
Such lengths were rarely necessary as with the exception of Kino

Flo Celebs, sunlight and existing location practicals Guleserian shot the
film largely with LED units that
allowed him to dial in color and output.
Principal photography was split
evenly between four weeks in Japan and
four weeks in Singapore. For the
Japanese portion of the shoot, the locations were largely practical, a decision
dictated by both financial prudence
and co-production designer Tino
Schaedlers affection for the work of
Japanese architect Tadao Ando. The
Ando-designed spaces including the
Awaji Yumebutai complex near Osaka
and the Sayamaike Historical Museum,
the combination of which provided the
setting for the Den feature a mixture
of antiseptic, monochromatic concrete
embedded within lush natural
surroundings that embody the
Collectives repressive serenity. It wasnt
a very high-budget movie, so we needed
to find practical locations that would
work which isnt easy for a futuristic
love story, Guleserian says.
Singapore provided both practical
locations and soundstages, and forced
Guleserian to venture off the beaten
path when he encountered a lack of
access to traditional filmmaking tools.
The lighting tools [we were familiar
with] in the States werent necessarily
available in Singapore, he notes; the
production ended up using such fixtures
as custom-made interconnecting RGB
LED pixel-bar wall washers, and 24volt, bi-color, high-grade LED tape that
was converted to be DMX-able.
Using the unfamiliar lighting
tools necessitated a few days of testing,
during which Guleserian and gaffer
Andy Cole brought various units from
local vendors into a soundstage. They
tested each light to ensure it wouldnt
flicker on camera, could achieve the
required color spectrum, and would play
nicely with the DMX board. A lot of
these things didnt even have brand
names that I was familiar with, recalls
Guleserian.
Silas apartment location was
Silas and Nia find one another in the crowd during a nighttime entertainment presentation.
created in Singapore by combining the

exterior of the ultramodern Reflections
residential complex designed by
Polish-American architect Daniel
Libeskind with a soundstage set for
the interiors. A visit to that set during
preproduction nudged Guleserian
toward the movies 1.85:1 aspect ratio.
Originally we thought about shooting
Scope, and Drake and I even talked
about how all the environments we were
scouting would actually be really cool in
www.theasc.com
4:3, the cinematographer explains. But

when we saw the apartment sets, they
were almost constructed in [the dimensions of ] 1.85:1. Also, as we were scouting, I was shooting stills on a little Sony
a6000 in 16:9, and I just started to get
married to the idea of a similar aspect
ratio for the movie.
Silas spartan living space features
a bed, wardrobe closet and dining
counter that retract into the walls when
not in use. A large window offers a view
August 2016
67
Love and Dystopia

Right: After hes
been officially
diagnosed with
SOS, Silas is
given a new job
with significantly
less personal
interaction.
Below:
Guleserian
follows Stewart
through the
garden.
of the cityscape. Creating that view by

using greenscreen was out of the question because of the reflective surfaces
that Schaedler and co-production
designer Katie Byron selected for the
walls of the futuristic abode. Instead,
Guleserian employed a pair of xenon
Barco 40 projectors to rear-project
visual-effects plates of the city onto a
17'x30' screen located just outside the
set. To add additional light inside the
68
August 2016
apartment, Guleserian placed a Canon

EOS 7D DSLR behind the projection
screen to shoot only the portion of the
digital matte painting visible in the shot;
the image from the 7D was then fed
into two additional Barco 40 projectors,
which were rigged onto a Condor and
shot into the window through 4'x4'
frames of Grid Cloth. The cinematographer notes that he worked with
projection-effects supervisor Lester
Dunton to come up with the projection

plan, and he was on set to implement
it.
The apartments retractable
furnishings were constructed of frosted
Plexiglas and frosted glass, with the
non-camera-facing side lined with bicolor LED tape. The direction and
intensity of the key light for any given
scene could then be determined in
accordance with whichever piece of
furnishing was in use. With the
LEDs, Guleserian adds, we also had
the ability to make the apartment any
color we wanted in order to track Silas
emotional state.
Silas must guard those emotions
most vigilantly while at his job, where he
toils as a graphic designer as Nia works
just a few desks over as a writer. The
location the production found for this
workspace is in actuality the school cafeteria at Japans Nagaoka Institute of
Design. The space was re-dressed to
include a false wall where students
normally stand in line for food. A
concrete wall and trees were also added
in the courtyard to obfuscate a distant
road. The early static wide shots of the
location showcasing the cavernous
ceilings and symmetric, impersonal

workstations were lit almost entirely
by available light, and the Alexas color
temperature was set to 4,200K for a cool
blue hue. When shooting coverage,
Guleserian augmented the sunlight
with Kino Flo Celeb 200s and 400s
pushed through various levels of Grid
Cloth. For night scenes, a bank of LED
Pars was aimed through panes of frosted
glass added to the location by the
production-design team.
As impersonal as the workspace is
during the workday, it becomes Silas
and Nias refuge after hours as they
sequester themselves in a shower stall
free of prying eyes. The shower-stall
scenes were shot on a set in Singapore
within walls built of frosted Plexiglas. A
single LED pixel bar provided cyanhued illumination. We tested a lot of
different ways to approach lighting
those scenes, says Guleserian. Initially
I thought I would light up all three of
the sets walls because its such a small
space, but that one light ended up just
wrapping around their faces perfectly.
Cyan played again at Singapores
Henderson Waves bridge, which
provided another clandestine meeting
place for Silas and Nia. The highest
pedestrian bridge in Singapore,
Henderson Waves features a series of
half-rotundas with ribbed ceilings, and a
wooden, boardwalk-esque walking
path. To light the rotundas, Guleserian
used 2' and 4' LED pixel bars, and to
offset the warmth of the locations existing LEDs that dotted the railing of the
boardwalk, Half CTB was added to
each practical. Even with the Super
Speeds wide open, the Alexas ISO was
pushed to 1,600 to achieve proper exposure in contrast to the majority of the
picture, which was shot at 800 ISO.
Each LED within the pixel bars
could be individually controlled, a
feature Guleserian used to good effect
for mid-shot color changes as the
rotundas hue shifts in a wave that
sweeps from one side of the structure to
the other. We wanted the light in the
movie to have this motion and mind of
its own, the cinematographer notes.
Silas finds hope and empathy in and gleans advice from fellow SOS sufferer Jonas
(Guy Pearce, middle, center).
www.theasc.com
August 2016
69
Love and Dystopia

Right: Silas
apartment
interior which
features
retractable
furnishings such
as a bed, couch
and dining
counter was
built onstage in
Singapore. The
sets design
encouraged
Guleserian to
frame Equals in
the 1.85:1 aspect
ratio. Below:
Guleserian gets a
shot of Hoult in
the apartment
set. The view
outside the
window was a
rear-projected
cityscape.
Such sentient lighting also

appears in a scene in which Silas and
Jonas (Guy Pearce), a fellow sufferer of
SOS, discuss their shared affliction. The
night exterior was shot at the
Hyakudanen, or 100 Stepped Garden,
located at the Awaji Yumebutai
complex, which features 100 small
gardens within concrete flowerbeds.
Guleserian keyed the scene with Kino
Flo Celebs adorned with Roscos Cyan
30 and Cyan 60 gels, and also used a
quartet of Celebs for backlight that were
70
August 2016
placed in the frame for the wide shots

to get the necessary kick and then
were painted out in post. Each of the
garden squares visible on screen was
given an LED pixel bar to light its
concrete faade.
The filmmakers referenced The
Man Who Fell to Earth and Fahrenheit
451 while prepping Equals, but
Guleserian points out that the inspiration for the movies color palette actually
came from images taken by the Hubble
Space Telescope, which has been recordAmerican Cinematographer
ing its cosmic observations from just

outside of the Earths atmosphere for
more than a quarter century. For the
scene at [the 100 Stepped Garden] we
took all of these different colors from the
Hubble telescope and had the pixel bars
constantly shifting between them, the
cinematographer explains. The society
in Equals looks up to space travel as
something thats almost spiritual, so we
considered that when thinking about
how they would light their world.
Balancing those bold colors with
Equals low-contrast aesthetic was one of
the difficulties faced by Peak during the
digital grade as was seamlessly blending-in multiple layers of visual effects
from different vendors. One of the
bigger challenges was bringing all of
these CG effects into Equals very soft,
organic look, says Peak, who colored in
Blackmagic Designs DaVinci Resolve.
Visual-effects vendors arent used to
working in very subtle, slightly desaturated and cool tones, so all the interfaces
came in from the vendors very saturated
and contrast-y. We had to dial all that
back separate from the photography.
The colorists most laborious
scenes, though, had little to do with
incorporating visual effects. The meet-
ings of an underground support group

for SOS sufferers required footage from
Singapore and Japan to be mixed with
Los Angeles reshoots. John and Drake
didnt really like either the original shoot
or the reshoot for those scenes, says
Peak. They were both shot with
stronger colored lights than the rest of
the film, so for those scenes we did a lot
of keying and windowing and a little bit
of roto to isolate the more saturated
colors in the background and on the
rims of faces, to get those way down into
the right palette.
As his starting point, Peak used a
custom soft 1D LUT, eschewing Arris
3D LUTs because of the level of saturation and contrast they impose on the
image. The grade then became more
about matching the tone from scene to
scene rather than technically matching
the look of locations. It wasnt important for the same location to look
[exactly] the same when we revisit it at
different points in the film, Peak says.
It was more about the feel from the
previous scene and the emotional arc of
the film.
That emotional arc was paramount, Doremus affirms. This is not a
film about intellectual ideas but simply
emotional ones, he observes. I love the
way the film feels, and a lot of that has
to do with Johns [cinematography] and
his commitment to that feel. To me its
his best work yet.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa XT Plus
Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime,
Zeiss Super Speed
Telecine &
Color Grading
Jod is a true artist with
a great passion for his craft.
John W. Simmons, ASC
Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388

Jod@apt-4.com
Post Focus
Going Big
By Noah Kadner
Its another sleepless night for Sophie (Ruby Barnhill) as she

wanders through her home at the orphanage. Hearing a noise
outside, she peeks out the balcony window to see a 25' giant (Mark
Rylance) creeping through the streets. Their eyes meet and he
absconds with her to his cottage in Giant Country. Not the monster
he initially appears to be, however, the self-proclaimed Big Friendly
Giant shows Sophie the ways of dream catching chasing down
flitting balls of light for delivery to the slumbering populace. Sophie
takes to calling her new friend BFG, and the two team up with the
queen of England (Penelope Wilton) to rid the world of the giants
much-larger and decidedly nasty brethren.
Adapted from Roald Dahls popular 1982 childrens book of
the same name, The BFG marks the latest collaboration between
director Steven Spielberg and director of photography Janusz Kaminski, whose partnership dates back to 1993s Schindlers List. The BFG
is the first feature the duo shot entirely digitally with Arri Alexa
cameras and Panavision Primo lenses.
Considering the storys massive characters and fantastical
settings, the filmmakers realized early on that extensive motion
capture and virtual cinematography would be critical techniques for
bringing the story to life. Weta Digital handled all of the films visual
effects, creating a powerful array of tools that enabled Spielberg and
72
August 2016
Kaminski to bring their traditional filmmaking skills into the virtual

world.
Joe Letteri, Wetas senior visual-effects supervisor, explains
the methodology: We got very excited when Mark Rylance was
cast as BFG, because hes such a great theater actor. We asked, Can
we take this idea of [a theatrical performance] and combine it with
motion capture? So we came up with moody mo-cap, which
includes props and cinematic lighting to give Mark something to
work off of just like a stage production. The difference was that
Steven and Janusz were right there with him and the other actors.
It gave us a great way to bring all the live-action elements of filmmaking together with performance capture and visual effects.
For the motion capture, we use highly calibrated monochrome cameras with ring lights around them, Letteri continues.
Your stage becomes a volume and each camera triangulates a
portion of that volume. The actors wear a head rig with a boom arm
holding a small HD camera that captures their facial performances.
Weve written a lot of our own proprietary tools for that [process].
We always wanted Mark and Ruby to be able to act
together, he adds, but because [we were working with] two very
different scales, we had to do both halves of the performance separately. Wed build giant sets on the mo-cap stage with all the props
scaled down to human size, so Mark could [interact with] everything. Then we would go through it again for Sophies size with
Mark up on risers or a camera feeding his image onto a screen we
The BFG image courtesy of Storyteller Distribution Co. and Disney Enterprises.
Motion capture, live-action sets and virtual cinematography were all brought to bear for the story of Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), a young orphan,
who befriends the Big Friendly Giant (Mark Rylance) in the feature adaptation of Roald Dahls book The BFG.
had on a pole, to give Sophie something to

play off of directly.
As production commenced, Technicolors supervising digital colorist, ASC associate Michael Hatzer, worked with Kaminski
to help define the look of the film. Joe
Letteri and part of his team worked with
[ASC associate] Josh Pines, Janusz and me in
Los Angeles to create a suitable LUT for all
the visual-effects and live-action material,
says Hatzer. Our team here at Technicolor
which includes project manager Ladd
Lanford, producer Bob Peishel and color
assistant Chris Jensen worked closely
with Janusz and Amblin Partners post executive Mark Graziano to develop a comprehensive color-management pipeline that
insured continuity from on-set dailies
through final home-video deliverables.
Our Technicolor mobile DI trailer,
outfitted with a Christie DLP projector, was
used to grade and review 2K projected
dailies, Hatzer continues. Dailies colorist
John Vladic graded dailies with [Blackmagic
Designs] DaVinci Resolve. When production
moved to the U.K. for additional aerial and
visual-effects shoots, Technicolor London
adapted the dailies-grading workflow to
[FilmLights] Baselight.
The BFG was shot primarily at
Mammoth Studios in Vancouver, Canada,
with additional location work done in
England and Scotland. The movie is bookended by sequences captured on mostly
live-action sets, including Sophies orphanage and Buckingham Palace. The bulk of
the remainder was captured in entirely
virtual environments, including Giant Country and Dream Country.
The orphanage was basically a full
practical set with extensions, explains
visual-effects supervisor Guy Williams, who
supervised Wetas visual-effects efforts
during production and post. One interesting aspect was our virtual-cam tent, which
had all the previs tools and a virtual version
of the set. Steven and Janusz could go
inside and use a virtual camera to decide if
they wanted to change an angle or a shot.
Steven really enjoyed working with the
handheld unit, which had a small screen
along with two 55-inch monitors at either
end of the v-cam table. You hold it like a
camera and it behaves like one, but it only
weighs a few pounds. So Steven could plan
shots inside the v-cam tent and then go out

onto the real set and shoot.
We also did a lot of SimulCam and
SimulCap, Williams continues. SimulCam
represents the virtual environment through
the motion-picture cameras viewfinder,
while SimulCap captures mo-cap performances in real time and feeds the virtual
character, or characters, back into the
camera. It meant that the camera team had
a live-action movie shoot, where they could
look at the characters and environment and
figure out how they wanted to frame their
camera in real time. So if Janusz wants to try
to find a great angle on a window-insert
stage, he can still see the rest of the wall
and bias the framing [accordingly].
BFGs dash from the orphanage to
Giant Country is described in the book as
being so fast that the landscape blurs away.
A lot of that sequence was virtual just
because of the limitations of practical cinematography, notes Williams. Its hard to
safely get a camera going 20 feet in the air
at 60 miles an hour down London city
streets. But once we got out into the countryside, we did an aerial-unit shoot over
northern England and Scotland and
captured things that would be used for
background plates.
Sophie and BFG travel to Dream
Country by trekking up a mountain to a
tree, whose reflection in an adjacent lake
reveals an alternate plane abuzz with luminous dreams, like so many super-sized,
multicolored fireflies. The two friends leap
into the water and emerge on the other
side, where the reflection is now their reality. There are so many wonderful
sequences in this film that were a real joy for
me to grade, Hatzer enthuses. I love the
transition from the rain sequence [in Giant
Country], through BFGs ascent into the
clouds, and into the fantastical world of
Dream Country.
After bottling up a few selected
dreams, Sophie and BFG hatch a plan to use
their procurements to enlist the queens
help. Successfully securing an audience with
the monarch, the unlikely pair is given the
royal treatment at the palace. One of my
other favorite scenes is with the queen in
the ballroom, where BFG is having breakfast, says Hatzer. You see BFG walking to
his table and the light is streaming in. We
www.theasc.com
created a really fun and beautiful golden

look that we were all very happy with.
Hatzer graded the final version of The
BFG in Autodesks Lustre using 2K DPX files
on an Eizo ColorEdge CG247 monitor in the
2.39:1 aspect ratio. Weta supplied mattes
for a majority of the different characters,
which allowed us to pick out areas within
the frame, says Hatzer. The challenging
part was seamlessly blending the practical
lighting on Sophies character within all the
CGI worlds. With Janusz and Stevens direction, I would augment key, shadow and
highlights, particularly on BFGs face, in order
to bend the Weta footage a little closer to
[the filmmakers] signature style and level of
contrast and highlights. The goal was to
make BFG as realistic [as we could], and the
lighting as dramatic as possible.
In addition to delivering a neutral
base grade on many live-action plates, and
overseeing dailies and final grading, Hatzer
also graded the films many final deliverables. This is Janusz and Stevens first film
graded in Dolby Cinema EDR, he reveals.
The DI opened up a lot of creative ideas for
them. I think they really enjoyed the ability
to put additional finessing into the shots
and take them to another level.
We werent sure how the story was
going to translate from the book, Letteri
confesses, but the more we saw Mark and
Ruby working together, and the more we
saw that relationship between BFG and
Sophie start to work on the screen, the
easier it became for us to add in additional
qualities. We added warmth into the environment, and used the idea of dreams as
light sources to give us color and magic.
Steven always puts tons of depth
and complexity into his movies, observes
Williams. He and Janusz really loved this
project and wanted to do the best job they
could. I was constantly blown away by the
way people were crafting this movie, and it
was amazing to watch them really swing for
the fences. We were able to get such
genuine and beautiful performances
while really striving to make not just another
kids movie, but a great movie.
August 2016
73
Filmmakers Forum
A behind-thescenes shot from
the making of
Life, on which
cinematographer
David Stump,
ASC put the
pioneering lightfield capture
system Lytro
Cinema through
its paces.
Seeing the Light in Life

By David Stump, ASC
Light-field capture, or computational imaging, has been

hailed by many as the future of filmmaking. While we are admittedly
still in the early stages, the technology itself promises to deliver new
opportunities in the way we capture images. I recently had the
opportunity to serve as director of photography on Life, the first short
film captured with Lytro Cinema a pioneering light-field capture
system that was introduced at NAB this year. This article relays my
experience on the project, shot for director Robert Stromberg, and
serves as an introduction to light-field cinematography for readers
who may not be familiar with the concept.
Preparing for Life
As the chair of the Camera subcommittee for the ASC, and
as a matter of personal interest, Im often asked to evaluate new
prototype technologies. When Lytro reached out to Robert and the
Virtual Reality Company production studio to assemble Life, I was
asked to be the cinematographer, both through my ASC affiliations
and as the chief imaging scientist at VRC.
The concept for Life was developed and designed by Robert,
and the shots were defined in collaboration with Jeff Barnes, Lytros
executive director of studio productions, to showcase the capabilities
of the technology. The short is a visual poem that tells the story of a
74
August 2016
boy and girl as they traverse from youth to old age. It was the first
use of the system on a production set and that along with a tight
deadline for our NAB premiere contributed to making Life a brave
and exciting endeavor.
We knew going in that we needed to present Lytro Cinema
as a practical, production-friendly solution, with images that could
intercut seamlessly with conventional footage, so we decided to
capture half of the shots on the Arri Alexa SXT. I want to relay a big
thank-you to Arri for supporting the project and providing us with
production gear.
Though it will get there very soon, the Lytro camera is not yet
optimal for shooting an entire show or feature, due to the amount
of data and the current size of the camera in its first-generation
state. In its present incarnation the camera is best used for shots that
are visual-effects oriented or otherwise impossible to capture traditionally.
Light Field
I have been following the development of light-field capture
and plenoptics since the first research papers on the topic came out
of Stanford University. There are different approaches to light-field
capture, but the fundamental principles are generally the same. A
light field is a collection of rays of light that reflect off of objects,
generally defined by whatever is in ones view. We interpret these
rays from the points of view of our eyes, which help our brain
Images courtesy of Lytro.
perceive an objects position in the world. If

you then think about a light field in terms of
camera capture, traditional cameras capture
an image from a single lens, and stereo
cameras from two lenses; in the case of
Lytro Cinema, however, light can be
captured from multiple vantage points, as if
there were an array of hundreds of thousands of cameras standing side by side,
perfectly synced to capture a scene. Lytro
has developed several technologies that
enable this type of capture, along with software that interprets the light field by
computing the angles of the rays arriving at
the sensors.
Light-field capture in the Lytro
Cinema system is made possible through
the use of a micro-lens array, which is the
equivalent of millions of lenses that are built
at the wafer scale and inserted between the
main camera lens and the camera sensor.
The micro-lens array takes the light within a
scene and breaks it apart into the color,
intensity and direction of the rays, which are
captured by a collection of pixels under each
micro lens, on the sensor. It takes a bit to
digest all of this and without getting too
deep into the weeds, I would recommend
watching some of the detailed video
presentations, easily searchable online,
given by Lytros head of light-field video, Jon
Karafin.
The magic behind Lytro Cinema lies
in the fact that each captured pixel has color
properties, directional properties and a
calculated awareness of its exact placement
in space. As the process produces a lot of
data, Lytro Cinema isnt just a camera; its an
end-to-end solution. The workflow includes
a camera, a server for storing and processing light fields, and software plug-ins that
work hand-in-hand with off-the-shelf
production solutions.
Since we were going to be working
with an alpha camera, my gaffer, Craig
Cowboy Aines, and I flew up to the Lytro
headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., early
on to get a feel for the system and gauge
our cabling and lighting needs. The camera
has a variable length extending from about
6'-11', depending on framing and refocusing range. The unit had substantial weight,
so from a planning perspective we needed
to be adequately prepared for the mechanics of moving, panning, tilting and dollying
These before (top) and after (bottom) images illustrate the light-field systems ability to pull
depth mattes for background replacement without the use of blue- or greenscreen or the need
for rotoscoping.
on set. We also had to take into consideration the parameters of shooting at very high
frame rates, with a fixed T-stop lens at the
sensors native ISO, which was around 200.
Given these circumstances, Cowboy and I
went to Mole-Richardson to speak with
honorary ASC member Larry Mole Parker, in
order to spec out lamps that would give us
the horsepower to create beams and shafts
of light within smoke at the illumination
levels we would need for a successful shoot.
One of my early mentors, Phil Lathrop, ASC who shot The Pink Panther and
the Peter Gunn television series using very
high key-light levels taught me how to
control big lighting units and how to use
hard light. It was very rewarding to draw on
his mentorship as part of this project.
Set Life
The experience on set with Lytro
www.theasc.com
Cinema was designed to be sensitive to the

standard workflow of traditional cinematography. In addition to capturing the
light-field data comprised of 755 raw
megapixels with 16 stops of dynamic range
we took advantage of the cameras ability to capture QuickTime ProRes, which
allowed us to review files on-set, immediately after the take. Because the metadata
in the light field is tied directly to the information in the preview capture, we could
make on-set decisions which got baked
into the metadata of the file system just
like you would on a traditional shoot, and
then see those versions in the real-time
preview. Those files were then uploaded to
our editor, Damien Acker, based at the Third
Floor, who began cutting while we were still
on set.
As a cinematographer, there really
wasnt much about the Lytro Cinema workAugust 2016
75
Top and middle: Cast and crew work onstage with the Lytro Cinema system. Bottom: Stump (left) adjusts
the frame as director Robert Stromberg (right) watches the monitor.
76
August 2016
flow that was any different to me than a

typical shoot; the Lytro on-set support team
made the amount of data flowing through
our project mostly invisible to me. Their
solution includes a drive array, and because
captured data moved through a 100-meter
cable, there was effectively no restriction as
far as the fiber tethering of the camera to
the drive, and the servers could be placed
anywhere for sound considerations. The
camera specs out at up to 300 fps, but for
this project we did most of the shots
between 24 and 120 fps, which still offered
us the ability to manipulate all of the
aspects of the image that make this camera
unique. At 755 megapixels, the files
coming off of the camera contain a dense
amount of data, but the end goal for Lytro
Cinema is that all of these files will be
stored and processed in the cloud.
There were many remarkable scenes
throughout the shoot, but there are a
handful that would have been impossible
to achieve with any other camera. One was
the wedding scene, where the couple is
standing at the altar in front of a preacher.
Theyre on a little walkway with an arch of
flowers behind them, and we shot this on a
bare stage, with grips walking behind the
actors while camera rolled, rather than
incorporating a blue- or greenscreen. Traditionally, that would have been very difficult
to shoot and pull mattes from, because
there is fine detail in the foliage and the
young womans hair, and we had reflective
Mylar confetti flying through the air in front
of the couple. From the light-field data, we
were able to use depth extractions to create
mattes for the couple, and composited
them into the final matte-painting environment. To be able to pull a matte from depth
alone and selectively include or remove
objects in a scene based on their depth
value was truly empowering.
Another scene that confounds filmmakers is at the start of the short, when the
boy is playing baseball with an impossibly
shallow depth of field in this case f.5.
This scene demonstrates how Lytro Cinema
enables you to select what you want in
focus in a scene, and then change the aperture of that focal plane to any desired fstop.
Seeing the Light in Post

Nuke Studio was used as the
primary creative software framework on
the post side, together with custom
computational plug-ins developed by Lytro
for depth keying and image processing. The
frames captured on set go through a
processing system that turns them into
light-field EXR files with embedded metadata to match the decisions made on set. In
the case of Life, one of our first steps in post
was to sit in on a light-field editorial session
to experiment with different possibilities
with depth of field and focus expanding
on the initial determinations made on set
with the help of preview files, and in the
initial edit.
Robert and I came out of this sixhour session with our final EDL, or lightfield decision list (LDL). When you retain the
Z-depth information of everything in a
scene and dont have to fully commit to
what was captured on set, it gives you the
ultimate creative flexibility to hone a shot
exactly the way you envision. Looking
toward the future of cinematography, these
are going to become very powerful tools.
That being said, it is still essential to retain
the original creative vision of the director
and the intended look established by the
director of photography in any production.
In the case of light-field capture or any
project for that matter it is important for
the cinematographer and director to oversee the phases of postproduction that build
on look development.
The visual-effects artists found the
ability to derive an alpha matte solely based
on depth, and to separate objects without
having to deal with any green- or bluescreen spill, to be revolutionary. Once
completed, the visual effects were dropped
into scenes, and the plates and visual
effects were then rendered as traditional
flattened 2D files to move into our DI
session, which took place at Technicolor
with colorist Jason Fabbro. The DI session
moved very quickly because the material
was in such great shape. At that point, only
minimal refinement was necessary.
All in all, we had a little over two
months from beginning to end to complete
Life. In that brief period, we were able to
produce a piece that showcases why lightfield capture is the wave of the future, and
Top: Lytro Cinema allows the cinematographer to select what is in focus and change the f-stop of that
focal plane. For this shot, Stump opted for an impossibly shallow f.5. Bottom: Stump checks the
monitor for a different setup.
to produce highly complex sequences

that otherwise would have required
substantial visual-effects man hours in
record time.
Why Light Field Matters
Over the years, Ive given a lot of
consideration to what we would be able to
do when this technology finally arrives in a
usable state, and what the most exciting
part of this adventure would be for me. The
notion of being able to derive depth data
for every pixel on a camera image is incredibly exciting.
In addition to shooting movies, Im
integrally involved in the visual-effects and
3D arenas, and the possibilities of what you
can do with the depth data that Lytro
www.theasc.com
Cinema affords is remarkable. It will give us

the ability to generate 3D movies from a
single camera, with left- and right-eye
points of view from the same lens; to derive
depth information to generate 3D incamera far more accurately; and to pull
mattes without a greenscreen. All of these
creative capabilities, along with the many
tricks with focus that can be done in post
using synthetic depth of field, introduce so
many new possibilities to filmmaking.
Its still early days for Lytro Cinema,
but the technology is advancing rapidly,
and Im looking forward to bringing it into
a studio feature or episodic project soon.
August 2016
77
New Products & Services

FilmLight Upgrades Baselight
FilmLight has introduced Baselight 5.0, the latest version of
its flagship color-finishing system. Baselight 5.0 introduces a host of
high-tech features and creative tools.
The most notable new concept is Base Grade. To give
colorists instinctual access to subtle grading, this creative tool moves
away from the traditional lift-gamma-gain approach in favor of
controls that accurately mimic the way the eye appreciates color: via
exposure, temperature and balance. Baselight 5.0 provides added
HDR capabilities through color-space families which simplify
the deliverables process for distinct viewing environments such as
television, 4K projection and handheld devices and gamut optimization to provide natural gamut-mapping deliverables and avoid
clipping when captured colors cant be displayed on a cinema or
television screen.
Baselight 5.0 boasts several tools that are tailored to give
colorists more creative control and reduce the time and energy spent
on back-and-forth with other effects and finishing systems. These
78
August 2016
SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to
newproducts@ascmag.com and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
features include: perspective operator, perspective tracking, grid

warper, dedicated keyer, paint tool, relight tool and Matchbox
shader.
Baselight 5.0 further streamlines workflows by introducing a
new approach to remote grading, whereby Baselight workstations
in different locations can collaborate. Facilities and freelancers at
remote sites can now browse any scene on their own or be locked
to the master suite and follow a grading session live. The remote
colorist can take over and suggest changes, which will be instantly
reflected on the other systems.
FilmLight has also introduced Prelight, a freely licensed Mac
OS X application designed to help cinematographers and other
professionals to author and review looks in preproduction and on
set. Prelights simple-to-operate interface makes it easy to check
how shots appear with looks or LUTs applied, and to import or add
grading decisions that can be passed downstream. Images can be
imported from almost any camera, and graded references can be
exported in almost any format.
The creative team can enhance the grade with simple but
familiar tools to create new reference stills as well as 3D LUTs or
Baselight Linked Grade files. With the render-free BLG workflow, the
grades are non-destructive; additional BLG metadata is created and
attached to the stills. The free license for Baselight for Avid or Nuke,
which makes it free to read and render BLG files, makes this workflow available to productions on any budget. An extended license
can be purchased so that when these files arrive in the Baselight
post house, or on a Daylight system for near-set dailies, the metadata is attached automatically and the BLG file becomes the basis of
the grade, which can then be refined right up to the moment the
deliverables are created. The additional license also includes
enhanced logging and monitoring capabilities.
Prelight complements the FilmLight products Flip and
Daylight, which already provide full on-set and near-set
grading capabilities. Prelight can also fit into any postproduction workflow because of the ability to export standard
ASC CDL lists and third-party formatted 3D LUTs. For realtime viewing, Prelight can interface with the majority of
professional LUT boxes or monitors.
Additionally, FilmLight has announced a new collaboration with Avid that will see both companies introduce a
new Professional Color bundle for editors. The Professional
Color bundle brings together Baselight for Avid with Avid
Media Composer in one single package, making it even
easier for editors to increase their finishing capabilities
directly within their NLE system.
For additional information, visit www.filmlight.ltd.uk.
spaces and pairs well with Blackmagic

Designs Micro Cinema camera and
GoPro cameras, as well as gimbals.
Building on the popular DH5 monitor, the DH5e is a 5" field monitor that
boasts a full-HD panel with 1920x1080
pixels and 4K support. The DH5e has
touch-screen capabilities including
pinch-to-zoom. This lightweight oncamera monitor is ideally suited for
gimbal operators or anyone using 4K
cameras such as the Sony a7S.
Sony Unveils 55" 4K OLED
Sony has introduced the PVM-X550
55" Trimaster 4K OLED monitor. The quadview monitor allows customized individual
display settings across four distinct views in
HD.
The PVM-X550 is equipped with the
same signal-processing engine as Sonys
BVM-X300, providing a 12-bit output signal
for picture accuracy and consistency. It also
supports industry-standard color spaces,
including the wider ITU-R BT.2020 for Ultra
High Definition. These all work in tandem
with Sonys Trimaster EL technology.
As demand grows for 4K and High
Dynamic Range content, production teams
and their clients need more tools for evaluating video, says ASC associate Gary
Mandle, senior product manager for Sony
Electronics. This new monitor delivers
quad-viewing flexibility in a size that meets
the need for larger, more detailed monitors
in postproduction suites.
The PVM-X550 supports HDR
through Electro-Optical Transfer Functions
(EOTF), such as S-Log3, SMPTE ST.2084 and
Hybrid Log-Gamma, covering applications
for both cinema and broadcast. The PVMX550s narrow bezel, lightweight design
and off-axis viewing performance make it
suited to wall mounting, a benefit in liveproduction environments where space is
often at a premium.
For additional information, visit
www.sony.com/monitors.
Ikan Expands Monitor Offerings
Ikan has introduced a line of 4Kcompatible on-camera monitors: the VL35,
the DH5e and the VXF7.
The VL35 is a lightweight and
compact on-camera field monitor. With a
3.5" screen, the VL35 works well in tight
The 7" VXF7 monitor is the latest

update to Ikans VX series. The VXF7 has a
full-HD plus IPS panel (1920x1200 pixels),
4K support and an SDI-to-HDMI converter.
Designed to function more like a standard
production monitor, the VXF7 has easy-toaccess knobs, professional BNC connectors,
SGO Partners With AJA

Software developer SGO and hardware developer AJA Video Systems have
announced a dynamic integration partnership. Mistika, SGOs flagship color-grading
and finishing system, is now fully compatible with AJAs line of Kona and Corvid
video-capture and playback cards, resulting
in optimized video output. The alliance
provides customers with high-quality delivery outcomes and finely tuned feature sets
to further enhance workflows. The combination of the new Mistika version with the
AJA hardware boosts support for video
www.theasc.com
and a four-pin XLR power connector. It also

has 3G-SDI, component, composite, and
HDMI inputs and outputs. This on-camera
monitor works well with cameras such as
Sonys FS7.
Ikan has also announced that it is
now the exclusive distributor in North and
South America (excluding Canada) for the
entire line of broadcast, field, high-brightness and recordable monitors, as well as
other video accessories, from South Korean
manufacturer Bon. The current Bon product
lineup includes 10-bit processing monitors
(the BEM and BSM Series), 12-bit processing monitors (BXM Series) and premium
OLED reference monitors (TXM Series). The
companys Postium Rackmount Monitors
will also be available with features such as
waveform, vectorscope, time code and
audio meters.
www.ikancorp.com.
Atto Builds ThunderLink
Atto Technology, Inc. a global
provider of storage, network connectivity
and infrastructure solutions for data-intensive computing environments has
unveiled its Gen 6 Fibre Channel product
portfolio. The Gen 6 line includes Celerity
32Gb and 16Gb Host Bus Adapters (HBAs),
formats such as 4K 3D dual-link, even at

frame rates up to 60p.
AJAs Kona capture, display and
mastering products for SD, HD, 3G, Dual
Link HD, 2K and 4K are a perfect match
with Mistika, which provides a complete
postproduction feature set. Stereo 3D
output in 4K using the Corvid 88 I/O card is
already available, along with viable future
8K capabilities for Mistika Ultima 8K
systems.
www.sgo.es and www.aja.com.
August 2016
79
both in low-profile single- and dual-port

versions. Both the 32Gb and 16Gb versions
are backward-compatible and take full
advantage of advancements for reliability
and forward error correction.
Attos additions to its Fibre Channel
portfolio will enable companies to capitalize
on their existing SAN infrastructure and
address the growing need for high-performing, scalable and secure storage to support
exponential data growth from applications
such as 4K/8K editing and high-performance computing and data warehousing,
along with the proliferation of virtualized
servers and flash arrays.
Complementing the new HBAs are
Attos FibreBridge 7500 and 6500 Storage
Controllers and Thunderbolt enabled
devices, which connect mobile computer
platforms to high-speed networks and storage infrastructures. On the Thunderbolt
front, the company has introduced a line of
Thunderbolt 3 to 40GbE devices. These
ThunderLink devices the ThunderLink
3402 dual 40Gb/s Thunderbolt to dual
40GbE and ThunderLink 3401 dual 40Gb/s
Thunderbolt to single 40GbE feature
USB-C connectors, allowing greater flexibility when connecting to any Thunderbolt 3enabled Windows platform. With protocol
speeds of 40Gbs, users can expect read and
write speeds capable of handling demanding bandwidth-intensive applications.
ThunderLink products help content
creators increase productivity and decrease
costs while incorporating a seamless workflow process, utilizing next-generation
workstations and workbooks to ingest and
edit 4K video whether in the field or in the
edit bay. Attos ThunderLink components
also feature exclusive Advanced Data
Streaming technology, enabling consistent
bandwidth and controlled acceleration of
data transfers.
www.attotech.com.
80
August 2016
Assimilate Supports ProRes, VR

Assimilate has added support in its
Scratch postproduction tools and workflow
for encoding and decoding using the Apple
ProRes 4:4:4:4 XQ codec, which is the highest-quality version of the ProRes codec for
4:4:4:4 image sources, including alpha
channels. This format has a very high data
rate to preserve the detail in HDR imagery
generated by todays highest-quality digital
image sensors.
Assimilate has also expanded its

Scratch Web cloud-platform capabilities to
offer a professional, Web-based dailies and
review tool for reviewing headset-based VR
content anywhere in the world. Once users
launch the Scratch Web review link for the
VR content, they can play back VR imagery,
pan around imagery or create a magic
window so that they can move a smart
phone around, similar to looking through a
window at the 360-degree content behind
Drylab Views Dailies

Drylab R&D has introduced Dailies
Viewer 2.7, which now runs on all iOS
devices, from the smallest iPhones up to the
12.9" iPad Pro. Dailies Viewer multitasks in
split-screen mode on iPad and iPhone 6/6s
Plus, so the application can be open alongside a script, for example. Users can
comment on takes, and draw and annotate
it. The VR content, including metadata, is

automatically formatted for 360-degree
video-headsets, such as Google Cardboard
or Samsung GearVR. The reviewer can then
make notes and comments on the mobile
device to send back to the sender.
www.assimilateinc.com.
Divergent Media
Integrates ScopeBox
Divergent Media has launched a new
version of its EditReady digital-media prep,
monitor and delivery software for DITs and
editors. With this new version, EditReady
now integrates Divergent Medias ScopeBox
software, providing users with a single workflow to quickly and easily get footage from
the camera to the editor, regardless of
camera or file format.
With support for all popular camera
and editing formats, EditReady converts
media for immediate preview and playback,
and lets users apply LUTs for color correction,
view and edit metadata, easily convert
between DNxHD and ProRes, and run simultaneous batches, allowing them to generate
proxy media or convert footage from different cameras. With ScopeBox integration,
users have dedicated, full-time scopes without the need for external hardware.
Divergent Media has also partnered
with Pomfort to integrate ScopeBox with the
latest version (5.1) of Silverstack XT,
Pomforts signature media-management
on frames with Apple Pencil or simply a

finger. Other improved features include
larger thumbnails, keyboard shortcuts and
improved streaming.
Dailies Viewer 2.7 is available in
Apples App Store and is free to download.
www.drylab.no.
software. With the integration of the ScopeBox application, Silverstack XT now offers a
variety of software emulations of video
scopes, including waveform and
vectorscope, plus new ways to visualize
video signals.
www.divergentmedia.com
and
www.pomfort.com.
MTI Film Enhances Cortex
MTI Film has unveiled the latest
version of Cortex, the companys dailies and
media-management software. Conceived
as a streamlined dailies-processing application, Cortex has developed into an end-toend solution for managing media from the
set through delivery.
Cortex can now create IMF delivery
packages for Netflix, Sony and other distributors, as well as AS02 packages for HBO.
Cortex also outputs HDR video and controls
the Dolby Color Management Unit hardware; the HDR metadata can be edited and
delivered while simultaneously monitoring
HDR and SDR.

Dead-pixel detection, included in all
Cortex editions, quickly alerts production
when a camera sensor has a fault. Deadpixel correction, a feature of Cortex Enterprise, automatically finds and repairs dead
pixels in edit masters and camera clips. Additionally, with MTI HQ or MTI-Samsung
UpRes, users can resize files up or down,
including taking HD source files up to 4K.
The latest version of Cortex also
features an improved Project Manager with
a global search tool so users can easily find
and consolidate clips from different shoot
days for revision and re-delivery to the editing room. Cortexs new Edit feature can be
used to create custom compositions on a
timeline. Color can be generated and
applied via LUTs, CDLs, stills and supported
tactile panels; Cortex is ASC-compliant with
full ACES support.
www.mtifilm.com.
81
International Marketplace
82
August 2016
Classifieds
CLASSIFIED AD RATES
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set
in bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per word.
First word of ad and advertisers name can be set
in capitals without extra charge. No agency
commission or discounts on classified advertising.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER. VISA,
Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are accepted. Send ad to Classified Advertising, American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230,
Hollywood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 876-4973.
Deadline for payment and copy must be in the
office by 15th of second month preceding publication. Subject matter is limited to items and services pertaining to filmmaking and video production.
Words used are subject to magazine style abbreviation. Minimum amount per ad: $45
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE

EQUIPMENT FOR SALEDoP/GAFFER WITH IMPRESSIVE TRUCK
AND CAMERAS
ALEXA, C300, ZEISS, FLYPACK
M18, SKYPANEL, HONDA 7000IS
WWW.WAYWEST.TV
TJs Grip Design, Inc.
Grip Rigging Accessories
5/8" fittings Mini Ball heads
www.tjthegrip.com
www.theasc.com
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE

4X5 85 Glass Filters, Diffusion, Polas etc.
A Good Box Rental 818-763-8547
HOLLYWOOD STUDIO ANTIQUES
www.CinemaAntiques.com
BUY-SELL-TRADE
Worlds SUPERMARKET of USED MOTION
PICTURE EQUIPMENT! Buy, Sell, Trade.
CAMERAS, LENSES, SUPPORT, AKS &
MORE! Visual Products, Inc. www.visual
products.com Call 440.647.4999
August 2016
83
Advertisers Index
Adorama 13, 29
AFM 87
Alan Gordon Enterprises 82
Arri 7, 25
ASC Film Manual 40
ASC Master Class 51
Aura Productions 71
B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio
21
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
63
Blackmagic Design 5
Cavision Enterprises 82
Chapman/Leonard
Studio Equip. 9
Cinebags, Inc. 83
Cinematography
Electronics 63
Cinekinetic 82
Cooke Optics 11
CW Sonderoptic Gmbh 17
Deck of Aces 83
Digital Sputnik Lighting
Systems 23
Duclos Lenses 71
Eastman Kodak C4
Filmotechnic 49
Fluotec 77
Hexolux/Visionsmith 83
IBC 85
Jod Soraci 71
K5600 15
Kino Flo 41
Lights! Action! Co. 82
Mac Tech LED 39
Mole-Richardson/Studio
Depot 82
Molinare TV & Film Ltd. 8
Movie Tech AG 82
NBC/Universal 39
Nila, Inc. 71
Off Hollywood/Vitec
Creative Solutions 27
84
P+S Technik Feinmechanik

Gmbh 83
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 82
Powermills 82
Pro8mm 82
Scheimpflug Rentals 63
Schneider Optics 2
Selected Tables 84
Super16, Inc. 83
Teradek, LLC C2-1
Tiffen C3
Treasury of Visual Effects
61
Willys Widgets 82
www.theasc.com 81
Yes Watches 50
Clubhouse News
ASC Elects Officers, Board

Kees van Oostrum has been elected
ASC president for the 2016-17 term. The other
officers are Vice Presidents Bill Bennett,
Lowell Peterson and Dean Cundey; Treasurer
Levie Isaacks; Secretary Frederic Goodich;
and Sergeant-at-Arms Roberto Schaefer.
Also elected to the Board of Governors
were John Bailey, Bennett, Curtis Clark,
Richard Crudo, Fred Elmes, Michael Goi,
Victor J. Kemper, Stephen Lighthill, Daryn
Okada, Woody Omens, Robert Primes,
Cynthia Pusheck, Owen Roizman, John
Simmons and van Oostrum. The alternates are
Schaefer, Mandy Walker, Karl Walter
Lindenlaub, Oliver Bokelberg and Cundey.
It is our task as an organization to
educate the industry on the value of the cinematographer as authors of the images, to be
involved in advancing imaging technology, and
most importantly, to promote our artistry, says
van Oostrum. Im honored to be selected
along with these officers to lead my peers and
colleagues into new visual frontiers, and
continue the educational mission of the organization.
Members Participate in
L.A. Film Fest
ASC members Joan Churchill, Amy
Vincent, Tami Reiker and Mandy Walker
86
August 2016
ASC at Cine Gear Expo

Cine Gear Expo recently wrapped its
2016 edition at Paramount Studios in Hollywood. On the first day of the event, Cine
Gear presented its Cinematography Lifetime
Achievement Award to Vittorio Storaro,
ASC, AIC; Storaro was also in attendance for
a screening of Caf Society and participated
in a discussion moderated by Jon Fauer,
ASC.
The following day, ASC members Bill
Bennett, Dean Cundey, Michael Goi,
David Klein, Charles Minsky, Donald A.
Morgan, Guillermo Navarro, James
Neihouse, Daniel Pearl, David Perkal,
Cynthia Pusheck and Lisa Wiegand
participated in a Dialogue With ASC CineAmerican Cinematographer
matographers moderated by George

Spiro Dibie, ASC. A number of other Society members participated in activities
throughout the expo, including Amy
Vincent and Bruce Logan, who were
among the judges for Cine Gears film
competitions.
Marking the end of the expo, the
ASC hosted its annual barbecue sponsored by the Sim Group at its Clubhouse
in Hollywood.
In Memoriam: Robert S. Birchard,

1950-2016
Animation editor, film historian and
longtime AC contributor Robert S. Brichard
died on May 30. He was 66.
A Los Angeles native, Birchard
worked in production as a sound editor,
animation editor and postproduction supervisor. His credits include the popular series
DuckTales and Adventures of the Gummi
Bears; the feature FernGully: The Last Rainforest; and the video releases The Return of
Jafar and 101 Dalmatians 2: Patchs London
Adventure. As a historian, he contributed to
numerous publications and authored books
including Cecil B. DeMilles Hollywood,
Silent-Era Filmmaking in Santa Barbara and
King Cowboy: Tom Mix and the Movies.
Birchard also served as president of
the Cinecon Classic Film Festival, the 52nd
edition of which is scheduled for Sept. 1-5 in
Hollywood and will be dedicated to his
memory.
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.

Photo of Kees van Oostrum by Gunther Campine. Photo of Robert S. Birchard by Lucinda Lewis.
ASC President Kees van Oostrum.
recently joined fellow cinematographer

Maryse Alberti in an educational program
titled Women Behind the Lens. Presented
as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival, the
panel was held at the ArcLight Cinema in
Culver City and moderated by cinematographer Patti Lee. After a quick screening of
clips from each participants body of work,
the discussion covered how each became
interested in cinematography and got
started in their careers, on-set experiences in
a male-dominated industry, and advice for
aspiring female cinematographers. The
panel was preceded by a brunch celebrating
the contributions of these esteemed cinematographers; during the gathering, held at
the Culver Hotel, Alberti was presented with
the Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award.
During the L.A. Film Festival Filmmakers Retreat in Palm Springs, Michael Goi,
ASC participated in a discussion about
shooting film. In conversation with film critic
Elvis Mitchell, Goi discussed the art and
science of cinematography, giving the audience a behind-the-scenes look at the making
of American Horror Story: Hotel and sharing
how-to insights on films ability to create
moods and effects. Goi also reminded the
audience of the archival power of film.
Lisa Wiegand, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression
on you?
A Clockwork Orange and Alien. I was way too young and they are deeply
burned into my memory cells.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do you most admire?
Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC classic and undeniable! Peter Deming, ASC
dark and surreal! Robby Mller, NSC, BVK fearless innovation!
Rachel Morrison (future ASC?) brave and political, shes an inspiration!
What sparked your interest in photography?
My dad taught photography, so we had cameras
and a fridge full of film. When I was 7 years old, I
wanted to be a Pet Photographer my young brain
assumed that was a thing. I traveled my neighborhood snapping pictures of pets and delivered the
prints to the owners. Never charged didnt understand that part of the biz.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?

Johnny Simmons, ASC; Tom Denove; [ASC associate] Bill McDonald;
Gyula Gazdag; Bill Dill, ASC; Steven Poster, ASC; Stephen Lighthill, ASC;
Laszlo Kovacs, ASC; and Rodney Charters, ASC, CSC. Ive had a lot of
support from many generous filmmakers. I hope I can do enough in this
life to pay it forward.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Growing up, I spent many hours at the Detroit Institute of Arts. For me,
art museums are like churches. Impactful art makes me feel connected to
humanity in a way nothing else can.
How did you get your first break in the business?
My career has been a long path of baby steps. Ive felt fortunate at every
stage of the game, and it just keeps getting better. There have literally
been times at work when Ive pinched myself to make sure I wasnt
dreaming. I love being a cinematographer, and Im glad I put all my eggs
in this basket!
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Being the first cinematographer to shoot a scripted series in my hometown of Detroit was surreal and deeply meaningful. I wish my grandparents were alive to visit the set. They were diehard Detroiters and would
have been so thrilled.
August 2016
What is the best professional advice youve ever received?

My agent, Charles Lenhoff, gives me pep talks before job interviews.
Early on he said, Tell them you want the gig. I thought he was nuts! I
assumed, If Im interviewing, obviously I want the job. Im still amazed
that when I say it, it works. In a couple instances, after the interview,
the producers thanked me for telling them,
because apparently they often cant tell if their
cinematographer candidates are actually interested.
What recent books, films or artworks have
inspired you?
Im a TV junkie. Lately, Im hooked on The People
v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, The 100
and The Last Man on Earth. Also: I was inspired by
the VR projects at Sundance 2016. I spent three
days at the VR exhibit, and now Im addicted.
Music also gets me jazzed up; currently Im into Kid
Cudi, Kate Tempest, Torres and Femi Jaye. Im reading The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female
Punk Band, by Michelle Cruz Gonzales. Her decisions are inspirational
because of her strength and purity of cause.
Where did you train and/or study?

I attended a record-breaking nine years of film
school. Undergrad at Wayne State U. in Detroit.
Graduate school at both UCLA and AFI. Then,
around the turn of the century, I taught cinematography at UCLA, LMU and AFI.
88
Have you made any memorable blunders?

No way. Why what have you heard? J.K. Most of my blunders have
been political, and those are way worse than any technical F-up.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to

try?
My all-time fave is post-apocalyptic sci-fi. But I enjoy variety in my work.
For instance, Im happy that I got to shoot the socially controversial
American Crime with John Ridley. Its invigorating to work on projects
that open minds and introduce marginalized perspectives.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
My fallback has always been mortician.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for membership?
Steven Poster, Stephen Lighthill, Johnny Simmons. Ive known them for
decades and they have each been wonderfully supportive. Having
them as sponsors makes my heart-light glow.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
Its another thing I constantly pinch myself about. It seems like just
yesterday I was a 15-year-old girl hiding out in her room, reading American Cinematographer and discovering her heroes.
Photo by Janna Coumoundouros.
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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER AUGUST 2016 STAR TREK BEYOND JASON BOURNE SWISS ARMY MAN EQUALS VOL. 97 NO.

An International Publication of the ASC

Love and Dystopia

An International Publication of the ASC

INSIDE THE 2016 INTERNATIONAL CINEMATOGRAPHY SUMMIT

The Future of the Cinematographer

CINEMATOGRAPHERS WHO PARTICIPATED IN THE ICS INCLUDED:

Yiannis Daskalothanasis, GSC

FSC (Finland) Cheong Yuk

Yang Shu, CSC (China)

An International Publication of the ASC

Visit us online at www.theasc.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

WEB DIRECTOR and ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

ART & DESIGN

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

American Society of Cinematographers

Full disclosure: I am a card-carrying, old-school Star Trek fan

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

With the tense, six-minute short Jessica, writer-director Jack

of the film. I really wanted to have that

darker quality, the cinematographer says.

RedLogFilm, Francis began by applying one

shots remain, providing the imagery with a

Mexico, standing in for the storys Texas settings. Nuttgens spoke

American Cinematographer: Did you know from the

Hell or High Water photos by Lorey Sebastian, courtesy of CBS Films.

range that covers almost all requirements,

on set. I feel that I can light an interior by

the two of you worked together previously?

Nuttgens: One of our intentions

developed, and you can only really achieve

needed to set off at pace. So David banned

incredibly dynamic. I was particularly

used all of the latitude we had to push into

as Bridges walks away from Pine

The Infiltrator directed by Brad

The Infiltrator photos by Liam Daniel, courtesy of Broad Green Pictures.

including period gangster films like Scarface

it out in studio mode with PL glass.

Reis worked with Canon EF L-series USM II

a 20-foot greenscreen with HMIs and a truss.

while nighttime sequences that featured

irector Justin Lin and cinematographer Stephen F.

Unit photography by Kimberley French, SMPSP,

Trek features to take place entirely in

Lin adds that Windon knows

coming up with solutions.

primary overlap between the previous

but the lenses held up perfectly,

previous movies] werent going to

t press time, Star Trek Beyond

coming together that was shot on

Ultra Prime 8R, for ultra-wide shots.

sidebar, page 34.)

custom look for each scene using CDLs,

sweeping moves through and around

SmallHD OLED monitors. Thus,

the ceiling of a long, curving hallway set,

he says. We were using the third axis of

movements [with a remote head], there

new lighting scheme for the familiar