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MAY 2011
$5.95Canada $6.95
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC
used to ride my 18-speed

race bike to the Librairie
Contact, a small bookshop
near the Champs lyses, the
only place in Paris where I
could buy American
Cinematographer. The ride
had to be carefully planned
too soon and the issue wouldnt
have arrived, too late and the
copies would all be sold. It was
the only way to learn how the
images I was discovering
onscreen had been achieved.
I still rely on AC for
information as well as
inspiration. One sentence in
an article will initiate a chain
of thoughts, which will then
lead me to try something
technically or stylistically
different on my next project.
photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC
TO SUBSCRIBE BY PHONE:
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The International Journal of Motion Imaging
On Our Cover: Bill and Pat Loud (Tim Robbins and Diane Lane) see their marriage and
family disintegrate on national television in Cinema Verite, shot by Affonso Beato, ASC,
ABC. (Photo by Doug Hyun, courtesy of HBO.)
FEATURES
28
40
52
60
69
Living Out Loud
Affonso Beato, ASC, ABC dramatizes televisions first reality

show for HBOs Cinema Verite
40
A Saint and a Sinner
Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC explores spiritual conflict in

There Be Dragons
First Dance
Byron Shah assesses the Arri Alexa on Prom
Decoding Digital Imagers: Part 1
AC explains digital-imaging sensors
52
A Hollywood Affair
Snapshots from the ASC Awards weekend
DEPARTMENTS
8
10
12
16
82
84
88
89
90
92
94
96
69
Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: ASC William A. Fraker Heritage Award winners
Production Slate: Cameraman Academy Sci-Tech Awards
Post Focus: The KB Workflow
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
In Memoriam: Don Peterman, ASC
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Tobias Schliessler
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES

D V D Playback:The Sweet Smell of Success Network
M a y
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The International Journal ofMotion Imaging
Visit us online at
www.theasc.com
PUBLISHER Martha Winterhalter
EDITORIAL
EXECUTIVE EDITOR Stephen Pizzello

SENIOR EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Stephanie Argy, Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard,
John Calhoun, Bob Fisher, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray, Jim Hemphill,
David Heuring, Jay Holben, Mark Hope-Jones, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer,
John Pavlus, Chris Pizzello, Jon Silberg, Iain Stasukevich,
Kenneth Sweeney, Patricia Thomson
ART DEPARTMENT
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Gore
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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 91st year of publication, is published
monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A.,
(800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.
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American Society of Cine matographers

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The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but

an educational, cultural and pro fes sion al
or ga ni za tion. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively en gaged as
di rec tors of photography and have
dem on strated out stand ing ability. ASC
membership has be come one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
pro fes sional cin e ma tog ra pher a mark
of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2010/2011
Michael Goi
President
Richard Crudo
Vice President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
John C. Flinn III

Vice President
Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer
Rodney Taylor
Secretary
Ron Garcia
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Stephen Burum
Curtis Clark
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
John C. Flinn III
Michael Goi
Stephen Lighthill
Isidore Mankofsky
Daryn Okada
Robert Primes
Nancy Schreiber
Kees Van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
Vilmos Zsigmond
ALTERNATES
Fred Elmes
Rodney Taylor
Michael D. OShea
Sol Negrin
Michael B. Negrin
MUSEUM CURATOR
6
Steve Gainer
Todays television landscape is so rife with reality shows that it

may be difficult for younger viewers to imagine an era when
the only celebrities on the tube were professional performers,
not the family down the block. Back in the early Seventies,
shows like The Real World, The Real Housewives of Orange
County and Jon & Kate Plus 8 were nonexistent. Although
Englands Up films, which have been tracking the progress of
14 British children since 1964, may have pioneered the form,
it was the 1973 PBS series An American Family that provided
a true template for later shows to follow. Comprising 12
episodes culled from around 300 hours of footage, the landmark documentary series followed the everyday lives of Californias seemingly perfect Loud family, whose problems
became more and more evident as the show progressed.
The Louds saga is dramatized in the new HBO telefilm Cinema Verite, shot by Affonso
Beato, ASC, ABC for co-directors Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman. The project offered
Beato a wealth of visual possibilities. We used Super 35mm, high-definition video that was digitally manipulated to look like 16mm, Super 8mm, and clips from the original PBS series, which
was shot on 16mm, he tells Jean Oppenheimer (Living Out Loud, page 28). We differentiated the formats by aligning them with certain points of view.
The period religious drama There Be Dragons presented Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC with
a similarly rich palette on locations in Spain and Argentina. In helping director Roland Joff tell the
tale of childhood friends who pursue distinctly different spiritual paths, Beristain was tasked with
presenting four time periods, including the Spanish Civil War era. The war period, with all the
famous visual references, took place around the time that color photography was becoming more
common, and that was, of course, fascinating to me, Beristain notes in a piece by David Heuring (A Saint and a Sinner, page 40). Also, our production design, by Eugenio Zanetti, was a
visual feast because of all the period details and textures. Added to that is the rich iconography
and symbolism of the Catholic Church. I knew we could make a great film from these elements.
Prom, shot by Byron Shah, is the first U.S. feature shot with Arris digital Alexa camera.
Introduced in April 2010, the Alexa features a 3.5K CMOS sensor and records up to 60 fps at
1920x1080 high-definition internally to ProRes 422 or externally to Arris proprietary ArriRaw
format. The camera also outputs an uncompressed 1080PsF 4:4:4 RGB stream, suitable for
uncompressed capture using external recorders. In interviews with Noah Kadner (First Dance,
page 52), Shah, director Joe Nussbaum and members of their crew offer a full rundown of their
creative strategies and how the camera performed on set.
For those of you seeking a deeper understanding of how digital cameras actually capture
and process images, AC technical editor Christopher Probst explains it all in the first half of a
detailed two-part primer (Decoding Digital Imagers: Part 1, page 60).
Last but not least is our annual pictorial recap of the ASC Awards weekend (A Hollywood
Affair, page 69). Our 25th-anniversary events were rousing, maximum-capacity successes that
drew raves from all who attended.
Stephen Pizzello
Executive Editor
8
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Portrait by Owen Roizman, ASC.
What propels a cinematographer to step away from the camera and direct a movie? Is it the
desire to have more complete control over the artistic process, the opportunity to work directly
with talented actors and writers, dissatisfaction with the course of ones career, or the need to
express a point of view about the world that no one else is addressing?
With their documentaries No Subtitles Necessary and The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) , James
Chressanthis, ASC and Ellen Kuras, ASC, respectively, brought dignity and awareness to the struggles of individuals caught up in tumultuous world events. With his Oscar-winning short film, Two
Soldiers, Aaron Schneider, ASC used narrative form to express the bond between two brothers
during a time of war.
This month brings the DVD release of a feature I wrote and directed called Megan Is Missing. I did not think about why I decided to direct a film until just now, when the journey to
get it into distribution is almost over. Ive realized that the film was born out of rage, an intense
dissatisfaction with many aspects of the ways in which child abductions and Internet predators
have been handled in the media and in the legal system. My goal in taking the directors chair
was to make the most disturbing movie of all time using only factual occurrences as the basis of
the drama; to that end, I spent two years researching seven different cases with a forensics investigator.
I decided early on that the movie should feel like it was not filmed by anybody; it had to
feel like it was happening now. At my insistence, cinematographers Keith Eisberg and Joshua Harrison used no movie lights and no
grip equipment (except for what was necessary to create TV-news sequences), and the young actresses wore no makeup. All the
dialogue was based on recordings Id made of my friends 14-year-old daughters. We shot the whole film in 812 days to both accommodate the number of children involved and give the unfolding drama a visceral pace.
When the film was completed, I became convinced Id made an unreleasable movie. It was exactly the movie I wanted to
make and how often do you get to say that? but to what end, if no one would see it?
Then glimmers of validation emerged. My agent said it was not the film he expected from a cinematographer there were
no sweeping crane shots, no beautiful lighting but it had pure, realistic emotion. And Marc Klaas, whose daughter, Polly, was
abducted and murdered, said the movie was the only filmed depiction of the subject that he and his wife had ever seen that deal t
with the subject honestly, without concern for a commercial resolution.
So as the journey to tell this story has been fulfilled, has the rage that compelled me to make the movie been pacified?
My forensics-investigator friend recently called to ask if I would like to know any details of a case he was working on, a highprofile child disappearance that had been reported on national TV. I told him no, I didnt want to know anything. He said that was
because I already knew. He correctly surmised that I had done my own investigating using the online search tools now available to
everyone, and that I had pieced together a possible scenario based on background checks Id done on the individuals who may hav e
been involved. Three days later, the authorities confirmed my conclusion: the child had perished at the hands of her uncle.
My forensics friend called again once that news was announced and said, Its in your blood now. You will never accept what
is told to you by the media as being the entire truth. You will always dig for the real story. And you will never look at the w orld the
same way again.
I suppose looking at the world in a different way is ultimately what drives a cinematographer to direct. Were always looking
for that new way of telling a compelling story, and that search never ends.
Michael Goi, ASC

President
10
May 2011
American Cinematographer
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Short Takes
ASC William A. Fraker Heritage Award

Honors 2 Students
By Iain Stasukevich
ASC William A. Fraker Heritage Awards were given to two

student cinematographers, Dagmar Weaver-Madsen of the University of California-Los Angeles and Boyd Hobbs of Full Sail University,
in February. (Honorable mentions were Wesley Cardino of the American Film Institute, Michal Dabal of the American Film Institute,
Madeline Eberhard of Florida State University and Allen Liu of Chapman University.)
Weaver-Madsens winning entry, The Absence , charts the
path of an upwardly mobile assistant manager in the records department of a mysterious company called Black House Securities. He is
sent on a mission to a rural town, where he uncovers the truth
behind Black House, and ultimately must choose between kowtowing to the messianic upper management and calling it quits.
12
May 2011
Weaver-Madsen entered UCLAs graduate program in film,

television and digital media knowing she wanted to study cinematography. (She had already shot a comedy series on video and a
short film on 16mm.) In her first year, the MFA programs three cinematography students and 18 directing students were rotated
through various crew positions over the course of multiple films;
someone served as camera operator on one film, then director on
another, then sound recordist on another, and so on. That way, no
matter what area a student finally focuses on, he or she knows what
the other departments are doing.
On her first project, Weaver-Madsen was assigned to be the
cinematographer for directing student Alex DeMille, and they
quickly discovered they worked well together. In their second year,
she shot DeMilles advanced project, and by the time their thesis
projects were being prepped, they had already developed a tight
shorthand. We could work together almost without even talking to
each other, says Weaver-Madsen. Wed just look at each other
The Absence photos by Jon Cannon and Kyle Warmack. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.
Cinematographer
Dagmar WeaverMadsen (below
right, holding
camera) won an
ASC William A.
Fraker Heritage
Award for her
work on the short
film The Absence,
which she
photographed as a
graduate student
at the University of
California-Los
Angeles. Next to
Weaver-Madsen is
1st AC Nate Slevin.
The Absence
was
photographed
on location in
New York City
and eastern
Long Island,
including
portions shot at
Oheka Castle on
Long Islands
Gold Coast.
and know what the other person needed.

Production on The Absence began in
N ew York in N ovember 2008. WeaverMadsen spent the month leading up to the
start of principal photography doing location scouts and tech scouts with DeMille.
We had terrible, freezing weather, she
recalls. It had a beautiful, dreary look, so I
was very happy for the photography, but it
was hard on the crew. Luckily, we were so
prepared that we were ready for any
circumstance.
Primary locations included farms in
Suffolk County and Oheka Castle on Long
Islands Gold Coast. The latter was used as
Xanadu in Citizen Kane , notes WeaverMadsen, who defers some of the credit for
her award-winning work to the Olmsted
brothers celebrated landscape architecture
at the historic estate.
The resourceful filmmakers made
the most of every opportunity they were
given. The script won the Deluxe Film
Award, which took care of their negativeprocessing fees, and because WeaverMadsen assisted Fuji with some film tests,
much of the stock (Fuji Eterna Vivid 500
8547 and the since-discontinued Super F125 8532) was provided at a discount,
making it affordable to shoot 3-perf Super
35mm. The production rented an Arricam
Lite and Moviecam Compact and a set of
Arri Master Primes.
The film is really about isolation,
and Alex and I both worked to make sure
that came across visually, says the cinematographer. With the lighting, stock and
lens choices, we really tried to underscore
14
May 2011
how the main character begins as a stranger

to the world that he is exploring; for example, we used shallow depth-of-field for the
first part of the story to underscore that he
is separate from that world and alone. Later,
after he decides to embrace this new world,
he is no longer isolated from the backgrounds, and everything becomes sharp.
Above all, Weaver-Madsen regards
her relationships with her instructors (Bill
McDonald, Tom Denove and John
Simmons, ASC), DeMille and crewmembers
as the driving forces behind her work. Since
graduating, she has maintained close ties to
all of her collaborators on The Absence.
Theres a family feeling in the MFA
program because its so small, she explains.
It teaches you to navigate relationships
and maintain communication and friendship. If youre always open with your collaborators about what you want to accomplish, then youll have a very effective set.
Hobbs winning entry, Loves Me Not,
takes place in an abandoned apartment
building in Atlanta, where a woman lives
with her lover. What starts out as a seemingly ordinary day begins to spin out of
control when the woman has a flashback
revealing she has been kidnapped and
forced into sex slavery and is experiencing
symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome.
Hobbs dabbled in still photography
before focusing on filmmaking as a course
of study. He started at Georgia State before
switching to Full Sail, which offers a 21month production-oriented program culminating with a B.S. degree.
Its an extremely competitive
program, says Hobbs. In our class, there

were only three 35mm films that were
picked to go into production out of about
75 students. Directing students have to
pitch their final projects to a panel of
instructors, so cinematography students
need to get on board with as many directors and scripts as possible to improve their
chances at shooting something.
Hobbs says he was immediately
comfortable working with motion-picture
cameras, but the lighting aspects of cinematography were initially somewhat intimidating. It didnt really come naturally at
first, so I challenged myself to figure it out,
he recalls. You see pictures of sets where
there are just a couple of lamps and a
camera, and somehow through the lens it
all looks right, and thats what I wanted to
learn: how the light comes together.
The script for Loves Me Not, written
by student directors Rebecca Hodges and
Ewa Pazera, offered Hobbs a variety of
opportunities to develop a personal
approach to lighting. Hodges, who had a
background in production design, worked
closely with him on the look of the film,
which Hobbs shot in Super 35mm (framing
for 2.40:1) with an Arricam Lite and Zeiss
Super Speeds.
Visually its a dark film, but at the
same time, light plays an important role,
says the cinematographer. We wanted
muted green colors that would fade into
warmer yellows, and we wanted [the look]
to go back-and-forth between something
thats really dark and something kind of
happy. Most of the action takes place in the
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apartment kitchen, and we worked with

[production designer] Alex Thomson and
[art director] Aaron Marinel to create a
single space that we could play a number of
different ways.
The kitchen set was built on the Full
Sail stages and designed to facilitate the
creation of distinct zones of light; the filmmakers planned to use these to suggest the
16
May 2011
characters wildly varying feelings. Theres a

certain kind of light on the actor when hes
in one space, and then a different kind of
light when he steps into another space,
says Hobbs, who shot the kitchen scenes on
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219. Sometimes
those spaces are two feet apart or visible
from a different camera angle. For example,
an open window offering bright light shares
the same space with a moodier window

crossed with narrow slats.
Though he was tempted by the
schools array of grip and electric assets,
Hobbs made an effort to keep things
simple, using a 5K tungsten lamp for each
window, a 2K open-face lamp in the hallway and three practicals in the kitchen,
along with a pair of 650-watt Tweenies on
stands that were positioned as needed. On
my previous film, I used twice as many lights
on a stage half the size, he says.
Full Sail uses Continental Film Lab in
Miami for students final transfers. Hobbs
notes, They typically set you up with an
online-supervised transfer, but I opted
instead to drive down to supervise it on site.
I wanted to get it perfect before it went into
editing, because every student who worked
on it would also edit it. I made sure everyone
in my class knew it had already been color
corrected.
Im still trying to figure out how to
light with film, because I havent done it very
much, he continues, noting that instructors Rob Tuscani and James Neihouse have
been particularly helpful in this regard. Rob
and James really pushed me to get things
the way I envisioned it in my head, and take
the time I needed to do it.
Loves Me N ot was a success
because of the people who mentored and
worked with me. I can take on any project
knowing that as long as I dont overthink or
underthink it, I can pull it off with the
support of my collaborators.
Loves Me Not photos by Nuh Omar. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of the filmmakers.
Cinematographer
Boyd Hobbs (far
right) won the
undergraduate
Heritage Award
for Loves Me Not,
which examines
the effects of
Stockholm
Syndrome. We
wanted muted
green colors that
would fade into
warmer yellows,
and we wanted
[the look] to go
back-and-forth
between
something thats
really dark and
something kind of
happy, says
Hobbs. Since
graduating from
Full Sail
University, Hobbs
has been
accepted as a
cinematography
fellow at AFI.
CONGRATULATIONS
Wally Pfister, ASC
Winner of the Academy Award for
Cinematography and ASC Award
for Outstanding Achievement
in Cinematography for
Theatrical Release.
Inception, directed by
Christopher Nolan.
We salute your passion for
pristine filmed images.
Strap on the Gibson SG and jam.
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC
panavision.com
Production Slate
The late, great
Jack Cardiff,
BSC makes a
point in a
scene from
Cameraman:
The Life &
Work of Jack
Cardiff, a
documentary
directed by
Craig McCall
that was shot
over many
years and in
several
countries.
Spotlighting a Legendary Cinematographer

By Mark Hope-Jones
It all started in the early 1990s, with a Bolex. Director Craig

McCall was making music videos at EMI in London, and an elderly
gentleman noticed the 16mm Bolex camera on his desk and
wandered over to take a look. I didnt know who he was, recalls
McCall. He came over, and we got to chatting.
The man was Jack Cardiff, BSC, who shot many of the most
visually accomplished three-strip Technicolor films ever made,
including A Matter of Life and Death /Stairway to Heaven (1946),
The Red Shoes (1948), The African Queen (1951) and Black Narcissus (1947). He won an Academy Award for the latter film, and 53
years later, he became the first cinematographer to be presented
with an honorary Oscar.
Cardiff was at EMI because he had been invited to shoot a
version of Vivaldis The Four Seasons, and he returned to the office
several times during his prep. McCall, now aware of his extraordinary background, spoke with Cardiff again as soon as the opportunity arose. One day Jack opened a newspaper and saw that it
had just snowed in Venice, Italy, which it hadnt done for
decades, recalls McCall. He loved that image, and he wanted it
for The Four Seasons, but he didnt have his budget yet, so he just
borrowed the Bolex, drove to Venice and got it in the can. I
thought that was fantastically inspiring. He had the enthusiasm of
a film student doing his first production, yet he was in his 80s and
18
May 2011
had made so many amazing films.

As their acquaintance developed, McCall had the idea of
making a film about Cardiffs illustrious career. He put the idea to
the back of his mind for a few years, but in 1997, he was on the
lookout for a new project and decided to shoot a pilot with Cardiff
in the hopes of rustling up a television commission. When he
accepted Cardiffs invitation to visit the cinematographers home
and discovered a treasure trove of production photos, behind-thescenes footage and other memorabilia that Cardiff had accumulated over nine decades in the film business, he realized how much
potential the project really had.
Born to two Vaudeville performers, Cardiff grew up around
entertainers, and he started working as a child actor, first appearing in My Son, My Son (1918) at the age of 4. After acting in
several more films as a youth, he worked as a runner on the silent
film The Informer (1929), then moved on to clapper loader (when
sound came in), then camera assistant, and eventually camera
operator.
A turning point came when Cardiff was selected by Technicolor, which was looking to expand into London, to be trained as
the companys first British camera operator. In the interview for the
position, he admitted that he knew nothing of the process
complex technicalities, but said that what interested him about
color was the opportunity to tap his knowledge of how the Old
Masters had used it as an emotive tool in their paintings. He got
the job.
Cameraman photos courtesy of Modus Operandi Films.
Analogies between painting and

cinematography are common, but in
Cardiffs case they are resoundingly relevant. Applying the principles of painters he
had meticulously studied and copied to
Technicolor cinematography, Cardiff
quickly became a deft and delicate master
of color. From Van Gogh he learned how
to use red and green; from Vermeer he
learned how to light interiors. In McCalls
film, he speculates that J.M.W. Turner
would have been the perfect cameraman.
Operating jobs with Technicolor
gave rise to work as a second-unit cinematographer, and it was while shooting an
insert montage sequence for The Life and
Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) that Cardiff
got his big break. Passing through the set,
director Michael Powell noticed the methods Cardiff was employing to suppress
multiple shadows, and stopped to watch
him work. The result was an offer to shoot
Powells next picture, A Matter of Life and
Death/Stairway to Heaven. It was Cardiffs
first feature as director of photography
and the start of a remarkable collaboration
with The Archers, the filmmaking partnership of Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
As accolades for Cardiffs work
multiplied, he collaborated with many
other great directors, including Alfred
Hitchcock, Richard Fleischer, Henry Hathaway, Joseph Mankiewicz and John
Huston. He became known for his ability
to light actresses, and was specifically
requested by Marilyn Monroe for
The
Prince and the Showgirl (1957). Female
stars admired him so much that they
agreed to sit for photographic portraits
taken by Cardiff during lulls in filming.
Among these women were Monroe,
Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren and Anita
Ekberg.
As he sifted through prints of these
portraits at Cardiffs home, McCall became
hooked. After completing the pilot for
Cameraman: The Life & Work of Jack
Cardiff, he made the rounds at the TV
companies but could find no takers. The
timing wasnt great because it had just
been the centenary of cinema, and everyone had recently done special programs
on cinema history, recalls the director.
So although people praised the pilot,
Top: Cinematographer Ricardo Coll checks the light on his subject while filming at Pinewood
Studios. Middle: McCall (left) works with interviewee Lauren Bacall and cinematographer
Jonathan Rho in Los Angeles. Bottom: McCall uses a 16mm Bolex to capture interviewee Martin
Scorsese, who is keyed by a light in his lap.
www.theasc.com
May 2011
19
Left: At the peak of their careers, Cardiff (left) and fellow cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, BSC pose with a Technicolor ca mera.
Right: McCall and Cardiff discuss a shot at Pinewood Studios.
nobody bit, and I therefore had to go

down an independent path. I raised some
money and set about getting interviews in
the can, because many of the people I
wanted to film were getting older.
Cardiffs name opened a lot of
doors, and the interviewees McCall assembled include Martin Scorsese, Kirk
Douglas, John Mills, Lauren Bacall and
Charlton Heston. As well as recognizable
names, McCall was keen to interview a
broad range of people who knew Cardiff
or could comment on his work. The mix
of people pretty much reflects a film crew,
with actors, directors, editors, cameramen
and a sound recordist, he says. It also
reflects the transatlantic aspect of Jacks
career. (Historical context in the documentary is provided by film historian Ian
Christie and the late American Cinematographer editor George E. Turner.)
Interviews were conducted over a
period of years and in several countries.
Arri and Kodak provided ongoing support
for the project, but McCall had to source
equipment and crew for each period of
filming, which meant he wound up working with nine different cinematographers:
Steven Chivers, Ricardo Coll, Simon
Fanthorpe, N icholas Hoffman, Jonathan
Rho, Ian Salvage, John Walker, James
Welland and Bob Williams. It was the
director, therefore, who had to conceive,
maintain and sometimes defend an overall
20
May 2011
visual approach.
For one particular interview, we
were putting a red light on Jacks face,
says McCall. Ian Salvage was the cinematographer that day, and Jack said,
What are you doing with that red light?
Ian explained that Id asked him to do it so
the interview would intercut with clips
from A Matter of Life and Death, and Jack
replied that it didnt look right to him. Ian
went to switch it off, but I told him not to
if I learned anything from Jack, it was to
stand your ground! When Jack came to
look at the first cut, he said, I really like
that with the red light on my face! So he
taught me a lesson. I had to stand up to
him that day, just as he probably had to
stand up to Michael Powell on certain
days.
McCall shot the majority of the
documentary on Super 16mm, believing
the ubiquity of the format would suit such
a fragmented shoot, and he initially shot
the rostrum work on 35mm to capture as
much texture and definition in the actress
portraits and photographs as possible, he
says. On some occasions, Betacam SP was
also used, and a limited amount of rostrum
work was shot on high-definition video.
Shooting mostly on film permitted
McCall to re-telecine and grade all his film
rushes to create HDCam-SR masters when,
much later, completion funding came
through. He notes that if hed shot on
DigiBeta, the best video format available at

the time, he would have been trapped by
the resolution. Im a great believer in
Super 16, he says. I would still shoot
with it today if I were doing anything that
involved documenting witnesses to
history.
Shooting on film allowed McCall to
pursue a distinctive aesthetic, though it
also gave him a few nerve-wracking
moments. He recalls, When we were at
Kirk Douglas house, he had all these beautiful paintings by artists like Czanne. He
left the room at one point, and I needed to
get the camera farther back, so I moved a
little Picasso sculpture that was in the way.
When Kirk came back, he asked, Who
moved that? So I said, Sorry, Mr. Douglas,
I moved it because were shooting on film
and we need the depth, and he replied,
Oh, okay. It was a bit terrifying, but he
went with it.
For the Scorsese interview, I actually put a light on his lap because I wanted
it to look a bit different, he continues.
He was in a very good mood, so he said,
If you want to do it, Ill do it.
Id learned my lesson doing a lot of
bread-and-butter work interviewing heads
of corporations my approach is to get in
early and have two lighting setups. If the
person comes in and is in a bad mood,
then I put in a soft light and quickly knock
it off. The second setup is a more compli-
Thank You!
I am extremely honored to have received the 2010
very gifted and loyal staff, my colleagues, my peers, my
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences John A.
family, but most importantly to all of you cinematographers
Bonner Award. This would not have been possible without
who inspire me. Thank you so very much!
all of you. Id like to express my sincere gratitude to my
www.clairmont.com
Denny Clairmont
TECHNICAL SPECS
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22
May 2011
Front row, left to right: Academy President Tom Sherak, actress Marisa Tomei and Sci-Tech
Committee chair Richard Edlund, ASC. 2nd row: David M. Laur, Arnauld Lamorlette, James
Rodnunsky, Denny Clairmont, Neil Wilson and Dr. Mark Sagar. 3rd row: Mark Noel, Eric Tabellion,
Florian Kainz, Alex MacDonald, Chris Allen, Mark Chapman and Rory McGregor. Last row: John
Frazier, Greg Ercolano, Mark A. Brown, Gautham Krishnamurti, Lance Kimes and Alan Rogers.
Academy Lauds Sci-Tech

Luminaries
By Jay Holben
At this years Academy of Motion

Picture Arts and Sciences Scientific and
Technical Awards, held on Feb. 12 at the
Beverly Wilshire Hotel, actress Marissa
Tomei played hostess, handling the
evenings esoteric jargon with ease and
humor. Award recipient Alex MacDonald of
Cablecam told her, What you have to say
here is harder than what we do!
Thirteen Technical Achievement
certificates and nine Scientific and Engineering plaques were awarded, and ASC associate member Denny Clairmont was honored
with the John A. Bonner Medal of
Commendation.
Technical Achievement Awards
are presented for accomplishments that
contribute to the progress of the industry.
This year individuals from four companies
were honored for their contributions to the
evolution of computer-render queuemanagement systems:
Greg Ercolano,for the design and
engineering of a series of software systems
culminating in the Rush render-queue
management system. The Rush system has
hadan influential effect throughout the
industry, enabling scalable render farms at
numerous studios.
David M. Laur,for the development
of the Alfred render-queue management
system. Alfred was the first robust, scalable,
widely adopted commercial solution for
queue management in the industry. Its user
interface and support for multi-machine
assignment influenced the design of
modern-day queue-management tools.
Chris Allen, Gautham Krishnamurti, Mark A. Brown and Lance Kimes,
for the development of Queue, a robust,
scalable approach to render-queue
management. Queue was one of the first
systems that allowed for statistical analysis
and process introspection, providing a
framework for the efficient use of render
farms.
Florian Kainz ,for the design and
development of the robust, highly scalable
distributed architecture of the ObaQ renderqueue management system. ObaQ has
scaled from managing a few hundred
processors in 1997 to many thousands
today, with minimal changes to the original
design.
Individuals from two companies were
honored for their contributions to the world
of computer-generated effects:
Eric Tabellionand Arnauld Lamorlette, for the creation of a computer-graphics bounce-lighting methodology that is
Academy Sci-Tech Awards photos by Richard Harbaugh and Todd Wawrychuk, courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.
cated one that Id worked out with the

cinematographer and usually involved
putting the camera farther back. I was able
to do that with Scorsese and many of the
others I spoke to for this film.
The most visually creative elements
of the project were shot at Pinewood
Studios, where McCall worked with art
director Miles Glyn and cinematographer
Ricardo Coll to re-create some of the lighting and matte effects from Black Narcissus
as a backdrop to several interviews. At
Pinewood, they also shot footage of
Cardiffs amazing memorabilia collection
and of the great cinematographer demonstrating a Technicolor camera, his fingers
still nimble at the controls and a sparkle in
his eyes as he describes the beam-splitting
prism that is the cameras soul.
Between the completion of filming
and the documentarys celebrated bow at
the 2010 Cannes Film Festival came a final
chapter both long and fraught with funding uncertainty. Ultimately, it was Cardiffs
death, in 2009, that prompted renewed
interest in Cameraman and the last bit of
funding from the U.K. Film Council.
Even at the first screening, at the
National Film Theatre, I was fretful that the
DCP projection wouldnt work, says
McCall. It was only when I heard the
audience clap at the final credits that I realized nothing else could go wrong. A few
days later, the movie was shown in
Cannes, and that opened it up to the
whole world.
Cameraman has been screened at a
dozen U.S. film festivals to date and will be
theatrically released in N ew York City on
May 13, with additional cities to follow.
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B e c a u s e
i t
m a t t e r s .
Left: Sherak (top) and Edlund (bottom) greet the audience at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
Above: ASC associate Clairmont accepts the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation.
practical at feature-film scale. This important step in the evolution of global illumination techniques, first used on Shrek 2, was
shared with the industry in the duos technical paper, An Approximate Global Illumination System for Computer Generated
Films.
Tony Clark, Alan Rogers, N eil
Wilson and Rory McGregor,for the software design and continued development of
CineSync, a tool for remote collaboration
and review of visual effects. Easy to use,
CineSync has become a widely accepted
solution for remote-production collaboration.
Scientific and Engineering
Awards were presented for achievements
that exhibit a high level of engineering and
are important to the progress of the industry. This year they were awarded to:
Mark Sagar,for his early and continuing development of influential facialmotion retargeting solutions. His work led
to a method for transforming facial-motion
capture data into an expression-based,
editable character-animated system that has
been used in motion pictures with a high
volume of digital characters.
Mark N oel ,for the design, engineering and development of the NAC Servo
24
May 2011
Winch System, and John Frazier ,for his

contributions to the systems design and
safety features. The NAC System allows fullsized cars, aircraft and other heavy props to
be flown on wires with unprecedented freedom of motion and a high degree of safety
onset and in real time. The system responds
to the motion of the operators hand,
permitting the recording and playback of all
axes of motion simultaneously, which may
be edited and refined for playback in subsequent takes.
In addition, two Scientific and Engineering upgrade plaques were awarded
to the following individuals, who previously
earned Academy certificates for their work
on cable-driven camera systems that have
made it possible to move a camera safely
and accurately anywhere through a threedimensional space:
James Rodnunsky, Alex MacDonald and Mark Chapman,for the development of the Cablecam 3-D volumetric
suspended cable-camera technologies.
Tim Drnec, Ben Britten Smith and
Matt Davis ,for the development of the
Spydercam 3-D volumetric suspended
cable-camera technologies.
Finally, the John A. Bonner Medal
of Commendation , given for outstandAmerican Cinematographer
ing service and dedication in upholding the

high standards of the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences, was presented
to ASC associate member Denny Clairmont.
In a later interview with AC, Clairmont noted that he grew up doing everything he could to avoid working in the
motion-picture business. His father was a
commercial cinematographer, and Clairmont strove to stay as far away from Dads
work as possible. However, he and his
younger brother,Terry, took an early interest
in cars. I loved anything with a motor in
it, recalls Clairmont. I started making my
own scooters when I was around 12 years
old. In high school,I took auto shop and
built my own hot-rod cars.
After high school, the Clairmont
brothers started a shop and fixed up cars for
fellow racers. It became the go-to place for
local San Fernando drag racers. We did
pretty well, but we werent really rolling in
cash, he recalls. Our customers were,
though. They all worked for the movie
studios in various positions, so Terry and I
went to our father and asked him how we
could get into the business. He taught us
photography and the tools of the trade, and
he said the best way to learn was to get a
Clairmont
The very mention of the name brings to mind integrity, perfection, fairness,
frankness, resourcefulness and can-do without compromise. Denny, we will
be forever grateful to you and your brother Terry for pushing the limits and
driving the bar of technology ever higher in the name of art.
You truly deserve the 2010 Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences, John A. Bonner Award.
Congratulations
& Thank you!
It Starts with the Glass tm
www.schneideroptics.com
Tomei served as the evenings hostess.
26
position in a camera-rental shop.

Denny found himself a position as a
driver at Birns &Sawyer in Hollywood, while
Terry kept the shop running. Birns &
Sawyers lead repair technician, John
Russell, took an immediate liking to Clairmont and promoted him to a position as his
assistant. In 1969,when Russell left Birns to
take another job, Clairmont was promoted
to lead repair technician, a position he held
until 1976. He quickly became known as a
guy who could create specialty gear for
cinematographers or camera assistants.
With the support of a strong machine shop
at Birns & Sawyer, Clairmont began crafting
specialty equipment on a regular basis.
When Birns goteven busier, Denny helped
Terry, who had found work as a camera
assistant, land a job at the facility as well.
In 1971, Terry was working with
future ASC member Michael Watkins,and
the two joined forces to purchase a Cinema
Products XR35 camera. They entered a
contract with Birns & Sawyer to stock and
maintain the camera in return for a share of
the rental proceeds. The camera worked
consistently,and in 1973,Terry and Denny

decided to purchase a new Arri 35BL and
enter into the same contract with Birns. At
that time, you could buy a 35BL with five
lenses and two 400-foot magazines for
$19,000, Clairmont recalls. I managed to
scrounge up $10,000 on my own and got
a bank to loan me the other $9,000. About
90 days later, when that camera was
constantly working, I went to the bank to
get a loan for a second camera.
In 1976, Birns & Sawyer came under
new management, and a dispute with that
party cost Denny his job. He went home
and told his brother that he was out of
work,and asked if he could get a job on
Terrys crew. Terry said no, he recalls with
a laugh. He said,Youre the guy we go to
when we want good camera equipment.
Everyone knows you and trusts you, so we
should open up our own rental house.
Unfortunately, the three cameras the
brothers owned were under firm contract
with Birns &Sawyer. Because the Clairmonts had a proven track record, though,
the bank agreed to loan them money to
purchase additional cameras, and Ed

DiGiulio of Cinema Products helped them
start their new company with a separate
loan of camera equipment worth more
than $300,000. Taking note of DiGiulios
move, several other companies followed
suit with loans of their own, including Arri,
Harrison & Harrison and OConnor. Clairmont Camera was born.
Today, Clairmont Camera occupies a
33,000-square-foot facility in Hollywood,
with satellite offices in Albuquerque,
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Denny
maintains his status as the go-to man for
custom equipment and was intrinsically
involved in the design of the Angenieux
Optimo zoom lenses.
He has been a member of the Academy Sci-Tech Committee since 1993 and
has served on the Steering Committee since
2000. He has been honored with two
Emmy Awards, as well as a 1991 Scientific
and Technical Academy Award for the
opto-mechanical design and development
of the Canon/Clairmont Camera Zoom
Lens.
Sherak
commends this
years award
recipients.
When I got the letter informing me

that I would be presented with the Bonner
Award, I was incredibly proud, but I was a
little worried, too, he recalls. So many
people deserve the credit Im getting, and
one of them is my late brother, Terry. Over
the years, many cinematographers and
camera assistants have pushed me to
design things and come up with new tools.

I certainly wasnt alone in earning this
honor.
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27
Living
Out Loud
Cinema Verite, shot by Affonso Beato,

ASC, ABC, revisits the first reality-TV
series.
By Jean Oppenheimer
|
28
May 2011
hey were supposed to be the perfect American family.

They turned out to be anything but, and as their lives
unraveled on national television, they incurred the wrath
of millions of viewers who were scandalized by what they
witnessed week after week. As a character in HBOs Cinema
Verite notes early in the film, One must never let the public
behind the scenes, for it is the illusion they love.
In an age when reality TV blankets the airwaves, it
might be difficult to appreciate what it was like in 1973, when
the first reality series, An American Family, aired on PBS. The
12-part series, produced by WNET in New York, chronicled
the lives of Patricia and Bill Loud (portrayed by Diane Lane
and Tim Robbins in the new film) and their children, an
Unit photography by Doug Hyun, Peter Iovino and Sam Urdank, courtesy of HBO.
Opposite: Bill Loud

(Tim Robbins) and his
wife, Pat (Diane Lane),
see their marriage and
family disintegrate on
national television
after they agree to let
a television producer
film their lives. This
page, top: The Louds
meet with the
producer, Craig Gilbert
(James Gandolfini), on
the outdoor patio of a
Mexican restaurant.
Middle: A cameraman
captures footage of
the Louds in their
Santa Barbara home.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Affonso Beato, ASC,
ABC (right) works
through a scene with
Lane and Cinema
Verite co-directors
Robert Pulcini and
Shari Springer Berman.
upper-middle-class family living in

Santa Barbara, Calif.
Cinema Verite, which premiered
April 23 and will play throughout May
and June, tells the behind-the-scenes
story of how the groundbreaking series
was made. When producer Craig
Gilbert (James Gandolfini) chose the
Louds, he didnt know but quickly
ascertained that the seemingly model
marriage was coming apart at the
seams, and that the couples eldest son
was grappling with questions of sexual
orientation.
Director of photography Affonso
Beato, ASC, ABC was intrigued by the
movie-within-a-movie concept and the
visual possibilities it offered. We used
Super 35mm, high-definition video
that was digitally manipulated to look
like 16mm, Super 8mm, and clips from
the original PBS series, which was shot
on 16mm, and the optical universes are
very different, he says. We differentiated the formats by aligning them with
certain points of view.
An Arricam Studio and Lite
captured the movie POV in 3-perf
Super 35mm (1.78:1), he continues. In
a sense, this was the big picture. Next
was the movie-within-the-movie, or the
documentary. Believing that modern
Super 16 stock is so good and so grainless that it looks like 35mm, Beato
ww.theasc.com
w
May 2011
29
Living Out Loud
Top: Gilbert
ingratiates
himself with Pat
at a California
resort hotel.
Bottom left: The
Louds and their
friends attempt
to stay natural
on camera.
Bottom right:
Beato finds his
angle. Affonso
has a real gift for
seeing shots on
the spot and
executing them
quickly, says
Pulcini.
decided to shoot this material with a

Panasonic AJ-HPX3700 VariCam and
use the digital grade to give it the look
of 16mm stock from that era. The
Panasonic was referred to variously as
the documentary camera, the crew
POV and sometimes the 16mm
POV, he says.
CinemaVerite jumps back and
forth between what the movie camera
sees and what the documentary camera
30
May 2011
sees. It was essential that the footage

look substantially different so that viewers would immediately know which one
they were watching. The movie POV is
composed, well-behaved, and we always
used a dolly, or occasionally a crane, for
that material, says Beato. The crew
POV, on the other hand, is kind of a
character in itself. We went handheld
and did a lot of panning and zooming, in
keeping with the style of the PBS series.
The onscreen documentary crew

carries an old clair, but the footage
incorporated into the film was shot by
documentary cinematographer Sandra
Chandler, who walked onto the set after
the main camera operators, Anthony
Arendt and Joseph Arena, were
finished; she used the same lighting
setup. Given that I would be shooting
handheld, I needed a shoulder-mount
camera, and the VariCam is set up
Top: The stress of

living on camera
causes tension to
creep into the
Louds
relationship, but
Bills off-camera
philandering
pushes Pat to the
point of no
return. Bottom:
Both Bill and Pat
confide in Gilbert
when the
cameras arent
rolling.
ergonomically for that, says Chandler,

who had worked previously with
Cinema Verite directors Robert Pulcini
and Shari Springer Berman. The 3700
records to P2 cards and has the F-Rec
gamma mode, which gave Affonso
great latitude in post to create the
16mm look. She kept a standard
Fujinon HD ENG zoom lens on the
camera.
Chandler also shot Super 8
home movies of the Loud family at
earlier, happier stages of their lives,
using a Beaulieu 4008 ZM4 borrowed

from loader Christian Kessler.
(Pro8mm in Burbank processed and
transferred the negative.)
Finally, clips from the 1973 PBS
documentary were added to the mix.
Often, two different formats appear
side-by-side on screen. Archival footage
of the real Louds plays on one side
while the actors portraying them appear
on the other. At times, the actors replicate the exact movements of their reallife counterparts.
ww.theasc.com
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Keeping track of which format

was to be used when, and what each
camera would need for a given shot,
could have been a nightmare. It turned
out not to be, however, thanks to the
meticulously organized workflow charts
Beato creates on every project. Affonso
breaks down the entire [schedule]
during prep and sends the charts to his
crew, says 1st AC Carlos Doerr. He
lists cameras and lenses, any special
equipment, the stock well need and
exactly how much to order, whether any
May 2011
31
Living Out Loud
The documentary
shows camera
team (top) tracks
the familys
movements with a
vintage clair
camera, while
HBOs crew
(bottom) captures
the scene with
modern
technology.
effects work is involved, and so on.

Those charts always keep us one step
ahead.
Beato notes that planning ahead
is a necessity these days. Tight shooting
schedules mean theres no time to
inspire yourself or change your mind on
the set anymore. It used to be that the
director would come to the set, plan
with the cinematographer, and then the
electricians would appear with their
32
May 2011
cables, all while 50 or 100 people

waited. That doesnt happen anymore.
But when things do change on
set, Beato can quickly alter his course.
Affonso has a real gift for seeing shots
on the spot and executing them
quickly, says Pulcini. Though he and
co-director Berman both interacted
with Beato on the set, Pulcini recalls, I
spent more time with him because I
deal more with the camera and the look
of the film, while Shari concentrates on

the actors.
AC visited the Cinema Verite set
on a cloudless, blistering-hot California
morning. In the scene at hand, Pat
arrives at a resort hotel to meet Gilbert
for the first time. Pat, a friend and
Gilbert sit down at a patio table under
an umbrella. Tennis courts and a swimming pool are clearly visible in the background. The scene comprised five pages
of dialogue and had to be completed
before the sun crept behind the building
and threw the action into shadow.
Furthermore, Beato wanted the tennis
courts to retain strong definition; he
couldnt just expose for the foreground
and let the background go bright.
Beato had his crew put a 20'x40'
softener over the table, and both
Arricams were backed up as far as they
could go, right against the sliding glass
doors of the clubhouse. The actors were
only 8'-10'away. We had to light the
actors 3 stops over what wed normally
do, says gaffer Justin Holdsworth. To
raise the light level, we used gold and
silver lam bounces. Then, to give some
shape to the faces, we brought in a 6K
Par with a Chimera, moving it closer
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Robert Richardson, ASC

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my expectations - an invaluable tool in the
arsenal of lmmaking.
Darius Khondji, AFC, ASC

I like the ALEXA very much; I feel closer
to this camera than I have to any other digital camera.
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Living Out Loud
Scenes set inside

the Louds home
were shot at a
house in
Sherman Oaks
that provided a
nearly perfect
match for the
real residence.
The living room
offered a deep
background
thanks to the
pool area beyond
the sliding-glass
doors, but the
setting required
Beato to carefully
balance his
interior and
exterior
exposures.
than I normally would.

Beato kept an eye on the sun. I
was getting nervous, he admits. We
had one shot left when the directors
decided that another problem took
precedence. By the time we went back
to the patio to get the final shot, there
was no way to match the light levels.
The last shot we got wasnt used.
The blue skies and hard light of
California serve as
Cinema Verite s
predominant look. Beato describes it as
a Kodachrome dream: colorful, bright
and sunny. This typically translated
into tungsten lamps gelled with
Straw or CTO. There was also a much
cooler New York look (HMIs with a
bit of CTB) that was used for scenes
showing Pat visiting her eldest son,
Lance (Thomas Dekker), at the famed
Chelsea Hotel. (The interior of the
hotel was created onstage.) At the end
of the movie, after An American Family
has aired and the Louds find themselves
the target of intense ridicule and scorn,
the California look takes on a severe
tone, a heavier, bluish-green hue;
instead of using lens filtration to achieve
this, Beato planned to create the look in
the DI.
The Louds home figured prominently in the series, and the
Cinema
Verite team managed to find a house in
34
May 2011
Living Out Loud

Sherman Oaks, Calif., whose interior
was almost a mirror image of the real
residence. (Another location provided
the front exterior.) The family tended to
hang out in the living room, which
looks out onto a patio, a swimming pool
and the back yard, all of which are visible through a wall of sliding glass doors.
Affonso didnt want to lose the depth of
having the pool in the background
while looking out from [the living
room], notes Holdsworth. That
meant balancing exposure inside for the
exterior.
One such scene, early in the film,
shows Gilbert and all seven members of
the Loud family sitting around the
living room, discussing what the documentary crew will be doing. Gilbert is
sitting in a chair, his back to the sliding
doors. To create soft ambient light,
Beato bounced sunlight (and occasionally an 18K) into the room off 8'x8'
frames of unbleached muslin.
Additionally, sheets of muslin were
spread across the patio outside and on
the living-room floor.
Arri T12s and 5Ks with
Chimeras, all bouncing off muslin, were
used inside. Because the ceilings were
low, it wasnt always possible to hang
lights. When we couldnt hang lights, I
had a huge tripod with a menace arm to
position a Chinese lantern above the
actor, recalls Beato. If it was a moving
shot, we might hang the menace arm
from the dolly. All of the lights were on
dimmers. A few Lowel Rifa 44 lights
were also used for the actors faces.
Unbleached muslin was the
diffusion of choice. To light a scene in
which Pat and Bill talk, 30"Mus Balls
containing 1,000-watt bulbs were
strewn across the bedroom floor. Pat
stands at the bathroom sink, looking
into the mirror, and Bill is a few feet
away in the bedroom, standing at a fulllength mirror. This was a very tricky
scene to shoot, notes Beato. The scene
opens on Bills reflection in the standalone mirror. He steps into frame,
admires himself in the mirror and starts
talking to Pat. The camera is stationary
behind him, so we see both his back and
Top: A truckmounted platform

facilitates a view
from the road.
Middle: The crew
captures a New
York street scene
outside the Chelsea
Hotel. Bottom: AC
visited the
production while
scenes were being
shot at the Altadena
Town & Country
Club (doubling as
the Santa Barbara
Biltmore), where
Beato strove to
capture the more
idyllic aspects of
California living.
36
May 2011
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Living Out Loud
Bill tends to
business as his
home life begins
to spiral
downward.
his reflection in the mirror.

The scene cuts to the bathroom.
The camera is to the left and slightly
behind Pat as she stands in front of the
mirror, so we see her reflection. Another
mirror hangs on a closet door behind
Pat, catching a different reflection.
Doerr picks up the story: Affonso, the
operator and I were snuggled into a
38
narrow hallway. The matte box was just

barely off-camera. The most difficult
part of this was when Pat reached down
to grab Bills hairbrush. I think we did a
135mm shot on that, really tight,
following her hand and going up to her
face and racking to the mirror.
Beato used several pieces of
equipment on Cinema Verite that hed
never tried before.He had heard good

things about a new HD video-tap
system, HD IVS, that attaches to the
Arricam cameras. It comes with a 6"
trans-video cine monitor. Beato notes
that its an expensive item to rent, and
he was grateful to Sean Jenkins at
Clairmont Camera in Hollywood for
fitting it into the productions budget.
Up until now, video taps have been
standard definition, which just isnt
good enough, asserts the cinematographer.
Another item Beato had never
used before was the Airstar Cloud, a
thin, flat balloon that is used as diffusion. Made of Lunix fabric, it acts like a
huge silk. The scene was the outdoor
patio of a Mexican restaurant, and the
place was packed with people. Bill is
sitting at a table, drinking with friends,
when Pat and Gilbert arrive. We spent
two days at that location, and the sun
going around would have totally
destroyed the light continuity, says
Beato. It turned out to be less expensive to rent the Cloud than to pump [up
the] light to balance the restaurants
interior and exterior. It was absolutely
fantastic.
The Cloud is 20'x20'but can be
expanded by zipping two or more
together. Beatos team created one that
was 40'x40'. (It was provided by Airstar
Space Lighting USA.) When darkness
started to fall, the crew set up three
18Ks to replicate sunlight.
Beato used three Kodak stocks
for most of the project Vision3 500T
5219 and Vision2 250D 5207 and 50D
5201 and he also mixed in two Fuji
Eterna Vivid stocks, 160 8543 and 500
8547, for the Super 8 material to help
differentiate its look.
All of the 35mm material was
processed at Technicolor Hollywood,
where AC caught upwith Beato again
as he started the digital grade with
colorist Jill Bogdanowicz. Weve got
some intricate keys going through the
movie to give it a 1970s look, says

Bogdanowicz. For example, I have
[primary color] chroma keys working
on the California look, and Im popping
these colors separately, which makes it
really saturated, like the look of early
70s film stocks. Thats the vibe were
going for.
Even with four formats to
contend with, Beato maintains that the
shoot was never confusing, though he
readily admits it was very complex. It
also brought back some unique memories. I was the first person in Brazil to
use the clair, the camera used by Alan
Raymond and Joan Churchill [ASC] to
shoot An American Family, he observes.
It was the first portable camera that
really gave you the opportunity to be
mobile and shoot sound at the same
time with a Nagra.
With a laugh, he adds, I was the
only person on the [ Cinema Verite] set
who knew how to hold the Nagra. I had
lived it.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
3-perf Super 35mm,
Digital Capture, Super 8mm
Arricam Studio, Lite;
Panasonic AJ-HPX3700;
Beaulieu 4008 ZM4
Cooke S4,Angenieux Optimo,
Nikkor and Arri Macro
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219;
Vision2 250D 5207, 50D 5201;
Fuji Eterna Vivid 160 8543,
500 8547
Gabriel Beristain,
ASC, BSC goes on
location in Spain and
Argentina for the
atmospheric religious
drama There Be
Dragons.
By David Heuring
|
R
A
Saint
and a
Sinner
40
May 2011
oland Joffs There Be Dragons tells the story of a Spanish

journalist who, in the course of reconciling with his
elderly father, discovers that the older man was a close
childhood friend of Josemara Escriv (played by Charlie
Cox), a real historical figure who was named a saint in 2002,
nearly 75 years after founding the devout Catholic organization Opus Dei. Joff has said that the movie, which was
partially funded by Opus Dei, is about love, human love,
divine love, hate, betrayal, war, mistakes everything it is to
be a human being.
The movies cast includes Dougray Scott as the journalist and Wes Bentley as his father, Manolo. Their story unfolds
in four segments: the boyhood years of Manolo and Josemara
in Spain during the early 20th century; the duos early
manhood in the 1920s; the Spanish Civil War era, which tore
the country apart in the late 1930s; and the 1980s, which serve
as the storys present day.
Joff chose Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC to photograph There Be Dragons. Beristain was born in Mexico, where
Photos courtesy of Mount Santa Fe.
Opposite:
Childhood
friends Manolo
Torres (Wes
Bentley, seated)
and Josemara
Escriv (Charlie
Cox) find
themselves on
conflicting
spiritual paths
as adults. This
page: Manolo
takes up arms
(top) while
future saint
Josemara
chooses the
priesthood.
his parents were successful actors. He

shot documentaries and commercials
before moving to Europe, and eventually studied at the National Film and
Television School in England. After
spending 15 years working in the
British film and television industries,
Beristain took the advice of Allen
Daviau, ASC and moved to the
United States. I was also aided by
Sandra Marsh, my agent at that time,
who persuaded Taylor Hackford to
consider me for Blood In, Blood Out, he
notes. His rsum has since grown to
include 40 films, among them
Caravaggio, K2, Dolores Claiborne and
The Spanish Prisoner. He recently
wrapped the pilot for Exit Strategy.
When Beristain first read the
script for There Be Dragons, he saw two
ways to think about the visuals:
through the four main time periods,
and by tracing the distinct emotional
paths followed by Manolo and
Josemara. The war period, with all
the famous visual references, took
place around the time that color
photography was becoming more
common, and that was, of course,
fascinating to me, says Beristain.

Also, our production design, by
Eugenio Zanetti, was a visual feast
because of all the period details and
textures. Added to that is the rich
iconography and symbolism of the
Catholic Church. The story concerns
one person who found a religious
mission in life and another who developed a hatred of religion. I knew we
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could make a great film from these

elements.
Early conversations between
Beristain and Joff focused on texture,
atmosphere and dcor, and how to
create chiaroscuro without losing sight
of delicate details, like the lace of a
dress. All this would need to be done
on a modest budget at locations in
Spain and Argentina. Two fundamenMay 2011
41
Top and bottom

left: As children,
Manolo and
Josemara make
frequent visits
to a chocolate
factory where
they receive
tasty treats
and bits of
wisdom from
Honorio (Derek
Jacobi). Bottom
right: The boys
enjoy the
comforts of an
opulent
upbringing.
tal technical choices that grew out of

their conversations were the decision to
light primarily with direct, undiffused
light (except for the 1980s scenes), and
the decision to keep the A camera
almost always mounted on a three-axis
Scorpio head operated by Beristain. The
Scorpio head was often used in conjunction with a Technocrane to facilitate
dramatic, sweeping movement.
Beristain describes his approach
to light as emotional lighting
letting the emotional content of individual scenes dictate his approach, as
opposed to applying an overall style to
42
May 2011
the entire film. Direct light is oldfashioned, in a way, but it gives me very
precise control over what part of the
scene to emphasize or intensify, he
says. Considerable engineering and
ingenuity went into creating the lyrical
camera moves Roland sought for this
film. In exterior situations, we usually
used the Technocrane; for interiors, the
camera was usually on a jib arm, sometimes attached to the Scorpio, which
became my dependable steed. I was
almost always operating, which is
something I trained extensively for
during my years in Europe.
The producers raised the possibility of shooting digitally, but Beristain

says Joff left the decision to him.
After we considered all the options
and weighed all the practical and artistic factors, we decided to shoot on
film, says the cinematographer. We
were going to have many different
cameras, and there were unknowns
about the dependability of postproduction in Argentina, which made using a
digital format less attractive. We
planned to film our exterior battle
scenes with half a dozen cameras and
two Technocranes, which would limit
our lighting options. Film would give

us the maximum latitude and dynamic
range, as well as the flexibility to make
everything match in post. We also
knew we would be shooting during the
summer in Argentina, sometimes in
the mountains, where the skies are very
powerful and very clean. With film,
theres no problem with strong highlights. Beristain ultimately decided to
use four Kodak stocks: Vision2 100T
5212, 200T 5217 and 250D 5205, and
Vision3 500T 5219.
Joff was keen to spread the
right mood throughout the set. I
could see from the beginning that I was
working with a method director, says
Beristain. The mood of the scene was
something Roland wanted to bring to
everyone on the set, thereby leading
each department to the right contribution. Cinematographers have to recognize how a director works and then
adapt to that method. Ours wasnt a
heavy set, but we were invited to
recognize the dramatic value of the
scene and the need to execute the shots
in a way that was harmonious with that
mood. Roland got excellent performances that way.
The boyhood scenes were filmed
in a tiny, picturesque village in Castile
called Sepulveda. Thats as Spanish as
it gets, Beristain attests. Its a
medieval stone town, a harsh place, and
we mostly filmed exteriors there for
about three weeks. Beristain mainly
used available light, although he was
occasionally able to augment the locations existing ambience with HMIs.
Once the company moved to
Argentina, production became more
complicated. Wide shots sometimes
required extensive bluescreen and
greenscreen construction to cover
period-inaccurate elements. In a place
like Argentina, these challenges are
solved in an artisanal way, says
Beristain. The crews may not have all
the resources and be as well prepared
for these situations as they are in
Hollywood, but today, these kinds of
techniques can be accomplished
anywhere. Buenos Aires has many
In the films present day, Manolos journalist son, Robert (Dougray Scott, top), has trouble
connecting with his emotionally distant father (Bentley, middle, in old-age makeup), but his
quest for understanding leads him to do some research at the Vatican (bottom).
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May 2011
43

beautiful, turn-of-the-century colonial
buildings, but some of them are right
smack in the middle of ghastly modern
architecture, so we needed to isolate
those locations by using large greenscreens. The scale was nowhere near
what I experienced when I was shooting additional photography on
Iron
Man, but the Argentinian crew built
the greenscreens using whatever was at
hand, and those shots made a significant contribution to the look of the
film.
By way of example, Ill note that
any screen larger than 20-by-20 feet
has to be put together skillfully in order
to avoid seams and folds, and our crew
put together an 80-by-80-foot screen
using several 20-bys carefully
suspended from a giant construction
crane, he continues. Just before the
shot, we discovered we needed an extra
20-by to cover a last-minute change of
composition. My point is, if you are
working with film crews far from
Hollywood, dont assume something is
impossible. If you have the will, its
neither expensive nor difficult.
Another visually arresting scene
During the
Spanish Civil
War, Manolo
aligns himself
with the rebels
but turns on
them and
serves as a
Fascist spy.
44
May 2011
shows Manolo, now a soldier, making

his first attempt to kill a rebellious
worker. I found a factory warehouse
with a glass roof, and we shot it day-fornight, says Beristain. I shot it during
the daytime but underexposed by 6 or 7
stops. I knew that once we got to the
digital intermediate, I could pick out
the windows and bring them down
further. I put three 10Ks inside the
office, and everything else was available
light. It lends the scene an ominous
quality. That shot was all in knowing
how to manipulate the exposure and
knowing what can be achieved in the
DI.
Like the majority of Beristains
crew on the film, gaffer Daniel Hermo
is Argentinean. Hermo studied
photography at National School
of Cinematographic Production and
Experimentation, and has served as
gaffer on many commercials and about
30 features, including the Oscarwinning The Secret in Their Eyes.
Beristains direct-light approach
meant larger sources and more rigging.
Hermo explains, To achieve the
aesthetic Gabriel described, we used
tungsten Fresnel lamps ranging from

650-watt units to 20Ks. We used HMI
mixtures in daylight situations. Most of
the sets were so large and complex that
we had two teams working simultaneously, with one crew pre-lighting the
subsequent scene. Close collaboration
with key grip Anibal Cattaneo was
crucial.
For several scenes, including a
church sequence, Gabriel asked me for

Musco or Bebee [Night] lights, but
they are not available in Argentina,
Hermo continues. We couldnt access
the roofs, and we needed an 82-foot
boom, so we rented a 131-foot telescopic mobile crane that is normally
used on construction sites. We assembled a truss structure that would absorb
vibrations and wind, and mounted
After joining the

rebels, Manolo
becomes a
jealous rival of
the factions
charismatic
leader, Oriol
(Rodrigo
Santoro, top).
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May 2011
45

three Arri 18K HMIs on the truss. We
used this rig to bring light into high
windows, casting beams through the
smoke we had laid in the church interior.In some situations, the crane rig
was augmented with an Arri
MaxMover to facilitate remote aiming
and focus of the lights.
The projects pice de rsistance, according to Beristain, was a
vast battle scene in which the square
and cathedral in Lujn, Argentina,
stand in for Madrid. In addition to the
numerous greenscreens, the scene
required extensive special effects, large
numbers of actors and extras, and careful choreography. The size of the square
meant Beristain had to work with
Cinematographer
Gabriel Beristain,
ASC, BSC says he
tailored his
lighting to the
emotional
content of
individual scenes
rather than
fashioning an
overall style.
Our primary
concern was the
dramatic mood of
the scene.
available light, and because the cathedral was oriented east-west, it was
backlit in the morning and front-lit in
the afternoon. Luckily, I had the
element of smoke to work with, says
Beristain. Whenever I had shadow
areas, I justified it as though smoke
were covering that area. The opening
shot was done in overcast conditions,
but once the sun came out, the smoke
saved my life. There are many actors
running through the scene, squibs
everywhere, explosions, shots being
fired its chaotic, and the adrenaline
was pumping. You cant stop everyone
and say, Sorry, the light isnt right.
Thats a reality for most cinematographers. We need to sharpen our wits and
find a way. When it was sunny, sometimes the sun would break through the
smoke and create fantastic shots.
46
May 2011

Filming battle sequences with
kinetic intensity also required ingenious
solutions. To render a documentary feel
for certain scenes, the production
combined a Steadicam rig with a
Segway two-wheeled vehicle, which
camera operator Matas Mesa used to
cover rough terrain at high speeds.
Roland is not generally very keen on
the Steadicam, Beristain says, but we
used it with the Segway in the battle
situations, and it added very much to
the sense of advancement we needed to
create. Its more than just following the
characters.
One of our most dramatic locations was the town of Epecuen, where
The movies main

battle sequence
was shot on a
square in Lujn,
Argentina, which
stood in for
Madrid. A
Steadicam rig
combined with a
Segway twowheeled vehicle
(middle right)
allowed the
filmmakers to
traverse rough
terrain at high
speeds.
48
May 2011

An ailing
Manolo
experiences a
vision from his
youth while
lying on his
hospital
deathbed.
we shot a big battle scene, he

continues. It became a ghost town two
decades ago, when the nearby lake
flooded half the villa. Half the town
comprises water avenues and submerged rooftops, and the other half is
dead trees, barren soil and abandoned
50
our heroes.
Beristain knew that many long,
moving shots might not make the final
cut intact, and Roland and I felt we
should not be saddened or discouraged
by this fact, he says. We believed that
by creating these dynamic, choreographed moves with the Scorpio head,
Technocrane, jib arm and Steadicam,
we were giving the film a different look,
and that even the cuts would be made
special by that movement. The cuts are
not simple, narrative-based cuts, but
rather based on the whole poetry.
Ideally the cuts and the movement
work in harmony to become something
very special, an integral part of the
mise-en-scne.
ruins. The soggy soil made it impossible
I think its important for films to
for us to bring in any heavy equipment, have that [fully integrated] quality, he
so cranes and dollies were out of the
says. People dont talk about that any
question. The Segway would just glide
longer, and I think its a vital part of the
over anything, and Matty achieved
cinematic language. Roland underphenomenal shots, like moving forward stands this, so I trusted him. In that
with enemy infantry as they charged
respect, There Be Dragons was a fasci-
nating experiment.
The productions front-end lab
work was done at Cinecolor Argentina
in Buenos Aires. That lab also handled
the majority of the 2K scanning; some
other scanning work was done at
Technicolor in Madrid, where
Beristain worked on the digital grade
with colorist Nomie Dulau.
Nowadays Im involved in many
conversations, panels and interviews
regarding how new technologies can
optimize the way a cinematographer
communicates with the dailies and final
colorists, he notes. Of course, the
integrity and artistic value of the
images cinematographers produce
depends very much on this communication, but I think equally important is
our close contact with the person who
will sit behind the machine, and our
capacity to involve him or her in the
project.
When I met Nomie and told
her about my emotional lighting
concept, she looked at me with an

expression that said, Oh, no, this is
going to be painful, but after she read
the script and we had a few conversations, she understood that our primary
concern was going to be the dramatic
mood of the scene. We didnt care
about the period or have any preconceived notions about certain colors for
certain characters. If the mood called
for cool light, we made it cool; if it
called for strong contrast, wed crank
those blacks. The [Autodesk] Lustre
helped us make the lighting a great
character, like a storyteller within the
film.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Arricam Studio, Lite
Arri Master Prime,
Angenieux Optimo
Kodak Vision2 100T 5212,
200T 5217, 250D 5205;
Vision3 500T 5219
51
First
Dance
Arris Alexa makes its U.S. feature
debut on Prom, shot by Byron Shah.
By Noah Kadner
|
he new Disney movie Prom,a coming-of-age story about

an ensemble of teens getting ready for the biggest night
of their young lives, marks the U.S.-featuredebut of
Arris Alexadigital motion-picture camera. (The
European film Anonymous, shot by Anna Foerster, was the
cameras first feature outing, according to Arri.)
For director Joe Nussbaum and cinematographer Byron
52
May 2011
Shah, the goal was a look that felt real, raw and a little out of
control, says Shah. The movie weaves together multiple
love stories, and the look had to match the whirlwind intensity of teen love.
We created a digital look-book made up of stills from
other movies, all of which had been shot on film; there were
no references for a digitally shot movie that had the look we
wanted,notes Nussbaum.
Before production commenced, the filmmakers tested
the Alexa side-by-side with a Red One MX and a Sony F35.
There was no studio mandate to shoot digitally, but Joe and
I both were open to the idea provided we could find a format
that worked for the project, says Shah. We didnt test film
because we knew what film looks like, and we wanted to
judge the digital formats on their own terms. We set up an
apples-to-apples test: same lens, same stop, same filters, same
setup, same lighting, same settings and so on. We just
switched out the camera bodies.
Photos by Richard Foreman Jr., SMPSP, courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc.
Footage from representative

scenes was taken through to a 35mm
print and screened blind at FotoKem.
Everyone agreed that the Alexa most
closely represented the look they
wanted. It was really unanimous, from
Disneys head of production, Sean
Bailey, on down, says Shah. The
dynamic range was what sold us on the
Alexa. We lit a scene at the main location, a school, that featured an actress
walking through a hot splash of
sunlight. It was 8 stops over key, but
instead of clipping, the Alexa rolled off
more naturally, as your eye would
perceive the scene.
Blown highlights are one of the
real tells of a digital format, and you
could never get away with such
extremes of contrast on any other digital camera without it looking electronic, he continues. When Ive shot
with other digital cameras Red, the
F35, a [Panavision] Genesis or
[Thomson] Viper Ive always had to
protect those highlights like a fanatic.
With the Alexa, we found a format that
could capture the extremes of brightness and darkness necessary for a story
about the extremes of the teen heart.
Introduced in April 2010, the
Alexa features a 3.5K CMOS sensor
and a PL mount, and records up to 60
fps at 1920x1080 high-definition internally to ProRes 422 or externally to
Arris proprietary ArriRaw format. The
camera also outputs an uncompressed
1080PsF 4:4:4 RGB stream, suitable
for uncompressed capture using external recorders.
We found the camera to be very
user-friendly, says Shah. It has great
ergonomics and very clear onboard
menus. Its viewfinder is the nicest electronic one Ive seen yet. Of course, its
not the same as an optical viewfinder. It
wasnt quite sharp enough to judge critical focus; that still has to be evaluated
on a big reference monitor.
Eager to see its new camera put
through its paces in a feature-film
workflow, Arri offered the production
support that included access to Stephan
Ukas-Bradley, the companys U.S.
Opposite: Despite an
early antagonism, Nova
(Aimee Teegarden) and
Jesse (Thomas
McDonell) grow close in
Prom. This page, top:
Justin (Jared Kusnitz)
asks Mei (Yin Chang) to
the big dance in creative
fashion.Middle:
Cinematographer Byron
Shah (far right) and
company prepare a
close-up of Chang.
Bottom: Shah confers
with director Joe
Nussbaum as camera
operator Paul Sanchez
(far right) frames a shot.
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May 2011
53
First Dance
Top: Nova leads a meeting outside the shed that houses the schools prom decorations.
Middle: After the shed burns down, Principal Dunnan (Jere Burns, center) tasks Jesse with
helping to remake the decorations. Bottom: Jesse and Nova restore a water fountain in
the schools art room.
54
May 2011
manager of technical services. Otto

Nemenz supplied the filmmakers with
two Alexas, a set of Cooke S4 prime
lenses and an Angenieux Optimo24290mmzoom lens; grip and lighting
gear was provided by Paskal Lighting.
Of the S4 primes, Shah notes,
Id tested Cooke Speed Panchros,
thinking theyd give us their lovely lowcon look, but on the Alexa they looked
muddy, not at all the way they look on
film. But the S4s looked fantastic on the
Alexa, delivering open blacks with a lot
of detail, and smooth skin texture. We
shot most of the movie between T2 and
T2.8, lending the characters a subtle
separation from their backgrounds to
heighten the intense emotions of the
moment.
Prom is set in Michigan, but the
production shot the movie exclusively
in Los Angeles. Shahs key crew
included 1st AC Ethan McDonald,
gaffer Jack English, camera operator
Paul Sanchez and key grip Patrick
Heffernan.
Footage was fed at 1920x1080
24p from the Alexas HD-SDI port to
an outboard Codex Digital recorder
capturing to the Codexs native RAW
format. The Codex files were
transcoded by FotoKem to DPX and
laid off to LTO tape, explains Shah. It
was a bit of a challenge because I calibrated my monitor to the Alexas Rec
709 color space LUT, so I was seeing a
lot less latitude than what the Codex
was actually picking up. But I knew
what we were truly getting, and I could
also monitor raw to confirm if needed.
With a lens on, the Alexa is a
little front-heavy, and the Codex
recorder helped to act as a physical
counterbalance, adding weight to the
back of the rig, notes McDonald. We
used an EasyRig backpack harness to
make things easier. The complete package camera, recorder and lens was
small enough and light enough to
handhold comfortably.
Shah used varying degrees of lens
filtration, often a mix of Tiffen Low
Con and Smoque filters. Sometimes
we combined them with ND/IR
filters, says McDonald. In testing, we

found that the Alexa has some built-in
IR protection, whereas most digital
cameras dont have as much. We found
that NDs alone werent keeping skin
tones neutral, so we moved up to IR
filters.
One of Proms big sequences is a
quintessential rite of passage, an elaborate ask to the prom. In this case, its a
theatrical moment set, appropriately, on
the schools auditorium stage. We shot
that scene, between Justin [Jared
Kusnitz] and Mei [Yin Chang], on our
first day of principal photography, says
Shah. With a Steadicam, we follow
Mei running up to the stage, where
Justin has lit up the word Prom? in
giant letters. We lit the letters with
Source Four [Lekos] on irises that we
hung amongst the theatrical lights
already at the location.
The theatrical lights had beautiful, vintage, amber glass stipple filters
that we augmented with 250 diffusion,
continues the cinematographer. Jack
[English] followed alongside the
Steadicam rig with a 500-watt ECT
globe in a Chinese lantern on a boom
pole. We backlit the auditorium chairs
using two Blondes with doubles on
them. We also used a Smoque filter,
which can give you some crazy, intense
flares.
To create those flares, we used a
2K Xenon Super Trooper theatrical
follow spot on the balcony and shined it
just into the matte box, and a 27mm
Cooke S4 and a Tiffen Smoque 1,
adds Shah. It gave us some
marvelously out-of-control but very
spontaneous-looking flares. I was a little
nervous about giving the studio dailies
like that on day one because wed
pushed the look so far, but they were
totally stoked, and we were off.
Befitting a story about highschool students, many scenes in Prom
take place in hallways and classrooms.
In those spaces, we swapped out the
overhead fluorescents for daylightbalanced Kino tubes, says Shah.
When there werent sufficient ceiling
fixtures, wed augment with Joker
Novas father, Frank (Dean Norris, right), confronts Jesse at a grocery-store loading dock. To boost the
practicals on location, Shah reports that gaffer Jack English created a special pumpkin light, which was
basically a bare 400-watt industrial sodium-vapor lamp.
Source Fours for ceiling bounce and

Kino Flo Vista Beams. As our key, we
put a 400-watt Joker light with a Jem
Ball on a boom pole that wed dance
around with.
Since this was a digital show, we
initially did a fair amount of NDing on
windows, and it turned out we were a
little overzealous, he continues.
When we started seeing how those
shots looked on the Alexa, we decided
to not waste the gel. The Alexa holds
hot windows really well, and we ended
up using less and less ND gel in general
as the shoot continued.
A confrontational scene between
bad boy Jesse (Thomas McDonell) and
the father of his would-be date takes
place on a grocery-store loading dock
at night. Jack created a special pumpkin light, which was basically a bare
400-watt industrial sodium-vapor
lamp that matched the practical on the
wall of that location, says Shah. We
rated the Alexa at 640 ISO and shot
handheld. The slightly desaturated
lamp gave a rough look, which was
perfect for the hard emotions of the
scene.
Another night scene that tested
the Alexa shows the shed holding the
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proms decorations catching fire and

burning to the ground. We built the
shed on a football field at a middle
school in Northridge, says Shah.
We had one 18K HMI gelled with
Lee Steel Blue on a Condor hitting
the grass in front of the shed, and that
was about it in terms of lighting. The
special-effects team estimated that
the flames would only go up about 4
feet off the roof, so I had to guess the
exposure.
We set the camera ISO to 200
and exposed at a T8, hoping that
everything else would be balanced
with the fire. We set up two Alexas;
one was a wide shot that dollied in,
and the other was on the 12:1 Optimo
to grab pieces. Once the burn started,
the flames leapt as high as 25 feet off
the roof, but the Alexa held the exposure, and we got it all in one take.
In the aftermath of the fire, Jesse
and Nova (Aimee Teegarden) find
themselves relegated to the schools art
room to design new decorations. It
was a ground-floor location that was
meant to play as a basement, says
Shah. So we started with four 4K
Xenons bounced off mirrors, projected
through clerestory windows playing as
May 2011
55
First Dance
centerpiece. We bounced Dedolights

into the fountain, says English, and
we also brought in a bunch of 150-watt
waterproof garden lights that we gelled
with Full Straw and ND. The fountain
had a copper-tile surface, and we
bounced two 300-watt Arri Fresnels
and two Peppers with 200-watt FEV
bulbs off it to produce shimmering
light on the kids faces.
For a lot of the night scenes, we
rated the Alexa at 500 ISO for more
shadow detail, says McDonald. In a
couple of instances, we went to 800 to
make a shot; that added some image
noise, but it was a pleasing, film-grain
sort of noise. For day scenes, we kept
the camera at 320 ISO, which seemed
to give us the best-looking skin tones.
As Jesse and Nova complete their
Top: Nussbaum directs Cameron Monaghan (left) and Nolan Sotillo (center). For scenes set in
hallways and classrooms, Shah says, we swapped out the overhead fluorescents for daylight-balanced
work, the film transitions to the night
Kino tubes. Bottom: Lloyd (Nicholas Braun) talks with Besty (Allie Trimm) in the library. Shooting
of the prom. We lit the prom scene
with Arris Alexa digital camera, Shah never shied away from extreme highlights. The Alexa holds
with 56 Pars and 19-degree Source
hot windows really well, he says.
Fours rigged over the tables, says
English. We dressed practical table
lamps with 216 diffusion gel in glass
cylinders and put two Jokers and
Source Fours gelled with 14 CTB on a
mirror ball over the dance floor.
During the dance, the filmmakers also
made judicious use of a 25'
Technocrane and a Steadicam.
At the beginning of the shoot,
Shah and Nussbaum screened a selection of dailies at 2K resolution on a big
screen in a Pablo suite at FotoKem,
using a custom-designed film-emulation LUT. We didnt film out any
dailies, notes Shah. Once we got
going, we had Internet dailies via the
Pix network.
In the dailies, I was surprised to
see a big difference in resolution
hard sun, and used a few Jokers with
our ubiquitous Chinese lantern fitted
between our prime and zoom lenses,
Source Four attachments for extra
with a 500-watt ECT. We also dressed he says. Like a lot of digital cameras,
splashes of sunlight.
the art room with lots of practical lamps the Alexa still needs that extra snap that
Scenes progress in this room
on hand-squeeze dimmers to play as
primes give on the big screen. That was
from a bright day to a bluish twilight,
warm and inviting as antagonism
fine with me, because we would have
continues the cinematographer. We
between the two characters gives way to used primes for almost the whole show,
bounced four HMIs [two 18Ks and
romance. We did a lot of long, handanyway.
two 12Ks] into a row of 12-by-12
held takes to emphasize their changing
FotoKems involvement in Prom
Ultrabounce frames for skylight
emotions.
began early in prep, with the help of
through the high windows, and then
Nova and Jesse create a giant,
Tom Vice, manager and vice president
used a tungsten key light inside with
functional fountain for the proms
of FotoKems NextLab. Weve had a
56
May 2011
First Dance
Jesse and Nova

survey their
handiwork.
Looking back
over his first
dance with the
Alexa, Shah
notes, we found
a format that
could capture the
extremes of
brightness and
darkness
necessary for a
story about the
extremes of the
teen heart.
long relationship with Arri, and this

was an important project for them and
for Disney, notes Vice. Arri was heavily involved and helped us in the early
stages, confirming workflows and
frame-rate combinations.
We set Byron up with enough
Codex magazines to shoot for two full
days, which gave us enough time for
our dailies turnaround, continues Vice.
As each drive arrived, wed load the
Codex RAW files onto the network
from our in-house transfer station. The
digital-imaging technician on set had
already input some scene slates and
metadata, which helped a lot.
The Codex RAW format uses a
proprietary 3:1 wavelet compression,
which wed immediately decode for
PIX and compress for Avid with
Byrons desired LUT already applied,
he continues. Then wed run off DPX
frames onto LTO tape for safekeeping.
The beauty of our system is that those
Codex files stay on our network and
can be called up directly in the Pablo
DI suite for the conform stage. We can
take the editors pull list, load it into the
Pablo, conform from Codex to DPX,
58
May 2011
and then go right out to film.

Shah worked with colorist John
Daro to create the films final output. I
knew the Alexas latitude was profound,
but it was a little crazy how much room
we had to play with and how easily we
could adjust files, says Shah. We shot
into hot windows whenever we could,
but the only blown highlights were in
the flames of the burning shed!
Going in, my chief concern was
that the texture of close-ups on the big
screen would feel electronic and unappealing, he continues. Diffusion
wasnt an option, because I didnt like
how even light amounts of [Schneider]
Classic Soft look on this format
totally phony. So I was delighted to see
that for the first time in my experience
with a digital format, the close-ups look
gorgeous, supple and natural.
Looking back on the experience,
both Shah and Nussbaum are pleased
with the Alexas performance. It was
initially a race against time just to get
our camera bodies right off the assembly line, recalls Nussbaum. But after
that, it was unbelievable how few problems we had during production and
post. We had all the range we needed in

the DI, and Byron just nailed the look.
Everyone was making the same
movie, notes Shah. The studio gave
us the support we needed, and the
results are a tribute to Joe and our
producer, Justin Spring. They encouraged me to take some chances on my
first studio movie, and all those chances
paid off.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa
Cooke S4, Angenieux Optimo
2011
LOS ANGELES
FILM FESTIVAL
L.A. LIVE Downtown LA
June 16-26
Learn more at LAFilmFest.com
HOST VENUE
PRESENTING PARTNER
The first of a two-part

look at the origins,
design characteristics
and functions of
todays digital-imaging
sensors.
By Christopher Probst
|
Decoding
Digital
Imagers: Part 1
G
iven the proliferation of digital motion-picture camera

systems available to cinematographers today, a primer
on how these various digital imagers function is perhaps
overdue. If you are a cinematographer, a clear understanding of the factors that influence a sensors function and
integration into a cameras design can help you make better
decisions about which system best suits your needs.
The first installment of this two-part series will discuss
how digital imagers developed and evolved, differentiate
between CCD and CMOS imagers, and touch upon the
concepts of resolution, Modulation Transfer Function,
perceived picture sharpness and Nyquist Sampling Theorem.
Next month, Part 2 will delve further into the function of
CCD and CMOS imagers and their application in various
camera systems, color-filter arrays, image processing, digital
output specs and recording mechanisms.
To begin our dissection of this topic, lets look at how
digital imagers developed.
60
May 2011
A History of Digital Imagers

The invention of the first passive Metal-Oxide
Semiconductor imager is credited to Gene P. Weckler of
Fairchild Semiconductor, who authored the article
Operation of p-n Junction Photodetectors in a Photon Flux
Integrating Mode in the Sept. 1967 issue of the
IEEE
Journal of Solid-State Circuits . Wecklers early work in MOS
imagers was also detailed in his influential follow-up paper,
Integrated Arrays of Silicon Photodetectors for Image
Sensing, co-written with Rudolph H. Dyck for the April
1968 edition of the IEEE Journal of Transactions on Electron
Devices.
Simultaneously, in the United Kingdom, Peter J.W.
Noble documented his active pixel concepts in the article
Self-Scanned Silicon Image Detector Arrays, which was
also printed in the April 1968 edition of IEEE Transactions
on Electron Devices.
An invention that is more directly related to todays
digital-imager environment, however,

occurred in 1969 at Bell Labs, with
George E. Smith and Willard S. Boyles
creation of the Charge-Coupled
Device, or CCD. The CCD imager
quickly established itself as a more easily
produced technology for the state of
semiconductor fabrication capabilities
in the 1970s and on through the 1980s.
Smith and Boyle were presented with a
2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for their
contribution to the birth of digital
imaging.
CCDs dominated early on partly
because of strong R&D by corporations
such as Sony, RCA and Bell Labs. In
fact, the Sony Corp. Research Center
actively developed CCD technology in
the early 1970s, and by 1972 displayed a
96-pixel linear CCD sensor at its
annual exhibition. By July 1976, Sony
had created its first single-chip color
camera prototype, and in March 1978,
it unveiled its first three-chip CCD
camera design that utilized three
110,000-pixel Interline Transfer CCD
sensors.
Opposite page: Arri's ALEV-III Super 35mm CMOS sensor used in the Alexa camera. This page,
top: At Bell Labs in 1974, Willard Boyle (left) and George Smith demonstrate an experimental
camera featuring an early CCD imager. (Reprinted with permission of Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc.)
Below: The principle behind the charge-transfer and readout of a CCD chip. One row at a time is
then shifted through an A/D Converter, which makes the output signal digital.
Defining the Pixel

In order to better understand how
digital imagers such as CCDs work, we
should first define an oft-misunderstood term: the pixel. The first known
use of the word was in a 1965 paper by
Fred C. Billingsley and George
Peterson, who collaborated at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
The term pixel comes from two
words: Picture and Element, says Larry
Thorpe, national marketing executive of
Canons Broadcast and Communication
Division and formerly a veteran of more
than 20 years in Sonys HD division.
However, there are several different
types of pixels, denoting several different
types of things. There are imaging pixels
in the sensor of a camera. There are
digital pixels associated with the camera
digitization processing and interfacing.
And today, with fixed-pixel displays,
there are also display pixels.
For this discussion, we will focus
primarily on imaging pixels and their
derived digital pixels used in the
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May 2011
61

Typical CMOS Photosite Structure
Microlens
Red
Color
Filter
Reset
Transistor
Amplifier
Transistor
Column
Bus
Transistor
Silicon
Substrate
construction of a SMPTE-prescribed
delivery format. To help avoid confusion, we will use the term photosite to
refer to imaging pixels and pixel when
referring to digital pixels. By definition,
imager photosites are the tiny receptors
in a CCD or CMOS sensor that transform the two-dimensional optical
image projected by the lens onto the
sensor into an analog electronic signal.
CCD Imagers
The CCD, at its most basic, is
designed to store and transfer information in the form of an electrical charge.
In cross-section, it consists of a substrate
of semiconductor material covered with
an insulator.
A pattern of metal electrodes is
positioned on the insulator, and every
third electrode is connected to a
common conductor. When voltage is
applied to an electrode, a potential
well forms in the semiconductor
beneath it. In the case of an imaging
sensor, the amount of charge that fills a
well depends on the amount of light
striking that area of the CCD. By
applying voltage to the next electrodes,
potential wells form under them, and
62
May 2011
Row
Select
Bus
Photodiode
Potential
Well
part of the stored charge shifts over to

the new well areas. When voltage is
removed from the original energized
electrodes, the charge in their wells likewise spills over into the new wells. This
process continues down the line of electrodes to a detector in a sort of bucketbrigade fashion.
Functionally, CCDs are the
simplest of imagers, states John Galt,
senior vice president of Panavisions
Advanced Digital Imaging Group, but
to manufacture them with todays specs
requires an amazingly complex process.
In fact, there are only a few manufacturers of CCDs in the world.
Jeffrey Zarnowski, sensor-design
engineer and chief technology officerof
Panavision Imaging, adds, CCDs have
dominated the solid-state-imager
market over MOS or CMOS photodiodes for the past 30-plus years because
CCDs have the lowest noise and highest sensitivity. Sony had the lions share
of the CCD market thanks to its Hole
Accumulation Diode pixel technology,
which allowed for improved blue
response over standard photogate pixels.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, CCDs
continued to evolve in resolution and
Left: The structure of a typical CMOS photosite

with a microlens and a single color of a color-filter
array. A certain percentage of the real estate is
occupied by processing circuitry, leaving only a
fraction of the area for actual photo-electric
sensing. Right: One of the first CCD sensors
produced. (Reprinted with permission of
Alcatel-Lucent USA Inc.)
quality, and in the year 2000, Panavision

and Sony introduced the F900 as the
first 3-CCD 24-fps progressive HD
video camera.
CMOS Imagers
Many of todays digital-stills
cameras and digital-cinema camera
systems use a different type of digitalimaging architecture: Complimentary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor, or
CMOS, sensors. These are fabricated
with many of the same processes as
todays highly complex integrated
circuits for microprocessors and
memory.
CMOS sensors differ from
CCDs in that they incorporate on-chip
much of the amplification and digitization circuitry necessary to capture a
photosites analog electronic signal.
This circuitry allows CMOS photosites
to perform their own charge-to-voltage
conversion, instead of requiring the
charge to be transferred to an output
node for subsequent conversion into an
electronic signal. It does this by arranging the photosites in a checkerboard of
readout busses that contain not only the
photosite, but also as many as eight
transistors that convert the accumulated

electron charge into a measurable voltage. These additional electronic components reside alongside the light-sensitive
photodiode and occupy a certain
percentage of the area of the photosite.
This remaining percentageis the actual
photosensitive area and mostly determines the actual sensitivity and dynamic
range of the sensor.
After converting the photosites
stored charge into an electrical voltage,
and before transferring the photosites
analog electrical signal to a vertical
column bus, this digital circuitry must
reset the photodiode to begin the next
integration cycle. The buss function is
to also supply necessary timing signals
to the photodiodes and send their readout information to the analog decoding
and processing circuitry. A benefit of
this grid structure of buses is that it
allows each of the photosites in the array
to be read as simple x and y coordinates.
With a CMOS imaging device,
each photosite has an amplifier with a
number of transistors, diodes and capacitors a miniature circuit that occupies the same [substrate], explains Galt.
With CMOS manufacturing, it has
been proven that the size of the features
on any semiconductor have been following Moores Law, getting smaller and
smaller.
Moores Law refers to Gordon
Moore, the co-founder of Intel Corp.,
who stated, Every 18 months, the
density doubles, or the feature-sizes
half. This rapid pace of increasing
technological complexity has allowed
CMOS imagers to make significant
qualitative steps. As Galt notes, They
have gone from having circuit features
that you could see with the human eye
to having features that you can only see
with an electron microscope!
To grasp the manufacturing
challenges this presents, he continues,
I use an analogy to help people get a
sense of how small the elements of these
devices can get. On edge, a dollar bill is
pretty consistently 100 microns thick.
On the sensor we use for the
[Panavision] Genesis, a photosite is only
A photomicrograph image of a cross-section of a pixel. Visible are the

microlens above each photosite well, as well as the color filter
photo-lithographically printed beneath the lens. (Image courtesy of Panavision.)
4.1 microns wide.

Zarnowski expands, The initial
promise of CMOS imagers was
hindered by the fact that they were
noisy [compared] to CCDs. This was
due to both Fixed Pattern Noise and
Temporal Noise, and as a result CMOS
imagers had objectionable patterns
that could be seen by the viewer and
didnt quite have the same sensitivity
as CCDs. With the recent architecture changes made to eliminate
FPN and the creation of overall lowernoise pixels through the addition of
pinned photodiodes CMOS imagers
are now living up to their potential.
CCD technology was the superior technology in the 80s and probably
through the 90s, but CMOS was on a
real growth curve because its a technology that is used in all of the other semiconductor manufacturing operations,
agrees Glenn Kennel, president and
CEO of Arri, Inc. Unfortunately, all of
the Moores Laws improvements no
longer apply to CCD because there just
arent enough products being developed
for them. CCD is still a viable technology, but its more expensive to make,
and it isnt improving at the same rate.
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In fact, it has reached a kind of plateau.

CMOS imagers continue to improve
and have now passed CCDs in sensitivity, dynamic range and frame-rate capabilities.
General Components of a
Digital Camera
For simplicitys sake, we can say
the digital camera has two discrete
sections: the front-end imaging section
and the back end for digital processing
and output digital interfaces.
In the imaging section, an image
enters a lens and is projected onto a
sensor. The sensor then samples this
image opto-electrically with its photosites and generates an analog electrical
signal. It is at this step when the resolution for the entire system is greatly
determined and/or influenced by the
number of samples on the sensor in
this case, the number of photosites.
This analog sampling of the image is
then handed to the digital section and
subsequently subjected to separate digital sampling.
In the digital section, we have to
grab that analog information and digitize it its a second sampling step,
May 2011
63
says Thorpe. The resolution, the

dynamic range and the tonal reproduction, all of the really important imaging
attributes, have to faithfully be represented digitally. With some sensors,
such as CMOS imagers, that analogto-digital conversion is done inside the
sensor, but its still a two-step process:
analog transformation followed by digitization. From that digital sampling
structure, you then do a lot of processing
and formulate interface signals that can
go to the outside world in the form of a
video-output signal to be viewed, or to
be sent to a recorder or other various
systems.
Now, he notes, is there a link
between the total number of imaging

photosites and their resultant digital
pixels? There can be, but there might
not be!
In fact, it is not mandatory to
have a direct 1:1 relationship between
the number of photosites on a sensor
and the digital-pixel dimensions derived
from that photosite array. Indeed, the
concept of an imagers photosites
directly corresponding to its digitalpixel output specs is fraught with confusion.
Thorpe recalls, In 1981, when
the world created the first digital standards for standard-definition video,
SMPTE defined the North American
standard as: 720 (H) x 480 (V). The

CCD cameras invented at that time
were all horizontally sub-sampled [with
imager photosites numbering less than
the horizontal output standard]. That
was all they could build! But as the 80s
progressed, manufacturers learned how
to build more sophisticated CCDs, and
by the late 80s, they started to
oversample, or super-sample, in the horizontal direction. To my knowledge,
however, even today there is no professional standard-def camera that has [a
1:1 ratio of] optical photosites and
[output] digital pixels.
Super-sampling facilitates subsequent digital filtering and helps
produce a very nice aperture, as we call
it, Thorpe continues. In HD,
however, in both the single-chip and
tri-imager systems, you will find a lot of
linkage between the photosites and the
digital pixels. One reason for that is that
when the first 3-chip CCD HD
cameras came out, in the early 90s, the
creators decided to go as high as they
possibly could [in terms of definition].
Even today we still see lots of HD
cameras whose optical sites match their
digital pixels, but, surprisingly, we also
see lots of sub-sampling in HD camera
systems. Additionally, there are several
Ultra High Definition camera systems
emerging on the market that are now
super-sampling.
Resolution
Clearly, there is some room for
interpretation in talking about photosites, pixels and resolution. The resolution of a digital camera is often defined
as the number of pixels in the signal
thats being delivered, but that is inaccurate, states Thorpe. However, it is true
that the topic of resolution and the
specifications for it are bound up in
discussions of pixels.
Looking at the specs of various
camera systems on the market today,
you see a range of different photosite
dimensions utilized in various HD, 2K
and even 4K camera systems.
There are a lot of differences to
be seen in each of these specs, notes
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May 2011
Thorpe. Why? Because every manufacturer wants lots of photosites on the

sensor to get more resolution, but that
creates a problem: As the number of
photosites goes up on a sensor, the
photosites get smaller, and when the
photosites get smaller, you see increased
noise and reduced dynamic range. So
theres a tradeoff between resolution and
management of dynamic range and
noise; each manufacturer decides on a
certain number of photosites and then
does some clever processing especially
if they sub-sample to try to recover
some of the resolution.
Sampling Theory and MTF
To describe the performance of an
imager, it is also necessary to define the
concept of sampling. Lets say I have a
CCD thats looking at an image
projected onto it by a lens, says Thorpe.
That sensor is photosampling that
image with its photosites. With that
information, you will then have to reconstruct all of those samples in order to get
something useful, like a video signal.
However, in 1928, Harry Nyquist wrote
a famous mathematical paper that
haunts us to this day. He concluded that
if you sample optically, electrically or
digitally you are stuck with a fundamental rule: If you have N samples
[across a line] or N-samples vertically,
you can only resolve N/2without experiencing an interference.
In other words, he continues, in
the reconstruction of an image, your
sampling of those photosites must be at
least twice the highest detail that is of
interest to you. Otherwise, youre going
to get interference, which we call aliasing
or moir. This applies to the sensor thats
doing optical sampling, and it also applies
to the digitization process thats doing
digital sampling. Harry hits you twice in
any digital camera!
To break it down mathematically,
if you have an HD imager with 1,920
horizontal samples, you can unambiguously resolve only 960 line-pairs per
picture width. And if some information
coming in from the lens has a frequency
that is higher than 960, it is going to
generate a problem. In fact, if that information is of very high frequency detail,

it will generate spurious signal interference at a correspondingly low spatial
frequency intermixed into the signal:
aliasing.
The sampling capabilities of a
digital sensor are more commonly
denoted as line-pairs per picture height,
or lp/ph. To derive this number, you
need to transform the line-pairs-perpicture-width value by the inverse of the
aspect ratio (16:9 in most digital
imagers), or by 9/16. So with our example of 960 lp/pw, we transform that by
the inverse of the aspect ratio, resulting
in a calculation for the 1,920 samples in
the sensor example being able to accurately resolve 540 line-pairs per picture
height across the picture.
But what exactly are the parameters of resolving line-pairs? Here is
where Modulation Transfer Function,
or MTF, rears its confounding head.
MTF begs the questions, What
are we modulating, and what are we
transferring? says Thorpe. Lets
postulate a lens looking at a scene,
which in our test case is low-frequency
black-and-white bars that have a nice,
high contrast of 600:1. The lenss job is
to transfer that scene from the real
world into an object-image. We hope
that object-image will be exactly the
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same as the scene in front of the lens, but

there is no such thing as a perfect lens, so
we cannot get the same 600:1 contrast
ratio through the lens. But lets suppose
that we have a very good lens that delivers a contrast ratio of 595:1. Well lose a
little contrast, even at the lowest
frequencies of a black-and-white highcontrast input.
But heres the bad part: If we
increase the frequency of that scene,
which means increasing the fineness of
the detail in the black-and-white bars
[like a test chart], the delivered image
will come through at an even lower
contrast than the lower-frequency scene.
That is true of every lens on the planet.
[An image projected through a lens] will
lose contrast increasingly as you raise the
detail fineness. Plainly stated, the transferred contrast is being altered as we
move up in higher and higher frequencies. And its the variations in transferred-detail contrast that constitute this
transfer function; the transfer function is
how your contrast behaves as you raise
the fineness of the detail. If you put
enough of these frequencies in, measure
their output and plot them on a graph,
you get a profile, or modulation, of the
transfer of contrast. Hence, MTF.
MTF occurs at multiple steps in
the image-capture, digitization and
output chain, and has a cumulative effect
May 2011
65

actually lifts, notes Thorpe. Thats great
because it gives us a potential for more
resolution, but its also bad because
[increased resolution] gives us more
energy to generate aliasing.
Typically, photosites using
microlenses will have a fill factor of
approximately 70 percent, says
Zarnowski, and most photosites that are
6 microns or smaller will have a
microlens. On larger photosites that dont
use a microlens, the MTF is directly
related to the percentage of the pixel that
the photodiode occupies. The smaller the
percentage, the lower the fill factor and
the higher the MTF; as the photodiodes
are effectively isolated from one another,
less cross-talk between them can occur.
on the total system resolution possible
in a digital camera. The lens fitted to
the front of the camera has its own
MTF characteristics, as do the sensor
sampling the image, the lens of a projector showing the image, and your very
own eyes.
pixels are usually a different color, and

its why a microlens over each pixel is
formed to focus the light directly onto
the photodiode.
A microlens is essentially a
single-element lens formed on the
sensor above each individual photosite.
The microlens is typically circular in
Fill Factor
shape but covers a
square photosite.
An additional consideration with How well a microlens is positioned and
both CCD and CMOS imagers is that
shaped has great affect on MTF and
because part of the sensors surface area
the fill factor of a photosite.
features additional circuitry components
MTF is only one aspect of
necessary to capture and digitize each
image quality that goes into the numerphotosites charge, the photosensitive
ous tradeoffs that have to be made in
areas of the pixel do not abut one
the design of the pixel, expands
another. This gap between the
Zarnowski. Different pixel designs can
photosensitive portions of the photohave as few as 1.33 transistors per pixel
sites the fill factor is often
or as many as 5 transistors per pixel.
discussed as a percentage of the area. For The fewer transistors per pixel, the
example, a sensor with a 60-percent fill
higher the fill factor; usually theres a
factor would have 60 percent of a
direct increase of the photosites full
photosites area devoted to capturing the well capacity. Additionally, a larger
incident light. The remaining 40
photodiode and full well [capacity] can
percent would denote the area occupied have a direct impact on the sensitivity
by the additional digital components on and dynamic range of the pixel two
the chip.
other very important factors of imager
In designing CMOS-sensor
quality.
photosites, there are metal wires that
An ironic aspect of fill factor is
run vertically and horizontally in a grid
that as the space between the photosites
pattern, says Zarnowski. These metal
increases due to these additional elecwires both block and reflect light to
tronic components, so does the sensors
neighboring pixels. It is this scattered
MTF response. If you have a large gap
light that can distort color, as adjacent
between photosites, the MTF curve
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May 2011
Perceived Picture Sharpness

and Optical Low-Pass Filtering
Resolution is often thought of as
synonymous with sharp and in focus.
However, the concept is also entangled
with our own human perceptionof
sharpness. During the 1950s, RCA engineer Otto Schade did extensive testing of
the subjective human response to resolution and perceived picture sharpness.
From this research, he determined that
the human-perceived impression of
sharpness was proportional to the square
of the area under the MTF curve.
Thorpe explains, Schade found
that when you look at a screen some
distance away, the perceived sharpness
that you see with your eyes and your brain
is weighted much more toward the
lower-band and mid-band spatial
frequencies. Higher frequencies do
almost nothing to your perception of
sharpness. When you square an MTF
curve, that new curve, and specifically the
shape and area underneath it, is what
your eyes and brain see as perceived sharpness. Its not about having 1,000 or 2,000
lines of resolution; that range is almost
meaningless to us because we cant see
frequencies that high from a normal
viewing distance.
In other words, good contrast
reproduction in the overalllow-band and
mid-band frequencies in an image is what
stimulates us to perceive an image as
sharp. However, as most concepts in the

science of cinematography go, these
parameters of sharpness, contrast and
resolution are inextricably intertwined. In
fact, a sensors high-resolution capability
does impact its reproduction of the lowband and mid-band frequencies.
Contrast and sharpness areinextricably linked, confirms Thorpe. We
can measure the MTF of a lens/camera
in line-pairs or with burst charts [a chart
that has some contrast in it], but the
bottom line is that you want the lens and
camera to deliver a curve with as high of
a belly as possible at the lower-band and
mid-band spatial frequencies. A lens and
camera with the highest curve, the fattest
belly in terms of shape, will be perceived
as the sharpest. You dont want to go into
the camera and turn up the digital edgeenhancement to get edges reproduced
with clarity and no softness. You want
inherent sharpness coming from a good
MTF.
Just how you get a good MTF is
determined from the start by the number
of photosites sampling the image at the
sensor and the quality of the lens. Every
step thereafter serves only to reduce the
images resolution, as Nyquist explained.
Put more directly, in order to get good
MTF performance at low-band and
mid-band frequencies, we need as much
high-frequency performance as possible,
even though we wont ultimately see that
fine detail with our eyes.
However, in order to produce the
high-resolution performance necessary
to produce a big belly MTF response
curve in the low-band and mid-band
frequency ranges, we must deal first with
Nyquists sampling theorem to avoid
interference. This means pre-filteringout
any higher frequencies that might generate aliasing.
Thorpe describes this filtering
solution: If we have a 1,920 (H) imager
that can unambiguously resolve 540 linepairs per picture height horizontally, and
if these photosites are large and abut one
another, then you get a curve like the one
[on page 66].
Now, lets say the lens projects
onto this sensor a very high-detail scene.
The top graph shows the sensor's MTF response to an incoming image in blue and the subsequent
Optical Low Pass Filtering at the Nyquist limit, resulting in the green curve below it. The bottom graph
shows all of the necessary digital filtering for Nyquist and SMPTE output requirements.
If its very-high-frequency detail is

higher than the carrier [or maximum
resolution capability of the sensor], it
will then generate a spurious interference at a very low frequency in the
signal. Thats aliasing. And once created,
aliasing cannot be removed its
indelible.
How do you avoid that? You use
an Optical Low-Pass Filterin front of
the sensor, and shape that filter to try to
keep the in-band resolution up and the
aliasing down as far as possible. There is
no perfect way of doing that, so you end
up with a tradeoff. All camera manufacturers have their own criteria for their
Optical Low-Pass Filters, but they
rarely publish what those criteria are.
As its name suggests, an Optical
Low-Pass Filter optically passes only the
lower frequencies at a manufacturerspecified range. Frequencies above the
cutoff are effectively blocked by a
process that blurs the high-frequency
details, thereby preventing them from
generating interference. As Nyquists
theory suggests, the filtering must be
done at any and all sampling steps in
the cameras imaging section (in front of
the sensor for the photosites sampling
of the image) and then again in the digital section (for the digital sampling that
occurs electronically).
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The sensor is looking at the

image from the lens and is therefore
sampling it, says Thorpe. So it has a
sampling frequency and a corresponding
optical Nyquist value. The camera
manufacturer has to then put in an
Optical Low-Pass Filter, which allows
you to keep most of the [low-band and
mid-band] resolution, but there is still a
tradeoff in order to keep the aliasing
way down.
Then that analog signal must be
digitized, and the digital section has a
digital sampling frequency that also has
a digital Nyquist value, which may or
may not be the same frequency, continues Thorpe. So, as you did with the
imaging section, you must filter the
digital section.
Finally, all camera manufacturers
will put a third filter near the output of
the camera thats intended to apply a
finite limit that protects against downstream digital processing [in the recording system, in post and in subsequent
digital distribution]. With HD cameras,
the shape of that final filter is prescribed
by the SMPTE to be 30 Mhz. That is
built into the production standard and is
deliberately below the camera Nyquist
limit for HD.
Ed. Note: See next months issue for
Part 2.
May 2011
67
Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC

graciously accepts his
Lifetime Achievement
Award, even if it is a bit
premature, he quips.
A Hollywood Affair
Photography by
Alex Lopez; Chris Mankofsky; Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; Georgia Packard, SOC;
Jason Redman; Logan Schneider; Dan Steinberg; and Matt Turve.
elebrating cinematographers 2010 accomplishments for screens both big and small, the
Society presented the 25th annual ASC Awards for Outstanding Achievement in
Cinematography on Feb. 13. The gala awards banquet was held at the Hollywood & Highland
Grand Ballroom, just around the corner from the ASC Clubhouse, where the Society hosted
a lively afterparty. In the days leading up to the Awards, the Clubhouse also provided the setting for
the ASC's annual Open House, the Nominees Dinner and the inaugural Friends of the ASC event.
These were the nominees for ASC Awards in competitive categories. They are presented in
alphabetical order, with the winners highlighted in boldface type:
Regular Series/Pilot: Eagle Egilsson, ASC, Dark Blue, Shell Game; Jonathan Freeman,
ASC, Boardwalk Empire , Home ; Christopher Manley, ASC, Mad Men , Blowing Smoke;
Kramer Morgenthau, ASC, Boardwalk Empire, Family Limitation; David Stockton, ASC,Nikita,
Pilot; Michael Wale, CSC, Smallville, Shield; Glen Winter, CSC, Smallville, Abandoned.
Motion Picture/Miniseries Television: David Gribble, ACS, Jesse Stone: No Remorse ;
Jon Joffin, Alice, Episode 2; Stephen F. Windon, ACS,The Pacific, Okinawa.
Theatrical Release: Danny Cohen, BSC, The Kings Speech ; Jeff Cronenweth, ASC, The
Social Network ; Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC, True Grit ; Matthew Libatique, ASC, Black Swan ;
Wally Pfister, ASC,Inception.
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May 2011
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4
1
7
5
10
9
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Enjoying a moment in the spotlight at the ASC
Awards ceremony are: 1. Victor J. Kemper, ASC;
2. Awards Chairman Richard Crudo, ASC; 3. actress
Allison Janney, who presented the Regular Series
category, and Richard Kline, ASC;
4. Michael Watkins, ASC and Janney;
5. Owen Roizman, ASC; 6. Ellen Kuras, ASC, who
introduced the Presidents Award; 7. an exuberant
Douglas Kirkland, who received the Presidents
Award in recognition of his remarkable career as a
stills photographer; 8. student filmmakers Dagmar
Weaver-Madsen of UCLA and Boyd Hobbs of Full
Sail University, who earned ASC William A. Fraker
Heritage Awards; 9. Stephen H. Burum, ASC;
10. Kirkland and Kuras; 11. Woody Omens, ASC;
12. Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.
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May 2011
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2
6
7
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Others who stepped to the podium: 1. director Michael Apted, who introduced the
International Award; 2. International Award recipient John Seale, ASC, ACS;
3. Bill Butler, ASC; 4. Seale and Apted; 5. ASC President Michael Goi; 6. actress
Gillian Jacobs, who presented the Motion Picture/Miniseries category;
7. cinematographer Marc Windon, who accepted the award on behalf of his
brother, Stephen Windon, ACS (The Pacific, Okinawa); 8. ASC members Robert
Liu, George Spiro Dibie and Donald M. Morgan; 9. John C. Flinn III, ASC, who
introduced the Career Achievement in Television Award;
10. Michael D. OShea, ASC, who received the award;
11. longtime friends OShea and Flinn.
11
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May 2011
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1
2
3
6
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The cavalcade continues with: 1. Haskell Wexler, ASC; 2. Tom Hanks
introducing his friend Julia Roberts, who received the Board of
Governors Award; 3. Roberts hefting her trophy; 4. Hanks and Roberts
doubling their star wattage as they stroll offstage; 5. Jack Green, ASC;
6. Joel Coen introducing Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Roger
Deakins, ASC, BSC; 7. Deakins applauding his peers; 8. Michael
Chapman, ASC; 9. actress Diane Lane introducing the Theatrical
Release category; 10. Roizman reading a note from winner Wally
Pfister, ASC (Inception); Goi and Crudo closing the show.
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May 2011
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Guests and honorees making the rounds at the pre-Awards cocktail hour
included: 1. nominee Kramer Morgenthau, ASC ( Boardwalk Empire, Family
Limitation) and Tracy Fleischman; 2. Kodak execs Kim Snyder and Bruce
Berke with Snyders husband, Jim; 3. Isidore Mankofsky, ASC;
4. ASC members Stephen H. Burum and Robert Primes; 5. John Seale, ASC,
ACS with Owen and Mona Roizman (Seale's wife, Louise, chats in
foreground); 6. Veronica Lighthill and her husband, Stephen Lighthill, ASC,
with Dan Kaslow and Nancy Schreiber, ASC; 7. Carmen Cabana and her
beau, American Cinematographer circulation director Saul Molina;
8. nominee Michael Wale, CSC (Smallville, Shield) and his wife, Janice;
9. Technicolors Bob Hoffman and his wife, Claire; 10. ASC events
coordinator Patty Armacost, Gina and Michael Goi, and ASC presidents
assistant Delphine Figueras; 11. the schmoozing throng.
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May 2011
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1. Franoise and Douglas Kirkland; 2. American Cinematographer
circulation manager Alex Lopez and his wife, Noemi;
3. Julio Macat, ASC and Miss ASC, Elizabeth Barndt, with Richard
Crudo, ASC and Joe Dunton, BSC; 4. Kay Baker and Shari Belafonte;
5: honorary ASC members Bob Fisher and Larry Mole Parker with
Victor J. Kemper, ASC and his wife, Claire; 6. ASC general manager
Brett Grauman and his wife, Benita; 7. Gordon Lonsdale, ASC and
his wife, Lynn; 8: Richard Kline, ASC and his daughter, Rija;
9. Macat with his agent, Frank Balkin, and Crescenzo Notarile, ASC;
10. Frank Kay, Jim Fisher, Barbara Bass and Alan Gitlin;
11. Kees Van Oostrum, ASC and his daughter, Sara;
12. Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC and his wife, Joy.
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May 2011
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Circulating at the Awards afterparty held at the newly renovated ASC Clubhouse: 1. Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS;
2. AFI students Mihal Dabal and Wesley Cardino (who earned honorable mentions in the student category) flank
cinematographer Polly Morgan; 3. Walt Lloyd, ASC, with friends; 4. Fujifilms Curtis Jones; 5. Daniel Pearl, ASC;
6. Chris Manley, ASC; 7. Dean Cundey, ASC and his wife, Tisha; 8. John C. Flinn III, ASC and his fiance, Julie Phillips;
9. Logan Schneider, a dedicated Friend of the ASC; 10. Canons Tim Smith with Rodney Charters, ASC, CSC and
Kish Sadhvani of Kish Optics; 11. associate member Denny Clairmont; 12. Joel Coen;
13. honorary ASC member Brian Spruill; 14. Fujifilms Sandy Kurotobi.
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May 2011
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Snaps from the Nominees Dinner: 1. ASC President Michael Goi; 2. Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC and his wife, Susan, flank
American Cinematographer executive editor Stephen Pizzello; 3. Glen Winter, CSC; 4. Eagle Egilsson, ASC;
5. Carol Peterson and Florence Omens; 6. the more spacious Great Room; 7. Ralph Woolsey, ASC and Justina Mintz;
8. Owen and Mona Roizman with Kodaks Michael Zakula; 9. Kramer Morgenthau, ASC; 10. Douglas Kirkland with
Milt and Joy Shefter; 11. Don McCuaig, ASC and Richard Crudo, ASC; 12. nominee Michael Wale, CSC;
13. Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; 14. Matt Leonetti, ASC and his wife, Mary Jane.
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May 2011
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3
8
7
9
10
12
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1. Roger and James Deakins with John and Louise Seale; 2. John Bailey, ASC with
Kodaks Judy Doherty; 3. Kodak president and general manager Kim Snyder;
4. Sharon and Michael OShea with Betty Negrin; 5. Janice Simpson and associate
member Grover Crisp; 6. Boston Red Sox fan Stephen Pizzello plays hardball with
New York Yankees apologist Owen Roizman, ASC as nominee David Gribble, ACS
(Jesse Stone: No Remorse) mediates; 7. Frank Kay and his wife, Sharlene;
8. Janet Parks and Michael Margulies, ASC with Victor J. Kemper, ASC and his
wife, Claire; 9. Roizman poses proudly with his own Reserved Parking sign,
which will mark his space on the ASC lot to salute his years of hard work as
chairman of the Building Committee; 10. Glen Winter, CSC and Julie Marr;
11. Michael Goi, ASC and nominee David Stockton, ASC ( Nikita pilot);
12. Robert Liu, ASC and his wife, Ivy.
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May 2011
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7
Enjoying the first Friends
of the ASC event are:
1. ASC pals Michael Goi and
George Spiro Dibie; 2. nominee
Michael Wale, CSC; 3. John Seale,
ASC, ACS (middle); 4. nominee
David Gribble, ACS and Goi;
5. a Friend of the ASC with Roger
and James Deakins; 6. nominee
Jon Joffin (Alice, Episode 2);
7. Stephen H. Burum, ASC and
Polly Morgan; 8. a roomful
of cinematography fans;
9. Nancy Schreiber, ASC and some
Friends of the ASC;
10. ASC compatriots Dibie and
Victor J. Kemper, ASC (at right)
flank Fujifilms Curtis Jones as
Kees Van Oostrum, ASC
chats in backgound;
11. Burum, John Simmons, ASC
and Mark Bender; 12. a Friend of
the ASC poses for a photo with
Haskell Wexler, ASC;
13. Frank Kay and Larry Mole Parker
welcome a guest.
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May 2011
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1. George Spiro Dibie, ASC takes to the microphone like a duck to water; 2. an Open House
attendee chats with Michael Negrin, ASC; 3. Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC and nominee Kramer
Morgenthau, ASC; 4. nominee David Stockton, ASC with fellow members Ellen Kuras and
Eagle Egilsson; 5. a Friend of the ASC with David Darby, ASC; 6. two Friends flank Steven
Fierberg, ASC; 7. Dibie anoints someone as sexy; 8. Bob Yeoman, ASC and two guests;
9. Haskell Wexler, ASC and Douglas Kirkland with attendees.
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May 2011
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3
4
7
Soaking up both the sun and interior ambience at the ASC
Open House are: 1. nominees Glen Winter, CSC (left),
Jon Joffin (hydrating in the hot sun) and David Gribble, ACS
(brown leather jacket); 2. a throng of visitors; 3. Michael
Negrin, ASC (second from left) and his father, Sol Negrin, ASC
(far right) mingle with guests; 4. John Seale, ASC, ACS and a
circle of admirers; 5. Gil Hubbs, ASC (right); 6. Logan Hall and
Conrad Hall, Jr.; 7. Ellen Kuras, ASC and a group of
cinematography buffs; 8. the first Friend of the ASC, Christian
La Fountaine, with his father, George La Fountaine, ASC;
9. Haskell Wexler, ASC (third from left) and students.
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Back in the open air: 1. associate member Andy Romanoff; 2. Nancy Schreiber, ASC and
Beverly Wood of Deluxe; 3. Haskell Wexler, ASC signs an autograph; 4. Larry Mole Parker and
Amy Vincent, ASC; 5. Tom Houghton, ASC holds court; 6. an Izzys-eye view captured from the
Clubhouse roof by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC.
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May 2011
81
Post Focus
Sokolsky, Stanley Detail KB Workflow

By Michael Goldman
In digital television production, there is no such thing as a

standard workflow. As digital acquisition proliferates, a wide range
of innovative solutions are popping up to meet network and
producer demands, budget parameters, creative requirements, and
logistical limitations. Some shows have abandoned tape altogether.
Others remain in an in-between place, using cameras capable of alldata acquisition but continuing to record to HDCam-SR tape.
But the reverse is also true, at least for Bing Sokolsky, ASC.
Last year, he shot the first 13 episodes of the CBS series Criminal
Minds: Suspect Behavior with a tape-based camera, Sonys F35,
while simultaneously recording and using data on set and beyond.
Sokolsky had just finished shooting a pilot, Nomads, in Thailand,
using an all-data pipeline with the Red One in collaboration with
digital-imaging technician Kevin Stanley, and hed enjoyed the benefits of that workflow.
FotoKems N extLab mobile data system was a key part of
Sokolsky and Stanleys process on Nomads; it enabled them to sync,
encode and color-correct data at the productions headquarters, and
transmit that data to editorial back in the United States via the Internet. When they began prepping Criminal Minds , for which the
studio mandated a tape-based camera, Sokolsky and Stanley
decided to use NextLab again.
We had good success using Reds and a file-based workflow
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May 2011
on Nomads, but for Criminal Minds we were using the F35, which
typically records to HDCam-SR tape, says Sokolsky. There are
ways, of course, to record files with those cameras using hard drives
and other systems, but those record a large digital file, one that
would be too large for us to move data and color-correct dailies on
set. Using NextLab gave me more control over the look of dailies,
and gave dailies to post about a day ahead of a normal workflow,
but it didnt support large files from Codex or Panavision DSSR [Solid
State] mags. So Kevin and I explored how we could record data with
the F35 that could be ingested by NextLab.
They decided to use Convergent Design NanoFlash HD-SD
data recorders to capture proxy 8-bit images (as 4:2:2 Long GOP
100Mbps QuickTime files in S-Log color space) of everything Sokolsky shot, while simultaneously recording 10-bit raw images to Sony
SRW-1 decks (as 4:2:2 PSF Sony S-Log files). The team was able to
shoot with both of those recorders onboard their F35s. This allowed
Stanley to manage and color correct NanoFlash media on his own
system near the set.
After being recorded, all files were sent via shuttle drive to
post facility Keep Me Posted, which used its own NextLab system to
render out data, apply color metadata and sound, and synchronize
all 8-bit image data quickly. Simultaneously, the production could
provide Keep Me Posted colorist Tom Overton with synchronized,
raw, 10-bit 4:2:2 HD images from the tapes.
Both versions have embedded time code, so theyre duplicates, making it fairly straightforward to conform the show after
Photo by Eric McCandless, courtesy of ABC Studios.
Special Agent
Sam Cooper
(Forest
Whitaker, at
head of table)
works with his
colleagues in a
scene from
Criminal
Minds: Suspect
Behavior.
Photos by Matt Kennedy, courtesy of ABC Studios.
Cast and crew work in one of the shows main sets. For the first 13 episodes of the series, Sokolsky (visible at far right in r ight-hand photo) and
digital-imaging technician Kevin Stanley integrated the tape-based Sony F35 with FotoKems NextLab mobile data system.
weve provided proxies for dailies and editorial, says Stanley. It didnt change my job
much in the sense that I still checked for
signal/file corruption, managed media,
applied looks to the log files and discussed
exposure and camera-related issues with
Bing, only I did it in a truck on location,
without that central hub of cables and
monitors running through the DIT system
on set. That freed Bing to work faster and
light by eye, the way hes always done with
film.
And were not burning in any look
we cant change later, he adds. With
N anoFlash, were using a proxy editing or
dailies format. That makes time code essential on both. The big ticket is to save money
on files up front, to media manage and
color on location, and then to let NextLab
sync and render everything on the back
end.
Sokolsky and Stanley have dubbed
this the KB Workflow, after the initials in
their first names. Their method of syncing
the two recordings relies on Ambient
Recording Clockit time-code sync boxes to
feed master time code from the sound
department, with that time code then
looped from the SRW-1 recorder to the
N anoFlash recorder via a 10-bit HD-SDI
stream with embedded time code. This
ensures that the conform process can be
straightforward.
Both recorders are powered by a
common power supply, but the biggest
engineering hurdle involved the creation of
a custom toggle switch to use as a trigger

to start and stop both the SRW-1 and
N anoFlash recorders at exactly the same
time. Steve Lucas designed the switch to
the filmmakers specs.
Sokolsky and Stanley chose a tape
stock and Compact Flash card size for the
two recorders that allowed both to record
for approximately 30 minutes at a time,
with file names designed to match the
corresponding recorder. After reloads, tapes
and cards were labeled and brought back
to Stanleys DIT station, and he copied and
downloaded them to a protected RAID
storage array and verified everything with
his NextLab software. He also performed a
best-light color grade using Sokolskys
guidelines on the N anoFlash QuickTime
clips, creating corrected dailies with synced
audio that could rapidly move by physical
media or the Internet to various parties.
Then, he sent master tapes to Keep Me
Posted for the eventual conform.
Before any of this could be implemented on Criminal Minds, however,
Sokolsky had to sell producers on the
concept, which he did with a series of tests.
Eventually, all 13 initial episodes of the
show were made this way.
The producers wariness illustrates
the state of the industry right now, says
Sokolsky. I had to prove to the studio and
the network that this would work, he
says. We shot screen tests onstage with
actors, and while executives were watching, we took the NanoFlash CF cards to the
ww.theasc.com
w
DIT cart, had Kevin color the images and

hand them off to Keep Me Posted, and they
then used NextLab to sync up sound files in
just a matter of minutes. They transcoded
them and backed them up to LTO4 [tape],
loaded a hard drive with transcoded files in
the DN X36 [Avid] format and carried that
over to editorial, where they were loaded
into the Avid. Executives saw us shoot, color
correct, sync and edit, all within an hour.
When we started the show, the
studio was not ready to accept a file-based
camera only, and I just didnt want to push
them too fast, continues the cinematographer. My next project, a pilot called Partners, will be shot on the [Arri] Alexa, so we
wont need N anoFlash drives or tape.
Instead, well use SxS [Solid State] cards in
the ProRes 4:4:4:4 format, and well still use
NextLab.
Many other TV shows will continue
to want tape involved, and this workflow is
perfect for them, he notes. I can work
untethered with any digital system and light
by eye, learning the new camera sensors
just like I would learn any new film emulsion.
The cinematographer estimates that
the KB Workflow put post a day ahead of
schedule and saved $15,000 an episode in
dailies. Plus, working untethered let us do
about 50-plus setups a day most of the
time, which was really nice.
May 2011
83
New Products & Services

Canon Introduces Ultra-Compact XA10
Canon U.S.A., Inc, has introduced the ultra-compact XA10
Professional Camcorder, ideal for situations that demand mobility.
The XA10 records Full HD 1080p video using an AVCHD codec.
The compact XA10 includes a detachable handle for lowangle shooting and portability; with the handle attached,
the XA10s functionality is
further enhanced with the
addition of XLR inputs and an
external microphone holder.
The camcorder also boasts
infrared video capture, as
well as the option of recording to a 64GB internal flash
drive or two SDXC-compatible card slots, as well as Relay
Recording and the ability to
record simultaneously to two cards for instant backup.
The XA10 features a Genuine Canon 10x HD Zoom lens,
1 3" native
Canon DIGIC DV III Image Processor and a Canon
1920x1080 CMOS image sensor,which delivers outstanding resolution and quality. The zoom boasts a 35mm equivalent range of
30.4mm304mm withan eight-blade iris capable of rendering
natural, smooth background blur with reduced lens diffraction. The
lens also features Canons SuperRange Optical Image Stabilizer (OIS)
system with standard, Dynamic and Powered IS modes for steady
video in almost any shooting situation. Autofocus speeds can be
selected from Instant, Medium and Normal to match the shooters
preference, and a focus ring on the lens allows for manual focus as
well.
For extreme low-light shooting the XA10 includes an infrared
feature. The camcorder also includes an infrared emitter with a
diffuser as well as a Green or White color option to shoot pleasing
high-definition infrared imagery even in complete darkness.
The XA10 provides users with complete manual control of
various functions including frame rates, zooming speed, focus, shutter speed, white balance and gain control. Various frame rates can
be selected to match the users preference 60i, PF30, PF24 and
native 24p. Through internal menus, users can adjust zoom-speed
settingsfor High, Middle and Low in 16 one-step increments for
both the body lever as well as the handle control. The focus ring on
the lens can be customized for manual focus control and users can
set the direction of rotation, as well as three levels of response
control. Auto-focus speed can be adjusted for smooth auto-focus
transitions, and a Face-Only AF mode allows for a blurred image as
a person walks offscreen. The camcorders white balance is
84
May 2011
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.
adjustable from 2,000K to 15,000K in 100K increments.

The XA10 camcorder also incorporates a waveform monitor
into the camera body for accurate exposure and detailed analysis of
image brightness. Checking critical focus is also extremely easy with
the high-resolution LCD screen and peaking,magnify and Canons
Edge Monitor Focus Assist system.
For in-camera cinematic effects, the XA10 provides nine
customizable cinema filters, which can be adjusted in three levels
Low, Medium and High. Additionally,the Standard Cinema Filter
function is further customizable through Color Depth, Contrast, Soft
Filter and Key adjustments.
The camcorders overall design is intended for comfortable
operation whether gripped in the operators palm or by the handle
for low-angle shooting. Compact and lightweight,the entire
camcorder weighs only 1.7 lbs. and measures only 3.7"x8.1"x7.0",
including the lens hood and handle. The 3.5" high-resolution
(922,000 dot) touch-panel LCD screen provides a large, vibrant
display and can be flipped for solo shooting with the LCD screen
facing the subject. The camcorder also includes an electronic
viewfinder for use in bright conditions where it would be difficult to
use the LCD panel.
The XA10 features dual XLR inputs for external audio sources
as well as a built-in stereo microphone. The camcorder supports
Dolby Digital 2ch (AC-3 2ch) with automatic and manual audio-level
adjustment.
Embedded in the detachable handle are the camcorders XLR
terminal inputs, audio switches, infrared light, tally lamp, removable
microphone holder, zoom and record switches,and a cold shoe.
For easy connection to both Canon and third-party wired remote
controllers, the XA10 has a built-in remote-control terminal (compatible with LAN C protocol). A custom key and dial allow for more
convenient, one-touch access to various functions such as focus or
exposure.
The Canon XA10 Professional camcorder is available for a
suggested price of$1,999.99. For more information, visit
www.usa.canon.com.
Sonys PMW-F3 Takes Pro Line Handheld
Sony has unveiled the PMW-F3, its first professional handheld
digital-production camera with a Super 35mm imager.
The F3 camcorder is based on Sonys XDCam EX workflow
and uses Sonys SxS ExpressCard-based recording media format. Its
Super 35mm CMOS imager delivers shallow depth of field with high
sensitivity, low noise levels and wide dynamic range. Through the
use of an HD-SDI dual-link output for external recording (4:2:2 1080
50/59.94P as standard and RGB 1080 23.98/25/29.97PsF as an
option), footage shot with the F3 can be seamlessly intercut with
content shot on Sonys F35 or SRW-9000PL

cameras. The F3s PL-mount adapter can
accommodate both PL and upcoming Sony
zoom lenses, and offers compatibility with a
variety of cine lenses such as Cooke, Fujinon
and Zeiss.
Users can select S-Log and Hyper
Gamma to increase the F3s dynamic-range
performance. S-Log represents Sonys
approach to the raw digital negative,
allowing access to the full dynamic range of
the Super 35mm imager for maximum flexibility in image manipulation during postproduction. This capability, combined with
the widely used SxS format, lets user take
advantage of already well-established
XDCam EX and HDCam SR workflows.
Recording formats include
1920x1080, 1440x1080 and 1280x720 at
23.98/25/29.97p, 50/59.94i and, in DVCam
mode, 25/29.97PsF and 50/59.94i. Users
can also take advantage of slow and
quick recording, from 1 to 30 fps at
1920x1080 (17 to 30 fps in dual-link mode)
and 1 to 60 fps at 1280x720 (17 to 60 fps
in dual-link mode).
The F3 supports look-up tables for
dailies and on-set color management. Up to
four LUTs can be stored in the camera and
stamped onto the footage on the SxS card,
simultaneously using the cameras dual-link
output with S-Log for the unprocessed
image.
Sony is also planning to introduce a
compatible SR Memory Portable Recorder
for the F3 camcorder. SR Memory, Sonys
high-speed, high-capacity card format, will
give users the ability to record directly to the
industry-standard HDCam SR codec using
the SR Memory Portable Recorder
connected to the F3s single-link and duallink output.
The PMW-F3 has a basic list price of
$16,000 without lenses. The camera is also
available with a lens kit (comprising 35mm,

50mm and 85mm T2.0 prime lenses) for a
suggested price of $23,000.
For additional information, visit
www.sony.com/cinealta.
P+S Technik Develops Weisscam

Upgrade Modules
P+S Technik has developed three
software-based Application Upgrade
Modules for the multi-purpose Weisscam
HS-2 MKII high-speed camera system,
which can capture from 1 to 70,000 fps.
The Film Mode Module provides
enhanced image quality for recording at any
frame rate. This mode optimizes the camera
settings, significantly enhancing and stabilizing blacks and low-light areas. The result
is 30-percent better performance on the
signal, especially at lower frame rates;
reduced readout noise; and increased
dynamic range.
The Studio Mode Module allows for
the integration of the Weisscam HS-2 MKII
directly into studio environments. It provides
RAW support for external IT recording
devices via GigE, and RAM HD-SDI preview
is available from the camera during recording and playback. The Studio Mode also
enables easy setup and control of the
camera via a Hand Unit.
The Rental Mode Module offers the
possibility to modify the Weisscam HS-2
MKII to the needs of rental customers.
Customers can choose from three different
presets tailored for different applications,
and all feature sets can be changed and
unlocked on set by entering a PIN code. The
three presets currently available are
Commercial, Fiction and TV Drama.
www.pstechnik.de.
86
May 2011
Panasonic Expands P2
Camcorder Line
Panasonic Solutions Company has
introduced the AJ-HPX3100 master-quality
1080p P2 HD camcorder, its most compact
and lowest-price 2 3" 1080p 3-CCD
camcorder.
Featuring three 23" high-density 2.2million-pixel CCDs, the HPX3100 captures
full-raster 1920x1080-resolution imaging
with 4:2:2 10-bit sampling using the
advanced AVC-Intra codec. The camcorder
records in multiple worldwide formats, in
HD in AVC-Intra and in DVCPro HD at 1080
in 24p, 25p, 30p, 50i and 60i, and in SD
(480i/586i) in DVCPro50, DVCPro and DV.
N ew features in the HPX3100
include 24-bit audio in AVC-Intra 100/50,
wireless metadata input capability via wireless LAN and high-quality proxy recording.
The proxy board also provides uncompressed audio, which can enhance editing,
especially for projects with a large amount
of content, like reality TV and long-form
projects.
The camcorder is equipped with
seven advanced gamma settings, including
Film-Rec 600-percent mode (made popular
by the VariCam) for capturing increased
dynamic range. It also features a built-in
reverse scan that allows unique setups such
as mounting the camera upside down or
the use of a prime lens or an anamorphic
lens adapter to create a 2.35:1 image.
Offering a new slim-line size for
added mobility, the HPX3100 sports a low
center of gravity and weighs only 8.6
pounds. The P2 HD camcorders superb
performance is enhanced with advanced
14-bit A/D conversion and a 12-pole matrix
color-correction function. Additional highend features include a Chromatic Aberration Compensation (CAC) function that
corrects for lateral chromatic aberration in
lenses, and a three-level Dynamic Range
Stretch (DRS) function that reduces blocked
shadows and blown highlights in scenes
where bright and dark objects coexist. The
HPX3100 has a high sensitivity of F11 at
2,000 lux in 1080i, and an S/N ratio of 59
dB (with Digital Noise Reduction turned on).
Power consumption is about 34 watts.
The camcorder records on high data
transfer speed E-Series P2 cards (capacity up
to 64GB).The HPX3100 has dual optical
filter wheels for separate control of ND and

CC,and a flip-out, 3.5" color LCD monitor
for easy viewing. There is an option for a
color or black-and-white type viewfinder.
Standard interfaces include an HD-SDI input
for external line recording, IEEE 1394A
in/out, USB 2.0 in/out, genlock in with HD
Tri-Level Sync or VBS in, and SMPTE time
code in/out.
The HPX3100 supports full 48kHz/24-bit audio recording on all four channels (in AVC-Intra 100/50), and supports the
optional AJ-RC10G and AJ-EC4 remote
control units for image and control adjustment. Other features include Digital Zoom
and Digital Super Gain, and a One-clip REC
function that records up to 99 consecutive
cuts as a single clip, greatly facilitating editing.
The AJ-HPX3100 is available at a
suggested price of $19,950. To lower total
ownership costs, Panasonic offers a five-year
limited warranty (the companys normal 1year basic warranty plus an extended
warranty for years two through five upon
registration).
www.panasonic.com/broadcast.
Arri Updates Alexa Software
Arri has released Software Update
Packet 3.0 for its Alexa digital camera
system. SUP 3.0 enables a host of new and
updated features.
For low-light situations, SUP 3.0
extends Alexas sensitivity to EI 3,200; the
new lineup of exposure indices is EI 160, EI
200, EI 400, EI 800, EI 1,600 and EI 3,200.
Alexas color-processing engine has also
been significantly enhanced, providing
higher color saturation in highlights as well
as improved skin tones under tungsten light.
Two new gamma options have also been
added: Log C delivers a signal similar to
negative film scanned on an Arriscan, and
DCI P3 is the color space used for digital
cinema projectors.
The false color exposure check

changes the image to black-and-white, and
uses color to indicate specific signal levels
such as clipping, skin tones and 18-percent
medium grey. SUP 3.0 also introduces the
ability to superimpose two frame lines, two
user rectangles, a center mark and a
surround view mask over the viewfinder and
output images, all at the same time, which
is especially useful for productions with
deliverables of different aspect ratios.
SUP 3.0 enables in-camera playback
of QuickTime clips from on-board SxS Pro
cards, so takes can be played back on the
camera viewfinder or via different camera
outputs, allowing for an instant image
check; frame lines as well as information
about each clip can optionally be seen in the
viewfinder or superimposed on the image
output.
The optional smooth mode, for any
frame rate up to 30 fps and any shutter
angle up to 180 degrees, eliminates shuttering in the viewfinder image, making camera
operating easier for shots involving fast pans
or fast action within the frame.
SUP 3.0 allows still images for continuity, lighting or grading references to be
grabbed and stored on the cameras SD card
at any time during standby, recording or
playback; images can be stored as JPEG, TIFF
or DPX files.Audio can now be recorded at
various frame rates and embedded into the
image output, providing a useful guide track
that significantly streamlines the audio
workflow. Additionally, an HD-SDI 3G Single
Link allows a 4:2:2 signal at 48, 50, 59.94 or
60 fps to be sent over just one BNC cable.
SUP 3.0 also introduces the ability to include
a Variflag signal
All new ALEXAs will have SUP 3.0
installed, and all existing cameras can be
upgraded to SUP 3.0. For more information
or to download Software Update Packet
3.0, visitwww.arri.com.
International Marketplace
Monitor Yoke Mounts
TM
88
May 2011
SUPER16INC.COM
Top-notch camera and lens servicing
Ask about Ultra 16!
T: 607-642-3352
bernie@super16inc.com
Toll-free: 877-376-6582
FREE ESTIMATES
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. N o agency commission or
discounts on clas si fied advertising.PAYMENTMUSTAC COM PA NYORDER. VISA, Mastercard, AmEx and Discover
card are ac cept ed. Send ad to Clas si fied Ad ver tis ing, Amer i can Cin e ma tog ra pher, P.O. Box 2230,
Hol ly wood, CA 90078.Or FAX (323) 876-4973. Dead line for payment and copy must be in the office by 15th
of second month preceding pub li ca tion. Sub ject mat ter
is lim it ed to items and ser vic es per tain ing to film mak ing and vid eo pro duc tion. Words used are sub ject to
mag a zine style ab bre vi a tion.
Min i mum amount per
ad: $45
CLASSIFIEDS ON-LINE
Ads may now also be placed in the on-line Classifieds at the ASC web site.
Internet ads are seen around the world at the
same great rate as in print, or for slightly more you
can appear both online and in print.
For more information please visit
www.theasc.com/advertiser, or e-mail: classifieds@theasc.com.
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE

USED EQUIPMEN T. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMEN T
COMPANY. (972) 869-9990.
Worlds SUPERMARKET of USED MOTION PICTURE
EQUIPMEN T! Buy, Sell, Trade. CAMERAS, LEN SES,
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www.visualproducts.com Call 440.647.4999
USED EQUIPMEN T. PRO VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMEN T
COMPAN Y. (888) 869-9998, providfilm@aol.com.
www.UsedEquipmentNewsletter.com.
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American City locations, lifestyle, events, and musical performance footage
Inquires to: info@Historicfilms.com
Arri 435ES very complete package plus 18-100 Zoom lens,

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May 2011
89
Advertisers Index
16x9, Inc. 88
Deluxe C2
AC 1, 89, 92
Aja Video Systems, Inc. 23
Alan Gordon Enterprises 88
Arri 33
ASC 68
AZGrip 88
Eastman Kodak C4
EFD USA, Inc 13
Backstage Equipment, Inc.

6
Bardwell & McAlister, Inc. 7
Barger-Lite 88
Bron Imaging Group - US 39
Burrell Enterprises 88
Glidecam Industries C3
Camera Essentials 89
Cavision Enterprises 35
Chapman/Leonard Studio
Equipment Inc. 9
Chemical Wedding 93
Cine Gear Expo 91
Cinema India 95
Cinematography
Electronics 6
Cinekinetic 88
Clairmont Film & Digital 21
Codex Digital Ltd., 49
Convergent Design 37
Cooke Optics 27
Film Gear 85
Filmtools 87
Five Towns College 85
Fujifilm 47
Innovision 88
Kino Flo 51
Kobold 39
Lite Panels 2
Los Angeles Film Festival 59
Maine Media Workshops 6
M. M. Mukhi and Sons 99
New York Film Academy 38
Oppenheimer Camera Prod.
88
Panasonic Broadcast
TV Division 5
Panavision, Inc. 17
Pille Film Gmbh 89
Power Gems Limited 26
Pro8mm 88
Schneider Optics 25
Shelton Communications
88
Sony Electronics 11
Stanton Video Services 87
Super16 Inc. 89
90
Tessive LLC 57
Thales Angenieux 15
VF Gadgets, Inc. 88
Willys Widgets 88
www.theasc.com 4, 50,
88, 90
Zacuto Films 89
JOIN YWOODS
HOLL ESSIONALS
PROF 11
IN 20
Cine Gear Expo
June 2-5, 2011
Expo & Conference
Premiere & Master Classes, Film Competition
The Studios at Paramount, Hollywood, CA, USA
September 24-25, 2011
Expo & Conference
Metropolitan Pavilion, New York City, NY, USA
phone: 310.472.0809 fax: 310.471.8973 email: info@cinegearexpo.com
www.cinegearexpo.com
In Memoriam
Don Peterman, ASC, 1932-2011
Oscar-nominated cinematographer
Donald William Peterman, ASC died on
Feb. 5 at the age of 79.
Peterman was born on Jan. 3, 1932,
in Los Angeles, Calif. After graduating from
Redondo Beach Union High School, he
served in the U.S.
Army, where he
was assigned to
travel the country
filming adocumentary.
He began
his civilian career
as a film loader at
Hal Roach Studios,
and then spent
five years as an optical-lineup man and optical-printer operator at effects company
Cascade Studios.All of that [opticaleffects] experience is out the window
because of computers, but I understand the
concept of compositing layers of images,
he told AC while discussing his work on
Men in Black (June 97). Theres a certain
mindset you have to have on an effects film
in order to piece everything together
and have a complete image of the film in
your head while youre shooting.
Peterman eventually began finding
work as a camera assistant and, before
long, as an operator. His operating credits
include the feature The Bubble (for Charles
F. Wheeler, ASC)and two seasons of Lassie
(for Robert Sparks).
In the 1970s, Peterman began finding steady work shooting commercials, and
he eventually photographed more than
200 national-television spots. In 1979, he
notched his first featurecredit as a director
of photography on When a Stranger Calls .
He later told AC, I shot that one with
nothing strictly Sun Guns and bounce
cards at T1.4. The scale of his projects
quickly grew, though, and in 1984 he
earned his first Oscar nomination, for
Adrian Lynes Flashdance (AC May 83).
Don is a guy who wont accept second
best, Lyne told AC.I pushed him to the
92
limit,and he pushed me to the limit.

In 1987, Peterman garnered a
second Oscar nomination and an ASC
nomination for Star Trek IV: The Voyage
Home (AC Dec. 86). Directed by Leonard
N imoy, the film found the intrepid crew
of the starship
Enterprise transported back to
mid-1980s San
Francisco, a story
that allowed
Peterman to take
advantage of
location filming
to expand the
franchises visual
palette. Star Trek was filmed mostly on a
stage before, and they could never use long
lenses because its impossible to get back
far enough, he told AC. We tried to
make it a little different by using really long
lenses as much as we could.
Don Peterman shoots from an
idea, said Nimoy. I saw stuff that he did
that tells me somebody has been paying
attention. There is tone; its not just,Light it
and get an image.
In 1984, Peterman was recommended for ASC membership by Society
fellows Wheeler, Jack Cooperman, Gene
Polito and Howard Schwartz.
His credits also include
Splash;
Cocoon; Planes, Trains & Automobiles ;
Point Break ; Addams Family Values ; Get
Shorty; Mighty Joe Young (1998); and How
the Grinch Stole Christmas.
I dont think you have to have a
style, he told AC in 1983. I think its good
if you do a different style in every picture.
Peterman is survived by his wife of
54 years, Sally; a daughter, Diane; sons
Keith, Jay and Brad, and 10 grandchildren.
Jon D. Witmer
Clubhouse News
Top: AC associate editor Jon D. Witmer (left) and

Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC. Middle (left to right): ASC
associate member Rob Hummel with Andrea Kalas,
Michael Friend and Steve Kochak. Bottom: During a
recent event at the Clubhouse, Bill Bennett, ASC
snapped this 360-degree panorama using his iPhone;
the exposure took 42.3 seconds.
94
May 2011
ASC associate member Michael

Bravin also participated in the Expo,
presenting the seminar About Digital
Cinema: Our Past, Present and Future.
Meanwhile, Createaspheres Digital
Asset Management Conference opened
with a panel moderated by ASC associate
member Rob Hummel that focused on
how to best manage digital assets as legacy
systems become obsolete. The other
panelists were Andrea Kalas of Paramount
Pictures, Steve Kochak of Deluxe Media
Services and Michael Friend of Sony Pictures
Entertainment.
Stein Teaches for
StudentFilmmakers.com
Peter Stein, ASC recently led the
workshop Lighting to Create a Mood for
StudentFilmmakers.com. The lesson began
with a discussion of three-point lighting and
then moved into an exploration of hard and
soft light. Stein demonstrated uses for Fresnel fixtures as well as open-face units, and
he showed the attendees how to shape
light with barn doors, flags and nets. Other
points of discussion included key-to-fill
ratios and background lighting techniques.
With the new technologies at
hand, current film students have the chance
to be the innovators creating the newest
and most daring styles in future filmmaking, said Stein.
Stein is scheduled to lead a series
of workshops with StudentFilmmakers
throughout this year. For more information,
visit www.studentfilmmakers.com.
Morgenthau, Baffa Discuss

Best of TV
Createasphere recently launched the
Best of TV webcast series, offering a
behind-the-scenes look at a number of television shows. The webinars have so far
examined Boardwalk Empire (featuring
Kramer Morgenthau, ASC and editors
Tim Streeto and Kate Sanford, moderated by
AC associate editor Jon D. Witmer); Dexter
(featuring director/cinematographer Romeo
Tirone and editor Louis Cioffi, ACE, moderated by AC contributor Iain Stasukevich);
Glee (featuring cinematographer Christopher Baffa, ASC and producer/editor
Bradley Buecker, moderated by AC contributor Jim Hemphill); and Sons of Anarchy
(featuring cinematographer Paul Maibaum
and camera operators/SOC members Steve
Fracol and David Frederick, moderated by
Stasukevich).
Members at the Movies
Haskell Wexler, ASCrecently visited
the American Cinematheques Aero Theatre
in Santa Monica for a screening of Medium
Cool (1969), which Wexler shot and
directed. Following the screening, Wexler
joined the films star, Robert Forster, for a
Q&A.
Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC recently
attended a screening of Scarecrow at the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. The film,
which Zsigmond photographed in 1973 for
director Jerry Schatzberg, was screened as
part of the series True Grit: The Golden Age
of Road Movies.
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.

Createasphere photos by Ryan Miller, courtesy of Capture Imaging.
Deakins, ASC Associates

Visit Createasphere
Createasphere recently hosted Roger
Deakins, ASC, BSC in conversation with AC
associate editor Jon D. Witmer at the Entertainment Technology Exposition in Burbank.
Marking the latest in the joint Createasphere-AC series of Legendary Conversations, the discussion offered a survey of
Deakins storied career, touching on his early
work shooting documentaries, his pioneering work with digital intermediates, his
recent forays into consulting on animated
features,and his use of Arris Alexa digital
camera on the upcoming feature Now.
Tobias Schliessler, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you?
Growing up in Baden-Baden, Germany, I was always fascinated by
American film culture. It represented another world. I loved Steve
McQueen and Paul N ewman. Le Mans (1971), Bullitt (1968), Cool
Hand Luke (1967) and The Sting (1973) all made a huge impression.
At the same time, the German TV miniseriesEight Hours Are Not a Day
(1972), directed by Fassbinder, had all of Germany glued to the television and got me hooked on German filmmaking.
Which cinematographers, past
or present, do you most admire?
[ASC members] Vittorio Storaro,
Gordon Willis, Conrad Hall, Owen
Roizman, Roger Deakins,
Emmanuel Lubezki and Harris
Savides, and the list goes on. Each
of them is an incredible visual artist.
They push the boundaries without
ever sacrificing technical perfection,
and their cinematography always
serves the story.
Where did you train and/or study?

In my twenties, I moved to Vancouver, Canada, and studied film at
Simon Fraser University. Early on, I figured out that cinematography
was my passion, and I shot as many student films as I could.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
In terms of life, my grandmother, mother, brother, sisters and daughter
have taught me all the important things. As for work, Ive always
learned the most from my gaffers and key grips.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
I love to collect and surround myself with paintings and sculpture, but
Im most influenced by the work of my peers and by contemporary
photography. For instance, I referenced a lot of William Egglestons
work for the movie Friday Night Lights. Right now Im inspired by the
lighting in the work of Australian photographer Bill Henson.
May 2011
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?

I remember standing on the set of Dreamgirls, a foot away from
Beyonc during one of her incredible musical performances. I was
giving her an eyelight with a Kino Flo in my hand while the theatrical lighting designed by Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer
surrounded her. I felt like I was at
the center of the moviemaking
world I had always dreamed of.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
At the age of 13, I flashed an
exposed roll of film while working
for my father a classic mistake
that you only make once.
What sparked your interest in

photography?
I grew up in a filmmaking family. My father, Martin, made adventure
documentaries, and my mother, Anemone, was his editor. I was loading magazines and rewinding film on a Steenbeck from an early age. I
used to read my fathers Kameraman magazines, which were basically
the equivalent of American Cinematographer in Germany. I loved the
spreads showing the huge movie sets with all the lights and cameras,
and I wanted to be part of that world.
96
How did you get your first break in the business?

I find it almost impossible to pinpoint my first break. All I know is that
every director and producer who has ever hired me has given me a
break.
What is the best professional

advice youve ever received?
Dont shoot your demo reel. Be
true to the story.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
The Secret in Their Eyes was one my favorite films of last year. It was
such a powerful story, so well told.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like
to try?
Id love to shoot a dark social/family drama like The Ice Storm or
American Beauty.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I cant think of a better job, except maybe a Formula One driver.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Daryn Okada, Karl Walter Lindenlaub and Peter Collister.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
I think of being invited into the ASC by my peers as the ultimate
professional honor. Im grateful for the support and camaraderie of
other ASC members.
Photo by Thomas Scott Stanton.
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MAY 2011

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The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but

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It all started in the early 1990s, with a Bolex. Director Craig

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