J A N U A RY 2 0 1 9

A M E R I C A N C I N E M ATO G R A P H E R • J A N U A RY 2 0 1 9 • V I C E – RO M A – M A RY P O P P I N S R E T U R N S – I F B E A L E S T R E E T C O U L D TA L K – C O L D WA R • V O L . 1 0 0 N O . 1
 J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 9 V O L . 1 0 0 N O . 1
— ASC 100th Anniversary —

On Our Cover: The eponymous nanny (Emily Blunt) brings

her magic back to Cherry Tree Lane in Mary Poppins Returns,
shot by Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS. (Photo by Jonathan Prime,
courtesy of Disney Enterprises Inc.)

FEATURES
32 Vice – Power & Glory
Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS mixes vintage formats and modern lights for this
political biopic

48 Roma – Memories of Mexico

Alfonso Cuarón brings epic scope to an intimate family drama

32
60 Mary Poppins Returns – Light Fantastic
Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS and director Rob Marshall bring a beloved character
back to the screen

70 The ASC’s Centennial Salute

The American Society of Cinematographers kicks off its 100th year of loyalty,
progress and artistry

72 If Beale Street Could Talk – Love & Family

James Laxton and director Barry Jenkins adapt James Baldwin’s novel for the
48
big screen

78 Cold War – Opposites Attract

Lukasz Zal, PSC captures director Pawel Pawlikowski’s romantic drama in
black-and-white

DEPARTMENTS
72
12 Editor’s Note
14 President’s Desk
16 Shot Craft: Recurring sets • Electromotive force • Meter case
26 Short Takes: ASC Student Heritage Award winners
86 New Products & Services
90 International Marketplace
91 Classified Ads
92 Ad Index
94
78
Clubhouse News
96 ASC Close-Up: Christopher Probst

— VISIT WWW.ASCMAG.COM —
 Web-Exclusive Centennial Coverage
Join us in honoring the
100th Anniversary of the American Society of Cinematographers!

ASC Members Live From the Clubhouse

We’ll be hosting a series of Ask Me Anything
33rd Annual ASC livestreams with ASC members ready and willing to
Awards Celebration answer your questions regarding specific projects, their
Join us Saturday, Feb. 9, creative approach, key collaborators, or anything else
on the red carpet for you’d like to ask about. Each participant will also
cinematography’s address the ASC’s 100th anniversary and how being a
biggest night as we member has impacted their careers. Watch for partici-
offer exclusive inter- pant and scheduling announcements on our social-
views with honorees, media channels. theasc.com/asc/news
winners and presen-
ters via Facebook
Live, as well as tribute
reels and much more.
Watch our site and
social channels for
announcements about
this special coverage.
theasc.com/awards

ASC Master Class:

On Film
Held in November, this edition of our ongoing
education program focused entirely on the special
considerations and unique creative opportunities
encountered when shooting 16mm, 35mm and
65mm motion-picture film. Instructors offering
their insight on photochemical production and
post included David Darby, ASC; Edward Lach-
man, ASC; M. David Mullen, ASC; Joshua Pines;
Linus Sandgren, FSF; and Hoyte van Hoytema,
ASC, FSF, NSC. Look for multi-part coverage start-
ing later this month. ascmag.com/articles

Stay Up to Date With AC & the ASC

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news and deals from top manufacturers.
Sign up now at bit.ly/ASCNewsletter
 J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 9 V O L . 1 0 0 , N O . 1

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

Stephen Pizzello
————————————————————————————————————
WEB DIRECTOR and ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
David E. Williams

EDITORIAL
————————————————————————————————————

MANAGING EDITOR Jon D. Witmer

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Fish
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst, ASC
SHOT CRAFT EDITOR Jay Holben
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Benjamin B, Rachael K. Bosley, John Calhoun, Mark Dillon, Michael Goldman, Jim Hemphill, David Heuring, Noah Kadner, Debra Kaufman,
Michael Kogge, Iain Marcks, Matt Mulcahey, Jean Oppenheimer, Lauretta Prevost, Phil Rhodes, Patricia Thomson
PODCASTS
Jim Hemphill, Iain Marcks, Chase Yeremian
BLOGS
Benjamin B • John Bailey, ASC • David Heuring
IT DIRECTOR/WEB PRODUCER Mat Newman
DIGITAL CONTENT CREATOR Samantha Dillard
NEW PRODUCTS & SERVICES David Alexander Willis

ART & DESIGN

————————————————————————————————————

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer

ADVERTISING
————————————————————————————————————

ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann

323-936-3769 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: angiegollmann@gmail.com
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce
323-952-2114 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: sanja@ascmag.com
CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Peru
323-952-2124 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: diella@ascmag.com

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

————————————————————————————————————

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina

SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal
————————————————————————————————————
ASC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Eric Rodli
ASC SPONSORSHIP & EVENTS DIRECTOR Patricia Armacost
OPERATIONS/EVENTS MANAGER Alex Lopez
MEMBERSHIP ADMINISTRATOR Salvador Maldonado
ASC ACCOUNTANT Shawnté Howard
————————————————————————————————————
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 99th 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.
Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $).
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and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.
POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.
 American Society of Cinematographers
The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer — a mark
of prestige and excellence.

OFFICERS - 2018/2019
Kees van Oostrum
President
Bill Bennett
Vice President
Paul Cameron
Vice President
Cynthia Pusheck
Vice President
Levie Isaacks
Treasurer
David Darby
Secretary
Isidore Mankofsky
Sergeant-at-Arms

MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Paul Cameron
Russell Carpenter
Curtis Clark
Dean Cundey
George Spiro Dibie
Stephen Lighthill
Karl-Walter Lindenlaub
Lowell Peterson
Cynthia Pusheck
Roberto Schaefer
John Toll
Kees van Oostrum
Amy Vincent

ALTERNATES
Stephen H. Burum
David Darby
Charlie Lieberman
Eric Steelberg
Levie Isaacks

MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
10
 EDITOR’S NOTE
THIS MONTH’S This month marks a truly momentous occasion: the

CONTRIBUTORS ASC’s 100th anniversary. Chartered by the State of Cali-

fornia on Jan. 8, 1919, the American Society of Cine-
matographers was founded by 15 professional directors
Mark Dillon of photography keen to advance the art and science
of filmmaking by bringing cinematographers together
is a freelance writer to exchange ideas, discuss techniques, and promote
(“Memories of Mexico,” the motion picture as an art form — a mission that
p. 48). continues today.
In November 1920, those pioneering members
Michael Goldman began publishing the magazine you currently hold in
is a Los Angeles your hands. To commemorate the ASC’s centennial,
Volume 100, Issue 1 of American Cinematographer
correspondent for the presents an updated design offering new fonts, restyled
magazine (“Light Fantastic,” layouts and “macro-focus” mini-sidebars featuring additional nuggets of filmmaking insight.
p. 60). We hope you enjoy the new touches, as well as the pictorial section with photos of
renowned ASC members (“The ASC’s Centennial Salute,” page 70) and an outline of the
Jim Hemphill special anniversary content we plan to include in each issue for the rest of this year.
is a filmmaker and freelance The cinematography we’re spotlighting in our anniversary year’s first issue is
nothing short of spectacular.
writer (“Love & Family,” For Vice, ASC and ACS member Greig Fraser combines vintage cameras, multiple
p. 72). formats and modern LED lighting to help director Adam McKay put a wryly comedic spin
on a biopic about former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney (played by a fully transformed
Jay Holben Christian Bale). “Adam takes complex, dry stories and injects elements of humor and great
is a filmmaker and an storytelling, and they become palatable to an audience,” Fraser tells Jay Holben (“Power
associate member of the & Glory,” page 32). “It really takes someone with Adam’s vision to tell this kind of story.”
With Roma, director Alfonso Cuarón revisits his childhood memories of Mexico
ASC (Shot Craft, p. 16; City’s Colonia Roma neighborhood. He initially planned to shoot the movie with his long-
“Power & Glory,” p. 32; time collaborator Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, ASC, AMC, but the production’s lengthy
“Period Detail,” p. 36). schedule meant potential conflicts with some of the renowned cinematographer’s other
commitments. Lubezki encouraged Cuarón to go it alone. “Chivo said, ‘Stop fooling
Debra Kaufman around. You should do it,’ ” Cuarón tells Mark Dillon (“Memories of Mexico,” page 48). “I
is a freelance writer realized it was necessary for the process, because it was such intimate stuff I was doing
— bringing images from my own memory.”
(Short Takes, p. 26). Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS renewed his own partnership with director Rob Marshall
on Mary Poppins Returns, a sequel to Disney’s 1964 Oscar-winning classic that casts Emily
Jean Oppenheimer Blunt as the ultimate nanny. At various points during his interview with Michael Goldman
is a Los Angeles (“Light Fantastic,” page 60), Marshall refers to Beebe as “my go-to person for anything and
correspondent for the everything,” “someone I share similar sensibilities with,” “my great collaborator,” and “my
magazine (“Opposites right arm.” The director adds, “When we work together, the shorthand is just great.”
Two other successful director-cinematographer teams are also featured in the
Attract,” p. 78). following pages: Barry Jenkins and James Laxton, who re-paired on If Beale Street Could Talk
(“Love & Family,” page 72) after their triumph with Moonlight, and Polish filmmakers
Pawel Pawlikowski and Lukasz Zal, PSC, who have followed the acclaimed Ida with the
black-and-white drama Cold War (“Opposites Attract,” page 78).
Photo by Chris Pizzello.

Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
12
 PRESIDENT’S DESK
Camerimage and the Renaissance

After the latest wonderful week of watching cinematography and making connections across
the individual worlds of cinematographers, including students and masters alike, the 2018
Camerimage International Film Festival ended with a devastating speech by festival founder —
and honorary ASC member — Marek Zydowicz. Surrounded on stage by festival staff and
volunteers, Zydowicz notified the stunned audience that this might very well have been the last
Camerimage in Poland.
A severe cut to local and national subsidies is expected and would make it virtually
impossible to produce the festival as we know it. This might be a wakeup call — a call to arms,
so to speak — but it also sadly represents a global trend of national and local governments failing
to recognize the value of the arts, disregarding the value of education, and outright ignoring the
value of communication between artists — all of which Camerimage has embodied since its
inception 26 years ago.
The thought of moving forward without the festival and losing all that it represents hurts
deeply.
In the United States, we are also enduring formidable budget cuts to the National Endowment for the
Arts and many other initiatives, some of which are in danger of being abandoned altogether. Our global society
— which increasingly follows the “reality” presented by Facebook, Instagram and other social media — unfor-
tunately seems desperate to look for quick and logical reasons for things such as art to exist.
This makes me think of David Lynch’s quote: “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They
accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.”
Historically, the connection between art and the human condition was expressed most clearly during the
Renaissance. Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians and writers mirrored in their works the spirit of their time.
Their art helped to visualize their history — and, more so, it helped them move beyond their history.
During the Renaissance period, a new conception of reality, of life itself, was born. The art of the time
reflected this new way of thinking, in which the individual began to rise in prominence above the community,
and attention was paid not just to God but to human beings. Portraits, self portraits, personal letters — even
the place of prominence within society that was given to artists — are just a few examples of how civilization
changed its thinking about identity in relation to existence during the Middle Ages.
This past summer I found myself wandering through the Galleria Borghese in Rome, where I viewed four
sculptures by Bernini, the Italian sculptor and architect: Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius (c. 1618-’19), The Rape of
Proserpina (1621-’22), Apollo and Daphne (1622-’25) and David (1623-’24). Each piece displays a staggering
beauty of finely chiseled marble; at the time of their creation, as art historian Rudolf Wittkower noted, they
helped inaugurate “a new era in the history of European sculpture.”
Scholar Katherine Eustace further commented, “What Shakespeare is to drama, Bernini may be to sculp-
ture.” In other words, he was one of the most prominent storytellers of the Renaissance. With his interest in the
life of the human soul as expressed in the structure and movement of the human body, he furthered the devel-
opment of the ideas, beliefs and values of the Renaissance period, many of which are still present in our lives.
So, coming back to today, Camerimage is to be considered an important and integral part of the devel-
opment of our craft and our creative expressions. I can only hope that reason and insight will prevail, and that
Photo by Jacek Laskus, ASC, PSC.

the consummate festival of cinematography will continue to exist, inspire, and give birth to new ideas for many
years to come.

Kees van Oostrum

ASC President

14 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 SHOT CRAFT
Actor Zak Orth
takes a seat in
one of Falling
Water’s
recurring sets
for the Season 2
episode “The
Art of the
Deal,” directed
by Michael Goi,
ASC, AIC.
I Fresh Perspectives
When you’re on a production for any length of time,
chances are you’ll be revisiting the same set or location multiple
times — especially when shooting episodic television, where
certain standing sets will be reused for multiple episodes through-
out the season. As the cinematographer, will you re-create the
same look to maintain consistency with that set, or will you mix it
up and strive for a different look each time?
AC caught up with ASC members Michael Goi and Alan
Caso to get their thoughts on approaching a recurring set. Goi is
a former president of the ASC whose work includes the series My
Name Is Earl, Glee, The New Normal and American Horror Story (AC
Nov. ’12), as well as the TV movies The Fixer (AC May ’99) and
Judas. Caso, a recipient of the ASC Career Achievement in Televi-
sion Award (AC Feb. ’18), has been behind the camera on series
including Six Feet Under (AC Nov. ’02), Hawaii Five-0 and American
Gothic; the telefilm George Wallace; and the miniseries Frankenstein
and Into the West (AC June ’05). At press time, the two were
collaborating on two episodes of The Rookie, with Goi in the direc-
tor’s chair and Caso as cinematographer.
“My approach to shooting any scene is an internal one, in
terms of how the main character in that scene feels about the situ-
ation that they’re in,” Goi explains. “I climb into the head of that
character, and I depict the world as they see it. We might be in the
same set four or five times in a movie, or every couple weeks on
a television show, and [this approach] requires giving that set a
different visual treatment — one that alludes to the mental state
of the character — each time. It makes it more interesting to watch
as a result. If the set looks the same every time you go into it, that’s
16 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary
By Jay Holben
monotonous and almost tends to be like white noise. The look
should vary according to how the character is feeling in that scene.
“How we accomplish that is by using the color and angle
of light to mix it up,” Goi continues. “Turn practicals on or off from
one scene to the next. Light in a way that is completely, radically
different than any way you’ve seen the room before — but have
it all be motivated by how the character feels at that particular
moment.”
“When you’re shooting a feature or long-form TV, it can be
an issue to keep it interesting if you’re in a set for a lot of time,”
Caso attests. “If you’re doing 30 pages in one location, you’re going
to have to find a way to see that place from a lot of different
angles. You have to take something specific that is on the page —
such as a moment where the characters are in a subdued or
vulnerable position for whatever reason — and then maybe you
pick a high angle looking at them like small rats in a lab. You pick
something like that not because you do it for every scene, but
because it’s right for this scene. In another scene with a lot of
activity, you design a shot with a lot of movement, and you pass
off the frame from one person to the next. In the next scene,
maybe one of the characters is in a position of power, so you do
a lower shot. Always look at what is on the page for inspiration. I
Photo courtesy of USA Network.
have yet to fail from doing that.
“The next layer is to borrow from time-of-day,” Caso adds.
“Nights are different than days, obviously, but days can also be very
different from one another. Is it bright and sunny, or overcast and
shadowy? Is it early morning, or high noon, or magic hour? Are
there hot beams of sunlight streaming in, creating hard shadows on
the walls and hot spots on people’s bodies? Is it just after sunset
and before people turn on the lights, when the windows are a cold
 p : Alan Caso, ASC on set for the miniseries Blackbeard.
u: Goi (top left) at work on American Horror Story: Asylum.
blue hue and the room is dim? [In the
latter case] you can turn on the lights and
change the look within the same scene.
“You always have all the tools at
your disposal,” Caso continues. “Camera
angles; the quality, color, intensity and
direction of light; and lenses — the combi-
nations of these tools are truly infinite. So
you choose something that helps put the
audience into the mood of the scene.
Want to put them right into the scene,
with the actors? You can choose wide
lenses and shoot close to the talent if it is
a really intimate scene. Is it more subjec-
tive and voyeuristic? Then you can use
longer lenses from farther away; you can
reduce depth of field and have only the
character in sharp focus while everything
else falls away. The choice of lenses and
composition can make a whole set look
completely different.”
This can beg the question: If the
same location looks different each time it’s
shown, how will viewers know where they
are? Shouldn’t there be some degree of
familiarity, or even a uniform look, to the
set?
“It depends on what you define as
a ‘uniform look,’ ” Goi responds. “The set is
going to be the set. Familiar furniture, wall
coloring, the arrangement of things — you
already have that familiarity for the audi-
ence, so you can vary the lighting and it
will still be recognizable as the same set. It
is the same set, but at a different time of
18 January 2019
day or in a different context.”
As an example, Goi cites an
episode of Falling Water that he directed.
“A character was being interrogated by
two others in one of our recurring sets,”
he explains. “I realized that they had never
shot in one corner of this large set; it was
always in the extreme background. There
was a lot of junk piled up in that corner,
and I thought it looked great and was
perfectly appropriate for this scene. I
chose that corner of the room instead of
the high-tech area where the computer
banks were because it felt right for the
scene. It gave a look and feel to the set
that we’d never seen before.”
While shooting the series For the
People, Caso became well acquainted with
a number of repeat sets. “We had a public
defender’s office and a lot of courtrooms
on the show,” he notes. “A lot of times I
would use a high angle looking down
because I wanted you to feel like you’re
watching ants in a hill, observing the
process of law and what happens in the
court. It’s like a view from Mount Olym-
pus, looking down and watching every-
thing unfold. I specifically asked the
production designer [Johnny Breedt] to
build hard ceilings, but with sections that
could come out. I like hard ceilings
because you can’t manipulate them easily;
it forces you to shoot the set like a prac-
tical location, using wide lenses to get the
view of the whole set, making it look more
ASC 100th Anniversary
like a real place. I also went the other way
because these ceilings were beautiful. I
would shoot a lot of low angles looking up
to help show the grandeur of the U.S. legal
system. Courts are meant to be intimidat-
ing; this is where decisions are made that
affect the lives of many people.
Blackbeard photo courtesy of Alan Caso, ASC. Michael Goi, ASC, ISC photo courtesy of FX Network.
“When it came to shooting the
attorneys, I would shoot the ending argu-
ments depending on what they were
saying,” Caso continues. “If they were
expressing personal emotions, I would
pick longer lenses and make the focal
plane very shallow so that we were in
their world and only their world. Other
times, when they were really making a
plea and connecting with people, I’d go
with wide lenses and get in very close to
the actors. Doing that would force these
scenes to look and feel different, even
though the location was the same.”
As Caso notes, lens choice is a key
creative tool that cinematographers
should embrace. “So much TV is shot out
of convenience rather than the filmmakers’
conscious choices,” he observes. “It’s
convenient to snap on a zoom and shoot
rather than picking prime lenses, which are
each chosen for a deliberate reason. You
can just zoom in and get a composition as
opposed to using a prime that forces you
to move the camera into the right compo-
sition for the shot. But we need to make
these conscious choices, to consider lens
choice alongside the placement of the

Caso considers his next move while working on the series For the People.
camera and the key light. That’s not some-
thing that should just happen by default.”
“On the seventh season of Pretty
Little Liars,” Goi recalls, “I had requested a
lens that was wider than they had ever
used on the show. I used it because I had
several scenes where I had to incorporate
the actions of several different characters
in a single shot. I felt the wide lens would
enable me to do that. In one of those
scenes, the characters were wandering in
a forest to find their missing car. I shot it
from high above, extremely wide, so that
they were just dots walking around with
flashlights. This was to give the feeling of
what they were experiencing: a sense of
being lost. It was effective, and those kinds
of shots became part of the visual lexicon
of the show.
“I’ve never had resistance [from a
director or production] about treating
something differently,” Goi says. “I think the
main concern is that the choices we make
still feel like the show, and that the charac-
ters are presented in a way that is familiar
to the audience. But within that context
there is quite a bit that you can do.
“People will often say, ‘Well, in this
room, the light has to come from that
practical source,’ but that’s not much of a
concern of mine,” Goi continues. “I’ll have
the light coming from wherever it feels
right. I’ll really put it anywhere to give the
audience the feeling I want to convey.”
For example, Goi says that when
he was shooting American Horror Story:
Asylum, “We had a very small prison set
with only one door and plain stone walls.
Every time we went into that cell, it was
different. One time I lit directly from the
top, almost like a Gordon Willis [ASC]
Godfather look. Another time I lit through
the gap under the door — a glimpse of
daylight that represented freedom to the
character trapped in that dark space.
Another time I used a hard light so that a
prominent shadow fell onto the wall of
the cell. It was completely unrealistic that
any sunlight would permeate that cell, but
the shadow gave me the image of some-
one who was stepping out of their own
body and the feeling that there were two
people in that room. Another time I lit it
completely bizarrely, echoing Nosferatu —
the door opened and the long, spidery
shadow of the evil doctor fell on the
woman cowering in the corner.”
Caso does concede that “by the
end of a season, if you’ve got a main set
that is used quite a bit, you’re going to run
out of things to do. So you can use some
motifs for certain times and moods —
and maybe it’s not such a bad thing to
reprise certain looks and feels. Again, if it’s
coming from the page and helping to tell
the story, then that’s what’s right for that
scene. Ultimately, that’s the responsibility
of the cinematographer: to help tell the
visual story. If you do your due diligence to
visually interpret what’s on the page, you
can’t go wrong. If there aren’t a lot of
things that are changing in the script and
there’s not a lot of difference from scene
to scene over a series’ season, then you
need to stretch out a bit and take some
creative license to shake it up for the
purpose of shaking it up — as long as it
still serves the story.”
“There’s always room to expand
the visual vocabulary of a show,” Goi
concludes. “As long as you’re motivating it
narratively, you’re doing your job.” ➔

Quick Tip
Shot Listing
“Because I read a lot of scripts, it can be difficult for me to
concentrate on understanding a script’s intricacies unless I make
a shot list. It doesn’t matter if I’m the cinematographer of the
How does she find out about it? Maybe she gets a letter, or an
email on the computer. Whatever it is, I start to shot list what
needs to be seen to emphasize what is important in the story.
“Once you start shot listing, then you know where you
need a close-up to see how the character is feeling; you start
getting into the psychology of the character and visualizing how
Photo courtesy of Caso.

show or the director — I start shot listing right away.
“When I read a scene and start breaking it down into
shots, I’m reminding myself about what is important in that scene.
Why are we in that scene? Maybe the character is going to find
out something about what happened to her mom in the past.
to present that character in the scene. It flows naturally for me
then. Each shot helps to clarify the story for me and helps me
prepare for what we’ll need to shoot on the day to tell the story.”
— Michael Goi, ASC, ISC

20 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary


Deep Focus
The Basics of
Electromotive Force
To understand how electricity
works, we need to break it down into its
most simplistic form. This requires a jour-
ney back in time to high-school science
class, where we’ll revisit atomic theory.
Don’t worry, we won’t stay there long.
Hydrogen has the simplest atomic
structure of all of the elements on the
periodic table. The hydrogen atom has a
nucleus, with one proton at its center and
one electron orbiting around it. If you’ll
remember from yesteryear’s science class,
the number of protons, which are posi-
tively charged, is always equal to the
number of electrons, which are negatively
charged, in atoms that are electrically
neutral.
However, when you have one lone
electron out in its own orbit — as is the
case with the hydrogen atom — it can
become easily dislodged. This, in turn,
changes the polarity of the atom from
neutral to positive. Atoms, as it turns out,
don’t like to be imbalanced, so this little
atom will now steal the electron from a
neighboring atom to make itself neutral
once again. This kicks off a chain reaction
of moving electrons right on down the
line, from atom to atom — and this
exchange of electrons is called electromo-
tive force.
All conductors, which are materials
22 January 2019
that allow for the easy flow of electric
current, have this free electron in the orbit
of their individual atoms.The best conduc-
tors are metals: silver, gold, copper and
aluminum (in that order, with silver being
the most conductive).
Copper is one of the most
common conductors used, as it offers the
best balance of conductivity to cost —
although aluminum was used quite heavily
in the 1970s and ’80s, and in some cases
can still be found. If we look at the atomic
structure of copper, we’ll see that it has 29
electrons and 29 protons, but the 29th
electron is in its own orbit and is there-
fore easily dislodged.
It’s important to remember that
heat is a byproduct of electromotive force
— the transfer of electrons generates
heat. And in high enough amounts, of
course, heat can cause fire. Mishandled, the
flow of electrons through a conductor can
easily cause materials around the conduc-
tor to melt or burst into flames.This makes
fire one of the greatest hazards in electric-
ity (alongside electrocution).
In a previous Shot Craft (“Keeping
the Lights On,” AC March ’18), we looked
at three of the principal elements of elec-
tricity: volts, amps and watts. Let’s take
another look at those, along with a fourth:
ohms.
If you think about the flow of elec-
tricity like the flow of water, some of these
components are easier to understand.
Imagine a large bucket of water with a
ASC 100th Anniversary
When a lone electron
is in its own orbit —
as is the case with both
the hydrogen and copper
atoms — it can be easily
dislodged, setting off a chain
reaction of moving electrons
called electromotive force.
spigot at the bottom. If the bucket is rest-
ing on the ground and you open the
spigot, water will spill out onto the ground
at a certain pressure. If you raise this
bucket up into the air, though, and then
attach a pipe to the spigot, the water pres-
sure at the ground level is going to be
greater than it was when the bucket was
on the ground.
In the most simplistic terms, this is
the same principle as voltage, which is the
measurement of the electrical potential
between two points, or the measurement
of how many free electrons are available
to pass from point A to point B. In other
words, voltage — which, remember, is also
known as electromotive force, and there-
fore is often abbreviated with the letter E
in mathematical equations — is the
measurement of the “pressure” of electri-
cal flow.
Amperage — which is also
referred to as “intensity” and is often
abbreviated with an I in mathematical
equations — is the measurement of the
capacity of flow of electrons. How many
electrons are flowing past a given point at
a given time? Amperage is dictated by the
capacity of the conductor and is directly
related to the amount of electricity ulti-
mately produced.
If you think about amperage as the
diameter of the pipe connected to the
bucket, it’s easier to grasp the concept. If
you have a 1⁄ 2"-diameter pipe attached to
the bucket, no matter how much pressure
 is behind that flow, it’s only going to allow
so much water to drain at one time. If you
swap out that pipe for a 1"-diameter pipe,
twice the amount of water can flow
through the pipe.
Wattage — aka “power,” and
abbreviated with the letter P — is the
measurement of the work done. Or, with
our bucket analogy, it’s the amount of
water you collect at ground level. That
amount of water is directly proportional
to the pressure and rate of flow — watts
are the product of volts multiplied by
amps. As an equation, that means
W = V x A, or P = E x I.
The final element is the ohm, which
is often represented by the letter R in
equations, and is used to measure the
resistance to electromotive force. All
materials have some resistance to the flow
of electricity. Metals (conductors) have the
least resistance, whereas dry rubber, dry
wood and dry air have the most resis-
tance. Ohms can be thought of as twists
and turns in the pipe coming from the
bucket, reducing the flow of water, regard-
less of the pressure or diameter of the
pipe.
One more step back into science
class: Notice that I specified dry rubber,
wood and air. That’s because water is two
parts hydrogen and one part oxygen, and
the hydrogen molecule, with its single elec-
tron, is a fantastic conductor of electricity.
Now let’s walk down the hall to health
class, where we’ll be reminded that the
human body is 60-70 percent water —
which means that people are pretty good
conductors of electricity. So please, be
careful when working with electricity, and
avoid completing any circuits with your
body! u

Meter Case
Kurt Jones

Cinematographer Kurt Jones started

his career as a camera and Steadicam oper-
ator, notching credits on series including
Brothers & Sisters, Samantha Who?, Cold Case,
Outsourced and Up All Night. He was
promoted to director of photography on
the series Wilfred, and has since shot
episodes of The Originals — including the
Season 4 episode “Bag of Cobras,” for which
he received an ASC Award nomination —
and The Unsettling. Currently, Jones is shoot-
ing the ninth season of Hawaii Five-0, alter-
nating duties with fellow cinematographer
— and longtime gaffer — Newton TerMeer.
Here, Jones offers a look inside his meter case and details
the tools he carries with him onto every job.
- iPhone X — “Not pictured, as I used it to take the pic. My main
app on my phone is Sun Seeker. I use it on location scouts and
take stills of the sun’s path so that once I’ve shot-listed with the
director, I can coordinate with the first AD as to the best time of
day to shoot there. Obviously, on a TV schedule, we can’t always
be at the location at the right time of day, so I also use the app on
tech scouts to discuss what I will need from my grip and electric
crew to achieve the look I want.”
- Spectra Cine Professional IV-A — “I come from a still-
photography background, so I shoot ‘old school.’ We do have a
DIT here on Hawaii Five-0, but I still use my trusty meter. That way,
I know my ratios, and if I have to come back and match a previ-
ously shot scene, I can keep my stops consistent. Consistency is
crews. I’m on the set with them, not at the DIT cart with a walkie.
I ask for specific lights and diffusions, and using the gaffer’s glass, I
can talk-in lights to be aimed where I want, and also check my
sun/cloud situation — which is constantly changing during the
Hawaiian day — for exterior work.”
- X-Rite ColorChecker Passport — “This little guy is great to
have for checking the color rendering of lights, cameras, lenses
etc.”
- Sony RX100 V and circular polarizer — “I use this great
compact camera for location scouting and set pics.”
- Handheld laser — “There aren’t too many night exteriors
here on Five-0, but this comes out when needed. My previous
show was dark and moody, with lots of night work, so it got a lot
of use.”
- iPad Pro — “With 10.5-inch screen and the Scriptation app.”
- Moleskine notebooks and Karas Pen Co. pens — “I still take
lots of notes and write them down, so this is a staple piece of kit
Photo by Kurt Jones.

key for me and my naturalistic style. Also, you’ll note that it’s Red
Sox red! Born and raised in Boston, and a die-hard Sox fan.”
- Sekonic Flash Master L-358 — “My backup ambient meter.”
- Sekonic C-500R ProDigi Color — “Color-temp meter.”
- Gaffer’s glass — “I’m very hands-on with my grip and electric
each time I read a script or scout locations. Don’t miss a thing.
Write stuff down. Be thorough.”
- Oakley Holbrook glasses — “With Prizm polarized lenses.
Need to protect the eyes!”

24 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 SHORT TAKES
Emerging Talent
I By Debra Kaufman
Furthering its mission to support emerging cinematogra-
phers, the Society presented three honors at the annual ASC
Student Heritage Awards event, which took place on Oct. 13,
2018 at the Society’s Clubhouse in Hollywood. In the Undergrad-
uate category, Matthew Hayward of Columbia College Chicago
was awarded the Gerald Hirschfeld Student Heritage Award for
The Latent Image. In the Graduate category, Steven Breckon of the
American Film Institute won the Sol Negrin Student Heritage
Award for A Place to Stay. This year’s Haskell Wexler Student
Documentary Award was presented to Alejandro Cortés Sánchez
of the School of Visual Arts for Adrift. AC spoke with the winners
about their work on these exceptional projects.
The Latent Image
Cinematographer: Matthew Hayward
Director: Joe Erwin
A young man, Samuel, looks through photographs of
himself in two relationships — one with a man (Rob) and another
with a woman (Red). He smokes and drinks as his anxiety level
rises, each photo bringing up painful memories.
“This is a story of the struggle a person faces to find himself
and accept who he is,” explains cinematographer Matthew
Hayward, who notes that he had the opportunity to capture this
short-form production, The Latent Image, on 35mm film negative
as part of his coursework. The assignment was to tell a story with-
out dialogue, and he and director Joe Erwin — who had worked
together on other student films — collaborated to design such a
narrative.
“We discussed how we could create the feelings with the
look — with color, camera movement and different shutter
speeds that describe the emotions,” says Hayward, who notes that
he found inspiration in such films as Red Desert and The Conformist
for their use of color to suggest emotions. As the cinematographer
recalls, for the scenes in which Samuel is on the beach, in a
tempestuous relationship with Red, Erwin suggested she be
dressed in red, the color of passion and love, and also of evil.
Further playing off this idea, the filmmakers used “bright green to
represent [Samuel’s] depressed mental state,” Hayward says. “We
used the color yellow for the scenes with Rob, to create a feeling
of softness and intimacy — but also of Samuel’s unease with that
relationship.”
Camera movement was deliberately slight and slow. “We
didn’t want to do anything too flashy,” Hayward notes. “We used
the dolly for slow, methodical movements — and handheld for the
chaotic moments of our protagonist throwing things, with a faster
26 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary
From left: Alejandro Cortés Sánchez, Matthew Hayward
and Steven Breckon.
shutter creating the choppy feeling. And then no camera move-
ment at all for the scenes on the beach, to delineate the different
stories.” Lars Moede served as camera operator, Zach Alsen as
gaffer, and Hex Yang as key grip.
Hayward used a Panavision Panaflex Gold II camera and
Panavision Ultra Speed lenses, with Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
stock, “because of the use of available light and the limited number
Photo on this page by Kylie Hazzard. All other images courtesy of the cinematographers.
of lights available on location,” he says. The lighting kit consisted of
four 1.2K HMIs and an assortment of gels and flags. “We tried to
keep the lighting simple and minimalistic,” he notes.
Shooting 35mm film was both a thrill and a challenge,
recalls Hayward, who reports that he relied on light meters and
tried to adhere to classical framing for most of the three-day
shoot. “This was my first experience shooting an entire short in
35mm,” he says. “On set, there was a lot more rehearsal, prepara-
tion and practicing the moves.” And though the distance between
the Chicago-area shoot and the Los Angeles-based FotoKem lab
resulted in a waiting period — “two weeks of nightmares,”
Hayward quips — before they saw the dailies, the filmmakers
were very happy with the transfer when it arrived.
Hayward expresses his appreciation for Columbia College
Chicago cinematography professors Robert Buchar and Adam
Jones. He also makes special note of the contributions of the
Latent Image crew, which included 1st AD Mitchy McGhan; 1st AC
Paige Hochstatter; 2nd ACs Caitlyn Spiritus and Emily Quezada;
and grip crewmembers Jonah Fatoya, Brian Delisi, Noah Kelly,
Alhareth Ajjaj and Jack Stearns — as well as editor Brendon
Perdikis, sound designer Maya Muerhoff and colorist Matt Filipek.
“I learned that shooting 35mm is a lot of fun,” the cine-
matographer concludes. “And I learned to trust my eye and my
instincts.”
➔
 u: Hayward
frames a shot.
uu: Breckon
operates an
Arri Alexa LF
camera.
A Place to Stay
Cinematographer: Steven Breckon
Director: Charlie Polinger
A Place to Stay takes place in 1959
Kansas City, as Andy awakens to find that
Gordon, his lover, has left him. Andy tracks
him down — only to discover that
Gordon is actually married with children.
Compelled to confront the truth of
Gordon’s double life, Andy engages with
his wife, telling her that he’s her husband’s
new work colleague. She invites Andy to
dinner, where things quickly go awry.
Cinematographer Steven Breckon
and director Charlie Polinger met on the
latter’s first short. They became creative
partners, and opted to collaborate on
their AFI thesis project. Breckon had
never shot a period piece before, and he
credits production designer Anastasia
Bankova — and her experience in re-
creating times gone by — with convincing
him to plunge in.
Polinger’s references were Paul
Thomas Anderson’s The Master and
Douglas Sirk melodramas. “These are rich,
formal films,” Breckon says. “We both
really like to find ways that the visual
language of a film can play against the
subject matter.” The cinematographer
adds that experimental filmmaker Stan
Brakhage’s 1963 Mothlight and Jackson
Pollock’s paintings inspired him as well.
“They’re abstract shapes pulsing with
energy, and this energy seemed fitting for
our characters whose sexual identities
were so repressed by the social pressures
28 January 2019
of that time,” he says. Breckon also
researched vintage Magnum Photos
photography, and perused a collection of
found photos from Kansas City.
The search for “pulsing energy” led
the filmmakers to add relentless rain to
the movie’s climactic scene, which takes
place in the cab of Andy’s truck — with
no audible dialogue as the camera
captures through the cab’s rain-streaked
rear window. “It was satisfying to dig so
deep into the visual-research prep, and
make new artistic connections,” Breckon
says. “It was also a very technical setup,
because we had to split this scene up into
multiple locations.”
The night-interior sequence in
which the actors walked out of the house
and into the rain “had to be captured day-
for-night,” Breckon says. “We tented the
location and backlit irrigation hoses that
lined the roof of the house for our rain
effect. For the night exterior on the lawn,
there were 100 feet of rain towers and 40
feet of dolly track as the actors walked
towards the truck. Then we shot the truck
interior in a parking lot on the AFI
campus.”
The project was shot with an Arri
Amira, which was paired with Cooke S4/i
primes and Angénieux Optimo zooms —
all with Fogal 110 rear netting. “This
particular type of pantyhose is hard to
find, and I was fortunate to receive a pack
from my mentor, cinematographer Peter
Hartmann, CSC,” Breckon says. “Combin-
ing the nets with the modern coatings of
the Cooke glass allowed me to keep dark,
ASC 100th Anniversary
inky blacks while getting a beautiful glow-
ing quality in the highlights.”
Breckon made liberal use of practi-
cal lighting for this production. “I had my
gaffer, Marcin Banasiak, wire all the practi-
cals in the house to a RatPac ‘lunchbox,’
which allowed us to wirelessly dim all of
them,” he says. “Beyond that, I often used
Quasar [Science] Q-LED lights to wrap
the practicals, attaching them to a piece of
beadboard to create an active bounce and
a softer, gradated source. For the day inte-
riors, I would use Maxi-Brutes outside the
windows, balancing the camera to 4,300
Kelvin rather than gelling the units.”
In addition to his crew of AFI
fellows, Breckon credits his “amazing
colorist,” EFilm’s Natasha Leonnet. “I really
love her perspective on color,” he says. “I
brought her my lens tests, and she created
a very warm LUT, which is what I used on
set and throughout dailies.”
Adrift
Cinematographer:
Alejandro Cortés Sánchez
Director: Paula Cury
Seeking to bring attention to the
alarming rate of teenage pregnancy in the
Dominican Republic, director Paula Cury
and cinematographer Alejandro Cortés
Sánchez traveled to the Caribbean coun-
try to interview pregnant teens in remote
villages, delving into their stories in the
short documentary Adrift. “All we had to
do was show up in a village or small town
and ask if they knew of any pregnant
teenagers, and they’d say, ‘Yes, we know
 p: A frame from the documentary short Adrift.
u: Cortés on location in the Dominican Republic.
15,’ ” Cortés says.
Prior to Adrift, Cury and Cortés
had worked on three narrative films
together at the School of Visual Arts —
but when Cury, who is Dominican, told
Cortés that she was concerned about the
“As a first-time
documentarian, the
biggest challenge was
to create a way for
these subjects to share
honest moments without
being uncomfortable
with the camera.”
number of girls getting pregnant at a very
young age, they decided the best way to
approach the topic would be via a docu-
mentary format.
In preproduction, Cury and Cortés
looked closely at the documentary
photography of Annie Griffiths and
Stephanie Sinclair, as well as the photos of
Lynn Johnson, Aaron Huey and Steve
McCurry. “We were inspired by photos
30 January 2019
with natural lighting that [instilled] a
certain emotion,” he explains.
Cury and Cortés spent November
of 2017 in the Dominican Republic, with a
Sony a7S II and Sony PXW-FS7. “We were
mostly on the Sony a7S because a small
camera allowed us to blend in a bit more,”
the cinematographer says. “We wanted to
capture honest moments, and a bigger
camera would have drawn too much
attention. But we used the FS7 for the
interviews.” He relied on Zeiss CP.2 Prime
lenses and two Angénieux zooms, a 16-
42mm Optimo DP (T2.8) and a 30-
76mm Optimo Style (T2.8). “I’m more of
a prime-lens cinematographer,” he says.
“But there were certain times when I had
to move really fast and get different
options, and I was happy with the results.”
Getting the teenagers to be open
to sharing their stories wasn’t easy, Cortés
recalls. “As a first-time documentarian, the
biggest challenge was to create a way for
these subjects to share honest moments
without being uncomfortable with the
camera,” the cinematographer says.
He reveals that Cury had consid-
ered tapping a female cinematographer
because of the intimate topic. “We took
the risk, knowing it would be difficult for
some girls to open up about their sexual-
ity,” he says. “I always treat people with a
lot of respect, and I think they were able
ASC 100th Anniversary
to see that. It took a little time, but I
managed to make them feel more
comfortable.”
A different but equally challenging
hurdle was the lack, or unreliability, of elec-
tricity in the remote villages where the
production shot. Cortés wanted to
capture as much as possible with natural
light, “but there were moments when we
needed to use lights, and it was tough,” he
says. Although he was able to limit his use
of the lights — which chiefly comprised
LiteGear’s LiteMat 4 units and “a couple of
[Litepanels] Astras,” the cinematographer
notes — charging the camera was another
issue. “A lot of times I had to save batter-
ies,” he says. “Every time we’d [complete a
shot], I would turn off the camera because
I didn’t know how long we would shoot
each day, and I never wanted to run out of
batteries.”
The short was graded by colorist
Diego Cordero with Blackmagic Design
DaVinci Resolve.
Cury and Cortés are now hard at
work expanding the project to include the
“many layers” they have discovered, the
cinematographer reports. “It ended up
being a bigger project,” he adds, noting that
their goal is to develop the production
into a feature-length documentary. “It’s
been a very transformative process.”
u
 Power
&
Glory

Vice President Dick Cheney (Christian Bale, left) and President George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) converse in the Oval Office.

Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS employs

LED lighting and 35mm negative —
Dick Cheney became a household name with the 2001 pres-
Unit photography by Matt Kennedy,

idential election, when he became vice president of the United

along with an array of vintage

courtesy of Annapurna Pictures.

States under President George W. Bush. By then, though,

cameras — to tell the decades-

Cheney’s career had already spanned several decades, during

spanning story of Vice

which he became a master politician and manipulator. Over
the course of the Bush administration, Cheney turned the
office of the vice president, which until then was mostly seen
as symbolic, into a genuine seat of power, in the process
By Jay Holben becoming what many have deemed to be the most powerful
man in the world.
Writer-director Adam McKay digs into Cheney’s life

32 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 Power & Glory
and politics with the feature Vice, which
stars Christian Bale as Cheney; Amy
Adams as his wife, Lynne; Steve Carell
as Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld; and Sam Rockwell as Bush.
Joining McKay for their first collabora-
34 January 2019
tion was cinematographer Greig Fraser,
ASC, ACS.
Despite its serious subject matter,
Vice mixes a sizable helping of comedy
with its drama — and, therefore, it
might seem out of character on Fraser’s
ASC 100th Anniversary
p: Cheney and his wife, Lynne (Amy
Adams), navigate the halls of power.
t: Director Adam McKay (left) and
cinematographer Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS.
résumé. “You might not know it looking
at my past history, but I love watching
comedies,” the cinematographer
reveals. “One of my favorites of all time
is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron
Burgundy [written by McKay and Will
Ferrell]. I really love Adam’s work. I’ve
never shot a comedy before mostly
because none had ever been presented
to me as an option.
“Another thing that a lot of
people don’t know about me is that I’m
very much into economics,” Fraser
continues. “There was a period in my
life when I was thinking of becoming an
economist. I find the theory of econom-
ics almost philosophical in nature. I read
the book The Big Short about eight times
and I loved the theory of it, but I didn’t
think it could ever be made into a film.
Then I heard that Adam McKay was
 Power & Glory
making it, and I couldn’t understand
that — until I saw the film, and it was
brilliant.
“Adam takes complex, dry
stories and injects elements of humor
and great storytelling, and they become
palatable to an audience,” Fraser attests.
Vice covers nearly 50 years
in the life of Dick Cheney
(Christian Bale), and in
conveying those shifting times,
director Adam McKay and
cinematographer Greig Fraser,
ASC, ACS strove to incorpo-
rate an array of period-
correct camera systems, with
formats including Super
16mm, Super 8mm, high-defi-
nition video, and digital and
analog standard-definition
video.
“I’ve done a lot of
movies and I’ve had to sched-
ule a lot of equipment, but it was quite
different to suddenly be seeking out a
1970s tube video camera for an upcom-
ing scene,” says 1st AC William Coe. “We
worked with equipment from the 1950s
to modern day, [including] Super 8mm,
JVC camcorders, Ikegami tube television
cameras, and modern HD news cameras.
“Keslow Camera in California
supplied the show with our primary
cameras and lenses and some of the
more esoteric vintage cameras, but
sourcing old video cameras in working
condition was not easy!” Coe continues.
“These weren’t just props for an actor to
walk around with — we were actually
shooting on these vintage cameras. We
ended up turning to Steve Irwin from
Playback Technologies, who had much of
what we were looking for in good work-
ing order. Another gentleman, Randy
Wedick, supplied us with some other
cameras.”
“We really tried hard to match the
look of existing archival footage, even if
we weren’t cutting directly against it,”
36 January 2019
“Dick Cheney himself is a very dry indi-
vidual. It really takes someone with
Adam’s vision to tell this kind of story. I
was excited to read this script, and it
certainly didn’t disappoint. Also,
Christian Bale was a huge factor for me.
I had never worked with Christian
Period Detail
Fraser offers. “But that [archival footage]
isn’t fresh out of a camera. It’s been
around a while. It’s been bounced off
satellites, and dubbed, and digitized, and
compressed — and that’s what we’re
used to seeing.
“We had a few shots of Colin
Powell [played by Tyler Perry] speaking at
the United Nations about the war in
Iraq,” Fraser adds. “I wanted to shoot this
with the same cameras that they shot
the actual speech on — this was the
time of early digital video, MiniDV and
early HD cameras — but the problem
was our footage [with those cameras]
just looked too good. It was pretty clean
out of the camera and didn’t match any
of the archival footage we had.”
Working with FotoKem senior
colorist and ASC associate Dave Cole,
Fraser says, “We beat up the footage a
bit. We sent it through a few different
dubbing machines, uploaded it to
YouTube and then downloaded it from
YouTube — and then we had something
that looked right! There was always a
ASC 100th Anniversary
before, but I had heard amazing things
from a lot of my crew who had.”
The story of Vice, Fraser says, is
“a complex one. Cheney was a brilliant
gamesman, and Adam constructed an
intricate and complexly interwoven
story. We chose 35mm anamorphic as
background discussion that
we could use a modern
camera and just degrade the
footage in post, but I’ve found
in life that I generally have the
most success when I’m as
honest as I can be. In this
case, sticking with what was
period-accurate just seemed
like the right thing to do.”
Cole did still use the
tools at his disposal in the
digital grade to further finesse
the footage captured with
these vintage cameras. “In
one scene,” Cole notes,
“there’s a flashback of Richard Nixon
having an off-the-record discussion with
Henry Kissinger. It’s voyeuristic — you
never see their faces in the scene — and
Greig wanted it to have a dreamlike
feel.” Fraser shot the argument using
Todd-AO anamorphic lenses, and then,
Cole adds, “I isolated small areas of the
frame to focus on, such as the tops of
Kissinger’s fingers holding a cigarette, and
caused chromatic aberrations to extend
from those regions, zooming them a little
bit to add an ‘aged lens’ effect.
“For some of the 16mm footage
that Greig shot that was supposed to go
next to some archival footage of
Photo courtesy of Michael Bauman.
President Jimmy Carter, that, too, was
just too clean compared to the old digi-
tized footage,” Cole continues. “So I had
to clip the signal, causing the highlights to
bleed a bit, add in some chromatic
distortion and simulate interlace arti-
facts. Once we added those effects, you
really couldn’t tell the [archival] footage
from the new stuff.”
— Jay Holben
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 Power & Glory
the main, consistent ‘voice’ throughout
the film, but we intermixed nearly every
other format except 65mm and Imax.”
(See sidebar, page 36.)
Rather than using those other
formats to distinguish between periods,
the cinematographer adds, they were
used as “augmentation and punctua-
38 January 2019
tion.” Indeed, most of Vice was
photographed — with Arricam ST and
LT and Arriflex 435 and 235 cameras —
on Kodak Vision3 200T 5213 and 500T
5219 stocks, which Fraser rated at 160
and 320, respectively. For certain
sequences, Fraser then pushed the
stocks one to two stops in developing in
ASC 100th Anniversary
Instead of traditional space lights, the
production rigged LiteGear LiteTiles
above its sets at Sony Pictures Studios.
order to bring out more grain.
Additionally, for flashbacks set during
the Vietnam War, Fraser details, “I shot
on a Bolex 16mm camera and pushed
the [7219] stock two stops to really
increase the grain and get it as punchy
as possible.”
“We mastered the film in 4K, so
all of the film was scanned at 4K and
other elements were upscaled to 4K for
the final,” explains FotoKem senior
colorist Dave Cole, an ASC associate
member. Cole points out that the
anamorphic 35mm footage was
captured in-camera with a Super 35
gate, which “gave us a 2.66:1 aspect
ratio, so we cropped out 2.39:1 from
there and had a little left/right room to
recompose the image.”
During prep, while Fraser was
trying to determine the appropriate
lenses for the story, he learned that cine-
matographers Brent Barbano, Mark
LaFleur and Kyle Stryker had joined
 Power & Glory
forces to produce the Ultimate
Anamorphic Lens Test for ShareGrid
and Old Fast Glass. The test included
lenses from 13 different brands — a
massive selection of anamorphic glass
that would be difficult for any produc-
tion to put together for a single test.
Fraser got an early look at the test before
it was released to the public, and after
examining the results, the cinematogra-
pher selected the lenses he wanted to
further investigate.
“I don’t really want to shoot the
same lenses from project to project,”
Fraser attests. “I want to give each its
own look. In this case, I ended up going
with Cooke [Anamorphic /i primes].
They’re clean, with good clarity, but not
too sharp. They still have a vintage char-
acter to them, but their edge-to-edge
performance is really good. They’re also
new and plentiful. Far too often,
anamorphics become hard to come by; if
you don’t lay claim to them first, some-
one else might.
LiteTiles provide “daylight” ambience from above the White House set, which was constructed on Stage 30 on the Sony lot.
40 January 2019
“There’s an interesting contradiction that happens with environmental concerns
and economic concerns, especially with the studios,” offers Fraser. “We’re in an age
where every company is trying to be green, which is great, but there’s still a massive
percentage of lights in the studio system that are fossil-fuel-burning monsters.They’re
not the latest technology, and they’re not energy-saving in any way, shape or form.
“Trying to get these studios to switch to LEDs can be a massive struggle,” he
continues. “They say they won’t invest in the new technology because there isn’t
enough demand, but the demand isn’t there because the supply isn’t there [from the
studios]. Also, the studios make their money on renting the older fixtures and on the
use of their electricity — including charging for the air conditioning on the stages.
When we use LEDs, we need a fraction of the rigging, a fraction of the cabling, a frac-
tion of the manpower and time to rig, a fraction of the air conditioning, and we’re using
significantly less electricity. For the production, it’s a massive savings — but for the
studio, it’s a loss.”
“The consistency and clarity of consistent and more prone to problems.
the Cookes also empowered me to go a If I had been shooting digitally on this
bit more bold and charismatic for project, I might have chosen the Todd-
certain sequences, and add in older AOs for the majority of the film, but
Todd-AO anamorphics. The Todd-AOs there’s always a risk with vintage lenses,
don’t resolve well, which I say as a posi- and when you’re working with film you
tive. They have a much more vintage don’t see the results immediately. You
look to them, but they’re also a lot less could have an issue with a lens and not
ASC 100th Anniversary
 Power & Glory
t: Gaffer Michael Bauman checks the light on Bale.
u: A crewmember positions a Digital Sputnik array in order to extend the sunset for an exterior scene on the campaign trail.
know it until long after the fact. The
Cookes were a much more reliable
choice that I knew I could count on, and
then I could work in the Todd-AOs for
more ancillary moments.”
Fraser also carried a set of spheri-
cal Arri/Zeiss Super Speed Mk II
primes, as well as an Angénieux HR 25-
250mm (T3.5) spherical zoom — and,
for the production’s Super 16mm
footage, which was shot with an Arriflex
416, the cinematographer opted for
Arri/Zeiss Ultra 16 primes. “We used
the [35mm-format] spherical lenses
for visual-effects shots and, every once
in a while, for found-footage-type
sequences,” the cinematographer
explains. “There’s a moment in the film
where it’s said that Rumsfeld was a
master of the butterfly knife, and we cut
away to an old 1980s-style instructional
video of a guy using a butterfly knife.
That was shot spherical, and we opened
[the aspect ratio] up to 1.33:1 for that
sequence.”
The production’s lighting pack-
age included a broad assortment of
modern LED fixtures. “We simply could
not have made the schedule without
using the LED technology,” says gaffer
Michael Bauman. “We shot in 40 loca-
tions on a 50-day shoot, including two
42 January 2019
weeks on stage at Sony. That’s a lot of
moving and doing it fast, with multiple
locations in a day. We really didn’t have
the time or manpower to work with
traditional HMI and incandescent
sources.
“When we got into the stage
work, the LEDs really saved us,”
Bauman continues. “We needed to
create large daylight ambience outside
the windows of the White House. A
standard approach would be to create
large soft boxes, using space lights or
coops as the light engine, but that’s
time- and labor-intensive — grips are
hanging truss and motors, cable is
heavy, external dimmers and air condi-
tioning are required, etc. Using LED
sources, we could switch to much
lighter cable, we could use pipe instead
of truss due to the lower weight load,
and it took half the labor and time to
rig.”
“With traditional tungsten space
lights, you only have one color — or you
have to gel them, and then you have to
constantly replace the gels because they
melt,” Fraser adds. “At the same time, I
never want to be the one to say that you
can’t use a 6K space light or you can’t
use a 20K. That’s taking paintbrushes
away from cinematographers, and
ASC 100th Anniversary
that’s not my intention. I do, however,
believe that LEDs are as good, if not
better, than tungsten or HMI, [and] I
think the future is definitely in RGBAW
LEDs. But I don’t want to see tungsten
lights go the way of carbon arcs — I still
want cinematographers to have choices
and to use what they feel is best.”
Instead of employing 6K space
lights above their stage-bound sets,
Fraser and Bauman opted for LiteGear
LiteTiles, which are large, flexible,
textile-like LED panels that can be
rigged via tie-line and grommets to
standard soft-good frames. The rigging
crew lined the entire ceiling of Stage 30
at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City
with these fixtures, allowing for instan-
taneous selection between daylight,
tungsten or any color in between, and
Digital Sputnik photo courtesy of Bauman.
with full dimming capabilities without
color shift. “LiteGear produced many
custom 10-by-10-foot panels for us,”
Bauman notes. “Each was 1,200 watts of
hybrid [bi-color] LED light, but each
panel gave us the equivalent output of
five diffused space lights — so, essen-
tially, 30,000 watts of incandescent
[light] was replaced with 1,200 watts!”
The overhead LiteTiles created a
soft and extremely realistic “daylight”
ambience that the crew could then
 Power & Glory
punctuate with direct “sunlight” created
with Digital Sputnik LED sources.
Many of the day interiors within the
elaborate White House set were primar-
ily lit with this daylight configuration
coming through the windows.
“During prelighting, Mike
Bauman, [key grip] Ray Garcia and I
were walking through the sets, and I
was saying, ‘This just feels real,’” Fraser
recalls. “It felt entirely natural, with the
soft light coming through the windows.
Many times you’ll be shooting on stage
until midnight or 1 a.m., and then you’ll
walk outside and be a bit disoriented;
that was especially true on this show
because the effect was so authentic.
“I used a bounce inside some of
the larger rooms,” Fraser continues, “or
we had some LiteTiles rigged to the ceil-
ing to provide some room tone just so
the room wouldn’t go black, but I didn’t
do that too much, as the effect of the
window light was really great. Then
we’d punctuate that a bit with the
Digital Sputniks to create more direct
44 January 2019
sunlight — not a hot beam of light like work done. We could show up at loca-
an HMI, but just a little peek, like sun tions and just plug into the wall — and
behind a tree just flicking inside, or just that was really critical when we were
the edge of sunlight coming in the doing multiple locations per day. They
window. [These were] subtle cues to worked wonderfully well on this show.”
make the environment feel real.” “The Sputniks are called ‘Digital’
“We carried a lot of Digital for a reason,” adds Cole. “We spent a
Sputnik fixtures,” Bauman says. good deal of time testing the LEDs for
“They’re really very punchy. Even with [use with] film, and the Sputniks were
day exteriors, the Sputniks have enough really an interesting case. The wave-
power that we didn’t need HMIs. lengths of light from them reacted differ-
Especially when you have actors who ently to film emulsion than they do to
are in the makeup chair for 4 to 6 hours digital sensors or to the eye.”
a day, time is so limited once they get on “Digital Sputnik uses a very
set that you have to move fast to get the different approach to their color spec-
For some night exteriors, one of which takes place in a village in Iraq (see inset
photo), Bauman and co. created a moonlight source with several LiteTiles tied to a
speed-rail frame suspended from the edge of a condor. “We had about 4,000 watts of
LED in [the rig for the Iraq sequence], and it was incredibly lightweight — well within
the weight capacity of a normal condor, which is amazing for a source of that size,”
asserts Bauman. “That would normally have been an 18K or a 20K in the basket, but
the larger source created a much more natural, soft light [over which] we had CCT
and intensity control.”
Inset photo courtesy of Bauman.
ASC 100th Anniversary
 Power & Glory
A Hudson Spider Redback parabolic LED keys Bale from above.
trum than most LED manufacturers,”
Bauman explains. “Most LEDs try to
create a broad spectrum of color to
match that of a true incandescent source
like tungsten. Sputnik uses a different
46
philosophy: They use an extremely
narrow spectrum of RGB color to opti-
mize what the sensor needs to see.
That’s how they get their efficiency. This
narrow spectrum reacts differently on
film. We found that if we set the
Sputniks at 3,200 Kelvin, that wasn’t
really what we saw on film. We had to
set them at 3,700K to get the look of
3,200K. Through testing on film, we
ended up creating a chart with the
settings we needed on the Sputniks to
get the color we needed. We got really
amazing results from that.”
“I’d done a lot of testing with
Sputniks for Rogue One [AC Feb. ’17]
and Mary Magdalene, and I knew they
performed very well,” Fraser notes. “I
have them dialed-in really well for digi-
tal shows, but I was a little worried
heading into film how they would
work, so we did quite a bit of testing in
prep. They were excellent for tungsten
and daylight situations, but I went with
[Outsight] Creamsource LEDs for
office-location situations where we had
to intermix with fluorescent light.
“Overall, however, I find that the
Digital Sputniks have more color depth
than most LEDs I’ve tried,” Fraser
continues. “They give better skin tones
and better color saturation. They inte-
grate very well with LiteGear, which
also have really great color. We actually
had to desaturate color a bit at times in
the DI, but I’d prefer to be in that situa-
tion than in the opposite, where we’re
trying to add color depth to the image.”
During one sequence in Vice,
while Cheney is in the hospital after
suffering one of the five heart attacks he
has survived, his wife works the
campaign trail in his stead, giving a
speech at an outdoor venue in Wyoming
at sunset. “We arrived at the location a
little late and shot Amy while the sun
was still out, but as we turned around,
the sun was just about to go,” recalls
Fraser.
“We lined up every Digital
Sputnik that we had and put them
through Light Grid, and we were able to
re-create the sun perfectly,” Bauman
says. “It was absolutely spot-on. We did
it very quickly, because the setup is so
simple with these fixtures.”
“We extended sunset at least
another 20 minutes,” Fraser recalls. “As
the skylight was fading, we merely
dimmed down the Sputniks to main-
tain the same ratio of ‘sunlight’ to
skylight and kept shooting. The result
was an absolutely perfect match from
LED sources — not HMIs.”
Fraser and Bauman also made
extensive use of the Hudson Spider
Redback parabolic LED, which incorpo-
rates LiteGear LEDs and controls; the
fixture can be fitted into an umbrella
shape or can be used on its own in an
eight-legged “star” shape. “The
Hudson Spider was an amazing tool for
shooting on location,” Fraser notes. “It’s
incredibly easy to rig pretty much
anywhere, it’s lightweight, it has a lot of
output and several configurations, and
it is really low-power and can just plug
into the wall.”
Considering the project as a
whole, the cinematographer offers,
“This picture is very contemporary,
current and important. Regardless of
whatever political agenda you have, it’s
important to understand the power that
one person in Washington can wield —
for good or bad. That was a great lesson
learned for me. It was a great experience
trying to understand this particular
man, and an amazing privilege to work
with Adam. He is such a gifted, talented
artist, with a storied history in comedy.
This project — be it a drama or a
comedy or a dramedy, whatever you
want to call it — was a pleasure to work
on, and it was a pleasure to collaborate
once again with my tireless and fearless
crew.” u
47
Memories
Mexico
of
Alfonso Cuarón re-creates where it won the Golden Lion — followed by Telluride and

1970s Mexico City for his

Toronto. It was also awarded the Bronze Frog at last year’s

highly personal, black-and-white,

Camerimage International Film Festival. Roma’s debut on

large-format feature Roma

By Mark Dillon
Roma is Alfonso Cuarón’s most autobiographical movie to
date. The director behind the ambitious thrillers Children of
Men and Gravity has turned inward for his latest film, which
is drawn largely from characters and events from his child-
hood years in Mexico City’s Colonia Roma neighborhood. It
is also the first feature he has shot on his own.
The movie screened at the Venice Film Festival —
Netflix was preceded by a theatrical release.
The story, set in 1970-’71, focuses on Cleo (Yalitza
Aparicio), a nanny who, along with best friend Adela (Nancy
García), works for a middle-class family on the verge of a diffi-
cult transition. Father Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), a doctor,
is leaving mother Sofía (Marina de Tavira) for his mistress, but
as far as their four children know, their dad is simply away on
an extended business trip.
Cleo’s romantic situation comes to parallel that of Sofía,
to whom she provides unwavering support. When Cleo
becomes pregnant, boyfriend Fermín (Jorge Antonio
Guerrero) skips out to focus on mysterious martial-arts train-
ing in a remote village. While preparing for impending moth-
erhood, Cleo unwittingly finds herself in the middle of what is

48 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary


now known as the Corpus Christi
Unit photography by Carlos Somonte. Additional photography by Javier Enríquez. All images courtesy of Netflix.
massacre, in which students marching
for democratic reforms encounter a
fierce paramilitary group.
Cuarón did not set out to be his
own director of photography, having
begun preproduction with longtime
collaborator Emmanuel “Chivo”
Lubezki, ASC, AMC. “It boiled down to
time,” Cuarón explains by phone from a
family trip in Italy. “I was going to have
a long prep, shooting schedule and DI
process. Then I decided to give us even
more prep time, and we realized we
also would need more shooting time.
Chivo said, ‘This is not going to work
for me anymore, because I have other
commitments.’ So, we had a discussion
about him starting the shoot and I’d
find someone to do the rest, but we real-
ized that [wouldn’t be] best. I wanted
one eye all the way through.”
He talked to several other cine-
matographers, but didn’t end up using
them, and he concluded that on a movie
tracing his roots, it was important that
he speak his native language of Spanish
on the set. “That’s when Chivo said,
‘Stop fooling around. You should do
it,’” Cuarón recalls. “I realized it was
necessary for the process, because it was
such intimate stuff I was doing — bring-
ing images from my own memory.”
Cuarón was no stranger to the
job, having spent more time as cine-
matographer than director in film
school and early TV projects, such as the
1980s horror anthology series Hora
Marcada (to which Lubezki contributed
his talents as well). He has also
performed additional shooting on some
of his recent features.
He spent about six months in
hard prep, knowing from the start that
he wanted his movie to be in black-and-
white. He and Lubezki, who shot
Gravity largely on Arri’s Alexa Classic,
tested various film and digital cameras,
narrowing their options to Arri’s Alexa
XT B+W — which has a modified
monochromatic sensor — or shooting in
color on Arri’s Alexa 65 and then desat-
urating in post.
“I wanted a digital black-and-
white,” he elaborates. “I wanted a film
shot today in black-and-white, and
looking into the past. I would refrain
from that classic, stylized look with long
shadows and high contrast, and go into
a more naturalistic black-and-white. I
didn’t want to try to hide digital in a
‘cinematic’ look, but rather explore a
digital look and embrace the present.
Each media — celluloid and digital —
has its own language and its pros and
cons, but I wanted to explore the amaz-
www.ascmag.com
tt and t: Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) helps
care for a middle-class family in Mexico
City in the feature Roma. p: Writer-
director-cinematographer Alfonso Cuarón.
ing dynamic range of the digital form.”
Lubezki ultimately pushed him
toward the Alexa 65. “I was skeptical
about the large format, but the 65’s
dynamic range was unbeatable,”
Cuarón says. “And as we did tests, I
realized this movie is honoring real-time
and space, and here we would have a
larger scope in which the characters
could flow. I wanted to shoot very wide,
and balance foreground and back-
ground with each informing the other.
The characters are a part of society, and
society is made up of individuals.”
He shot at 6560x3100 resolution
in Open Gate mode at 24 fps, capturing
to 2TB Codex SXR Capture Drives. The
movie is presented in the 2.39:1 aspect
ratio, and Cuarón usually framed to
allow for an extra 4 percent of space to
be able to further stabilize the image.
Ernesto Joven handled DIT duties.
The production borrowed
Lubezki’s show LUT from Birdman (AC
Dec. ’14) and The Revenant (AC Jan. ’16),
both of which the director of photogra-
phy shot for Alejandro G. Iñárritu. “This
allowed us to target and key red, green
and blue values to control and manipu-
late parts of the image,” says
Technicolor senior finishing producer
Michael Dillon.
“That was part of Chivo’s [contri-
January 2019 49
 Memories of Mexico
bution],” Cuarón adds. “In color, you Pines, who notes, “The source timeline Cuarón insisted on looking at only
take advantage of the whole dynamic was OpenEXR linear files in Arri wide- monochromatic images unless
range. Chivo’s LUT allows some gamut color space. A linear-to-log (Log absolutely necessary. “I didn’t want to
contrast and the color tends to be desat- C) transform was applied on input to have even the notion of color in the
urated, [yielding what] I would [call] a the color corrector. Creative grading process, including location-scouting
‘melancholic naturalism’ — but in was done in this log space. Color infor- and casting,” he says. “Everybody was
black-and-white, and adding a bit of mation was available, which could required to deliver their files in black-
contrast, I would characterize it as a ‘soft assist with keying for color correction and-white.”
naturalism.’” and visual effects. A custom final- Cuarón paired the camera with
Both Lubezki’s original LUT and output rendering transform provided Arri Prime 65 lenses, which he calls
the modified LUT for Roma were an overall creative look for the movie, in “fantastic.” He adds, “The downside
authored by ASC associate member and addition to desaturating the image to was that I wouldn’t reach the sweet spot
Technicolor vice president of imaging black-and-white.” of the lens until T4.5 to T5.6. Before that,
research and development Joshua Although originating in color, they would be soft and break up a little
bit, and edges would be more notice-
The production employed 256-LED panels for interactive lighting at a movie- able. Because of the format, the edges
palace interior in which Cleo tells Fermín she is pregnant. Cuarón wanted the light tend to distort when you work with
from the movie screen — playing a World War II-set comedy — to illuminate the lenses as wide as ours. For more than 10
shot, which was captured from behind the couple’s seats, encompassing the theater’s years I’ve been working in spherical
crowded floor level. A 35mm projection would not have been bright enough, so the 35mm [format], and only with 18mm
crew played the movie on a 22'-wide 256-LED panel, over which a 35mm projection and 21mm [lenses], and here with the
in the same sync was composited in post. Alexa 65, we worked with the roughly
On each side of the screen, they placed an additional smaller panel playing a equivalent 35mm and 50mm.”
fraction of the movie frame to wrap the light a bit more. These panels were erased Cuarón eschewed lens filters
in post. “We were fighting with concert venues to get enough LED panels for that other than NDs. “For interiors and big
day,” Cuarón recalls. spaces, I decided not to use any smoke

50 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

or equivalents,” he adds. “That creates a
beautiful diffusion for the background,
but I refused to use it unless it was
absolutely justified, as I wanted a very
sharp and grainless look.”
Shooting spanned early fall of
2016 to the following spring, encompass-
ing more than 110 days of principal
photography.
Capturing in color also allowed
the production to work with green-
screens, as in a scene in which Cleo
crosses an avenue after a family night
out at the movies, when the kids think
they spot their father and his girlfriend.
The production made every effort to
shoot on the locations where events actu-
ally transpired, but in this case the actual
street had changed so much since the
1970s that Cuarón had production
designer Eugenio Caballero construct an
enormous six-block-long set in an indus-
trial space.
Working from photos of the era,
the art department painstakingly re-
created period-accurate details, right
down to the goods for sale in dress and
camera shops. Gaffer Javier Enríquez
and his team lit the stores with various
practicals amplified by diffused
LiteTile+ Plus 8 foldable LED fixtures, as
well as 5K tungsten lights and 10K
Fresnels. “The diffusion we could get
from the equipment rental houses [was]
not thick enough to diffuse these
fixtures, so I went to look for a regular
fabric,” Enríquez notes. “After I found
the appropriate fabric, it was sewn [to] pp: Cleo rests with one of the children. p: Cuarón finds his frame.
the measurements we needed. In addi-
tion to these, [we also used] regular gray so, relying on family photos, the would go dark quickly,” Cuarón notes.
fabrics, which were bought locally, to production re-created it using a similar “Sometimes it was about translating a
create volume and direction to the light.” house that was scheduled for demoli- color separately. For instance, I wanted
A 20'x20' cube constructed with tion, which allowed Caballero to all the tiles in the house to be the origi-
diffusion frames housed three 18K construct a wild-walled set within the nal colors. The original floor tiles were
Fresnels and was hung from a crane over residence. The art department deco- yellowish but they were translating too
the intersection, surrounded by bounces rated the location with whatever origi- bright, so we wound up using a green-
to simulate the light from the cinema nal furniture and personal items ish color. I felt uncomfortable seeing a
marquee. They also placed 18Ks on Cuarón could procure from his family. color that was not right at first, but it
rooftops. “We used all the 18Ks in The filmmakers occasionally ‘cheated’ translated beautifully into black-and-
Mexico,” Cuarón quips. Greenscreen colors in the set design and costume white. Also, we had to be careful of the
was placed at one end of the strip for CG designer Anna Terrazas’ period cloth- contrast of different colors — which
street extension. ing, depending on how they registered look great to the naked eye, but when
Cuarón’s actual childhood house in black-and-white. translated in [gray] tones were a single
had also changed too much to be used — “A certain range of reds and blues one-tone block.” ➔
www.ascmag.com January 2019 51
 Memories of Mexico

bottom, with skirting further directing

the light downward. Enríquez notes that
the bottom was diffused with “three
layers of diffusion. One was white
fabric, bought locally, and the other two
were Chimera Full.” If any lights
appeared in frame, they were erased in
For a sequence in which the fatherless family visits an uncle in the country for post.
the Christmas holidays, a New Year’s celebration is interrupted when Cleo spots a A massive mechanized rail
fire spreading in a nearby forest — and everybody rushes out to try to extinguish system was built over the top of the
the flames. house that enabled a curtain-like exten-
Cuarón wanted to illuminate the scene by fire. Special-effects supervisor sion of black fabric for contrast and day-
Alejandro Vázquez had several rigged trees and shrubs burning in a clearing in the for-night shots, as well as three layers of
foreground, amplified by gas-controlled flaming grills — as big as 20'x12' — soft diffusion — comprising the same
suspended from cranes and tripods. material as had been employed with the
Inspectors restricted them from using fire in the background near real trees, so aforementioned cylinder-housed 20K —
instead the crew placed a series of LED panels on a slight incline on the ground, which for varying amounts of sunlight. Three
projected video of fire onto the trees for a flickering effect. A similar panel suspended sides of the building were covered this
from a crane provided backlight on the actors. Four 18Ks were placed in the far way, with the largest extension measur-
distance to give a very dim light level to the forest in the deep background. ing 67'x14'. “After my first meeting with
Alfonso, and understanding what he
wanted to do, I started designing [a way
Equipment got tied up at hide, Enríquez’s staff relied on Arrimax to make this possible], and I came up
customs, so Cuarón didn’t have time to 18s outside windows as a daylight with this mechanized rail system,”
test the Alexa 65 in the family home, the source. Additionally, they rigged on the Enríquez notes, “It took about one
movie’s main location. By the time they roof an 8'x6' mirror that reflected month of prep designing and [construct-
got rolling, he was surprised by how sunlight down through a skylight, ing] it with my technicians.”
much lighting was required to shoot at sometimes through muslin. This would “A couple of times we wanted the
T5.6. “I thought, ‘My God, we’re doing be amplified by a custom-made version light to change within the shot, which
a movie like in the 1950s,’ with a huge of a space light — also on the roof — we could do by sliding [one of the
camera and a lot of light,” Cuarón says. comprised of a metal-framed cylinder fabrics],” Cuarón says. “It was a location
“Also, I didn’t want long, stylized shafts containing three Arri M90s pointing up that worked like a studio.”
of light. I wanted naturalistic soft-light at bounce material. The exterior of the house, Cuarón
sources, but we were shooting very For night interiors, the produc- relates, “was shot across the street from
wide, seeing the extension of the house tion used practicals including a chande- the original house, because that house
from one corner of the house — seeing lier containing a 1K bulb that could be had the same configuration as our inte-
everything. It took a lot of light with raised and lowered above the staircase, rior set, [with the] patio on the left and
bounces and diffusions to go through with LiteTile+ Plus 8 wrapped high the house on the right — [which was]
the windows and get enough exposure around the wall for fill. Enríquez also the mirror image of the original house.”
deep into the rooms.” hung a 20K in a cylinder that was In addition, he says, “this way we
Since movie lights were hard to blacked-out except for its diffused would face south when photographing

52 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 Memories of Mexico
Working from photo reference of the Mexico City streets where Cuarón based Roma’s story, production designer Eugenio Caballero and his
team constructed a six-block-long set in an outdoor industrial space.
it, and the sun would, at the right hour,
backlight the ground glass of the gate.”
Galo Olivares operated the A
camera, while Cuarón was responsible
for the actors, for setting the camera
angles and movements, for the look,
and for controlling the aperture. Cuarón
stood by his calibrated Flanders
Scientific CM250 monitor when they
were rolling. “Galo is a DoP in his own
right, and a great camera operator,” the
director says. “It was a privilege to have
a young, fresh eye near me. Sometimes
he would look at me and say, ‘Are you
sure you don’t want a negative fill?’
And I would say, ‘You’re right — nega-
tive fill.’”
The B camera, operated by
Alejandro Chávez, only occasionally
came into play. One such sequence
involved a picnic in which the adults
show their proclivity for recklessly
firing guns. Within this is a sequence in
which children, including a boy
costumed as an astronaut, and dogs run
through a pondy forest. Using the two
54 January 2019
cameras — one on a Technocrane and
the other on a tripod — ensured “being
able to have the sunlight in the perfect
position for the two shots,” Cuarón
says, “and also the perfect continuity”
when cutting between the two angles.
The single-camera approach
gives the movie a consistent perspec-
tive, one in which the camera is unob-
trusive — Cuarón characterizes it as
“objective” — and usually on a dolly,
sometimes with a Scorpio Stabilized
Head or Libra remote head. There are
no handheld or Steadicam shots, as
those, the director says, “would change
the language we were after.” Cranes
were sometimes employed, but as with
the dolly, there were no moves in and
out — only panning and tracking.
The Corpus Christi massacre was
the project’s most logistically compli-
cated sequence. Cuarón, of course,
elected to shoot it at the very intersec-
tion where the tragedy unfolded.
Hundreds of extras, stunt performers
and period cars were brought in follow-
ASC 100th Anniversary
ing extensive rehearsals on a football
field. The production had initially
requested that the location — which is
currently a busy part of town — be shut
down for three days, though they left
after only two, believing they had
caused enough disruption.
On-hand city officials were
reportedly surprised when they saw
that the sequence’s most expansive shot
was captured by only one camera from
behind a second-floor window. In the
scene, Sofía’s mother, Teresa (Verónica
García), brings the pregnant Cleo to a
furniture store to buy a crib, just as the
mayhem begins outside. Shop patrons
rush to the window and the camera
pans from them to reveal protesters and
paramilitary forces clashing on the
street below.
“Sometimes you are tempted
with amazing angles, but you know
you have to do only the one that is
right,” Cuarón explains. “Part of our
approach was to extend every shot
through to its natural consequence, and
 Memories of Mexico

in the shot, and it added a dramatic

element. Outside, we used mirrors of
different shapes to cast a strong light on
some background actors, such as police
officers and running students.”
One particularly long take in Roma sees Sofía and Cleo on a trip with the chil- The crew shot at a time of day in
dren to a Veracruz beach. Sofía forgets something and must return to the car, and Cleo which the sun through the back
walks part of the way with her. Since she is responsible for keeping an eye on the windows provided ambience as well as
children, however, Cleo must go back as a couple of the kids go in over their heads in a hard backlight on the characters as
the choppy waves. Although she can’t swim, she wastes no time braving the surf to they enter the store. When they
try to get to them.The camera tracks with her along the beach, from sun to shade to captured the crowds on the other side,
sun again, following her right into the water. however, the building blocked the sun,
To accomplish this complex single shot, the crew built a 200' wooden pier, half providing a less contrasty look below.
on the beach and half in the ocean. Constructing a level pier was difficult given the With the camera panning from
beach’s inconsistent terrain, so the dollying camera was placed on a Technocrane, which the interior of the store to the window,
would allow Olivares to compensate for variations in height. After several scouts of Cuarón had to be particularly nimble in
the beach, Cuarón decided it would be best to shoot after 3 p.m. When the time came, manipulating the aperture. “As we go to
an 8'x8' negative fill was employed to block the sun bounce on Aparicio. the window, we went down three stops,
and then three stops up as we go [back]
not do long shots just for the ‘Olympics’ “We needed a lot of light to get inside,” he says. “I tried to do it as subtly
of it. I decided to cut from that shot the necessary interior exposure while as possible. It was a constant in our
before it calls attention to itself.” being able to see outside without over- longer shots: When the sun appears,
In the store location, the crew exposing,” Enríquez notes. “Also, make big stop changes.”
placed about 60 Kino Flo tubes in the behind the windows we hid Maxi- Cuarón was heavily involved in
existing fluorescent fixtures, and also Brutes to create a sense of sunlight enter- the final-grade process, and worked in
took advantage of the light from practi- ing the store. That was one of the few Hollywood with Technicolor supervis-
cal lamps ostensibly being sold in the scenes in which we used direct light, ing finishing artist and ASC associate
store. since it was a day interior with windows Steven J. Scott. According to Cuarón, the

56 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 Memories of Mexico
Cuarón finesses the light at the family’s table.
sessions comprised 576 hours  of color
correction and 397 hours  of additional
color support, for a total of 973 hours of
sessions spread over six months. Scott, a
longtime collaborator, had been
involved in the discussion of the look
since the camera-testing phase with
Lubezki. Finishing was performed in 4K
with 16-bit open float linearized Log C
EXR files, using Autodesk
Lustre/Flame 2019 Connected Colour
Workflow software on Lenovo
ThinkStation P920 machines.
The display LUT converted the
full-color image to black-and-white.
Having the color information available
throughout the finishing process
allowed for greater control in manipu-
lating elements of the image. “If Alfonso
had shot in black-and-white,” Scott
explains, “and if you had somebody
wearing a pink sweater against a light-
blue sky that matched the tonal range of
that pink sweater, we would have had
two similar shades of gray and wouldn’t
have been able to isolate either one. But
with the color intact, I could use all of
the color range in my Lustre, which
meant I could isolate and manipulate
that pink without affecting the sky.
Although you don’t see the color, it gave
us a much broader range of options in
terms of what we could isolate and
manipulate. For practical reasons,
58 January 2019
Alfonso’s decision to shoot in color was
brilliant.”
Scott also used Flame to deal with
tricky lighting situations. He analyzed
and created luminance curves that
would read light-level fluctuations, and
then used those curves in Lustre to
organically and automatically compen-
sate with brightening corrections when
a shot flickered dark. This came in
handy for the beach, forest-fire and
cinema-interior scenes where there were
extreme lighting fluctuations. “That was
the biggest innovation for me,” Scott
relates. “Alfonso inspires me to think
expansively because of the unique
demands of the beautiful images he
captures. He always keeps me on my
toes in the best possible way.”
Standard dynamic range (SDR)
and then extended dynamic range
(EDR) passes were completed sepa-
rately, with Cuarón finishing them
differently to take advantage of the
unique characteristics of each. “I want to
look into the shadows and see every-
thing I possibly can,” Scott says. “That’s
the great thing about EDR, and the
Dolby Vision [projection system] in
particular. Because the low- and high-
end information is not visible with SDR,
if you put black on the screen, it’s going
to appear dark gray. But if you put black
on an EDR screen, it’s an absolute, beau-
ASC 100th Anniversary
tiful black. There can be a lot of layered
information in that range from SDR
black — [or] gray — to absolute EDR
black, and we tried to reveal as much of
that detail as possible in the EDR pass.
We had the same goal for the high end
— to show details in the clouds, sky and
even the sun that SDR couldn’t begin to
approach.”
Cuarón reports that delivering a
single IMF master file to Netflix that
contained the HDR master along with
the SDR “trim pass” metadata wouldn't
reproduce or stream the SDR image as it
was originally conceived during the
finishing process. Therefore, for the first
time, two separate IMF files were deliv-
ered to Netflix. Cuarón notes, “This was
very different from the standard Netflix
delivery of only one IMF file that
included the HDR pass along with SDR
trim metadata. The Roma package
included both an HDR file, as well as a
separate and distinct SDR file. This
allowed us to take full advantage of all
of the original Lustre tools to time both
the HDR and the SDR separately.” The
first IMF master served HDR clients, the
color grade for which was based on the
DCI XYZ master, but was extensively
adjusted in Lustre to optimize it for
HDR. The second IMF master served
the SDR clients, the color grade for
which was also based on the DCI XYZ
master, “but it was carefully adjusted by
Steve Scott using all of the Lustre tools
originally available in the SDR color-
grade suite, and not just the more
limited SDR trim tools available with
the Dolby Vision toolset,” Cuarón offers.
On his choice to shoot as well as
direct, Cuarón confirms that he would
do it again. “In a second,” he says. “I
think I will drift back and forth, because
I also enjoy the collaboration with cine-
matographers I admire. I like learning
from them. Talking about not only their
technical approach but also their
conceptual approach is so much fun. I
started as a cinematographer, and after
all these years, to take it from the begin-
ning all the way to postproduction was
just a joy.” u
 Light Fantastic

Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS and the indomitable nanny completed her work with the Bankses

Rob Marshall launch a new chapter and departed courtesy of her flying umbrella — and now she

for a cinematic icon with

Mary Poppins Returns
By Michael Goldman
In the mid-1930s, as the “Great Slump” ravages London’s
economy, the Banks family grapples with tragedy, looming
financial ruin, and an almost complete disconnect from even
the simplest of joys. With life getting more bitter by the day,
their quiet desperation is sensed by a long-ago friend known
for her skills with a spoonful of sugar. It’s been 24 years since
returns to introduce the next generation to a host of new
friends and magical, musical adventures.
Directed by Rob Marshall and shot by longtime collab-
orator Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS, Mary Poppins Returns is a sequel
to the 1964 Oscar-winning Disney classic, Mary Poppins, star-
ring Julie Andrews. Taking on the mantle of the eponymous,
larger-than-life caregiver this time around is Emily Blunt.
Paying proper homage to the original movie, and yet crafting
an entirely new musical story from scratch that works on big
screens for today’s sophisticated fans proved to be “a fine
balancing act,” says Marshall — who notes that it took him
three years to develop the project.
“My intention was to honor the first film, but at the
same time create something completely original,” the director

60 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

Unit photography by Jay Maidment, SMPSP. Additional photography by Jonathan Prime. All images courtesy of Disney Enterprises Inc.
says. “One of my great desires has
always been to work on an original
musical for film, which Dion and I had
never done until now. We had always
done Broadway shows that we trans-
lated to film, so to create an original
musical is a whole other thing.”
For his part, Beebe — who
worked alongside Marshall on the
motion-picture adaptations of the
Broadway hits Chicago (AC Feb. ’05),
Nine (AC Dec. ’09) and Into the Woods —
notes that Mary Poppins Returns was an
intimidating proposition. “When Rob
first mentioned the idea, I think we both
shared a terror at the prospect of trying
to do a sequel to Mary Poppins,” the cine-
matographer says. “Plus, it is a whole
new musical. The essence is this beloved
character, and it has elements based on
original P.L. Travers Mary Poppins books
— in particular, 1943’s Mary Poppins
Opens the Door, and with reference to
[1935’s] Mary Poppins Comes Back — but
it’s entirely something new. So I think we
both felt somewhat tentative at first
about how to tackle the movie.”
At different points in Marshall’s
interview with AC, he refers to Beebe as
“my go-to person for anything and
everything,” “someone I share similar
sensibilities with,” “my great collabora-
tor,” and “my right arm.” The director
also notes that as the musical is an art
form that not all cinematographers are
deeply familiar with, Beebe’s experience
alongside Marshall over the years was
particularly crucial. “He understands
movement and choreography, and he
understands how musicals need to have
fluidity to them,” Marshall says. “So
when we work together, the shorthand
is just great.”
In terms of “how to honor some-
thing that was made 54 years ago,”
Beebe says, the filmmakers opted for a
delicate balance between a more realis-
tic, grittier backdrop of an economically
ravaged London in the 1930s — “a
slightly faded, more worn version of
London,” as the cinematographer
describes it — and the movie’s more
colorful, fantastical elements. The latter
includes a lengthy animated/live-action
sequence that puts the characters into a
stylized 2D animated world in a way
www.ascmag.com
tt: Mary Poppins (Emily
Blunt, right) is back to
aid a new generation of
Banks children — this
time with the help of
lamplighter Jack (Lin-
Manuel Miranda, left).
p: Siblings Jane (Emily
Mortimer) and Michael
Banks (Ben Whishaw) are
shocked by their
erstwhile nanny’s return.
t: Cinematographer
Dion Beebe, ASC, ACS
(left) and director Rob
Marshall.
that emulates, but goes far beyond, the
breakthrough companion sequence in
the original film.
Marshall adds that the original
movie is “very stylized. The street the
family lives on, Cherry Tree Lane, for
instance, looks almost like a fantasy. It
has this fantastic quality to it; it’s not the
real world. We did the opposite, and
tried to create a juxtaposition between
the real world and the fantasy world. So
our Cherry Tree Lane looks very famil-
iar, but it is ‘real’ — there are cracks in the
sidewalk, water runs down the sides of
buildings, and so forth. And then I used
myself as a barometer, because I love the
original film so much. What would I
want to see if I were seeing a sequel to
Mary Poppins? So the iconic images are
still in place.” ➔
January 2019 61
 Light Fantastic
The crew maneuvers a crane-mounted camera for the “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” musical number.
The movie was shot in and
around Central London in a wide range
of locations, including at some famous
landmarks, as well as on several large
stages at Pinewood’s Shepperton
Studios. Beebe opted to shoot the feature
primarily on Arri Alexa SXT cameras,
with the production carrying three of
them as well as one Alexa Mini. The
majority of the feature was captured
with anamorphic glass, and the picture
was framed for the 2.39:1 aspect ratio
throughout.
According to digital-imaging
technician Peter Welch, the production
recorded raw at various sensor modes
— primarily 4:3 2.8K, as well as Open
Gate 3.4K and 16:9 2.8K. “We applied an
extraction of 90 percent for our
[Panavision] Primo V series 14.5mm
[spherical] lenses, as [they] exhibited a
vignette on the 4:3 sensor [for certain
shots],” Welch adds.
Beebe used a wide range of
Panavision G and T Series Anamorphic
Prime focal lengths, plus Panavision
ATZ 70-200mm (T3.5), ALZ11 48-
550mm (T4.5) and AWZ2.3 37-85mm
62 January 2019
(T2.8) anamorphic zooms.
As the cinematographer explains,
it was decided early on “that we wanted
to be in the 2.40 aspect ratio, and that this
movie needed to have a big-screen feel.
That was another way we could tip our
hat to the original film. The [images
produced by] the anamorphic lenses
offer a certain kind of nostalgia. [It’s] the
quality of the glass, and the falloff you
get because of the anamorphic squeeze.”
The handful of shots captured
with Panavision Primo V spherical
lenses were useful in reducing camera
weight, as well as in allowing for refram-
ing in post, thanks to the extra image
height. A handheld Stabileye gyro-stabi-
lized gimbal system — featuring a
remote hand wheel and frequently used
with the Alexa Mini — was often
employed for the Primo V-captured
sequences. The Stabileye and Primo V
rigging was used “for fast dramatic
movement during the big dance
sequence in ‘Trip a Little Light Fantastic,’
and the bicycle journey to Big Ben
through the narrow London streets at
night,” Beebe says.
ASC 100th Anniversary
A-camera/Steadicam operator
and Association of Camera Operators
member Peter Robertson notes, “When
the Stabileye is used, it is normally
carried by [one or two] grips, and I
remotely control it from a set of hand
wheels. We are connected via open-mic
radio headsets, so I can direct the grips
into position.”
Marshall built in a two-month
rehearsal period to work out major song-
and-dance numbers — choreographing
performers, lights and cameras to work
seamlessly together. “Dion was always
right there shooting the rehearsals with
me, and that put us ahead of the game,”
the director says. “That gave us a
template for how we were going to deal
with these challenges. Those rehearsals
really saved us.”
“Dion recorded those perfor-
mances simply on a handheld Sony a7S
digital camera with an onboard monitor,
to allow for reviewing [later, when] plan-
ning scene coverage and shots with Rob,”
Welch says. “Costume and set-decoration
tests were also carried out [using SXT
cameras paired with G Series lenses].”
The DIT adds that the tests “proved really
useful in order for Dion to be able to
design show looks” with supervising
colorist and ASC associate Peter Doyle
at Technicolor London, and with
Technicolor Los Angeles supervising
colorist and ASC associate Michael Hatzer
— the latter of whom served as colorist for
the final grade, which was performed at
Technicolor New York.
Welch notes that the LUTs
provided by Technicolor were templates,
and that he collaborated with Beebe to
further develop or tweak particular looks
throughout production, as necessary. He
reports that he provided DIT rigs for
main, 2nd and visual-effects units, so they
could all maintain an identical workflow
and hardware, and share additional
resources. The filmmakers employed a
series of calibrated Sony PVM-A250 and
PVM-A170 monitors, which were distrib-
uted to each production and postproduc-
tion department. Alan Stewart served as
2nd-unit cinematographer, alongside
2nd-unit director Thomas Napper.
“The DIT rigs were built — to
The “Trip a Little
Light Fantastic”
sequence continues.
One of the technical hurdles for the “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” sequence
related to the fact that all the gas lamps seen in the performance needed to be picked
up by the Alexa cameras as displaying gas flames, while allowing the filmmakers to keep
them controlled and choreographed. “We had the challenge of being able to use real
gas light,” relates gaffer Dave Smith, “yet [we had to make] sure we had enough light
coming out of what we shot. Since there was not enough exposure from the gas lights
alone, a group of us — including Dion, special-effects supervisor Steven Warner, the
props team, and my team — came up with the idea of putting tungsten bulbs into
actual gas lamps to augment the gas light with an electric light that could [match the
flame]. We had 800-watt bulbs, all on individual dimmers.”
“The rigs were fireproofed and the gas was triggered with igniters that needed
to ignite on cue,” Beebe notes. “Coming from Broadway, Rob knows his lighting cues,
and getting these units to synchronize was quite stressful, as the SFX team had to
preload the gas lines and offset their cue in order to match the other lights. We had a
total of five cameras shooting — one on a 30' telescoping arm, some on dolly and
track, and one that we mounted on the Stabileye cable system above the set.”
www.ascmag.com January 2019 63
 Light Fantastic
pp: The C camera is readied for a high-angle shot in the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank set.
p: Multiple cameras frame up on Meryl Streep, who portrays Cousin Topsy.
Dion’s requirements — around
Pomfort’s LiveGrade software for on-set
color and the chosen ACES workflow,”
Welch continues, noting that Mary
Poppins Returns was one of the first
Disney features to rely entirely on the on-
set ACES color pipeline.
Regarding camera movement,
Robertson notes, “Rob Marshall’s work
explores the area between theater and
cinema. The choreography of the camera
is very much driven by the musical
soundtrack and the movement of the
actors and dancers. Rob and Dion have
their camera moves worked out to the
64 January 2019
beat, often with a ready-made score, so
it’s always demanding for operators and
grips to coordinate their timing in a
unified way, especially when swinging a
75-foot crane around.”
The production’s three-camera
system was employed both for “the
musical numbers on stage and also
when filming the regular drama,”
Robertson offers. “On location, the
limited time we had on busy London
streets with transient light made it a
must to set more than one camera. It’s
also important on dance routines, and
when working with three child actors, to
ASC 100th Anniversary
ensure that continuity of action is
achieved, and cutting options were
offered to our editor [Wyatt Smith].”
Beebe adds that the “very limited work-
ing hours with our young cast” were
another factor in opting for multiple
cameras.
The filmmakers report that the
challenges involved with shooting on
location in London were numerous. By
way of example, Robertson notes,
“Permissions and road lock-offs meant
that we had a small window to achieve
our shots, and multiple takes were often
out of the question. Chapman/Leonard
telescopic cranes and remote Scorpio
Stabilized Heads were used extensively
to solve the problem of getting the
camera into position over roads and
public walkways, especially when
shooting the opening number, ‘Under
the Lovely London Sky.’ The sky in
London has a fickle nature and doesn’t
always reveal itself, so being in position
to capture its transient light is often a
combination of meticulous planning,
blind faith, and a generous portion of
good luck.
“Visual effects obviously played a
big part in [re-creating] the London
skyline of the past, while blending it to
the built sets and natural light of our
shots,” Robertson adds. “It was often
bizarre to drop down on a crane move
from a modern skyline of skyscrapers
and construction cranes to a scene of a
lamplighter on a bicycle weaving his
way past a horse and a cart on a foggy
street.”
“Location work is always chal-
lenging on period movies,” Beebe says.
“We had quite a lot of scene work and
two big musical numbers that required a
lot of location shooting. ‘Trip the Light’ is
one of our most ambitious numbers, and
required starting on location in Central
London at night in a heavy fog. As the
number [makes] its way through the
narrow London streets, more ‘leeries’ [or
streetlamp lighters] join the dance and
we begin a journey from our real world
into a magical fantasy. Eventually, we
transition from location onto [three
different sets] on two separate sound
 Light Fantastic
stages, ending in our huge Abandoned
Shooting on the Shepperton stages allowed a lot more control than was possi- Park set. The number then develops into a
ble when shooting on location, but it also came with more ambitious requirements. complex choreographed dance routine
Among the major set builds was the all-important Cherry Tree Lane. Beebe describes with more than 30 dancers, extreme bicycle
the Cherry Tree Lane set as “a huge build, where we re-created that whole street on stunts, ladder acrobats, and a synchronized
the Shepperton H Stage. From there, we were bouncing around and doing builds, and dance with burning torches. This blend of
tearing various sets out and putting them back on at least six Shepperton stages.We location work and stage presents big chal-
had three big musical numbers that required a fair amount of greenscreen because lenges, as the control we are able to
of the many visual-effects and animation elements, so we needed a dedicated green- manage on stage is always very tough to
screen stage. But Cherry Tree Lane was the one that had to stay built, because we replicate on location.
go through the movie seasonally; we travel through winter and a sort of depressed “Rob, John de Luca, and their team
state, to spring when the cherry trees blossom.That set was up pretty much for our of choreographers worked for weeks prep-
entire production period.” ping the dancers and training the cast,”
According to Smith, the Cherry Tree Lane set posed particular lighting chal- Beebe continues. “I would shoot rehearsals
lenges. “It was demanding just to fit everything in there,” he says. “We needed to and discuss with Rob throughout the prep.
seamlessly go from day to night to dusk during different seasons.” Lin-Manuel Miranda [who plays leerie-
To provide a flexible solution to accommodate this wide breadth of lighting leader Jack] was amazing, dancing side by
needs, a tremendous, movable soft box was built over the entire stage. “More than side with some of the best dancers in the
200 Arri LED SkyPanels were rigged through a giant diffusion, providing a ‘sky’ that business. It’s a number that goes for eight
was fully adjustable in intensity and color temperature,” Beebe notes. To create direc- minutes, and it was designed to keep
tional sunlight, Smith adds, “we had 20Ks that we attached to wire systems through building and introducing more spectacle.
the roof, which were on trolleys with electric motors, so we could move the units ‘Trip’ was also our most theatrical number,
around to where we wanted them to be. That way, we could slide them up and down making use of moving lights and multiple
the stage.” lighting cues.” ➔

66 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 Light Fantastic
Crewmembers
work on the
production’s
greenscreen
stage.
“That was our biggest production
number,” Marshall notes. “It involved
dancers, stuntmen — [who are] incredi-
ble, hardcore bicyclists — kids and
multiple sets.”
Gaffer Dave Smith reports that the
most complicated set lighting to prep
was at the Abandoned Park for the “Trip
a Little Light Fantastic” number. He
adds that the sequence required more
than 100 moving lighting units. “There
were [also] 60-odd PAR cans in different
configurations, but with every unit
going back to the [GrandMA II console
operated by Daniel Bocking and Dave
Tatoro], which controlled a particular
color or time when a light would go on or
off,” he says. “There are somewhere over
150 cues within that piece, with the lights
changing with the dancing and the
music.”
First AC Dave Cozens notes that
Mary Poppins Returns was “a massive
crane show” that particularly relied on
the 73' Chapman/Leonard Hydrascope,
among other tools. Robertson adds, “The
Steadicam was [also] ever-present. We
used it on London streets as a quick and
unobtrusive way to get moving shots
with the actors. The approach and depar-
ture from Cousin Topsy’s, which
happens in an alleyway in Central
London, was a case in point. Steadicam
was often a good way to complement the
crane moves and allow a fluidity in the
[dancing].”
Robertson reports that the produc-
tion also employed a Gizmo remote stabi-
lized head, which he operated, to achieve
rollover shots in the Cousin Topsy scene
that takes place in an upside-down room
built at Shepperton. “The system had a
rotating operator’s monitor, which was
slaved to the camera,” he says. “This
kept my hand-wheel controls correctly
orientated on a pan-tilt axis, so it didn’t
mess with my own internal GPS system
— i.e., my brain.”
“The [third-axis] roll on the Gizmo
head also [assisted in] simulating our
‘underwater’ flying sequence for the
song ‘Stuff and Nonsense,’ which was
shot at 32 fps to speeded-up playback,”
Beebe says. “Slowing the motion was
great for simulating weight and move-
ment underwater, but poor Emily
sounded like she was auditioning for
one of the Chipmunks.”
Both Marshall and Beebe agree
that the set-piece hybrid animated/live-
action sequence in Mary Poppins Returns
was “the most challenging part of the
movie for us,” the director says. He adds
that the sequence was put together “like
a mosaic — in small pieces, in a tedious
and painstaking way.”
Beebe notes that integrating live-
action elements into a 2D environment is
quite different from the world of CG
visual effects and animation that he has
become well accustomed to. It was
crucial for the production’s success,
however, since the animated sequence
was “clearly meant to be one of our
biggest homages to the original Mary
Poppins,” the cinematographer says.
“We went through a process of
recording rehearsals with animators on
set,” Beebe relates, “so they could
understand our camera movement,
which was really important to them in
terms of, for example, ‘Are we doing a
multi-axis move or a linear move?’ All
those things affected the [animated]
world. How things move relative to the
camera when you are in a flat, 2D land-
scape is different than when you are in a
real environment. So for me to work
with animators and understand their
point of view — how my camera move-
ment will affect the animated environ-
ment — was really important.”
Beebe reports that edited rehearsal
footage was given to the animation
team, who would then roughly sketch in
the animated characters at points where
they interacted with live-action
elements. Jim Capobianco served as
animation-sequence supervisor on the
production.
“Often we would shoot rehearsals
with people holding cardboard cutouts
of the animated figures so we could
understand their movements and the
actors could understand their eyelines,”
Beebe says. “Then the footage went
through a number of iterations. We
would reshoot bits, they would animate
bits, and we could make changes so that
when we went into principal photogra-
phy of those sequences, we had a sort of
animatic available — a crude live-
action/hand-drawn sequence that the
actors could watch, [so they could] better
understand what they were interacting
with.” u
 Centennial
The ASC’s

Salute Each month this year, AC will

shine a light on a different facet of
the Society’s past and present

All photos courtesy of the ASC archives.

1
2

4
1. Arthur Edeson, ASC, Robin Hood (1922). 2. Owen Roizman, ASC (white cap),
The French Connection (1971). 3. Rachel Morrison, ASC, Fruitvale Station (2013).
4. Dennis Muren, ASC, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). 5. Charles Lang, ASC,
Sabrina (1954). 6. James Wong Howe, ASC (in baseball cap), Hud (1963).
7. Ernest Dickerson, ASC, Do the Right Thing (1989). 8. Ted McCord, ASC, The
Sound of Music (1965). 5
70 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary
On Jan. 8, 1919, the American Society of
Cinematographers was officially chartered
by the State of California. Born out of two
prior organizations, New York’s Cinema
Camera Club and Los Angeles’ Static Club
of America, the Society was founded by a
group of 15 directors of photography: Joe
August, L.D. Clawson, Arthur Edeson,
William C. Foster, Eugene Gaudio, Fred
LeRoy Granville, Walter L. Griffin, J.D.
Jennings, Roy H. Klaffki, Victor Milner,
Robert S. Newhard, Philip E. Rosen,
Charles E. Rosher, Homer A. Scott and L.
6 7
8
Guy Wilky. Within its first year, 50 more
cinematographers were invited into
membership, and in the century since, the
ASC has continued to grow in both its
ranks and its impact on the motion-picture
industry around the globe — all the while
holding true to its motto of “loyalty,
progress, artistry.”
Each month this year, in celebration
of the ASC’s 100th anniversary, AC will
shine a light on a different facet of the
Society’s past and present. We’ll examine
the history of the ASC Awards and the
www.ascmag.com
Society’s famed Clubhouse, the influence
the ASC’s members have had on technol-
ogy and visual effects, the global reach of
the membership, the Society’s education
and inclusiveness initiatives, evolutions in
lighting styles and techniques, and more.
In August, the entire issue will be dedi-
cated to the centennial, with content
including a detailed history of the ASC
and profiles of its founding members.
The party’s just beginning. Thank
you for joining us during the celebration.
u
January 2019 71
CINE LOS ANGELES 2019

GEAR
FILM COMPETITION MAY 30
EXHIBITS MAY 31 - JUNE 1
MASTER CLASSES JUNE 2
LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER | LA LIVE

EXHIBITS | SEMINARS | DEMONSTRATIONS

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FOR FULL DETAILS GO TO WWW.CINEGEAREXPO.COM
 Love
Family
&

Cinematographer James Laxton

and director Barry Jenkins reteam
ism is at the center of Laxton’s latest collaboration with
Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk.

to adapt the lauded novel

If Beale Street Could Talk
By Jim Hemphill
After working together for several years on student films,
shorts and the 2008 feature Medicine for Melancholy, director of
photography James Laxton and director Barry Jenkins earned
worldwide acclaim for their 2016 release Moonlight. That film
garnered the cinematographer Academy Award and ASC
Award nominations, among many other accolades, and intro-
duced a wide audience to his and Jenkins’ unique blend of
visual lyricism and documentary authenticity. The balance
between romantic, stylized imagery and undiluted natural-
Adapted by Jenkins from the James Baldwin novel of
the same name, the feature tells the story of 19-year-old Tish
Rivers (KiKi Layne) and her fiancé, Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt
(Stephan James), childhood friends who have fallen deeply in
love and plan to spend the rest of their lives together. When
Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit, the couple’s
lives, and the lives of their friends and relatives, are irrevoca-
bly altered. In Laxton’s and Jenkins’ hands, the movie
becomes an unblinking indictment of the inequities and
contradictions of the criminal justice system, as well as a
graceful ode to the power of love and family.
Although Moonlight (AC March ’17) was the first to go
before the cameras, Laxton remembers hearing about
Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk at around the same
time, since Jenkins wrote them back-to-back. “I think it was
the winter of 2014,” the cinematographer recalls. “Once it was
decided that Moonlight was going to go first, that became the

72 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 focus, but Beale Street was always in the
back of my mind — and Barry’s as well,
obviously. It’s been a long germination
process, which I love. The fact that my
relationship with Barry goes back to our
university days allows us the luxury of
talking about projects months or even
years before we end up on set, because
we’re also friends outside of the busi-
ness.”
Jenkins notes that the common
language he and Laxton discovered in
film school has served them well from
the very beginning. “We just clicked,”
he says. “We both responded to the
most esoteric, challenging, out-there
movies, and had a mutual appreciation
for formalism and aesthetics.” He adds
with a laugh, “We were kind of obnox-
ious — but we united over the long,
wide box of possibilities we thought
aesthetics could fit into.”
“It’s wonderful to have the time
that our relationship affords us to let
ideas about visual language rumble
around our conscious and our subcon-
scious prior to getting out there,”
Laxton adds. “It helps tremendously. I
think it allows us to be quite unique
with each project instead of just trying
to rush an idea through.”
Unit photography by Tatum Mangus. All images courtesy of Annapurna Pictures.

Although their previous work

had been inspired by filmmakers like
Claire Denis and Wong Kar-wai, for If
Beale Street Could Talk, Jenkins and
Laxton found inspiration less in other
movies than in references drawn from
still photography. “James and I always
have a Dropbox or iPhotos folder filled
with visual research that we can share
back and forth without being in the
same room,” Jenkins says. “With this
film, we looked at a lot of New York
street photography of the 1970s — work
by people like Gordon Parks and Roy
DeCarava. I remember Roy DeCarava
was very big for James.”
Laxton adds Jack Garofalo and
Camilo José Vergara to the list of influ-
ences. “During the preproduction
process, I would meet with production
designer Mark Friedberg, costume
designer Caroline Eselin, or Barry, and
we all had a lot of the same photogra-
t: Stephan James as Alonzo “Fonny” Hunt and KiKi Layne as Tish Rivers in the feature
If Beale Street Could Talk. pp: Director Barry Jenkins works with his cast.
p: Cinematographer James Laxton operates the camera.
phers on the wall,” he says. “There was about each of these that reflects our
a lot of overlap in what was speaking to voices, but the way the camera moves,
us individually, and it was primarily the way the light plays, and the tone of
documentary photography that had each piece is very different.”
both romance and realism. That’s the Jenkins notes that he and Laxton
balance we were trying to find within have grown as filmmakers, at the same
the visual language of the movie. pace, with each movie. “Medicine for
“Something Barry and I take very Melancholy was so rough around the
seriously is trying to find a unique edges, and so fast,” the director recalls.
visual language and presentation that’s “We had 13 days and no money, and the
different for each movie,” the cine- only way to do that is with somebody
matographer adds. “Beale Street needed you’re creatively connected with the
to look and feel different from way James and I are. Early on If Beale
Moonlight, just as Moonlight was differ- Street Could Talk, we knew we wanted a
ent from our first film, Medicine for more classical aesthetic than Moonlight,
Melancholy. Clearly, there’s something because it felt right for the world that

www.ascmag.com January 2019 73

 Love & Family
Three frames from the movie, which the filmmakers shot with Arri’s Alexa 65 camera.
Mr. Baldwin created. When you read
the book, there’s a sweeping emotional
tone to the imagery. It’s very lush and
evocative, and we were definitely
aiming for that in our filmmaking.”
Baldwin’s novel was key for
Laxton in motivating his aesthetic and
technical choices. “Going into Beale
Street, the visual language grew out of
our desire to emulate James Baldwin’s
74 January 2019
voice as a writer,” he says. “We often
talk about the adaptation process from a
novel to a screenplay, or even from a
novel to performance, in terms of how
actors embody an author’s work. But I
think the same process applies to cine-
matography. Something I think about
when I read Baldwin is his ability to
speak with such power and strength at
the same time that he speaks with such
ASC 100th Anniversary
nuance and delicacy, and that affected
my decision to shoot large-format on
the [Arri] Alexa 65. The high resolution,
wide dynamic range, chip size, and the
field of view all spoke to that strength
and specificity.”
The sense of solidity and strength
extended to Laxton’s approach to
camera movement. “The tone of this
film spoke to us from a very grounded
place,” the cinematographer says.
“Again, it’s all about representing
Baldwin’s work through a camera that
creates a strong but delicate atmos-
phere, so when you move the camera,
it’s in the service of subtly building
intensity and conflict.”
Laxton notes that the production
had two Alexa 65s for 10 days of the
shoot, and the rest of the 35-day shoot
was captured with a single Alexa 65.
Michael Fuchs served as A-camera
operator alongside 1st AC Nicholas
Huynh, and Malcolm A. Purnell oper-
ated B camera with the aid of 1st AC
Michelle Clementine. Tiffany Amour-
Tejada served as the production’s digi-
tal-imaging technician.
In terms of lenses, Laxton notes
that there was a lot of development and
testing before he wound up with the
package that suited his ambitions for
the movie. “We ended up with the DNA
primes from Arri,” he says. “Again, it
was about balance — [the lenses] gave
us a nice vintage quality that helped
evoke the period, but there’s something
very precise about them as well. So in
our minds, it was a way in which we
could view and present the era, but
through the prism of today — which is
sort of the point of the movie. We didn’t
want it to feel like it was just a film from
the 1970s. It needed to have a language
that felt contemporary, since these
topics and issues are still very present in
our own time.”
In general, Laxton stuck to the
mid-range in terms of focal lengths.
“The 65mm DNA was on the camera a
lot,” the cinematographer says. He
explains that he and Jenkins liked to
place the camera quite close to the
performances. “We wanted to put the
 Tish’s mother, Sharon (Regina King, center), struggles to come to terms with her daughter’s plight after Fonny is
audience in the perspective of the char-
acters, to give them an immersive expe-
rience. Sometimes characters look
directly into the lens.”
On occasions when Laxton
needed a longer lens, he relied on a
Vantage Film Hawk 150-450mm (T2.8)
zoom. “We used that when we needed a
telephoto perspective, often to isolate a
character within the larger scope of the
film,” the cinematographer says. “The
DNAs only go up to 200mm, which was
great for most of our show, but occa-
sionally we needed to go longer. We also
used [the Hawk] lens when we needed
to zoom in on the characters, as in a
scene with Tish and Fonny in the
subway. As they wait for the train to
arrive, we slowly zoom in on them to
bring our attention to the two lovers in a
sea of New Yorkers. There’s a romance
to this zoom that fit with our approach
as it pertains to touching on a 1970s
aesthetic.”
Laxton was intent on infusing his
lighting and palette with the same sense
of romanticism that he found in
Baldwin’s descriptions of Fonny and
Tish’s love story. “I love how much
Baldwin cares for these characters, and
loves these characters,” Laxton attests.
“I wanted to reflect that with an inviting
arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.
lighting style that would provide an in the movie when Fonny and Tish meet
access point for the audience. My feel- at a restaurant. “They walk down the
ing was that if we could let them fall in stairs into a night where it’s raining
love with the characters the way the quite hard, and they’re backlit,” he
characters fall in love with each other, explains. “The [Louma Crane-mounted]
they would be in a good position to camera is drifting behind them and
empathize with and be impacted by the toward them as they walk down, like in
story that James Baldwin wrote.” an early 1940s piece of classical
Laxton points to an example early Hollywood cinema. And that was defi-
There are essentially two different time periods represented in the movie — the
flashbacks to Tish and Fonny’s budding romance, and the “present-day” in which Fonny
sits in jail while Tish tries to move forward with her life on the outside. Jenkins wanted
the former time period to be a more beautiful and inviting atmosphere, and the latter
a starker reality. “The characters are in purgatory in the present day,” the director
explains. “So when Tish remembers better times, those memories are filtered through
a gaze that’s hopeful and pure, and almost overly saturated.”
In terms of specific techniques, Laxton notes, “We supported the contrast
[between the two time periods] by not moving the camera as much in the present-day
scenes — and in the flashbacks the camera [moved] in romantic ways, primarily from
Tish’s perspective. An example of this is the scene in the loft, where Fonny shows Tish
where he plans on putting the furniture in their future loft. Even though we don’t always
see the scene in the loft from Tish’s [point of view], the camera moves in ways that
allude to her mind’s eye. Here, we wanted to move the camera as if we were her imag-
ination walking through Fonny’s telling of what he plans for their life.To do this, we had
our Steadicam and A-camera operator, Michael Fuchs, begin with a simple medium shot
of Fonny, and on a cue [he would] drift off of [Fonny] and on to empty spaces in the
room, where we as the audience can imagine and in turn empathize with our charac-
ters’ future lives. This dreamy camera movement speaks to the past-tense sequences’
need for romance and love to be the approach.”
He adds, “We also subtly affected the colors in each of these time periods.”
www.ascmag.com January 2019 75
 Love & Family
u: Laxton and
A-camera 1st AC
Nicholas Huynh
transport the
camera — fitted
with a Hawk
150-450mm (T2.8)
telephoto zoom —
to the next setup.
q: The
cinematographer
helps position the
camera on a slider
for a subway-car
interior.

movement, the script The director notes that the pursuit

might describe a of discovery continued into the grading
medium close-up on process, which was performed at
Fonny that moves over to Technicolor PostWorks New York with
nitely purposeful — the attempt to find Daniel [Brian Tyree Henry] in the Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve.
emphasize and ‘photography light’ in corner,” Laxton says. “But I know from “The colorist — Alex Bickel — and
ways that would express love and working with Barry so long that he James and I are always trying to find the
connection. I also used a Tiffen Smoque might have an idea in the moment that’s best way to reflect mood and tone,” he
1 filter almost all the time, not to be inspired by the actors or the location, so says. Laxton adds that Bickel was a key
romantic and soft, but to create atmos- I’m always ready to say, ‘Okay, let’s collaborator from the beginning. “This
phere. I find it helps lift the blacks move that one thing over’ — and it’s not was the first time I’ve gone into produc-
slightly, and bloom the highlights a lot. a challenging thing.” tion with the colorist already in line to
A combination of that filter with the Jenkins concurs, adding, “We work with us,” the cinematographer
DNA lenses was the perfect marriage to shot-list the entire film, but I also try to says. “The great thing about that was
create the feeling I was hoping to find.” relinquish some of that control on the that he created some LUTs that reflected
Laxton and Jenkins also both like day, and allow the actors and James — those particular street photographers [as
to remain flexible when it comes to their and myself — the freedom to veer away we researched their work]; he also
shot selection. “In terms of the camera from the plan.” looked into what film stocks they were
shooting their images on in the early
1970s. Alex figured out how to get this
Laxton offers that the intimacy onscreen is a result of a restrained approach on kind of art into our Alexa 65 system, and
set. “I try to leave as much equipment outside of the space as I can,” he says. “I don’t then again into our DI.”
want it in the space the actors are performing in.That’s largely because the way Barry Regarding the movie’s treatment
and I like to work is to move the camera a lot, often going from one actor to another of the perspective of memory, Jenkins
and sometimes spinning around 360 degrees. Obviously, that doesn’t leave a lot of opines, “When we remember things, we
room for lighting, so I tend to basically light from the windows adjacent to the subject don’t remember them as they actually
of the scene. I’ll bring in a small LED to create eye lights or soft key lighting, and I use were, and this movie is reflecting that.
a fair amount of toplight — which [can be challenging] in practical situations. On Beale It’s not supposed to constantly remind
Street, I used a lot of [LiteGear] LiteMats, because they can be hung without taking up you that it’s 1974, for that reason. The
a lot of ceiling height.” movie is kind of floating above time.”
u

76 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 Opposites
Attract With an emphasis on long single
takes, Lukasz Zal, PSC frames
The intimate Polish drama Cold War charts a tempestuous
love affair that plays out against the changing political land-
scape of post-World War II Europe. The title refers to both the
ideological divide that arises after the war, and the tensions
that continually threaten the passionate but tumultuous rela-
tionship between the tale’s mismatched lovers.

Pawel Pawlikowski’s turbulent

The story begins as Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a talented
composer and pianist, roams the Polish countryside with

black-and-white romantic drama

Irena (Agata Kulesza), a musicologist. Their research into
Polish folk music and dance lead to their founding of the
Cold War Mazurek Ensemble, whose mission is to preserve the coun-
try’s cultural heritage. Zula (Joanna Kulig) successfully audi-
tions for the troupe, and soon she and Wiktor fall deeply in
By Jean Oppenheimer love. Yet Zula’s spontaneous, frank and impatient disposition
contrasts sharply with Wiktor’s calm practicality — an

78 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

 emotional conflict intensified by Stalin’s
tyrannical influence on the ensemble,
Wiktor’s discontent with Soviet rule,
and Zula’s satisfaction with her Eastern
Bloc success.
Cold War marks the second
collaboration between cinematographer
Lukasz Zal, PSC and director Pawel
Pawlikowski — and their second in
black-and-white. Their first project,
2013’s Ida (AC May ’14), was Zal’s debut
Photos by Lukasz Bak, courtesy of Amazon Studios.

feature as a director of photography. He

had begun that project as camera oper-
ator, but moved up when
Pawlikowski’s longtime cinematogra-
pher, Ryszard Lenczewski, PSC became
ill early in the production. Zal and
Lenczewski shared numerous acco- t: Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig) are mismatched lovers in the period
feature Cold War. pp: Musicologist Irena (Agata Kulesza) supervises a troupe rehearsal.
lades for their work on Ida, including p: Director Pawel Pawlikowski (left) and cinematographer Lukasz Zal, PSC.
the Golden Frog at Camerimage, the
ASC Spotlight Award, and a European Cold War, which won the Silver Frog. Poland. “He [likes to stage] scenes in
Film Award for cinematography. Zal, “One of the things I love about single shots, rather than doing typical
who notes that he “grew up reading working with Pawel is that every scene coverage. While shooting, we were
American Cinematographer,” was back at is like a ‘micro film,’” Zal says, speaking refining all the time — framing and
Camerimage this past November with to AC by phone from his home in reframing the shots; tweaking composi-

www.ascmag.com January 2019 79

 Opposites Attract
The curtain rises on a performance by Zula and the troupe.
tion and adjusting lighting; adding,
subtracting and moving objects within
the frame. Pawel is always trying to
capture that one magical moment when
all the elements will synchronize in one
take. For me, this is cinema.”
Both director and cinematogra-
pher wanted the look of 35mm for Cold
War, though budgetary limitations
prevented them from shooting on film.
Zal — also known for the features
Loving Vincent, The High Frontier and The
Here After — suggested shooting on
Arri’s Alexa XT and grading for the
appearance of 35mm. “We built a
simple set for our actors, put them in
80 January 2019
costume, and shot scenes both on 35mm
and the Alexa, using the same lenses
from the same angles,” Zal says. “We
tested a variety of lenses, fabrics, and
shades of gray, and we experimented
with lighting. We [graded and] found a
look we liked on 35mm; then we
decided to find an equivalent on the
Alexa and master it to the point where it
would be hard to distinguish [from
35mm]. For shooting, we created LUTs
— one for day, the other for night.”
Zal opted for the Arri/Zeiss Ultra
Prime lenses he’d employed on Ida,
which he says performed beautifully on
Cold War. “The majority of the film was
ASC 100th Anniversary
shot on the 32mm, which is like the
human eye,” he notes. “That [focal
length] also works best in terms of show-
ing people in their surroundings.”
Angénieux Optimo 24-290mm (T2.8),
19.5-94mm (T2.6) and 45-120mm (T2.8)
zooms were pressed into service as well.
All were supplied by rental company
Out of Frame in Warsaw.
Pawlikowski, Zal, and produc-
tion-designer duo Katarzyna Sobanska
and Marcel Slawinski spent a full six
months discussing and prepping for the
film. “We spent about 30 days going on
recces, placing production people at
every location, and trying out different
camera angles,” Zal recalls. “We were
very well prepared, but when you actu-
ally start shooting a film, it can take on a
life of its own. You always need to be
aware of what reality is giving you, and
throw away [ideas] that no longer
work.”
Regarding his decision to frame
for the 4:3 aspect ratio, Pawlikowski
notes, “It is a very good format for
portraits and double portraits. It is much
more precise in what you show and
don’t show. Ida was [also] shot 1.33:1,
and was quite flat. We wanted more
depth in Cold War, which is a very inti-
mate love story.”
Preproduction was followed by
seven months of shooting — from
January through August 2017 — but
with many breaks in the schedule to
accommodate the weather and the avail-
ability of the professional folk ensemble
that appears in the movie. The feature
was shot in Poland, Croatia and Paris.
Paris interiors were captured in Poland.
The filmmakers eschewed stage work for
the production, shooting on practical
locations and on location-built sets.
“Contrast was one of the most
important elements in the film,” Zal
notes. “It is present in every layer, start-
ing from the construction of the shot and
the frame, the way the scenes connect, all
the way to the ‘emotional temperature’
between our characters. Not only in
terms of lighting, but also production
design and locations — different grains
of wood, different shades of gray, props
 Kaczmarek (Borys Szyc), Wiktor and Irena relish the troupe’s success.

that offered some contrast and separa-
tion.”
Shot chronologically, the picture
opens in 1949 in a poor rural village in
Poland. A fiddler and a piper, their faces
eerily expressionless, play in front of a
small crowd. The scene has a rustic,
grainy, documentary look and feel, with
almost no contrast — just shades of
gray. “That was our first day of produc-
tion,” the cinematographer recalls.
“Pawel found the two performers at a
folk festival.” The next several shots
retain the documentary feel, but are
more tableau-like — single, static
frames in which people sing or dance
for Wiktor and Irena. The grays are
slightly more tonal, but the feature’s
visual style really only starts to change
at Mazurek headquarters, where addi-
tional auditions — including Zula’s —
are held.
“Zula is [really] the trigger for the
camera — the force that makes the
camera move,” Zal explains. “Once she
appears, and especially once her
romance with Wiktor begins, the story
takes on a more narrative quality and
the visual contrast increases. We used
either a 1 ⁄ 2 or a 1 Black Satin [lens filter]
on Joanna, mainly for her close-ups.”
Poland is where Zula is happiest,
and the scenes there are shot with deep
focus and on wider lenses — specifically
the 28mm, 32mm and 40mm focal
lengths. The style shifts in Paris, where
Wiktor is happy but Zula is not. Longer
lenses — 50mm and 65mm — and shal-
lower depth of field suggest discord in
their relationship and Zula’s sense of
alienation.
“We were using f/4 to f/5.6, and
even f/5.61 ⁄ 2 , for both day interiors and
exteriors in Poland,” Zal says. “It’s a

Like Ida, Cold War was shot in color and desaturated to black-and-white
in post. Also as with Ida, the lighting, production design, costumes and
background were designed for monochrome. Video village monitored the
shoot in black-and-white. “I couldn’t think of a color that would make sense,”
Pawlikowski says of the feature’s black-and-white imperative. “There was no
color in Poland in the 1940s and Fifties. It was all gray, brown and greenish. We
played with the notion of shooting the picture [in a way that would approxi-
mate] the East German/Soviet stock Orwo, with its washed-out greens and
reds, but I felt it would seem too mannered.”
 Opposites Attract
pp: Wiktor waits for Zula.
p: A day exterior with Kulig is captured with a handheld Arri Alexa XT.
depth of field reminiscent of old cinema.
In Paris we wanted shallower focus, and
generally stayed at or around f/2, or at
f/2.8 [on the] zooms. Ultra Primes work
exceptionally nicely when wide open.”
In terms of lighting, Zal notes,
“We were trying to achieve high
contrast, but with soft light. I like mixing
HMIs and tungsten, not because of the
needs of the film, but because tungsten
lights are easier to dim than HMIs.” He
adds that at night, they would hide
82 January 2019
small LEDs on walls and under tables.
Egg crate, butterflies and flags
were ubiquitous throughout the
production. “In Poland, even for exteri-
ors, we used 4-by-4-meter and 6-by-6-
meter butterflies,” the cinematographer
reports. “Black butterflies for negative
fill and white butterflies when we used
9Ks and occasionally Arrimaxes.
“We used a lot of diffusion on
Cold War,” Zal continues. “We were
always lighting through butterflies with
ASC 100th Anniversary
Full, Half or Quarter Grid fabric, or arti-
ficial silk. We used a lot of depron as
well, not just as diffusion but also for
bouncing.” Other diffusion filters
included White, Brushed Silk and
Hollywood Frost, as well as Quarter and
Light Grid Cloth.
In Paris, the production
employed practical “in-frame existing
streetlights, and added movie lights off-
screen,” Zal says. “We often used cherry
pickers for night shots — fitted with 9Ks
[diffused through] 4-by-4-meter butter-
flies — as backlight.” The filmmakers
also employed a smaller cherry picker,
whose base was placed behind the
camera, and whose arm — which was
fitted with a lamp — extended to reach
behind the actors in order to achieve
“kicker or backlight, just on characters
when they were close to camera,” the
cinematographer notes.
The production’s lighting pack-
age, sourced from Krakow-based rental
house Gaffers, included Arri SkyPanels;
Aladdin LED panels; LiteGear LiteMats;
Kino Flo units; PAR 64s; Arri M-Series
9K, 4K and 1.8K units; Dedolight’s
Octodome; and 2K, 1K and 650-watt
Fresnels.
The cinematographer notes that
his overall preference for multiple
sources extended to his lighting of
actors. “I like to wrap light around
them,” he says.
The majority of Cold War was
captured using a single camera, with
Ernest Wilczynski and Jaroslaw
Wierzbicki serving as operators — the
latter of whom was called into service
for Steadicam work. Only the Mazurek
Ensemble performances required two
cameras. “Although we had a lot of
wide shots and exteriors, most of the
film consists of two-shots of Wiktor and
Zula,” Zal reports.
Aside from Steadicam, handheld
and a small amount of crane work, the
Alexa XT generally stayed on a dolly,
even for static shots. “We were adjusting
all the time — higher, lower, boom up,
boom down — constantly looking for
the best angle,” Zal says. The camera
was mounted to an OConnor head for
 Discord grows when the lovers go to Paris, where Zula is decidedly unhappy.

the dolly shots — as well as the crane
shots, for which Wilczynski rode the
crane and operated manually, eschew-
ing remote work. Steadicam was used
extensively for Paris exteriors.
A notable example of the direc-
tor’s affinity for long takes is the oner
that begins with a bored Zula sitting at
a table at a nightclub while Wiktor
talks to his friends. Suddenly, the song
“Rock Around the Clock” cues up.
Zula jumps up and runs onto the
crowded dance floor, where she starts
bopping to the music with a succession
of partners. “It was a single shot lasting
several minutes,” Zal says. “Ernest
was on a handheld camera, [moving
among the dancers]. We lit from above
with PAR 64s and Fresnels, which were
visible in the shot. Production design-
ers Katarzyna Sobanska and Marcel
Slawinski designed and built the club
in a hotel.”
The cinematographer notes that
there were numerous applications of
handheld work over the course of
production. “Most of the emotional,
intimate shots between Zula and
Wiktor were handheld,” he says. Zal
adds that handheld was employed for
the scene in which “Zula is dancing and
drinking in a pub at a party in East
Berlin, [as well as] the whole beginning
with the folk musicians.”
A far more complex example of a
striking oner was also the cinematogra-
pher’s most challenging sequence on
the feature, as well as the most time-
consuming in postproduction. The shot,
which depicts Wiktor’s defection to
West Berlin, involved stitching together
footage from two separate locations in
Wroclaw, Poland. We first see Wiktor in
a long Steadicam shot, walking down a
street amid the ruins of unreconstructed
East Berlin. He stops at a wooden post

Though Pawlikowski calls his reputation for shooting 50 takes

“unfounded,” he readily admits to frequently shooting between 15 and 20 takes.
He notes that because he favors oners,“everything must coincide — the perfor-
mances, the lighting, the framing and the background action. It often requires
several takes for everything to line up. Some people are put off by so many takes,
but I believe it is better to not have to take time to relight for new angles. For
me, the magic of cinema is when something happens here and now — in real
time — in which both performance and visuals are in balance.”

83
 Opposites Attract
pp: Pawlikowski prepares for the next shot, with Kot seated in the back seat of a car.
p: The director and cinematographer work through a day interior.
near a crumbling building and waits for
Zula. The shot of Wiktor standing at the
post as he chain-smokes cigarettes is
intercut with shots of Zula sitting in a
pub. Each time the montage returns to
Wiktor, it is later in the day, eventually
turning to dusk and then to night.
He finally gives up and defects
without her — and as these are the days
before the Berlin Wall, this simply
84 January 2019
means walking into West Berlin, just a
few feet away. The camera — affixed to
a track-mounted dolly and paired with
the 19.5-94mm lens — follows Wiktor as
he walks toward his new life.
Footage captured at the second
location picks up from there, as he
enters an environment vastly different
from the run-down eastern part of the
city he’s just fled. Even at night, West
ASC 100th Anniversary
Berlin has an air of prosperity, with
people milling about, cars driving by,
newly constructed buildings, and neon
advertising signs filling the streets.
A full 70 percent of the shot was
generated in post, “but also quite a lot
— people, cars and some decoration —
was done in camera,” Zal says. “We had
four cherry pickers and an assortment
of 4Ks, 9Ks, 18Ks, and smaller sources
like Rifas and Kino Flos. Fresnel lamps
lit up two giant greenscreens — one
about 80 meters long by 8 meters high,
and the other 30 meters by 4 meters —
that were erected on-site, allowing
effects artists to later create the vibrant
West Berlin background.
“We decided to shoot at magic
hour in order to take advantage of the
ambient sky light,” he continues.
“During grading, we gave the scene
more of a night look while retaining a
bit of the sky’s pastel light. We only had
time for four or five takes in the best
light, because magic hour is so short. I
had to readjust the lights on the cherry
pickers for each take. All the lamps were
on dimmers.”
Zal offers high praise for his
entire crew, noting the contributions of
focus puller Radoslaw Kokot, gaffer
Przemyslaw Sosnowski and key grip
Tomasz Sternicki — as well as colorist
Michal Herman at DI Factory in
Warsaw. The cinematographer makes
special mention of digital-imaging tech-
nician Lukasz Brzozowy, who passed
away last summer.
On working with Pawlikowski,
Zal notes, “Although Pawel is very
prepared, he is always sculpting and
refining, looking for a little bit more
here, a little less there — adding and
subtracting all the time to arrive at some
essential truth.”
The director found working with
Zal to be equally satisfying. “Lukasz has
great energy and a great sense of light,”
Pawlikowski attests. “We have a harmo-
nious, friendly, symbiotic relationship.”
u
 NEW PRODUCTS & SERVICES
• SUBMISSION INFORMATION - Please email 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.
Panther Evolves Dolly Design
Panther has introduced the S-Type Dolly, which combines
the advantages of scissor-arm and center-column dolly concepts.
The S-Type scissor arm makes a
100-percent linear movement, and the
compact double-arm design ensures
low energy expenditure and maximum
stability. New full-range technology allows
the scissor arm to move the same way
up and down, and despite its compact
dimensions, the arm can extend up to
57.5". To simplify transportation, the
scissor-arm element is detachable, and
extra carrying bars help facilitate easy
removal. Transportation is also streamlined with the
dolly body’s integrated, extendable carrying handles.
The S-Type Dolly is powered by a durable electro-mechan-
ical drive system, which allows for programming and limit functions
and can work for long durations without charging. In order to real-
ize the dolly’s compact and lightweight design, Panther developed
new slide-in batteries that can be easily and quickly pushed into
the side of the dolly; a carrying handle on the batteries facilitates
handling and transportation.
Panther has significantly improved its Combi-Wheels for
the S-Type Dolly. Specifically, the brake lever now simultaneously
brakes the studio or air wheels with the track wheels. The wheels
are arranged in a square configuration, allowing the dolly to be
placed lengthwise or crosswise on track without requiring sepa-
rate wheels or accessories. Giving operators more flexibility, the
dolly is equipped with four different steering modes: crab, round,
conventional front and conventional rear.
The standard S-Type package includes a wireless handset
that can also be used with a cable and can be parked on the
dolly’s detachable steering rod. Information available through the
handset’s interface includes arm level, height control, battery
check, charging, fine adjustment of speed control, and limit and
program operations. Additionally, the handset is 100-percent
waterproof down to 20".
Complementing the dolly’s flexible design, Panther also
offers a new Flip-Flop Platform that can be easily swiveled from
high mode to low mode. The platform’s three sections — front,
left and right — can be separated for individual use, and each
section features a rubberized surface for a solid grip and silent
operation. The company also offers an adjustable high platform.
To further facilitate the work of the dolly grip, the S-Type
Dolly features an additional push bar that is extendable and fold-
able and can be used in various positions around the dolly.
For more information, visit www.panther.tv.
86 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary
Cooke Adds Special Flair
In response to requests from cinematographers around the
world, Cooke Optics has added the 35-140mm (T3.1) zoom lens
to its Anamorphic/i SF (“Special Flair”) family.
Anamorphic/i SF lenses feature a specially developed coat-
ing that adds more flare, in addition to the oval bokeh and other
aberrations that are synonymous with the anamorphic look. The
new 35-140mm zoom is identical in every other aspect to the
standard 35-140mm Anamorphic/i zoom; each is a true front-
anamorphic zoom with 2x squeeze, a cam-style focus mechanism,
/i Technology to capture lens metadata, and the “Cooke Look.”
Color and depth of field with the new zoom are matched to the
rest of the Anamorphic/i SF range.
“Cinematographers love the bokeh and the kicked-up flare
that they get with the Anamorphic/i SF zoom lenses,” says ASC
associate member Les Zellan, chairman of Cooke Optics. “This
additional character, combined with the warmth of the Cooke
Look, gives yet another option for storytelling. With many cine-
matographers asking us to add this ‘special flair’ to the family, we
were happy to oblige.”
The Cooke Anamorphic/i SF 35-140mm zoom is now
available to order.
For additional information, visit www.cookeoptics.com.
Koto Opens U.S. Office
Koto Electric Co. — a specialist in motion-picture lighting
and an array of other technologies — has opened a Koto Electric
North America Inc. location in North Hollywood, Calif. The facility
houses an extensive inventory of products that are available for
same-day delivery.
“We are looking forward to being closer to our customer
base and our partners in this new chapter for Koto Electric Co.,”
says Shinji Harada, the company’s senior vice president. “We are
very positive that we can make an improvement on the industry,
being in the epicenter of the stage, studio and TV high-technology
lighting industry.”
Koto Electric North America is located at 7401 Laurel
Canyon Boulevard, Unit 29, North Hollywood, Calif., 91605. For
more information, visit www.koto-jp.com/en/.
➔

Infinity Expands Focus
Infinity Photo-Optical — an Ameri-
can manufacturer of microscopes and
industrial imaging optics that has recently
established an E.U. facility in Goettingen,
Germany — has announced its entry into
the cinematography market. Spurred by
increasing interest from cinematographers
and other filmmakers to use the company’s
imaging systems for commercial, advertis-
ing, tabletop and special-effects applications,
Infinity has launched the Cine/Robusto
series.
Infinity’s Robusto — which combines
all-metal construction and precision focus
adjustment as well as built-in gearing for
motor attachment — was first used in Infin-
ity’s K2 DistaMax and K1 CentriMax long-
distance microscopes. Now, Robusto has
been adapted to the InfiniProbe TS-160, an
imager capable of direct focus from infinity
to 18mm and 0-16x on full-frame sensors.
What began as a special microscope has
now expanded to become a universal solu-
tion for some of the most difficult problems
in cinematography.
Additionally, Infinity has developed
the Suffocator module for the InfiniProbe
TS-160 Robusto Cine Lens System. The
Suffocator conveniently replaces the stan-
dard rear tubes of the TS-160 and acts as
an extremely sensitive secondary fine focus
— without introducing breathing — for
virtually any imaging accessories used with
the TS-160. Those accessories include vari-
able-focusing Macro and Micro objectives, a
series of distance-corrected taking objec-
tives, snorkel dipping objectives, and fixed-
working-distance microscope objectives.
Once the primary focus is set by the TS-
160’s main focusing control, the Suffocator
can then be used to provide an incredibly
sensitive fine-focusing capability.
For additional information, visit
www.infinity-usa.com.
AJA, Colorfront Analyze HDR
AJA Video Systems has unvieled its
HDR Image Analyzer, an HDR monitoring
88 January 2019
and analysis appliance powered by Color-
front-developed software. The HDR Image
Analyzer supports the monitoring and
analysis of 4K/UltraHD/2K/HD, HDR and
WCG content for broadcast and OTT
entertainment across production, postpro-
duction, quality control and mastering.
The HDR Image Analyzer is the
second technology collaboration between
AJA and Colorfront, following the integra-
tion of Colorfront Engine into AJA’s FS-
HDR real-time HDR/WCG converter; the
new technology fuses AJA’s audio and
video I/O technology with Colorfront’s
image-analysis software. The 1RU device
delivers a comprehensive toolset for moni-
toring and analyzing HDR standards
including Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) and
PQ (Perceptual Quantizer) for
4K/UltraHD workflows.
Feature highlights of the HDR Image
Analyzer include support for display-
referred SDR (Rec 709), HDR ST2084/PQ
and HLG analysis, and for scene-referred
Arri, Canon, Panasonic, Red and Sony
camera color spaces; display and color-
processing LUT support; automatic color-
space conversion based on Colorfront
Engine; CIE graph, vectorscope, waveform
and histogram support; nit levels and
phase metering; false-color mode to easily
spot out-of-gamut/out-of-brightness
pixels; advanced out-of-gamut and out-of-
brightness detection with error intoler-
ance; data analyzer with pixel picker; line
mode to focus a region of interest onto a
single horizontal or vertical line; file-based
error logging with timecode; reference-still
store; UltraHD UI for native-resolution
picture display; up to 4K/UltraHD 60p
over four 3G-SDI inputs; SDI auto signal
detection; loop-through output to broad-
cast monitors; and a three-year warranty.
“Production professionals are
embracing 4K HDR and WCG at a break-
neck pace to bring audiences more
ASC 100th Anniversary
compelling viewing experiences, making
quality control a central focus,” says Nick
Rashby, president of AJA Video Systems.
“We’re excited to bring them HDR Image
Analyzer, which will improve quality control
with a cost-efficient and proven Colorfront
toolset for monitoring and analyzing HDR
productions, all in real time.”
“We’re thrilled to reteam with AJA
to bring HDR Image Analyzer to the wider
global market,” says Aron Jaszberenyi,
managing director of Colorfront. “Our tech-
nology partnership addresses a key concern
among productions today, of critical
4K/UltraHD HDR quality control, and this
new product is aimed squarely at high-end
UHD productions mastering and delivering
HDR content to broadcasters and OTTs.”
For additional information, visit
www.aja.com and www.colorfront.com.
Zeiss Unveils ZX1
Zeiss has announced the first-gener-
ation ZX1 camera, a compact, contempo-
rary mirrorless system with a 35mm (f/2)
Zeiss Distagon lens and a full-frame 37.4
MP CMOS sensor.
This small-package camera delivers
multi-faceted street, landscape and travel
capabilities. The high-resolution OLED EVF
gives a high-quality live view and intuitive
input with no distraction. Additionally, the
virtually silent “leaf ” shutter assists in quiet
environments, while the intuitive switches
guide photographers to change appropri-
ate modes seamlessly and quickly.
The ZX1 allows users to shoot, edit
and share photos all from the camera,
which features integrated Adobe Photo-
shop Lightroom CC and allows for direct
uploads and backup to the cloud from the
built-in 512GB SSD.
For additional information, visit
www.zeiss.com.
For more New Products & Services
coverage, visit ascmag.com/articles/new-
product. u
 INTERNATIONAL MARKETPLACE

90 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary

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All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set in 4X5 85 Glass Filters, Diffusion, Polas etc. Greg Kendrick, DoP
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 ADVERTISERS’
INDEX
AC Film Manual 90 Duclos Lenses 90 RPM Lighting, Inc. 83
Alan Gordon Enterprises 90 F.J. Westcott 47 Samy’s 39, 41, 43
Amazon 9, 13 Filmtools 85 Selected Tables 92
Annapurna Releasing, LLC Focus Features 19, 23, 29, 35 Sundance Film Festival 89
2-3, 5 Fox Searchlight 11
Arri 53 Teradek, LLC C2-1, 59
Fujifilm Optical Devices
Atomos Global C4 USA, Inc. 65 Walt Disney Studios 15, 27
B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio Warner Bros. 21, 33
Hollywood: PL 83 www.ascmag.com 83, 90
87
Backstage Equipment, Inc. Kino Flo 69
10 Koerner Camera Systems 10
Blackmagic Design, Inc. 37 Lee Filters 46
Camerimage 93 LiteGear 68
Canon C3 Maccam 81
Carl Zeiss, SBE, LLC 77
Cavision Enterprises 90 NAB 95
Chapman/Leonard NBC/Universal 55
Studio Equip. 67 NBC/Universal Pictures 7
Cinekinetic 90 Netflix 17, 25, 31
Cinematography P+S Technik Feinmechanik
Electronics 10 Gmbh 90
Cooke Optics 45 Panavision, Inc. 57
Creative Handbook 91 Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 90
Pro8mm 90

92
 CLUBHOUSE
NEWS
u: Gregg
Heschong, ASC.
uu: Andrij
Parekh, ASC.
uuu: Colin
Watkinson,
ASC.
ASC Welcomes
3 Into Membership
“I was fortunate to grow up
surrounded by images, words and music,”
says new active member Gregg
Heschong, ASC. His father worked as an
art director, and his mother acted, wrote
and directed in theater groups. When
he was 11 years old, Heschong began
participating in theater workshops, and by
12, he had bought his first motion-picture
camera.
He went on to attend UCLA film
school and then began shooting animated
educational films with a company in Santa
Monica. Early in his professional career, he
served as a camera operator on a number
of features, including Tron, The Incredible
Shrinking Woman and Cannery Row. He
also served as 2nd-unit director of
photography on Broadcast News and Who
Framed Roger Rabbit.
As a cinematographer, Heschong
moved into television, where his credits
have included The Tracey Ullman Show,
Perfect Strangers, ’Til Death and Fuller
House. Heschong also served as director
and cinematographer on several series,
including Family Matters, NewsRadio, Becker
and True Jackson, VP. For his work on The
New Adventures of Old Christine, Heschong
received a 2006 Primetime Emmy nomi-
nation. His recent credits include the series
Abby’s, slated for release in 2019.
94 January 2019
Andrij Parekh, ASC discovered
his passion for cinematography while trav-
eling around the world with two cameras
during a hiatus from his studies at Carleton
College in Minnesota. After graduating, the
Minneapolis native enrolled in the gradu-
ate film program at New York University’s
Tisch School of the Arts to study cine-
matography and directing.
Parekh was nominated for a 1998
Eastman Kodak award; apprenticed with
Harris Savides, ASC on The Yards; and
received an honorable mention for the
ASC Arthur Miller and ASC John Seitz
Heritage Awards. He was also included in
Filmmaker Magazine’s 2004 list of “25
New Faces of Independent Film” and Vari-
ety’s 2006 list of “10 Cinematographers to
Watch.”
To date, Parekh has shot more than
20 features, including Half Nelson, Sugar,
Blue Valentine, Madame Bovary, The
Zookeeper’s Wife and The Catcher Was a
Spy. In 2010, his work on Cold Souls was
nominated for an Independent Spirit
Award for Best Cinematography. He has
also worked on the HBO miniseries Show
Me a Hero and the Netflix series 13
Reasons Why. Additionally, Parekh has
notched directing and cinematography
credits on the HBO series Succession and
Watchmen.
Colin Watkinson, ASC first knew
he wanted to be a cinematographer after
ASC 100th Anniversary
going on location with Peerless Camera
Co., a London-based visual-effects studio.
His first feature as a director of photogra-
phy, Tarsem Singh’s The Fall (AC May ’08),
was critically acclaimed and described by
film critic Roger Ebert as “one of the most
extraordinary films I’ve ever seen.” For his
work on the picture, Watkinson won the
2008 Austin Film Critics Association
Award for Best Cinematography and was
nominated for best cinematography
awards by the Chicago Film Critics Associ-
ation and the Online Film Critics Society.
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.
In 2016, Watkinson again collabo-
rated with Singh on NBC’s Emerald City;
that same year, he also shot Season 1 of
Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (AC June ’17).
He won an Emmy Award for his work on
the latter, and he was again nominated for
an Emmy for his work on Season 2.
Watkinson has also served as director of
photography on music videos for artists
including Paul McCartney, Katy Perry and
Pink; commercials for companies such as
Apple, Coors, Disney, Verizon and Nike;
and the television series Entourage. His
upcoming work includes the mystery
series Are You Sleeping.
For further coverage and additional
news, visit theasc.com/asc/news.
u
 CLOSE-UP
Christopher Probst, ASC
When you were a child, what film
made the strongest impression on
you?
My first memory of going to a cinema
was seeing the original Star Wars and
my jaw hitting the floor. I was 6, and the
opening image of that film set me down
a path to the Dark Side (of lighting)
that I never fully recovered from.
Which cinematographers, past or
present, do you most admire?
My all-time No. 1, now and forever, is Conrad L. Hall, ASC. He was
constantly reinventing himself and pushing his work forward. His
last film, Road to Perdition, is a master class in cinematography.
What sparked your interest in photography?
Growing up at the dawn of the blockbuster era, I was drawn to
visual effects. Studying the cinematography behind visual-effects
techniques then broadened my desire to tell full stories through
images, and not just make spaceships fly.
Where did you train and/or study?
I was an electrical-engineering major at Arizona State when I
decided I could apply my affinity for technology to cinematogra-
phy. The community college in Scottsdale had a vibrant film
program — so that, and a mountain of AC back issues, comprised
my film education before I moved to Los Angeles and entered the
ranks as a camera assistant.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Denis Lenoir, ASC, AFC was one of my early mentors. He is a
master at handheld, and I use his guidance on operating daily in
my own work. Secondly, I surreptitiously used my role as a writer
for AC magazine to break into dozens of my favorite cinematog-
raphers’ homes, tie them to a chair, and ask them anything I
wanted. So, basically the entire roster of the ASC ?
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Having knowledge of history, science, technology and mechanical
designs — as well as art, pop culture, and a broad range of films
— all inform and inspire you as an artist and problem-solver, even
on a subconscious level.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I moved to L.A. and announced, ‘Here I am!’ — and then started
working on ultra-low-budget features in the mid-Nineties.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
That rare time the image becomes transcendent, and takes on a
96 January 2019 ASC 100th Anniversary
meaning and emotional impact beyond
what you hoped for. It may not happen
every day, but when you strike that
balance, it’s a gratifying feeling.
Have you made any memorable
blunders?
Mistakes are what build and define your
cinematographic toolkit, and I feel the
struggle is what defines you as an artist
and what ‘sticks’ in that kit. A reward
hard earned is much more appreciated than one that just falls in
your lap.
What is the best professional advice you’ve ever received?
‘Be a rock.’ Many people come to Hollywood as such multi-
hyphenates that no one can pinpoint exactly what they are. A
rock is planted firmly in place, knows what it is, and sticks to that.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
It’s an exciting time with the renaissance of television filmmaking.
These shows are truly capitalizing on the long-form canvas of
series storytelling, where you can really invest yourself in the char-
acters. The quality rivals even the best theatrical films.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like
to try?
I do a lot of sci-fi and visually complex work, but I’m also a sucker
for a good Victorian drama — so anything in England with over-
cast skies and old buildings you can’t rig to would be just peachy.
A Western would be fun to tackle visually, too.
If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I love film editing, as well as writing in general — and I have a
passion for music and used to be a musician in a former life. I also
build handmade guitars from scratch in my dwindling free time.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Daniel Pearl, John C. Newby and Peter Collister.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
Having worked in and around the Society for almost 25 years,
membership for me is not about boasting the initials behind my
name — it’s about contributing to the Society and the art form
Photo by Jarred Land.
as a whole. Becoming a member allows me to get much more
involved in that regard, and I’m so honored to contribute to the
ASC in any way possible. u