James Bowen (Luke Treadaway), a London street musician and heroin addict, pulls his life together with
the help of a serene orange tabby in the
I Spirit Animal
By Matt Mulcahey
In a classic montage from Day for
Night, François Truffaut’s 1973 ode to the
agony and the ecstasy of filmmaking, a
crew tries with increasing desperation to
coax a cat to walk into frame and sip from
a saucer of milk. Director Roger Spottis-
woode laughs at the reference, but insists
his feline stars caused no such exasperation
on his latest film, A Street Cat Named Bob,
which tells the true story of a London street
musician who pulls his life together with the
help of an atypically serene orange tabby.
“I find animals fascinating,” Spottis-
woode says. Laughing, he adds, “I love
humans, too — but I don’t subscribe to this
thing about ‘never work with children or
animals.’ In fact I find the opposite is the
case because I think you learn so much from
them.”
Spottiswoode’s previous experiences
with four-legged thespians include pairing
Tom Hanks with a slobbering canine for the
1989 buddy-cop film Turner & Hooch, and
enduring the icy environs of Churchill,
Manitoba, with a polar-bear cub for 2014’s
The Journey Home. The latter feature was
shot by Peter Wunstorf, ASC, who
reteamed with Spottiswoode for A Street
Cat Named Bob. “I was once again doing a
rather difficult film working with animals,”
the director notes, “and I knew how well
28 December 2016
feature A Street Cat Named Bob.
Peter works under difficult circumstances.”
Based on the autobiographical book
by James Bowen, A Street Cat Named Bob
follows Bowen’s story of redemption from
homeless heroin addict to best-selling
author, aided by the fluffy orange compa-
triot perched atop his shoulder. In the
feature, Bowen is played by English actor
Luke Treadaway and Bob is played by, well,
Bob — along with the help of half a dozen
fellow felines working under the supervision
of trainer Mark Dumas.
The plan wasn’t initially for Bob to
play such a pivotal role, but once shooting
began, the cat’s comfort in the bustling
London locations proved indispensible.
“None of the other cats could quite cope
with inner London, and we shot a lot in the
streets where you can’t control the crowds
and the traffic,” Spottiswoode says. “Bob,
because he spent years on those streets
with James, has this extraordinary calm. The
other cats got completely distracted. Only
Bob was really good at traveling on James’
shoulders or sitting on a curb and paying no
attention to the trucks flying by behind him.
He became an essential part of the film very
early on.”
“It was a constant shuffle with the
cats,” Wunstorf adds. “They are continu-
ously rewarded with food, and after a few
takes they get full and don’t want to do any
more!”
In order to capture the required
American Cinematographer
moments from Bob and the pseudo-Bobs,
Wunstorf ran four cameras for scenes that
featured the cats — a pair of Arri Alexa
Pluses aimed at the human stars and a pair
of Sony’s mirrorless a7R IIs trained on the
cats. Two additional a7R IIs were used by the
A Street Cat Named Bob behind-the-scenes photos by Andreas Lambis. All images courtesy of the filmmakers.
second unit, which was tasked with picking
up any particularly difficult bits of Bob busi-
ness.
With the exception of B camera —
which lived on a Steadicam operated by
John Hembrough — the majority of the film
was shot handheld, often with the camera
resting on a sandbag atop a tripod. Addi-
tionally, A-camera operator Bob Shipsey
brought his own method for toting the
Alexa. “I cradle the camera in my right hand
so it doesn’t sit on my shoulder,” he
explains. “This comes from the far-distant
days of Aaton cameras that sat in your hand
so beautifully. [This style of operating]
means that when you move, you don’t have
any bounce transferred through your shoul-
der. It is almost a very poor-man’s
Steadicam, using your arm as the spring.”
Shipsey was also responsible for
shots from Bob’s point of view. Added at
the behest of Spottiswoode, these POVs
were shot on the Sony cameras. “That was
something Roger brought up when I arrived
in London,” says Wunstorf. “At first I was
hesitant about the idea [of] those shots, but
Bob Shipsey executed them brilliantly.” The
cinematographer favored focal lengths of
 Right: Green
tones were
employed for
scenes dealing
with James’
addiction and
withdrawal.
Below: A single
set, constructed
at Twickenham
Studios, served
as the separate
apartments of
James and his
neighbor Belle
(Ruta
Gedmintas).
18mm and 21mm for Bob’s field of view.
Shipsey took the opportunity to have
a little fun with the idea of a “cat cam.” He
recalls, “If any cast were required to act
directly to the cat [camera], then I would
attach small orange-tape ears to either side
of the lens — partly because the idea
amused me, but also to give a point of focus
for the actor.”
The a7R IIs, which were placed in
LockCircle BirdCage Pro rigs to make them
more ergonomic, recorded 4K footage in
24p to Atomos Shogun recorders in Sony’s
XAVC codec; the cameras recorded in
Picture Profile 7, which is the camera’s S-Log
profile. That profile was then augmented
with customized gamma, saturation and
detail in order to match the Alexa Pluses,
which captured 2K ProRes 4:4:4:4 in Log C
to SxS cards. For his on-set monitoring of
the Alexas, Wunstorf eschewed a Log C to
Rec 709 conversion in favor of live grades
performed by digital-imaging technician
30 December 2016
John Miguel King, whose work was then
passed on through the post pipeline for
matching.
The Alexas lived at their native ISO of
800, but the sensitivity of the a7R IIs fluctu-
ated based on shooting conditions and
ranged from 800 up to 2,000 for dimly lit
interiors and night scenes. Both cameras
utilized Angenieux Optimo zooms — 15-
40mm (T2.6), 28-76mm (T2.6), 45-120mm
(T2.8) and 24-290mm (T2.8). The a7R IIs
were outfitted with Sony E-mount to PL-
mount adapters to accommodate the Opti-
mos. Sony/Zeiss Sonnar primes — as well as
a package of Zeiss Distagon and Planar
DSLR primes — were also employed, specif-
ically with the second-unit a7R IIs.
Prior to Wunstorf’s arrival in London,
he began communicating with one of the
production’s 2nd-unit cinematographers,
Ann Evelin Lawford, via Skype to discuss
camera tests and begin identifying the ideal
settings for matching the Arri and Sony
American Cinematographer
cameras. Wunstorf and Lawford also
consulted with Sony Europe’s 4K workflow
specialist Pablo Garcia Soriano for guidance.
Camera tests took place at Movietech
Camera Rental at Pinewood Studios. The
footage was then graded by Molinare senior
colorist Asa Shoul. Shoul also performed the
final grade, which was completed with Film-
Light Baselight at the cameras’ respective
native resolutions for a 2K DCP final deliver-
able.
“We tested the Alexa and Sonys side
by side, in the presence of plenty of cats
roaming and meowing,” Lawford explains.
“We also tested the Sonys on their own to
best suit the needs and requirements for
[the second] unit. We adjusted every possi-
ble setting one could find in the camera’s
menu, and we replicated different shooting
conditions [such as] nighttime, rig move-
ment, cat movement, rolling shutter, stabi-
lization, etc.”
Wunstorf adds, “It’s a little extra
work in the digital intermediate, but it was
amazing how the cameras matched up.
There is a lot of Sony footage intercut with
the Alexa.” The digital grade also included
tweaks to match the color of the various
Bobs’ eyes, as well as a slight overall bright-
ening and increase in saturation. Before
that, Wunstorf notes, “the film felt a little
too somber.”
The story’s bleakest passage comes
at the outset, as James is living on the streets
of London before bottoming out with a
heroin overdose in a stranger’s unlocked car.

For these early scenes Wunstorf selected
Tiffen Antique Suede filters to mute the
colors, and often added green in-camera.
In the scene prior to James’ over-
dose, he talks with a fellow user amid a
London downpour — an exterior sequence
shot under a covering. Gaffer Marc Rood-
hart backlit the rain with a combination of a
2K tungsten unit and 1.8K HMI gelled with
1⁄2 CTO and 1⁄2 Plus Green. A soft toplight
above the actors was provided by a 2K Jem
Ball on a dimmer. Existing practicals at the
location were either gelled with NDs and/or
White diffusion; black-wrapped; or
switched off, as the bulbs weren’t allowed
to be swapped out.
More severe restrictions were
enforced at London’s popular shopping and
tourist site Covent Garden, where James
spent afternoons busking, with Bob
perched on his shoulder. “We were very
limited in how much gear we could have
there,” recalls Wunstorf. “Normally I would
use 20-by-20-foot frames, but it was impos-
sible to do in Covent Garden because some-
times we only owned 20 or 30 square feet
of real-estate. Instead we would set up a
series of [floppies] for negative fill and then
some bounce from either an 8-foot-by-8-
foot frame of Ultrabounce, a silver Rosco
flex, or just beadboard to catch the ambient
light.”
The 35-day production used all prac-
tical locations with the exception of the
apartments of James and his neighbor Belle
(Ruta Gedmintas). One set was built at
32 December 2016
Twickenham Studios and re-dressed to serve
as both housing-estate flats. In that single
space, Wunstorf was tasked with creating
myriad moods and looks, from the warmth
of a holiday dinner to the sickly green of
James’ withdrawal as he comes off
methadone. “The set was pre-lit, and we
would make adjustments depending on the
scene,” says Wunstorf. “We generally used
the same units, but we would move them
around, change the quality of the light by
softening it or hardening it, adjust color with
gels, and/or [adjust] the color temperature
on the Alexa.”
From outside the set’s walls, 12K and
5K tungsten units were pushed in through
windows; CTB, CTO, CTS and Chocolate
gels were employed depending on the
desired look. Inside the apartment, small
tungsten units, Litepanels 1x1s, Kino Flo
Celebs, Rifa-Lites and China balls were used
for eye lights, wrap and fill, with some units
often diffused with 3mm-thick sheets of
Depron “clipped to the sides of the unit and
‘coved’ to form a semicircle,” Wunstorf
describes. Above the set, 20'x20' and
12'x12' frames of unbleached muslin hung
as bounce sources and were used for both
ambience and as an occasional key light.
“Only a center ceiling [tile] was removed,”
the cinematographer notes. All the lights
were on a dimmer board, which aided the
cinematographer in the tricky assignment of
lighting simultaneously for four cameras.
“Generally for wide shots I would
light the room as best as I could and still key
American Cinematographer
Left: The apartment set featured lighting
pushed through the windows from outside.
Above: Director Roger Spottiswoode (left)
and cinematographer Peter Wunstorf, ASC
discuss a scene.
the actors well, but the cat didn’t always
find his light,” says Wunstorf. “As we
moved in closer I would make lighting
adjustments. When we shot 360 degrees,
we would put fixtures on the ground, and
the cameras would shoot over them.”
The studio portion of A Street Cat
Named Bob was a welcome respite from the
chaos of shooting in Covent Garden, where
even the Zen-like Bob occasionally
unleashed his inner animal. “Bob really
wanted to go into all the stores,” says Spot-
tiswoode with a laugh. “He kept running
into them and, not knowing it was going to
happen, we had not gotten permission to
be in the stores. I had to go in afterward and
say, ‘Sorry we blundered in with some
cameras, but we were just following a
cat!’”
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus, Sony a7R II
Angenieux Optimo; Sony/Zeiss Sonnar;
Zeiss Distagon, Planar ●
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