DECEMBER 2018

A M E R I C A N C I N E M ATO G R A P H E R • D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8 • S U S P I R I A – A P R I VAT E WA R – T H E F R O N T RU N N E R – W I D O W S – T H E FAVO U R I T E • VO L . 9 9 N O. 1 2

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8 V O L . 9 9 N O . 1 2

An International Publication of the ASC

On Our Cover: Abigail Masham (Emma Stone) vies for a position of privilege with the
queen in the period feature The Favourite, shot by Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC. (Photo by
Yorgos Lanthimos, courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp.)

FEATURES
30 Suspiria – Season of the Witch
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and director Luca Guadagnino reimagine
a landmark tale of terror 30

44 A Private War – Fearless Reporting

Robert Richardson, ASC helps director Matthew Heineman bear
witness to Marie Colvin’s lasting legacy

56 The Front Runner – Into Chaos

Eric Steelberg, ASC reteams with director Jason Reitman to trace
a presidential hopeful’s fall from grace 44

66 Widows – Partners in Crime

Sean Bobbitt, BSC continues his longtime collaboration with director
Steve McQueen

74 The Favourite – Royal Trappings

Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC brings a wide-angle view to director
Yorgos Lanthimos’ genre-subverting period piece
56

DEPARTMENTS
10 Editor’s Note
12 President’s Desk
14 Shot Craft: Diffusion • Holiday lights • Lenses in cold weather
24 Short Takes: Last Taxi Dance 66
82 New Products & Services
84 International Marketplace
85 Classified Ads
86 Ad Index
87 2018 AC Index
92 ASC Membership Roster
94 Clubhouse News
96 ASC Close-Up: T.C. Christensen

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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

Stephen Pizzello
————————————————————————————————————
WEB DIRECTOR and ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
David E. Williams
————————————————————————————————————
EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Fish
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst, 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
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CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Peru
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SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS
CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina
SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal
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ASC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Eric Rodli
ASC SPONSORSHIP & EVENTS DIRECTOR Patricia Armacost
OPERATIONS/EVENTS MANAGER Alex Lopez
MEMBERSHIP ADMINISTRATOR Salvador Maldonado
ASC ACCOUNTANT Shawnté Howard
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6
 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
John Simmons
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
Lowell Peterson
Cynthia Pusheck
Roberto Schaefer
John Simmons
John Toll
Kees van Oostrum
Amy Vincent

ALTERNATES
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Stephen H. Burum
David Darby
Charlie Lieberman
Eric Steelberg

MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
8
 EDITOR’S NOTE
I became a fan of Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC when Wuthering
Heights blew my mind at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
The movie’s bold take on Emily Brontë’s classic tale — inti-
mately framed in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio — was raw,
intense and completely absorbing. I was similarly
astounded by my first taste of Dogtooth, a fearlessly outré
slice of absurdist cinema from Greek director Yorgos Lanthi-
mos, who proved just as audacious with his follow-up films
Alps, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer.
When I heard that Ryan and Lanthimos would be
teaming on the 18th-century costume drama The
Favourite, I circled the title on my coming-attractions chart.
A droll spoof of Restoration-era “teacup movies,” The
Favourite playfully pokes at genre conventions, making
artfully offbeat use of ultra-wide lenses, and had me laughing out loud at some unexpected
bursts of contemporary-sounding pejoratives. “[Yorgos] doesn’t like conventional coverage,”
Ryan informs Jim Hemphill (“Royal Trappings,” page 74). “He’s very keen on creating a [visual]
language where you don’t really see the normal angles that you would expect.” Lanthimos
concurs: “I don’t react well to angles or lenses that feel ‘middle of the road.’ In this film, I
wanted to create a world which felt quite absurd and distorted.”
The environs of Suspiria, a reimagining of Dario Argento’s 1977 giallo horror classic, are
downright grotesque. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom and director Luca
Guadagnino set their version in late-1970s Berlin and created an oppressive, somber ambience
that reflects the political tenor of the times. The look, Guadagnino tells Iain Marcks (“Season
of the Witch,” page 30), is intended to reflect on “the concept of contemporaneity and
conflict with the generations of the past, the fathers and mothers who deny themselves the
possibility to acknowledge what they did under National Socialism.” The resulting style might
be dubbed Fascist Grand Guignol.
While political conflict provides a haunting backdrop in Suspiria, it’s foregrounded in A
Private War, shot by ASC member Robert Richardson, who reconnoitered with documentarian
and first-time feature director Matthew Heineman. The cinematographer’s extensive back-
ground in documentary work made him an ideal choice for the project, which dramatizes a
decade of journalist Marie Colvin’s real-life experiences in many of the world’s war-torn regions.
Heineman tells Patricia Thomson (“Fearless Reporting,” page 44) that while Richardson’s Oscar-
winning renown was slightly intimidating, the ASC icon never made him feel out of his depth:
“It was never like, ‘I’m Bob Richardson, I’ve won three Oscars and been nominated for six. I’ve
been doing this forever.’ No, it was always peer to peer. That’s what made it such an enjoyable
experience for me.”
On The Front Runner (“Into Chaos,” page 56), Eric Steelberg, ASC continued his long-
time collaboration with director Jason Reitman to recount the scandalous fall from grace expe-
rienced by Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart in 1987 — a timely topic in today’s
climate of “gotcha” politics. Another longstanding collaboration is explored in Rachel K.
Bosley’s Q&A with Widows cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, BSC and director Steve McQueen
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

(“Partners in Crime,” page 66), who renewed their fruitful pairing on the Chicago-based crime
drama.

Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
10
 PRESIDENT’S DESK
The Nine Lives of the Cat!

We’ve all heard the saying: “Cats have nine lives.” It’s a popular myth, one that’s been around for
hundreds of years — and one that even earned a reference from no less a legend than Shakespeare,
who worked it into Romeo and Juliet, giving Mercutio the line, “Good King of Cats, nothing but
one of your nine lives, that I mean to make bold withal, and, as you shall use me hereafter, dry-beat
the rest of the eight.”
Where the cat’s cultural significance becomes relevant for this column is in the marketing
campaign that accompanied the debut of Jean-Pierre Beauviala’s first Aaton 16mm camera, which
he likened to a cat on the operator’s shoulder. This came at a time when shoulder designs for film
cameras were nonexistent.
At the beginning of the motion-picture industry, the Lumière brothers designed their “cine-
matograph” as a wooden box, square and plain. For decennia to come, the principle of designing
a “box” remained largely in effect. The Arriflex departed from the conceit, as did Éclair’s NPR,
designed by André Coutant. Nevertheless, those cameras weren’t exactly balanced, and a good
amount of muscle was necessary to keep them steady. So, when Beauviala introduced his new
camera — one that can straddle the operator’s shoulder in a way that it can almost be left to sit there without support —
he effectively launched the concepts of balance and ergonomics as they apply to camera design.
Beauviala founded Aaton in Grenoble, France, after having worked as an engineer at Éclair. Under Beauviala’s lead-
ership, Aaton introduced its first 16mm camera in 1971 and went on to develop an array of small and reliable motion-picture
film cameras, all of which were produced according to the “cat on the shoulder” ethos. Aaton’s LTR 16mm camera was
succeeded by several models, including the LTR 54, XTR, X0, XTR Plus, XTR Prod and A-Minima, the latter of which is a small,
specialized Super 16 reflex camera that takes 200' loads. Aaton has also made very successful 35mm cameras, including the
Penelope, which is field-switchable between 2-perf and 3-perf.
Lastly, the company developed the digital Delta camera. Evolving from an early design that swapped the Penelope’s
film magazine for a digital recorder, the Delta featured one of the first ground-glass optical viewfinders for a digital camera,
along with a rotating mirror shutter to avoid rolling-shutter artifacts. The camera worked with an internal SSD recorder for
full-resolution CinemaDNG uncompressed raw as well as editorial-ready proxies. And, true to Beauviala’s original vision, the
Delta was lightweight and maintained the company’s cat-on-the-shoulder profile.
What baffles me to this day is that other manufacturers have seemed to adopt the idea of a well-balanced camera
only reluctantly and never completely. Yes, Arri made vast improvements with the SR through to the 416 camera. And at
certain times Beaulieu and Bolex followed. But nobody bent the rules — or the camera, for that matter — as consistently as
Aaton. And now, in this era of digital cinema cameras, we seem to have gone completely retro. Let’s face it, like the Lumières’
wooden box, digital cameras are square, unbalanced, incomplete structures. And in lieu of ergonomics, they’ve given rise to
a thriving cottage industry of shoulder pads, flex mounts, bean bags and other contraptions.

Photo by Jacek Laskus, ASC, PSC.

Jean-Pierre Beauviala has always thought outside the “box.” In November, in recognition of his groundbreaking
work and lasting contributions to our industry, the ASC presented Beauviala with a special award. As the ancient proverb
says, “A cat has nine lives. For three he plays, for three he strays, and for the last three he stays.”

Kees van Oostrum

ASC President

12 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 SHOT CRAFT

A 1K Fresnel was
placed near these
geometric shapes
and aimed at a
1'x1' mirror that
was positioned
20' away, so that
the light then
reflected back
onto the shapes
— having
traveled a total
distance of 40'
and thereby
creating a harder
source with
cleaner shadows.

I Diffusion Confusion, Part 2: Alternative Diffusion

By Jay Holben
Over the years, I’ve often been asked, “Can I light with
[insert household fixture here]?” My answer is always “Of
course!” — but there’s a caveat. Not every device that produces
light does so in a manner that is actually useful photographically.
Some popular, inexpensive, high-wattage work-lights put out a
lot of footcandles, but the quality of light is not good. However,
if you put that fixture through some diffusion, magical things can
happen. In fact, with the right “flavor” of diffusion, any light
source can be beautiful. Diffusion is truly the lighting equalizer.
And for those who can’t afford commercially sold diffusion mate-
rials, there are plenty of alternatives that you can use. We’ll take
a look at some of them here, compared to the “real stuff.”
In October’s Shot Craft, we looked at a test of common
diffusion materials that cinematographer Kaity Williams and I
without significant risk of fire. Alternative materials, on the other
hand, are not resistant to heat and flames. While a bedsheet can
make for a wonderful, large piece of diffusion, if you place an
incandescent source too close to it, beware: You can start a fire.
Additionally, there’s no consistency or control of color variance
with DIY diffusions — not all bedsheets or shower curtains are
created equal. One might have a slight blue color to it, another
might be slightly yellow. In turn, this can affect the skin tones of
your talent. So you have to be careful what material you use —
in addition to being careful about the color fidelity of the light
source behind the diffusion!
Now, on to our test. For our DIY materials, we chose a
piece of off-white liner’s silk; a white bedsheet; a white vinyl
shower-curtain liner, purchased from a home-improvement
store; a piece of silver metallic poster board, also known as show
card; and a piece of white foamcore. Stepping briefly away from
diffusion, we also tried to create the hardest shadow we could
All images courtesy of Jay Holben.

conducted. But Williams and I also tested an array of alternative
— aka DIY — diffusion materials. “We all have little tricks and
treats in our toolbags,” Williams offers. “Doing this test was a
wonderful way to help refine the DIY items that I carry fairly
often, and to get a chance to try them against higher-end tools.
Some of the results were very surprising.”
Again, there are always caveats. Professional, commer-
cially sold diffusion is manufactured to be heat- and flame-resis-
tant, meaning that you can safely use it close to light fixtures
by using a 1'x1' mirror.
Let’s start with the mirror. Remember, the softness of light
is primarily determined by the size of the source relative to the
source’s distance from the subject. In the case of our testing, we
could only get our lighting instrument to a distance of about 20'
from the subject to get the hardest light possible. I wanted to
push that farther, so we brought out a 1'x1' mirror, which we
placed 20' away from our geometric shapes; we then positioned
our lighting source right near the shapes and aimed it at the

14 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 mirror. This doubled the
distance that the light
was traveling — it went
from the source, 20' to
the mirror, and was then
reflected 20' back to the
shapes, creating the
hardest source with the
cleanest shadows that
we could muster within
our given limitations. The
shadows were almost
entirely umbra — the Liner’s Silk Full Tough Spun
deep, dark center of the
shadow — with almost
no penumbra — the
“fuzzy” perimeter — at
all.
Of the alternative
diffusion we tested, the
liner’s silk had the least
softening/diffusing
effect. This inexpensive
material is silk-like and is
intended to line the
inside of garments; it is
very similar to the profes- Bedsheet ⁄ 216
12

sional silk diffusion you

can buy from most grip
retailers. Liner’s silk is
something that I’ve used
as an alternative diffu-
sion for many years. I
usually have bright white
and warm off-white with
me at all times —
although, full disclosure,
my bright white went
missing for this test.
Surprisingly, the closest White Shower Curtain Full Grid Cloth
professional diffusion to
the liner’s silk was Full Tough Spun. Both produced roughly the same shadow
effect, creating sharp umbra and penumbra elements.
As mentioned in a previous Shot Craft (AC July ’17), the bedsheet is another
favorite of mine. It’s inexpensive, quiet and readily available — you can even
“borrow” it from a hotel room when you’re on location — and if you get the fitted
kind, you can easily put it around a PVC frame and make yourself a 7'x7' diffusion
with a king-size sheet. The light loss varies depending on the material; the
bedsheet used in our test resulted in a loss of 11⁄ 3 stops.
The bedsheet we tested didn’t have a perfect counterpart among the “real”
diffusions, but I felt its effect was close to that of 1⁄ 2 216, except the shadow
density seemed to be less with the bedsheet, meaning that there was more light
scattering around, even though the overall shadow length and edge softness was
comparable. However, Williams notes, “While Jay felt the bedsheet was closest to Silver Show Card
1⁄ 2 216, I felt it was closer to the quality of Full Grid Cloth. Either way, it’s conve-

16 December 2018 American Cinematographer


Foamcore (bounce light)
Field Guide
Holiday Lights
The holidays are a great time for lighting professionals. When
else do we get to enjoy so many lighted decorations all around us?
It’s also the perfect time to stock up on holiday lights for use year-
round.
I carry several strands of clear miniature holiday lights with
me on nearly every shoot. They’re phenomenal in the background
or even as a key light. And the variety of holiday lights is always
growing. Although I generally stay away from LED lights — I prefer
the warmth and quality of light from true tungsten sources — LEDs
are improving every year and are increasingly good at mimicking the
look of real filament fixtures.
Clear miniature lights come in 25-, 50-, 100-, 150- and occa-
sionally 200-light varieties; I find that the 150-light configuration is
the most commonly available. Each 150-light strand is about 3 amps
(40 watts). Generally, three strands can be daisy-chained together
before you’ll trip the fuse in the first strand. If you cast a wide-
enough net in your search, you’ll also find strands that space the
bulbs 2.5", 4" or 6" apart from one another. I usually go for green
strands of the 4" variety.
Some people consider larger bulbs to be more traditional. C7
and C9 are the two common sizes of larger holiday bulbs, with C9
being the bigger of the two. C7 lamps are 21⁄ 8" high (base to tip)
and 7⁄ 8" across at the widest point; they have E12 bases, which are
small “nightlight” screw bases, and are commonly 5 watts per bulb.
A C9 bulb is 27⁄ 8" high and 11⁄ 8" across at its widest point; C9s are
commonly 7 watts per bulb, though a 10-watt version is also avail-
able — and both versions have E17 intermediate bases. The larger
bulbs really only come in straight strands, whereas miniature bulbs
are available in a variety of strand configurations, including icicle
(with the bulbs hanging in perpendicular strands of various lengths
from the main power strand) and netting (with a “chain-link”
configuration for draping over hedges).
18 December 2018 American Cinematographer
nient that you’re able to get a wonderfully diffused look from
an everyday household item!”
The vinyl white shower curtain behaved similarly to Full
Grid Cloth — which came as another surprise. One of the least
expensive diffusion alternatives performed in a way that’s
extremely close to one of the most expensive professional vari-
eties!
We then tested bounce light, starting with a piece of
silver poster board, or show card. Even though our card was
only 3'x3' — all of our other diffusions were 4'x4' — the show-
card bounce created a softer source than any of the diffusions.
“This one was really surprising,” Williams notes. “I thought the
silver show card was going to have much harsher shadows, but
it created a softer and more flattering look than I expected. The
show card is not to be confused with a shiny board, however,
which has a much higher reflectivity and creates a much
harsher and sharper shadow.”
Next, we bounced the light into a 4'x4' piece of white
Holiday lights can enliven a shot’s background with out-of-focus
“orbs.”
Holiday lights are most commonly used in the deep back-
ground or immediate foreground to create glowing orbs of light,
but they’re great for many other applications as well. I’ve run strands
of the miniature lights behind the bottles of a bar or under a coun-
tertop to provide some glow. I often use them in candlelit scenes,
wrapping the strands across an open 4'x4' frame to create a large
warm source that mixes in beautifully with candles. I’ve squished
strands into balls to create something akin to a China ball. I also use
holiday lights in the background of every lens test as a way to test
the bokeh.
Holiday lights run very warm, around 2,500K; they can be
dimmed, but of course that makes them warmer still. I’m generally
not a fan of the colored assortments, although they do have their
uses. For example, mixed colors can be great in the background to
give more “life” to your out-of-focus orbs.
On most jobs, I carry a box of about 20 or 30 single strands
of miniature lights, along with a couple strands of larger C7 bulbs
and a couple strands of net lights. That keeps me covered and
provides great variety for most any situation.
— JH

Book Light (Foamcore and 216)
Pro Perspective
Christopher Probst, ASC:
Out in the Cold
The cold winter months can be very
hard on equipment, especially on older gear.
Christopher Probst, ASC — AC’s technical
editor, and an ASC Award nominee for his
work on the series Mindhunter — recalls the
toll that extremely cold weather took on his
vintage set of Kowa anamorphic lenses.
“Vintage glass is all the rage today
with digital sensors, but you have to be very
careful how you handle older lenses, espe-
cially in extreme conditions,” Probst offers.
“I was shooting a car campaign for Jeep in
the mountains outside of Denver, and one
morning we had a freak cold-front sweep
through. We were shooting with my vintage
set of Kowa anamorphic lenses when the
temperature dropped rapidly, in a matter of
minutes, into the single digits [Fahrenheit].
“The optical adhesive commonly
used when these lenses were made was
Canada Balsam, a natural resin from the
balsam fir tree that works wonderfully to
bond glass elements,” the cinematographer
continues. “Unfortunately, not only can the
Balsam turn yellow over time and bias the
color representation of your lens, it can also
become very brittle. It is not the most
evolved glass adhesive in terms of thermal-
differential tolerances, either. So when the
20 December 2018
cold-front suddenly hit, the glass constricted,
but the Balsam didn’t, causing the glass to
separate away from the glue. Suddenly the
cemented cylindrical doublets and triplets
inside my Kowas were all starting to sepa-
rate, some only on the edges, others more
substantially.”
Probst’s 100mm Kowa took the
brunt of the damage, with the front triplet
of the anamorphot group separating half-
way through the frame, and the doublet
focusing cylinder behind that also coming
partially unglued. “My 50mm also had some
significant separation of the front cylinders,
and my 75mm got it in the rear doublet,”
Probst laments.
“As it turns out, the director loved
the flares that the separating lenses
created,” Probst recalls. “I did, however,
immediately have a set of Hawk anamor-
phics sent out from Camtec to finish the job
with. But we did shoot a few shots on the
separated anamorphics, which created a
very unique look!”
Returning to Los Angeles, Probst
employed the services of Duclos Lenses to
repair the damaged elements, at a cost of
more than $5,000. “Canada Balsam is
fairly easily dissolved in acetone,” explains
Probst. “So Duclos soaked the elements,
separated them completely, and cleaned
off all the old adhesive before re-centering
the elements and re-gluing them with a
American Cinematographer
foamcore. This also resulted in a softer
light than any of the diffusions we tested
— and when you consider the science,
that makes sense. With all of the diffu-
sion materials, we were pushing a hard
light directly through the diffusion and —
even in the case of 216 and Full Grid
Cloth, where the original source was
almost entirely obscured when looking
directly at the diffusion — there is still
some directionality to the light. But when
you evenly fill a flat, 4'x4' piece of foam-
core, there’s significantly less directional-
ity and no hotspot, resulting in a softer
source with longer shadow transfer
values. Surprisingly, we only lost 2⁄ 3 of a
stop by bouncing into foamcore.
Kicking our test up a notch, we
moved the foamcore back a bit and
placed a 4'x4' sheet of 216 in its place,
modern optical cement.”
It’s not necessarily a difficult process,
but it is a time-consuming and costly one.
Luckily the glass itself hadn’t been cracked
or damaged in the cold. “This was a beauti-
ful set of original — not rehoused — Kowas,
in mint condition,” Probst says. “I was
enamored with this particular set as they
performed among the best that I had ever
seen in Kowas. If the cylinders aren’t
perfectly aligned, you’ll never get a sharp
performance from these lenses. I could
shoot this set wide open and they were very
sharp. Duclos did a wonderful job repairing
and reconstructing the set, and they’re just
as good as new — perhaps even improved
now with the more resilient optical adhe-
sives holding the elements together.”
What might the cinematographer do
in the future if faced with a similar situation?
“My first remedy would be to not bring
vintage lenses into extreme cold conditions
without having them first go through a
costly modification to replace the Canada
Balsam,” he offers. “If you haven’t re-glued
the elements, you run the risk of catastro-
phe. When you have lenses that are 30 or 40
years old — or older — you have to treat
them with a little more TLC than you might
a brand-new, modern lens.”
— JH

Foamcore (bounce light)
Book Light (Foamcore and 216)
Bedsheet
Clear Shower Curtain
22 December 2018
and then we angled the foamcore so that only one edge was
touching the 216. We then bounced the light into the foamcore,
which was angled to direct the light through the 216 toward the
shapes — an arrangement commonly known as a “book light.”
This softened the light even more, which surprised me. I had
hypothesized that the difference between a 4'x4' bounce and a
4'x4' bounce through a 4'x4' sheet of diffusion would be negli-
gible. We didn’t change the size of the source, nor did we
change its distance to the subject — yet the result is a softer
light. We only lost another 1⁄ 3 of a stop by adding the 216,
making for a total light loss of 1 stop.
When we look at these materials on the mannequin head,
we can see a difference between the foamcore bounce and the
book light in both the shadow-transfer value and the overall
density of the shadow. “My favorite was probably the book
light,” Williams opines. “I really appreciated how much smaller
the shadow was compared to Full Grid Cloth. And now I want to
test this same strategy with different cuts of diffusion instead of
just 216.”
Interestingly, when we looked at the mannequin with the
light diffused by the bedsheet, there was significantly less
shadow density than with 1⁄ 2 216. In fact, on the mannequin, the
umbra seems to recede to the point of being almost indiscernible
— all we see is penumbra. This result was not easily observed
with the geometric shapes.
As already mentioned, these alternative diffusion materials
affect the light’s color. Our clean source was 3,330K, the warm
liner’s silk gave us a 3,170K source, the white vinyl shower
curtain came in at 3,050K, the bedsheet was 3,250K, the silver
show card resulted in 3,360K, and the 4'x4' white foamcore
produced a source of exactly 3,200K.
“It’s great that there are alternative, inexpensive ways to
make lower-budget sets look like they have higher production
value,” concludes Williams. “Some of these alternate tools I
might consider even on larger projects with bigger budgets
because I really like the quality compared to certain professional
tools. In the end, there’s no excuse not to have good lighting on
any budget.”
This proved to be an incredibly enlightening test for me,
with some surprising results. I hope that our findings will also be
of help to you, dear readers, in your own photographic travels.
To see larger versions of the diffusion-test photos, visit
ascmag.com/blog/shot-craft/alternative-diffusion. ●
American Cinematographer
 SHORT TAKES

Mahea
(Danielle
Zalopany) sings
for an audience
of sailors at
a post-World
War II Honolulu
dance hall in
the short Last
Taxi Dance,
which was
directed by
Brayden Yoder
and shot by
Chapin Hall.

I After Hours
By Matt Mulcahey
In Last Taxi Dance, a native Hawaiian singer and an American
soldier clash and then connect in an eerily empty dance hall. Set in
post-World War II Honolulu, the short was shot on location in the
city’s Chinatown neighborhood by a pair of Hawaii-grown filmmak-
ers — director Brayden Yoder and cinematographer Chapin Hall.
Yoder first pitched the idea to Hall in late 2015 during a surf-
ing excursion on the island of Oahu’s North Shore. Despite attending
the same high school, though not concurrently, and sharing a home-
town, the two had only recently met and were seeking a project on
which to collaborate. Floating in the Pacific Ocean between sets of
waves, Hall asked Yoder if he had any ideas for short-form projects.
Yoder answered, “Have you ever heard of ‘taxi dancing’?”
“I knew right then we had found our project,” Yoder recalls.
The story unfolds in a single night at the Paradise Ballroom,
Yoder says. “Hopefully, it gets people thinking.”
For thematic inspiration, Yoder and Hall turned to the satu-
rated colors and lonely figures of Edward Hopper — particularly the
painting Nighthawks — and Ernest Hemingway’s short story A
Clean, Well-Lighted Place.
“In Hemingway’s story, a young waiter learns to see a lonely
old patron in a new light,” Yoder explains. “Hopper’s framing and
color palette illustrate a similar theme of loneliness, while inviting the
viewer to connect with the subject. We wanted to achieve some-
thing similar with Last Taxi Dance.”
To channel Hopper and Hemingway, Hall selected an Arri
Alexa Mini and a set of vintage Franscope anamorphics. The lenses
— comprised of spherical glass, each rehoused to accommodate the
single Franscope front-anamorphic element — had thrived in the
French New Wave era of the 1950s and 1960s.
On his acquisition of these lenses, Hall tells of an email friend-
ship he struck up with Jean-Sébastien Lefèvre several years back.
All images courtesy of the filmmakers.

where native Hawaiian singer Mahea (Danielle Zalopany) belts out
tunes while sailors pay 10 cents a dance to twirl one of the locals
around the floor. As the closing-time crowd drifts out into the warm
tropical night, a wounded soldier (Max Holtz) lingers, and asks
Mahea for a dance in the now-vacant ballroom.
Their subsequent interaction embodies Yoder’s own views
about his time in the United States Army, which included deployment
to Iraq. “As someone born and raised in Hawai`i, and who proudly
served in the U.S. Army, I felt this story offered a way to explore the
complexities of military service and the aftermath of colonization,”
Lefèvre had worked in France during the New Wave period as an AC
and camera operator, and when Hall came upon an old Franscope
zoom on eBay, “I wrote Sébastien about it,” the cinematographer
recalls. “He said, ‘We used those a bunch in the early 1960s. I think
I still have a set of prototype primes in the attic.’ He sent me photos
and we talked about them, on and off, for a couple of weeks — and
then one day, he said, ‘I don’t know if they still work, but do you
want them?’”
After receiving them, Hall sent the Franscopes to True Lens
Service in Leicester, England for some modifying. There, TLS head of

24 December 2018 American Cinematographer


To get the most out of the production’s anamorphic lenses and Alexa Mini camera while framing
for the 1.78:1 aspect ratio, Hall rotated the camera 90 degrees relative to the lens so that the
anamorphic squeeze was applied to what would otherwise be the sensor’s vertical axis.
lens engineering and design Gavin White-
hurst converted the set — a 35mm, 40mm,
50mm, 75mm, 100mm and 135mm — to
PL mounts. He also added alignment pins
and screw collars that allowed the spherical
lenses and the anamorphic adapter to be
screwed together into one solid unit.
When asked to identify the original
lenses before their rehousing in Franscope
bodies, the cinematographer notes that they
are likely Cooke Speed Panchros — except
for the 135mm, which, Hall observes, Cooke
didn’t make at the time — though no one
he’s consulted can say with certainty.
Hall received the lenses back from
TLS in early June of 2017, and almost imme-
diately put them to work on a music video in
Los Angeles. “They looked great, but they
definitely came with some caveats,” the
cinematographer says. “They’re really hard
26 December 2018
to get a matte box on. They have a lot of
glare and veiling issues, and they flare off of
almost any light source. Even a bright-white
wall will cause problems. So they’re super
imperfect, but they have a great vintage feel
and they’re very soft and pleasing on
faces.”
Upon seeing the video and the
Franscopes, Yoder was intrigued, but there
was a problem. The director envisioned the
short in a 16:9 aspect ratio, rather than
2.39:1, and Hall was loath to simply lop off
the edges of the anamorphic frame.
Inspired by the lens-positioning tech-
nique employed on a recent commercial
shot by Ian Bloom, on which Hall served as
operator, Hall devised a solution. By rotating
the Alexa Mini 90 degrees in relation to the
lens, while shooting ArriRaw in Open Gate
mode, Hall could utilize a taller and
American Cinematographer
narrower portion of the sensor. That
2202x2477 section of the 4:3 sensor —
when properly unsqueezed — would
provide the desired 16:9 aspect ratio with-
out the resolution decrease of a traditional
crop.
“But even more so than the extra
resolution, the benefit was the extra field of
view,” Hall notes. “One of the reasons I love
anamorphic is the ability to use a longer lens
than I would spherically, but retain a wider
field of view. That allows you to work closer
to the actors, and for Last Taxi Dance the
director and I wanted this story to feel inti-
mate — not distanced and observational.”
To achieve the correct desqueeze on
an image that was swiveled 90 degrees,
Hall researched potential fixes and selected
an AJA ROI-SDI converter, which was
programmed to rotate the feed from the
Mini and perform the 2x anamorphic
desqueeze on the vertical image, resulting
in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1.
“The AJA box allowed us to feed the
onboard monitor and the wireless director’s
monitor, and the Steadicam and AC moni-
tors as well, without issue and without fear
that we might not all be seeing the same
thing,” Hall says.
Monitoring on this production was
crucial, especially when it came to the two
elaborate Steadicam tracking shots that
open Last Taxi Dance. When blended
together by a disguised cut, the combined
“oner” unfolds over nearly three-and-a-half
minutes, and required the entire first day of
the three-day schedule to complete.
The initial section of the oner — shot
on the Franscope 50mm — follows a pair of
sailors up a flight of stairs and into the
Paradise ballroom. They are bathed in
moonlight, courtesy of a 1.2K HMI gelled
with Lee Steel Blue that was placed on the
roof of an adjacent building by gaffer
Gregory Doi and his team. A sodium-vapor
streetlight draped the background in warm
light.
As the sailors enter the dance hall,
the camera appears to pass through a wall,
disguising a cut — which, to the filmmak-
ers, marked the spot where things got
complicated. Now inside the Paradise,
Steadicam operator Abraham Williams
glided around the bustling room, occasion-
ally stopping for a glimpse of a pair of inter-

Top: A wounded soldier (Max Holtz) lingers after the crowd leaves. A large backdrop provided
the period-appropriate view outside the window. Above: Hall (left) confers with Yoder.
twined dancers, a ticket taker, or a waiter
scurrying through the frame with a tray of
drinks. Mahea then emerges from a side
door in silhouette and strides toward the
stage. As she steps onto the bandstand,
the camera swoops onto the stage, darts
behind the band, and circles back onto the
dance floor, just in time to catch a spotlight
illuminating Mahea’s face as she begins to
sing.
Serving as conductor from behind his
monitor, Hall orchestrated a series of 21 cues
to guide the waltz of dancing extras,
Williams’ Steadicam, and the symphony of
lighting units being dimmed and bright-
ened.
“When it was time for dialogue, I
would cue [sound mixer] John McFadden,
28 December 2018
who would fade down the music, which
was playing so the dancers could hear the
rhythm, the band could mime to the track,
and Danielle could lip sync,” says Hall. “All
you would hear for a couple of seconds was
lots of feet dancing and the dialogue, and
then we’d go right back to blasting the
music track and me yelling number cues at
the top of my lungs.”
Hall speaks highly of Ajita “A.J.”
White’s focus-pulling during the complex
oner. “I tried to give him a reasonable stop,
but it was T2.8-T4, so not as forgiving as
one might hope,” the cinematographer
says. “[A.J.] really nailed every take.” Hall
further notes that Makoto Kuchimura, who
served as 1st AC on the remainder of the
production when White and Abraham
American Cinematographer
were called to another project, “did a
phenomenal job in spite of the challenges
of this film.”
Because the roving Steadicam
peered out several windows, Hall had to
create a backdrop to obscure the anachro-
nisms of contemporary Honolulu visible on
the other side of the panes. “My wife
[Bruna Hort] and I took the biggest ladder
we could borrow and walked around
Chinatown snapping photos with her Fuji-
film X-T2,” Hall notes. “We shot old build-
ings, neon signs, the night sky — anything
we thought we might need to make the
backdrop work.”
Hort Photoshopped together
elements from the various images, and
Collins Visual Media in Shadow Hills, Calif.,
printed out the 10.5'x35' backdrop. The
grips built a large frame for it, which they
rigged to an awning outside the location.
Doi and his crew provided backlight. “It
was probably the largest single-ticket item
on the film, but it saved us money,” Hall
attests. “[Employing the backdrop] was at
the very smart suggestion of producer Bob
Bates. Brayden, Greg and I had been talking
about greenscreen, but Bob foresaw the
postproduction costs associated with that
— especially the tracking marks with all the
planned camera movement and eventual
background replacement. It was his idea.”
Though the window backdrop and
night-interior setting limited the amount of
Honolulu seen onscreen, Hall still empha-
sizes the importance of shooting Last Taxi
Dance on location. “I came up working on
the East Coast, mostly in New York City, so
I didn’t have a career in my home state. The
Hawai`i film [community] was small and
hard to break into [when I was starting
out],” Hall says. “But I’ve always wanted to
tell stories at home, and a lot of filmmakers
who were born here are starting to come
back. There is a burgeoning independent
film scene, and we’re working very hard to
show that we have stories to tell outside of
Hawaii Five-0 and studio tentpoles.”
To view the trailer for Last Taxi Dance
and see a schedule of upcoming screen-
ings, visit www.lasttaxidance.com. ●
 Season
of the
Witch
Cinematographer unrecognizable in prosthetic makeup by Mark Coulier),
desperate and struggling to communicate the details of an
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom helps experience at her school — something to do with witches.
juxtapose a scheming coven with the In this sequence, the filmmaking is as frantic as the
strife of postwar Berlin for young woman. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom
follows Patricia with a dolly-mounted camera as her eyes dart
Luca Guadagnino’s reimagining of around the room, and editor Walter Fasano quick-cuts
Suspiria. between jittery POVs of doors, windows, book spines, the
extreme close-up of Klemperer’s note-taking in his diary —
By Iain Marcks and an old framed photo of a young dark-haired woman
(Suspiria ’77’s Jessica Harper, as Klemperer’s long-lost wife,
•|• Anke).
It’s a stark contrast to the wide-angled, Technicolor,
blood-saturated sequence mirrored from Argento’s original

E
arly in Luca Guadagnino’s reimagining of Dario
Argento’s 1977 giallo landmark, Suspiria, a panic-stricken
young woman, dance student Patricia Hingle (Chloë
Grace Moretz), bursts into the gloomy West Berlin flat
of her psychiatrist, Dr. Josef Klemperer (Tilda Swinton,
(photographed by Luciano Tovoli, ASC, AIC; AC Feb ’10), in
which Patricia (Eva Axén) takes refuge at the home of a
friend, and the two are subsequently killed by a knife-wielding
attacker.
The premise of Guadagnino and co-writer David

30 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 Opposite: In the
horror feature
Suspiria, dance
student Susie
Bannion (Dakota
Johnson) studies at
a prestigious
tanztheater that in
fact is a front for a
coven of
murderous witches.
This page, left:
Madame Blanc
(Tilda Swinton)
runs the dance
company. Below:
Director Luca
Guadagnino (right)
lines up a shot
with
cinematographer
Sayombhu
Mukdeeprom.

Kajganich’s new script closely resembles

that of Argento and Daria Nicolodi’s:
American dancer Susie Bannion
Photos by Alessio Bolzoni, Sandro Kopp, Mikael Olsson and Willy Vanderperre, courtesy of Amazon Studios.

(Dakota Johnson) travels to Germany to

study under Madame Blanc (Swinton,
sans prosthetics) at the prestigious and
exclusive Helena Markos Dance
Company, only to discover that this
tanztheater fronts for a coven of murder-
ous witches (played by a murderer’s row
of European cinema grand dames), who
are seeking a vessel into which they can
channel the spirit of the decrepit and
dying Markos (Swinton, again with
prosthetics), who claims to be one of the
three ancient witch “Mothers.”
“When you dance the dance of
another, you make yourself in the image
of its creator,” Blanc tells her students. in motion for much longer. ping and murder of influential business
The filmmakers behind Suspiria ’18 all “My first encounter with Dario’s executive Hanns Martin Schleyer by the
agree, however, that Argento’s film is a work was in 1981, when I was 10 and Red Army Faction militant organiza-
masterpiece, “so if we couldn’t make it saw the poster for Suspiria hanging in a tion, and the hijacking of a Lufthansa
more interesting, we should do some- cinema,” Guadagnino reminisces. “I airplane by the Popular Front for the
thing different,” says Mukdeeprom, a finally saw the film when I was 13, and Liberation of Palestine. The group
Thai cinematographer who collaborated I’ve been nurturing a passion for it ever demanded $15,000,000 in exchange for
with Guadagnino previously on Call Me since.” the hostages, as well as the release of 10
by Your Name (AC, March ’18). It was The year in which Argento’s film imprisoned RAF members and two
during the production of that film that was released served as a touchstone for Palestinians — which inspired the 1978
the director and cinematographer first Guadagnino’s Suspiria. It’s also the year anthology film Germany in Autumn,
began discussing a remake of Suspiria, of the infamous German Autumn: a directed by German New Wave legends
but for Guadagnino, the plan had been series of events surrounding the kidnap- Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander

www.ascmag.com December 2018 31

◗ Season of the Witch
An abandoned hotel in Northern Italy provided the exterior and all interiors for the
Helena Markos Dance Company.
Kluge, Edgar Reitz and Volker
Schlöndorff, among others.
Guadagnino wanted his Suspiria
to be a spiritual successor to the cinema
of this era, which, he says, “reflected on
the concept of contemporaneity and
conflict with the generations of the past,
the fathers and mothers who deny
themselves the possibility to acknowl-
edge what they did under National
Socialism.”
“That era of the late Seventies is
32 December 2018
very [confusing, regarding all aspects of ]
Germany: politically, socially, and the
light — everything mixed together,”
says Mukdeeprom, who worked with
Berlin-based gaffer Florin Niculae for
the German segment of production.
The infamous Berlin Wall may have
fallen, but even today the cultural divide
is still evident in the way the city is lit at
night. Sodium-vapor lamps illuminate
the East with a yellower color, while in
the West, newer fluorescent, mercury-
American Cinematographer
arc and gas lamps produce a whiter
light.
Suspicion and subterfuge perme-
ate every aspect of Suspiria, with its
Cold War setting, the cruel milieu of a
city divided, and fear of imminent, real-
world terror around every corner. The
filmmakers heightened and harnessed
this oppressive atmosphere with a color
palette that suggested myriad shades of
brown, green and blue.
Principal photography com-
menced in October 2016. Mukdeeprom
wanted Berlin to look “very somber, very
sad” — an arguably easy ask for the
German capital in the cold season.
Production designer Inbal Weinberg
notes, “We shot in Italy from October to
December, and then in Berlin in
February and March 2017.” As for the
architecture, she recalls, “I don’t think
I’ve ever seen that many shades of gray.”
Costume designer Giulia
Piersanti reports that she emphasized
“muddy, muted army greens, rusty
browns, camels and beiges — subtle
colors that blended in with Sayombhu’s
dark, sophisticated photography. These
were true to the aesthetic of the German
Democratic Republic, which was, in
reality, a bit darker and bleaker than the
propaganda pictures in [the magazine]
Sibylle, whose colors were much brighter
and emphasized. I also tried to use red as
a recurring color to alert of the dangers
to come.”
Sibylle, Piersanti says, was “an
impressive fashion and culture magazine
from the GDR,” from which she drew
heavy inspiration. “It’s filled with
incredibly dreamy, high-quality fashion
shoots from around Berlin, and what
was really amazing about it was that
there were no real brands — it was
supposed to be all from the ‘people’s
own factories.’ It even had patterns to
make your own clothes, so you could
copy the fashion shoots. They were very
hard to find, but I managed to find most
of the issues from ’75 to ’79 on German
eBay.” She further describes the publica-
tion as “Eastern Bloc Vogue.”
Regarding her collaboration with
Guadagnino and Mukdeeprom,
Piersanti notes that the three “had
worked together on Call Me by Your
Name — and I worked with Luca on A
Bigger Splash — so we know each other’s
processes very well, and how our work
together can look as a whole. We have
group readings and discussions where
we all share personal notes, and Luca
discusses his intentions. We also run
early test shots with the actors in full
costume, hair and makeup to see if all of
our colors and textures interact correctly
with the photography and the back-
grounds.”
Mukdeeprom shot Suspiria
entirely on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
color-negative film — including day
exteriors — without correction filters,
and pushed it one stop to 1,000 ISO
when needed. Cameras, lenses, grip and
electrical equipment were rented from
D-Vision Movie People in Rome,
which provided an Arriflex 535A and
two Arricam LTs, all configured for 3-
perf Super 35 operation, and one 4-perf
Super 35 Arriflex 435ES for visual-
effects shots. Augustus Color in Rome
developed the negative and delivered
dailies. Colorist Alessandro Pelliccia
performed both dailies and final color
correction with Blackmagic Design
DaVinci Resolve.
“This is my standing point: I
always shoot movies on film,” says
Mukdeeprom. “Film cameras talk to me
more than digital cameras.”
Most of Suspiria takes place in
and around the West Berlin neighbor-
hood of Kreuzberg, an area close to the
wall. “We didn’t actually shoot [in
Kreuzberg], because it had gentrified
beyond recognition since the fall of the
wall, so we had to re-create that look in
other parts of the city,” Weinberg says.
The filmmakers spent two weeks
on location — on the street; on bridges;
under the U-Bahn tracks; at the Paris
Bar, where the witchy mistresses of the
tanztheater gather to carouse; at a space
in Charlottenburg made to look like a
cafe in Tiergarten. An abandoned GDR
office building in Mitte was employed
Top: Mukdeeprom sits atop a crane in the dancers’ rehearsal space. Middle and above: Susie
as de facto stages for the municipal appears to be a promising vessel for the witches’ wicked plans.
police station, where Klemperer

www.ascmag.com December 2018 33

◗ Season of the Witch

The dancers
perform while
draped in
knotted, bright-
red rope that
was meant to
evoke “dripping
blood,” explains
costume
designer Giulia
Piersanti, who
used red
throughout the
film “as a
recurring color
to alert of the
dangers to
come.”

‘Mutterhaus’ with its cabinet of occult

implores a pair of clueless polizei to
investigate Patricia’s mysterious disap-
pearance. This space was also used for
the interior of Tränenpalast, or “the
Palace of Tears” — the civilian crossing
between East and West — while its
exterior was shot at the actual site.
Klemperer’s family dacha was filmed in
the Berlin exurbs, and the Ohio
Mennonite farm where Bannion grew
up was captured at a rural location an
hour outside the city.
The Helena Markos Dance
Company was entirely and meticulously
created in an abandoned hotel located in
a mountain range near Varese in
Northern Italy. All of the dance-
company interiors were filmed there —
lobby, dance studios, offices, kitchen, the
dancers’ dormitories, and the secret
objects, its dark catacombs, and its ritual
chamber.
Weinberg describes the hotel as
“beautiful, with a really great flow,” but it
was in need of major repairs. There was
no electricity, no running water, and
parts of the ceiling had caved in. “The
other thing was that it was built in the
late 1800s, so the architectural style was
a little too Art Nouveau,” she remarks.
(See sidebar, page 36.)
The production set about reno-
vating the entire space, and in the
process replaced many of its more deco-
rative elements, augmenting the existing
ornamental façades and columns with
more modernist surfaces and details.
Scenic artists painted faux surfaces of
marble and granite, and the film’s
construction crew patched walls, refin-
ished the dance floor, and laid every tile
in the building’s lobby.
“We made absolutely every inch
of space count,” Weinberg says.
Klemperer’s flat was also filmed there, as
was the exterior of the tanztheater, with
its sidewalk, neighboring buildings, and
section of the wall. For the street,

34 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 •|• Aesthetics and Identity
It’s 1977 and a coven of witches is on the verge of reconsti-
tuting their nefarious leader at a Berlin dance company in the
retelling of Dario Argento’s horror classic Suspiria. Directed
this time around by Luca Guadagnino and shot by
Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, the production called upon the
services of production designer Inbal Weinberg, who took
some time with AC to discuss the creation of the film’s eerie,
period-specific environments.
American Cinematographer: From a design stand-
point, what was your relationship to the original Suspiria
and the work of production designer
Giuseppe Bassan before you started
on the remake?
Inbal Weinberg: I always felt
like I started this project from scratch.
The original is so over-the-top, visu-
ally, and is so specifically of the oeuvre
of Dario Argento — a world with its
own look. Our storyline is similar, but
the horror elements are conceived
differently and have maybe even
different symbolism in terms of the
visuals.
Different in what way?
Weinberg: What’s really inter-
esting about the script, to me, are the
historical and political layers that you
can link with the ideas of horror and
violence. It’s a psychological explo-
ration into the darkness of humanity, and there are definitely
connections to Germany’s past — specifically Berlin in the
1970s, which was a divided city and had an interesting social
mise-en-scène rooted in the wall. We were going for this kind
of bleak, modernist feel that plays into the concept of German
identity presented in the film. I know Berlin well and I speak
German, but up until Suspiria, I didn’t think a lot about the
wall and what it meant. [The 1970s] was an era of decline for
Berlin. It’s such a complex place. Its people lived with a rip
down the middle of their lives. But there’s a banality to it —
an acceptance.
What can you tell us about your research into the
real-world history and architecture?
Weinberg: Luca and I had similar references for the
architecture. Some of it was contemporary to the Seventies, so
I went deep into historical research of the time. Then we
delved back into the beginning of 20th-century modernism,
specifically as it relates to Austrian and German architects
and designers. I’m talking about the forefathers of
modernism, before Le Corbusier, who were trying to move
beyond Art Nouveau. Adolf Loos was a large influence on us,
as was Josef Hoffmann. We liked their use of marble and
36 December 2018 American Cinematographer
•|•
granite, and different stones and geometric lines. Loos wrote
an essay called Ornament and Crime in 1908 just after the
period where Art Nouveau had reached its peak and became
so decorative that it was drawing a counter-movement calling
for the abolition of all ornament. We thought that was more
in the spirit of our film, that beneath the banality of everyday
life lies this dark, otherworldly power.
In Suspiria, that dark, otherworldly power possesses
a distinctively ornamental aesthetic, however — all curves,
fine detail and coarse textures.
Weinberg: In terms of the underworld elements, we
looked at surrealist paintings — [as
well as naturalist] architecture, such as
[the work of ] Antoni Gaudí — but a
lot of our references came from
contemporary performance art and
installation art by women artists.
These ended up being our strongest
references.
How would you describe
your collaboration with the
film’s cinematographer, Sayombhu
Mukdeeprom?
Weinberg: It was an interesting
collaboration because Sayombhu is
Thai and he’s a Buddhist, so he has a
different way of perceiving things.
Even on location scouting, he would
stand back and let Luca and me talk,
and just receive the information.
Obviously, I consulted with him about anything that had to
do with lighting, practicals or window dressing and so on, but
there’s also his inclination to photograph things as naturally as
possible, with as little ‘influence’ as possible. I’d seen it in his
other films, and I thought it would work beautifully here,
because the world we were building was already a visual one.
Sayombhu described his approach in terms of using
the spaces as a stage. Was this an element of your produc-
tion-design technique as well?
Weinberg: I would say the most stage-like sequence
we had was the performance of Volk. For that, we reconfigured
the rehearsal-room set as a stage, and even worked with a
lighting designer from the theater and opera — but in terms
of the design, I didn’t really feel like there was a stage. At a
certain point, it did start to feel like we were living there. It
was a tough production experience, and we had moved our
offices into this abandoned hotel where we worked for
months. I suppose I’ve lived in all of my sets. Actually, in my
house in New York right now, next to my house keys are the
keys to Klemperer’s dacha, because in a way, these places will
always be a part of my life.
— Iain Marcks
◗ Season of the Witch
Weinberg had concrete poured and
embossed with cobblestones, and had
streetlights imported all the way from
Germany. “We went pretty far in trying
to get things right,” she attests.
Mukdeeprom believed that the
company’s dancers should be deeply
influenced by their surroundings. “The
environment will give us the mood and
the feeling,” he explains. “So rather than
try to create a look for the film, I wanted
to create the world of the film, and
approach it as if we just brought the
camera there to photograph it.”
The way in which Mukdeeprom
approached this world was primarily
influenced by Guadagnino’s direction
and Weinberg’s production design, as
well as the movement of the actors. “I
like to create a stage for Luca and the
actors, so they have the freedom to
move anywhere,” the cinematographer
says. “Luca watches the frame, and if he
chooses to go in for a close-up, it will be
driven by the character.” Mukdeeprom
adds that he generally lit “the whole set
at once, like a stage,” and only on occa-
sions when there was limited space
would he light one angle at a time.
Having been asked by the direc-
tor to do something visually different
from Call Me by Your Name,
38 December 2018
Left: Madame Blanc is relentless as she prepares her dancers for an opening-night performance
that will double as a spell-casting ritual dance. Above: Mukdeeprom checks his exposure for a
shot of Swinton.
Mukdeeprom notes that on their prior
collaboration, “I used only one lens — a
35mm. For this one, I had every lens
from 18mm to 100mm.”
In addition to the project’s
Cooke Speed Panchro S2 and S3 prime
package, the production also carried
Cooke’s Varotal 18-100mm (T3) zoom
and Angenieux’s Optimo 24-290mm
(T2.8) zoom, as well as vintage
Arri/Zeiss Super Speed (T1.3) glass.
Suspiria was framed for the 1.85:1
aspect ratio.
When it came to moving the
camera, Mukdeeprom, who was also
the A-camera operator, strove to limit
his options to what the cinematogra-
phers of the German New Wave would
have used in 1977 — which meant no
big cranes and no Steadicam. Germany
key grip Radu Marinescu and Italy key
grip Massimo Spina worked primarily
with a J.L. Fisher Model 11 Dolly, a
“pied de poule” (aka spider dolly), a
MovieTech Magnum Dolly column
and a Foxy Pro Jib.
This is not to say that creative
thinking was discouraged, however. In
the scene where another disillusioned
dance student, Olga (Elena Fokina),
tries to flee the tanztheater but is
confronted on the stairs, Guadagnino
American Cinematographer
wanted the camera to track with Fokina
as she descended the long, curved stair-
case. To accomplish this, Spina devised
a system of pulleys that connected a 3-
axis remote flight head and an Arricam
LT to the track-mounted Fisher dolly
on the seventh floor of the lobby. Spina
referenced a monitor mounted to the
dolly to follow Fokina’s action, and
lowered the camera while operator
Alessandro Barisano executed the pan
with a remote Flight Head V system.
A-camera 1st AC Massimiliano
Kuveiller employed Tiffen ND filters to
maintain a T2.2-T3 — and sometimes
T1.3 — exposure at night, and T4-T5.6
during the day. Tiffen diopters were
used for capturing detailed shots with-
out the use of a macro lens.
The spirited camerawork that
opens Suspiria and continues through-
out its 152-minute runtime is another
departure from the filmmakers’ previ-
ous collaborations — with the addition
of dramatic snap-zooms and split-focus
shots, the latter with the aid of classic
split diopters, to their repertoire.
Second-unit cinematography
and B-camera operation was assigned
to Carolina Costa. She performed
her cinematography duties alongside
2nd-unit director Ferdinando Cito
◗ Season of the Witch
The director prepares a scene with Ingrid Caven — who portrays Miss Vendegast, one of the
tanztheater’s witchy mistresses.
Filomarino (director of 2015’s Antonia,
produced by Guadagnino and
photographed by Mukdeeprom). Using
the first unit’s shot list and Italy gaffer
Francesco Galli’s lighting plots as a
reference, Costa occasionally picked up
shots for Mukdeeprom on the produc-
tion’s busiest days, when first unit was
rushed to move on after getting a master
and reverse. “Those were rare circum-
stances, though,” Costa says. “The
second unit was actually formed to
shoot Suspiria’s dream sequences.”
In the film, as Bannion settles
into her new life as lead in the tanzthe-
ater’s latest production, her sleep is
disturbed by dreams of her childhood
home, the protracted death of her
mother, and colorful, haunting visions
sent by Madame Blanc to entice her
young protégé into submission. “We
used some color here, only because the
sequences are unconnected with reality,”
Mukdeeprom says. Galli fashioned a
custom lamp — two 1,000-watt tung-
sten bulbs mounted to an aluminum
base at the end of a boom, wrapped with
1⁄4 Grid Cloth diffusion and two layers
of Lee Lime Green, and controlled by
two Magic Gadgets flicker boxes — to
40 December 2018
augment the ghostly green apparitions
that envelop Bannion in her dream-
state.
Otherwise, Mukdeeprom was
restrained in his use of color and subtle
in his application of light. “We wanted
to have minimal impact in all the stage
scenes, and give maximum freedom to
move camera and actors,” Galli says.
In the dancers’ dormitory, 12'x12'
greenscreens were rigged on condors
outside each window, above which were
placed — on another condor — two
side-by-side Arri 4K Fresnels fitted with
Chimera’s Daylite Plus M and
DOPChoice’s SnapGrid. Also
employed were 12K Chimera units
fitted with Lighttools Soft Egg Crate.
The combined rigging provided a soft,
blue-gray atmosphere on the set.
According to Mukdeeprom, the
dorm was one of the film’s darker sets,
where even with practical lamps, inci-
dent exposure hovered from 2 to 2 1⁄2
stops under reflectance. “If the director
says the mood is dark, I will make it
dark,” he notes. “It will be properly
exposed; I’m just working at the lower
part of the curve.”
Lighting the dance-theater inte-
American Cinematographer
rior scenes from overhead seemed like a
practical approach, and simultaneously
kept the lamps out of the way of the
actors and filmmakers. In the spacious
practice room, every unit — three
massive chandeliers, and 20 Arri
SkyPanel S60-Cs fitted with 1⁄2 Grid
Cloth and the units’ proprietary
Diffusion Panels — was routed through
a manual Strand dimming system oper-
ated by Matteo Attolini.
Swinton, as Madame Blanc,
channels the spirits of such modern
dance legends as Pina Bausch, Rudolf
von Laban, Mary Wigman and Martha
Graham — driving the dancers relent-
lessly forward to the opening night of
Volk, an avant-garde expression of
suffering in postwar Germany (choreo-
graphed for Suspiria by Belgo-French
artist Damien Jalet) that also doubles as
a spell-casting ritual dance. The dancers,
with their near-nude bodies draped with
knotted, bright-red rope — meant to
evoke “dripping blood,” Piersanti
explains — twist and writhe between
the points of a pentagram taped out on
the dance floor.
Galli and Mukdeeprom turned to
theatrical lighting designer Giordano
Baratta to produce the light for the Volk
performance, while they focused on the
main aspects of production. Baratta
conceived a bare-bones layout —
consisting of just a few 1970s-era plano-
convex spotlights — that was run
through a Jands T2 lighting console to
form hard, diagonal slashes of intersect-
ing light. “A ‘Dante’s Inferno’ between
the demonic and the lightness of the
bodies,” Baratta calls it.
From its beginning to the grue-
some showstopper, it took an entire
week to film the performance, the cine-
matographer reports. Apart from
adding a third camera, operated by
Filomarino, to his and Costa’s,
Mukdeeprom notes that he approached
the scene in much the same way he had
the rest of the film: “We just let it
happen.”
The Helena Markos tanztheater’s
subsequent climactic performance takes
place far from the public eye, and is
 ◗ Season of the Witch
Mukdeeprom
operates the
camera as cast
and crew
work in tight
quarters.
staged in honor of the monstrous
“Mother” Markos, who has chosen
Bannion as her next host. The
company’s entranced students enter the
immense Mutterhaus chamber, and
begin a theatrical ritual dance.
The “hair dresses” worn by the
dancers in this scene, Piersanti says,
42
“were made from real human-hair
extensions. [The dresses were] studied
one by one, by sketch first, then draped
onto a cage-like grosgrain ribbon base
to keep them as free as possible for the
movement of the ritual dance perfor-
mance. Each night after we filmed, they
were all cleaned of ‘blood’ and re-
brushed into place.”
“We are at the very heart of the
[witches’] world — a secret place, and I
wanted to create a different kind of
stage for them,” Mukdeeprom notes.
Here, Weinberg’s production design
took its cues from surrealist paintings,
contemporary art installations, and
performance art. The cinematographer
wanted the ability to capture the set all
the way up to the ceiling, so he, Galli
and crew lit the ritual stage from across
the room with 750-watt ETC Source
Fours, using a combination of 10-, 19-,
26-, 36-, and 50-degree lenses, all
through Hampshire Frost, as well as
1,000-watt PAR 64 lamps with spot
and flood bulbs.
The ritual is interrupted when
Bannion achieves a supernatural trans-
formation, which plunges the
Mutterhaus into darkness, save only for
a soft, red light just barely bright
enough to make out the grisly, incendi-
ary fate of the coven’s unbelievers in a
sequence filmed at variable frame rates
— 6, 12, 25, 50 and 100 fps — with the
intention of mixing them in post.
“I check everything with my light
meter,” Mukdeeprom says. “Even if I’m
at the deepest, darkest point of the
curve, it’s there, and because I shot on
film, I can do a digital intermediate and
have the best of both worlds.” The cine-
matographer further notes that the
aforementioned red light was in fact
achieved “in color correction by adding
red to certain regions, rather than to the
whole [room] as [an actual] red light
would do.”
In addition to processing and
dailies for Suspiria, Augustus Color also
provided film scanning, final color
correction, and mastering services. The
film’s title and credit sequences, digi-
tally created by graphic designer Dan
Perri, were filmed out to 35mm,
printed, and re-scanned at 4K resolu-
tion. Mukdeeprom’s original camera
negative was digitized as 10-bit Log
DPX files at 2K for the approximately
1,000 visual-effects shots, and 4K for
the non-visual effects shots.
“[As] Luca said to us during day
one of color grading, digital interven-
tion had to be invisible, with an analog
flavor,” Pelliccia explains. “Sayombhu
wanted deep blacks without losing
information in the details, and Luca
wanted a realistic atmosphere with gray
skies; dark, dense tones; low saturation;
and no high contrast. With extensive
use of Resolve’s RGB Mixer and Layer
Nodes, every effort was made to find the
right key, scene by scene, to enhance the
‘color feelings,’ which allowed us to
better isolate subjects — such as shad-
ows, faces, set decoration — from the
background.
“Even though he has a masterful
knowledge of cinema from the technical
point of view, Sayombhu’s priorities are
more humanistic than technical,”
Guadagnino extols. “More importantly,
he has a masterful knowledge of cinema
from the storytelling perspective — the
part of the film that has to do with
human beings and their emotions.”
“I was just very honest with the
script,” Mukdeeprom notes. He
suggests that the success of any collabo-
rative art form — be it film, music,
dance or witchcraft — ultimately
depends on the successful interaction of
a team. As he says, “You have to let
everyone show off.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219
Arriflex 535, 435, Arricam LT
Cooke Speed Panchro S2, S3, Varotal;
Angenieux Optimo;
Arri/Zeiss Super Speed
Digital Color Grade
43
 Fearless
Reporting
Robert Richardson, ASC and along with its handmaiden, heavy drinking. But war reporting
was her main addiction, fed by ambition, a hard work ethic, and
director Matthew Heineman take bravery bordering on bravado. Her scoops were legendary, her
a documentary-style approach to interviews hard-hitting, her writing alive with details. Colvin
framing a courageous journalist’s died in 2012 during the siege of Homs, Syria.
A Private War, starring Rosamund Pike as Colvin and
undertakings in war-torn regions. Jamie Dornan as her photographer, Paul Conroy, follows the
last decade of the journalist’s life, charting her professional
By Patricia Thomson triumphs and personal demons. “In this day and age, where
truth seems to be malleable and journalism is under attack, I
•|• thought it was an incredibly important film to make, celebrat-
ing this courageous woman, but also celebrating journalism,”

“T
here is always a story at the end of a rocket,” Marie
Colvin once said. That’s what lured the American-
born British Sunday Times war correspondent to the
world’s most dangerous hot spots: Syria, Iran, Iraq,
Libya, Kosovo, Chechnya, to name a few. She kept going back
after losing an eye to a grenade when covering the Tamil Tigers
in 2001 in Sri Lanka. She returned even after PTSD set in,
says director Matthew Heineman, who teamed up with
veteran cinematographer Robert Richardson, ASC, to make
his narrative-feature debut.
The biopic represents a big leap for Heineman. He’d
previously worked exclusively in documentary, making a name
for himself with Cartel Land (AC Sept. ’15), which followed
vigilante groups on both sides of the Mexican border. That

44 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 Opposite: War
correspondent
Marie Colvin
(Rosamund Pike)
witnesses the
uncovering of a
mass grave in
Iraq — one of
many real-life
experiences
depicted in the
biopic A Private
War. This page,
left: Colvin meets
photographer
Paul Conroy
(Jamie Dornan)
while covering
the war in Iraq.
Below: Director
Matthew
Heineman (left)
and
cinematographer
Robert
Richardson, ASC.

project earned an Oscar nomination and

numerous awards, including a DGA win
and two big ones for cinematography —
Unit photography by Keith Bernstein. Additional photography by Paul Conroy. All images courtesy of Aviron Pictures.

an Emmy and a Sundance prize (both of

which Heineman shared with co-cine-
matographer Matt Porwoll). His next
awards magnet was 2017’s City of Ghosts,
which tracks a group of citizen-journal-
ists in Raqqa, Syria.
After Cartel Land, the scripts
poured in — but none spoke to
Heineman until A Private War, based on
Marie Brenner’s Vanity Fair profile. The
resulting feature is also the first time the
director hasn’t shot his own footage.
He found his dream partner after
an unexpected phone call. “Bob’s agent
called and said, ‘Would you be interested
in speaking with Robert Richardson films of all time.” He’s referring to The I’ve won three Oscars and been nomi-
about shooting A Private War?’ I said, Front Line — a 1982 documentary nated for six. I’ve been doing this
‘Ummm, of course!’” Heineman recalls about the civil war in El Salvador — forever.’ No, it was always peer to peer.
with a laugh. “It was an amazing turn of which was followed by Richardson’s That’s what made it such an enjoyable
events.” war-themed scripted collaborations with experience for me.”
At the time, Richardson — best Stone, first on Salvador, then Platoon, Richardson thinks he’s the lucky
known for his award-winning work with and then Born on the Fourth of July. one, however. “Matt is incredibly impas-
Scorsese, Tarantino and Oliver Stone — Given Richardson’s extensive sioned,” the cinematographer attests.
was in Fiji shooting Baltasar Kormákur’s feature credits — and Heineman’s own “It’s so clear in his documentary work
Adrift, so they met via Skype. “He’s sort lack of them — the director thought the levels he will go to achieve a film.”
of a documentary fanatic, so we spent their partnership might be “nerve-rack- In many respects, Heineman
most of that time talking about docu- ing.” It was anything but. “There was didn’t intend for A Private War to be
mentaries,” Heineman recalls. “He always a warmth and brotherly cama- particularly different from his documen-
started out shooting documentaries, and raderie between us,” Heineman attests. tary work. He wanted the visuals to stay
shot, in my opinion, some of the best war “It was never like, ‘I’m Bob Richardson, on the ground with Colvin, fully

www.ascmag.com December 2018 45

◗ Fearless Reporting
immersed in her world. “My goal is to
humanize stories,” he says. “Obviously,
this is in the form of a narrative film, but
the goal is the same: to help people
understand what someone like Marie
Colvin goes through, but also the expe-
rience and horrors of war and what that
does to somebody.” To that end, he
continues, “I tried to bring my documen-
tary aesthetic to the film’s look and ethos.
We wanted to make it feel ‘docu-like,’
and as pure and honest as possible. That
was my North Star at every step along
the way, whether it was casting, shooting,
acting or costumes.”
The 38-day shoot took place in
London — as well as in numerous loca-
tions in Jordan, which stood in for Sri
Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and
Syria. The plan was to go lean and light-
weight, and cover the war zones mostly
with handheld camera and Steadicam.
Above: Colvin They decided upon a package from Arri
enters the Sri Rental U.K. that primarily included two
Lankan jungle. Alexa Minis, with an occasional third
Right and
below: Cast and Mini for action sequences. An Alexa XT
crew continue was used for a portion of the production.
the Sri Lanka After considering the use of an
sequence —
which was Alexa 65 to distinguish the London
actually shot in scenes, they ultimately stuck with a single
Jordan — after format. Except for action sequences, the
sunset.
production was largely a single-camera
shoot. The Mini units recorded 3.4K
ArriRaw in Open Gate mode, with the
frame cropped to 2.39:1 for a 2K release.
They recorded to 256GB CFast 2.0
memory cards, and backed up on set
using a Codex Media Vault.
To allow Richardson to stay light
on his feet and shoot documentary-style,
the Mini was often stripped down to its
bare essentials — lens and pistol grip —
while battery, transmitter and additional
lenses were tucked inside a backpack
carried by 1st AC Peter Byrne and 2nd
AC Kat Spencer. “We had [Arri/Zeiss]
Super Speed MKII and Standard Speed
primes, which are quite small, that I just
carried in a box,” Byrne says. “I had two
boxes in my backpack, so I had all the
lenses and could go anywhere.” The 1st
AC is also quick to note, “Without Kat
backing me up, I couldn’t have done the
job.”

46 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 That glass also facilitated another
doc-inspired goal. “I tried to emulate
natural light as much as possible, and not
light where it was not necessary,”
Richardson says. “I wanted the speed for
night.” Night scenes often had the lens
wide open, with the camera’s ISO set to
1,600 or even 2,000, giving the filmmak-
ers the wherewithal to light by flashlight,
firelight or computer screen.
But the real workhorses, especially
in Jordan, were two compact handheld
zooms — an Angenieux Optimo 15-
40mm and a 28-76mm (both T2.6).
“They mostly came out of my experience
on Adrift, which was almost all handheld
zooms, and that came out of World War
Z, actually,” Richardson notes.
“Those two were really our go-
to’s, because they were lightweight and
gave us the flexibility to grab lots of shots
quickly,” Byrne says. “It sounds silly, but
not having to keep changing lenses
makes a massive difference, especially
when you’re in those dusty environ-
ments.” Rounding out the package was a
12x Optimo 24-290mm (T2.8), which
lived on the B camera.
The material was monitored in
Rec 709. “DIT Alex Golding was on set
to check that there was no damage to the
cards, which were sent twice daily to
[Shed colorist] Fergus Hally to begin
grading, when possible,” Richardson
says. “Fergus was set up in a room next to
editorial in a hotel in Jordan [where] the Top: On location in Jordan, Steadicam operator Shaun Cobley frames the action from behind
crew was [staying].” The director carried Dornan, while shooting a scene set in Afghanistan. Above: Dornan confers with the real-life
Conroy, who served as a consultant on the production.
a handheld monitor, and another was
tucked away for the rest of the team. that if we didn’t grade it ahead of time, Throughout the shoot,
Heineman notes, “We occasionally you’d walk into a final with weeks of Richardson placed himself where he felt
[had] a video village with monitors — work,” he says. most natural: behind the camera. “Every
not every day, though.” “Bob came up with this look for movie I’ve ever shot, I’ve operated.
Byrne adds, “In many of these the film that he applied in the dailies, Whether or not I had to pay for an oper-
locations, we wanted to be able to shoot which had a burned-out, bleached look ator, the majority of shots in my career
360 degrees, so that meant leaving a for the war zones and a much more cool- are mine,” he says. “I’m not just a director
minimum amount of equipment blue look for London,” says Heineman. of photography who watches monitors.
around.” That was especially true in the “We pulled that back a bit in the final, Without operating, I’m not able to see, I
desert’s wide-open spaces, where the but there’s definitely a different feel to don’t know how to light — and princi-
camera truck, catering and everything the home front and the war front.” pally, I don’t know how to have a rela-
else had to be miles away; small essen- Colorist Matt Watson performed tionship with the cast. I have to look into
tials were hidden behind rocks. the final grade with FilmLight Baselight their eyes.”
With only five days budgeted for v5 at Shed in London. Watson graded This was the second consecutive
the final grade, Richardson faithfully the London dailies as well, while Hally production, following Adrift, on which
stayed on top of grading dailies. “I knew handled dailies in Jordan. Richardson had the camera mostly on

www.ascmag.com December 2018 47

◗ Fearless Reporting
Heineman
trains his eyes
skyward as
Richardson
sits atop a
Grip Factory
Munich GF-16
camera crane.
his shoulder. “As a cameraman, I’m
instinctive — or it’s what I attempt to
achieve when operating,” he says. “To
shoot a film in this vérité manner was a
joy — a liberation of sorts, you might
say. Having just done back-to-back
features primarily in this manner, I real-
ized that a precision of composition and
quality of lighting would be lost, but
that loss was a gain for the authenticity
we were attempting to achieve. A loss is
not always a loss. The goal was to be
vérité in style, and I did not want a
tailored image that felt false to reality,
nor did Matt. This extended to how we
approached the DI — to leave what we
captured on the screen and not clean it
up to the level one would normally
attempt. That was not easy for me to do
as a cinematographer.”
On Steadicam and the occasional
B camera was Shaun Cobley. And
though the director himself pitched in to
operate a few shots, Heineman — as
difficult as it might have been — essen-
tially let go of the dual role of director-
operator that he was accustomed to,
since he “obviously trusted and appreci-
ated Bob’s skill,” the director says. “It’s
amazing how fast Bob can move. When
we’re not shooting [scenes], he’s always
capturing little ‘documentary’ moments
48 December 2018
and cutaways, helping to bring that loca-
tion to life, especially in war zones.”
One scene in which those ingre-
dients come together in a powerful way
is when Colvin and Conroy witness the
uncovering of a mass grave in Iraq —
proof of Saddam Hussein’s atrocities.
Villagers gather to watch a bulldozer dig
in the sand. An argument between
Colvin and Iraqi police flares up, but it’s
interrupted by the wails of women after
a skull is unearthed. Close-ups follow:
hands pulling body parts out of the sand,
Colvin’s anguished face, burka-clad
widows grieving.
“That was basically shot in real
time,” the director says, “from morning
till night, using the trajectory of the sun
to dictate the scene. It was predomi-
nantly handheld — Bob at his best.”
The sequence was captured entirely
under natural light.
During that long day, Richardson
relied on a dependable ally — backlight.
“If you’re going to shoot a sequence,
backlight allows you the most affordable
way to continue a day from various
angles and [have the footage] appear to
[take place] at the same time,” he says.
Gaffer Mark Taylor elaborates,
“After we had recce’d this location, we
sat down and made detailed graphs and
American Cinematographer
charts, and plotted where the sun was
going to be at any given time. For every
setup, we always shot towards the sun.
When the sun was at its highest, Bob
would move in and do lower and wider
shots, because that’s when the light was
at its least flattering. As the sun was near
the end of the day and we were down in
the grave, we used the supporting artists
gathered around the grave as a ‘flag,’
essentially, with the sun behind them,
which in turn created a natural negative
fill inside the grave itself.”
At various points, Richardson
pressed the 12x lens into service and
picked off shots of the people looking
on.
During the digging, “there had to
be 40 or 50 shots I did in a very docu-
mentary way — hands, faces, gestures,
left, right,” the cinematographer says.
Byrne attests that by the end of the day,
“we had a record number of shots —
well over 100, and probably double that.”
But what sticks in everyone’s
mind is the raw emotion of the day.
Heineman made a point of hiring
nonprofessional extras from the coun-
tries being depicted, so in this case, they
came from Iraq. Richardson recalls,
“There were these women who had
gone through something akin to this,
◗ Fearless Reporting
and they started crying and wailing and
calling out their past.” Indeed, a chant of
mourning broke out, unprompted by the
director. “It was complicated to shoot,
because you are literally in the midst of a
docu experience,” the cinematographer
adds. “I shot it as if I was a documentary
filmmaker. I tried to capture their expe-
riences, but also Rosamund’s and
Jamie’s.” The director notes, “I think that
energy we felt on the day is translated to
the screen.”
Adding to the reality quotient was
Paul Conroy himself — a constant pres-
ence on the Jordanian locations. The war
photographer and Heineman had
become friends after Conroy hosted a
screening for City of Ghosts. On A
Private War, Conroy was “integral in
preproduction and in bringing authen-
ticity to the script,” the director says.
Conroy then came on board as an offi-
cial consultant during production. His
presence led to some emotional encoun-
ters. “During the Syria sequences, our
stunt man and one of our extras came up
to Paul, having recognized him from the
media center in Homs, where Marie
died,” says Heineman. “He was an
amazing inspiration to everyone. We
were telling a real story, and here’s this
guy who actually lived through it, help-
ing us do so.”
The decimated city of Homs was
a key location for the final sections of the
movie. It was also a rare case of the
production staying put for a week — as
prior to this, company moves had
usually come once or twice a day. The
stand-in for Homs was discovered by
Heineman when he was en route to the
airport during an early scout in Jordan. It
was a derelict construction site with a
dozen or so four-story apartment build-
ings, abandoned before the outer walls
had gone up. “It had this amazing
energy and a scary, haunting emptiness
to it,” Heineman recalls. “Literally, I
knew right then I wanted to shoot
Homs there.”
“When we all saw it, we thought
Top and middle: Crewmembers keep pace with Pike while carrying a length of speed rail that Matt was insane,” Richardson says.
supports the underslung camera. Above: Richardson hand-holds the camera for an exterior that “There are literally just concrete founda-
takes place in Iraq.
tions that are empty, nothing within.

50 December 2018 American Cinematographer

◗ Fearless Reporting
There were no streetlights, no electricity.
Right: Conroy waits
out an attack in
But Matt had this confidence. He saw it
Homs, Syria. Below: in his head, and he created it.”
The photographer Production designer Sophie
documents a group
of women and
Becher dressed the exteriors with rubble,
children trying to and turned interior parts into sets for the
flee the siege of Homs media center and FSA safe
Homs. Bottom: An
explosion erupts in
house, the widows’ basement hideaway,
front of Colvin and the makeshift medical clinic, and a
Conroy. An bombed-out version of Colvin’s
abandoned
construction site in
bedroom as seen in her nightmares. “It
Jordan served as took two weeks to put in the power cable
stand-in for the and dimming-control systems,” the
decimated city of
Homs.
gaffer says. “Bob wanted the site to feel
like there were still people living there,
hiding out amongst the chaos and ruins.
We used sodium fixtures on some of the
buildings, and the same fixtures on the
floor around the rubble of the bombed
buildings, as though there were still
some electrical power remaining. We
also used some fluorescent fittings in
broken and damaged signs on shop
fronts, bare practical bulbs in some of the
windows, and small clusters of flickering
festoons deep in the back of the build-
ings to give us points of light. The main
sequence of entering Homs at night was
predominantly lit by special-effects fires
and explosions, and flame bars strategi-
cally placed in key points within the
sequence.”
In general, Richardson says, “we
had an extremely small HMI package
and tungsten package in Jordan.”
Daylight ranged from 18Ks to M8s, and
tungsten from 12-light Dinos to 150-
watt Dedolights, fleshed out with an
array of 100-watt practical bulbs.
“Basically, when we went to Jordan,
Bob’s idea was to not light anything, just
to control what we had,” Taylor says. “All
the night interiors are predominantly lit
with practicals. We just wanted to make
it as natural and real as possible.”
Production lights came from two
rental houses in Jordan, supplemented
by a container from PMBS Lighting
outside London, which also supplied the
U.K. half of the shoot. Among the items
shipped were Aladdin kits, LED kits
and ribbons, and various textiles.
Lighting Homs interiors required
some dexterity. For the bare-bones

52 December 2018 American Cinematographer

◗ Fearless Reporting
Richardson and
Heineman study a
monitor while
working on a day-
exterior scene in
Jordan. “There was
always a warmth
and brotherly
camaraderie
between us,” the
director says of the
collaboration. “It
was always peer to
peer. That’s what
made it such an
enjoyable
experience for me.”
media center, where Colvin filed her
stories and did a final live feed to broad-
casters, “we designed a lighting system
from reference photos that looked very
improvised, but was actually quite
sophisticated,” Taylor says. “[Electrician]
Jason Reynier worked alongside the
production-design team and our local
rigging gaffer, Ezz Islam, to install
cabling, which led back to a dimming
system that gave us control of every
practical lamp in the control room. To
enhance the light emitted from the
computer screens, we used 12-volt and
24-volt LED tape stuck onto the
screens. To enable that, my best boy,
Danny Griffiths, had to find a specialist
electronics shop that could manufacture
specific 12-volt and 24-volt batteries to
power the LED tape. We also used a
number of Aladdin Eye-Lites.”
At its most minimal, lighting in
Homs involved only flashlights or fire.
Such was the case with the re-creation of
the abandoned storm drain that ran
under the city, which the rebels would
use to access their hideaway. The Jordan-
based stand-in was a Roman-era water
tunnel in Umm Qais, which is carved
out of limestone 5 meters underground.
“The logistics in that tunnel were
horrendous, because there were no
radios working,” says Byrne. And as the
tunnel was barely wide enough to
accommodate the width of a human
being, Richardson notes that “it proved
exceedingly difficult” to shoot there with
54 December 2018
either Steadicam or the cinematogra-
pher’s handheld camera.
To light the coming and going of
rebels and reporters through the tunnel,
“Danny sourced every [available] flash-
light in Jordan,” the gaffer says. “Also,
one of my floor sparks from the U.K.
brought some of our own powerful LED
flashlights to Jordan in his luggage.
Flashlights were our primary light in the
tunnel, along with carefully placed
special-effects flame bars and fires. We
also used some [Arri] SkyPanel S60s
bounced above the tunnel [and] back
through small tented holes above to
create one small area of moonlight.”
For much of the movie, the
camera stays close to Colvin. One
powerful shot breaks this rule, however:
the opening and closing view of Homs
in ruins. Both veering from the docu-
mentary ethos and incorporating visual
effects, the shot begins with the camera
looking down at the rubble around the
media center after Colvin and Conroy
have been hit by an RPG. The camera
then rises, moving past the bombed-out
building and finally tipping upward to
reveal the whole city — a landscape of
smoking destruction that stretches for
miles.
“That shot is very symbolic for
me,” the director attests. “You never
really get to see the devastation, given
how we shot the film. It’s always through
Marie’s perspective — you’re racing
between buildings, you’re driving
American Cinematographer
through the streets, it’s dark. So this was
an opportunity to pull out and see this
utter, horrific devastation that
surrounded her.
“Due to various constraints, it
became apparent that it couldn’t be all
drone, and it couldn’t be all crane,”
Heineman continues. The shot thus
began with a Grip Factory Munich GF-
16 crane carrying the Mini and 25mm
Super Speed. Then a heavy-lifter drone
took over, and captured “basically every-
thing 30 feet above the pull-up and out
of the buildings, and the tilt up,” the
director notes. Sunlight was controlled
on the crane shot using 20'x20' frames
“skinned with unbleached muslin and
rigged to a couple of Manitou
Telehandlers,” Taylor notes.
Because the hero location was
surrounded by desert, it was clear from
the outset that a visual-effects solution
would be needed once the camera rose
above the lower dressed floors. A combi-
nation of CGI and matte paintings came
into play, all based on reference footage
and still photos of Homs shot in Syria.
“Bashar al-Assad is still assailing a
generation of human beings,”
Richardson says of the enduring rele-
vance of Colvin’s story. “Colvin spoke
out about it, but it’s still taking place. She
died giving her voice.” The cinematogra-
pher puts her in a class with Margaret
Bourke-White, Martha Gellhorn,
Christiane Amanpour, Clarissa Ward
and Zeina Khodr — chroniclers of the
travesties of their day. “In this time, we
need Marie. We need her desperately,
and that’s why I feel it’s an important
film.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Mini, Alexa XT
Arri/Zeiss Super Speed;
Angenieux Optimo
CW Sonderoptic has become Leitz.
Over a century ago in Wetzlar, Germany, Leica founder Ernst Leitz began a tradition of optical
excellence that revolutionized photography and directly informed our design of the Leica cine lenses.
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www.leitz-cine.com
 Into Chaos
Eric Steelberg, ASC and director
Jason Reitman adopt period aesthetics
to tell the story of fallen presidential
hopeful Gary Hart.
By Mark Dillon
•|•
T
he Front Runner recounts the 1987 collapse of Gary
Hart’s White House ambitions amid scandalous allega-
tions, while capturing a pivotal moment when political
journalism first overlapped with tabloid sensationalism.
The movie opens in 1984, as Hart (Hugh Jackman) loses his
first bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidacy. Yet
three years later, the telegenic, articulate Colorado senator
rebounds as the favorite to lead the Democrats to the Oval
Office. This threatens to come undone, however, as rumors of
extramarital affairs hang over his seemingly harmonious
family life with wife Lee (Vera Farmiga) and daughter
Andrea (Kaitlyn Dever).
The situation comes to a head when Miami Herald
56 December 2018 American Cinematographer
reporters confront him about an alleged relationship with
Florida marketing professional Donna Rice (Sara Paxton).
The story is picked up by The Washington Post and other
outlets, throwing Hart’s campaign into a tailspin — and
campaign manager Bill Dixon ( J.K. Simmons) into damage
control. As much as Hart tries to keep his public dialogue on
message, relentless media grilling about the nature of his
acquaintance with Rice threatens both his marriage and polit-
ical aspirations.
Director Jason Reitman learned of the saga only a
couple of years ago on a Radiolab episode, and was riveted. “It
was a real-life thriller in which the presumed next president of
the United States wound up in a dark alleyway in the middle
of the night with a group of reporters, and no one knew what
to do because no one had ever been there before,” Reitman
tells AC after the movie screened at the Toronto International
Film Festival.
“It has connective tissue with 2018 [in terms of ] what
journalists cover and how they cover it, and how that has
changed journalists, campaign workers, voters and readers.
Here is a story from 30 years ago that planted a seed that led
to today.”
Reitman’s longtime cinematographer, Eric Steelberg,
ASC, recalls the director pitching the idea to him and 1st AD
 Jason Blumenfeld when they were
shooting the 2018 comedy-drama Tully
in Vancouver. “We thought it sounded
incredible,” the cinematographer says.
“This was just before the [U.S. presiden-
tial] election in 2016. It was timely. We
were excited to get the ball rolling on it
as soon as we were done with Tully.”
The movie is based on the book
All the Truth Is Out: The Week Politics
Went Tabloid by Matt Bai, who co-wrote
the script with political-campaign
veteran Jay Carson and Reitman. From
the start, the director knew he wanted to
shoot on motion-picture stocks, after he
and Steelberg had captured digitally on
Young Adult, Labor Day, Men, Women &
Children and Tully.
To get a sense of what campaigns
look like behind the scenes, the film- Opposite: Presidential
makers watched the 1993 documentary hopeful Gary Hart
(Hugh Jackman) finds
The War Room, directed by Chris himself in the midst of
Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, and a media frenzy when
shot by Pennebaker, Nick Doob and allegations of an
extramarital affair
Kevin Rafferty. And despite The Front become front-page
Runner’s 1980s setting, Reitman felt the news in The Front
story was best suited to the aesthetics of Runner. This page,
above: Hart comforts
1970s political dramas, which he also his wife, Lee (Vera
screened. He says their “North Star” was Farmiga). Left: Director
Michael Ritchie’s 1972 comedy-drama Jason Reitman (left)
and cinematographer
The Candidate, starring Robert Redford Eric Steelberg, ASC.
and shot in a naturalistic style by Victor Below: Cast and crew
J. Kemper, ASC. rehearse the film’s
opening sequence.
“In that film, the lead actors,
supporting cast, background actors,
Unit photography by Frank Masi, SMPSP, courtesy of Columbia Pictures.

physical locations and vehicles are alive,

wild and messy in a way that real life is,”
the director explains. “And we thought
we had a story where the morality is
gray. We have a presidential candidate
— who has big ideas but has made
mistakes — surrounded by people
trying to figure out what is right, and we
needed to present it in the most realistic
way possible. The idea was to sit the
audience down in each of these rooms
so they can decide for themselves what
is right and wrong.”
Reitman also wanted to capture
the grain and warmth of those ’70s
films, and as much as possible stick to
production technology from that era.
The initial thought was to shoot on
16mm stocks. ➣

www.ascmag.com December 2018 57

◗ Into Chaos
are so good, and so much detail can be
scanned from them, that you just see
Right: Hart everything. I actually wanted to see not
meets Donna as much, and by underexposing the film
Rice (Sara
Paxton) for the by half or one stop and pushing it, I
first time think I got there.”
aboard the The filmmakers shot with
yacht Monkey
Business. Panavision’s Panaflex Millennium XL2
Below: The camera with HD Video Tap. Their pref-
candidate erence was to stick to long takes when-
arrives at a
convention just ever possible — with dialogue
after news frequently overlapping, à la Robert
breaks of Rice’s Altman — but cutting into close-ups
having spent
the night in his was sometimes required, so they usually
townhouse. ran two cameras. Matthew Moriarty
was A-camera and Steadicam operator
— although the director mostly avoided
Steadicam — and Cale Finot handled B
camera.
The production tracked down
vintage Sony broadcast cameras for two
scenes in particular — when Hart
shoots a campaign ad, and when Miami
Herald reporter Tom Fiedler (Steve
Zissis) appears intercut with actual
footage of Nightline host Ted Koppel in
an interview. “We spent more time
making those old video cameras work
than anything else on the shoot,”
Steelberg says. “We had to bring in
seasoned video engineers to keep them
up and running.”
The cinematographer’s produc-
tion office was in the art-department
area, keeping him close to the mock-ups
and photo research managed by produc-
tion designer Steve Saklad and his team.
“We had [shot] digital so much, film was processed at Kodak’s new Saklad, a frequent collaborator of
but here we were going period,” Atlanta lab, and then shipped to EC3 in Steelberg’s, went to great lengths to
Steelberg says. “We tested 16mm Los Angeles where dailies were scanned accurately re-create locations such as
against 35mm, but our producers ended and colored by Company 3’s Dave Lee. Hart’s campaign headquarters and his
up being not as comfortable with The footage was then uploaded for cabin in aptly named Troublesome
[16mm], and neither were we. We have viewing on iPads via a Light Iron dailies Gulch, Colo. The cinematographer was
a big ensemble cast and quite a few system. also in ongoing communication with
crowd scenes, and in some of those, The force processing, Steelberg costume designer Danny Glicker —
16mm didn’t have enough resolution on explains, “was based on testing. I noticed another regular partner — throughout
people’s faces, particularly in low light. that in the movies Jason referenced, preproduction, even sending fabrics for
So we opted for 3-perf Super 35mm.” there was never much range in the shad- Hart’s suits back and forth to see how
The filmmakers shot predomi- ows. It would go to black pretty quickly. certain stripes would register on film.
nantly on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 And when they would try to get more Ahead of eight weeks of principal
color negative pushed one or two stops, detail out of the shadows, they would photography — starting in September
and 200T 5213 pushed one stop for print up a bit so the shadows got a little 2017 in and around Atlanta and
daylight exteriors and for visual-effects grainy, foggy and desaturated. I tried to Savannah, Ga. — Steelberg and
shots requiring greater resolution. The do the same thing. Modern film stocks Reitman embarked on their usual

58 December 2018 American Cinematographer

◗ Into Chaos
process of visiting every location with
stand-ins and taking still photographs of
every shot that would appear in the
movie. The cinematographer notes that
even the “messy” feel of sequences at
campaign HQ and media scrums was
composed with great precision.
“We were following the script, but
we didn’t know from take to take what
the operators were going to find,”
Steelberg explains. “We would watch
rehearsal and the operators would learn
who’s doing what, and as we went on
they were able to finesse as the actors
developed their pacing. The operators
would then be able to choreograph
camera moves, zooming and focus-
pulling.” The cameras were mostly on
dollies — and the director of photogra-
Above and right:
The production phy credits dolly grip Sean Devine and
films a scene in B-dolly grip Beau Bellanich with their
which Hart exacting work.
delivers a
campaign speech Zooming was embraced as a key
on the side of a part of the film’s style. “We’re zooming
mountain. Below: in and out during conversations, which I
Multiple cameras
roll for a scene thought was cool,” Steelberg says. “I’ve
with Jackman, always liked zooming. It’s a tool that’s
Farmiga and J.K. not often used lately, but here we had a
Simmons
(portraying Hart’s good opportunity to do it. I usually use
campaign primes, but [it’s] fun to try new things
manager, Bill and see how it changes your approach.”
Dixon).
Zooms were thus the production’s
go-to lenses. The package included
compact spherical Angenieux Optimo
15-40mm (T2.6), 28-76mm (T2.6) and
45-120mm (T2.8) zooms, as well as
Panavision’s Primo 24-275mm 11:1
SLZ11 (T2.8) — all modified to
slightly decrease sharpness and contrast.
Steelberg and Reitman generally
preferred shooting at 40mm, and some-
times in the 30mm-35mm range. They
used ND filters and a grad filter on a
couple of occasions, but no lens diffu-
sion. The production mostly shot wide
open, which “worked out well for the
amount of light I wanted to use and the
amount of contrast it gave us,” Steelberg
notes.
The crew also carried Panavision
PVintage Primes for night exteriors,
including the pivotal alleyway scene
outside Hart’s Washington, D.C., town-
house, where reporters ask if Rice had

60 December 2018 American Cinematographer

◗ Into Chaos
Reporters
confront Hart to
ask about his
overnight guest.
spent the night there. Steelberg says the
scene, shot in Savannah, was the most
complicated to light.
“Jason was so specific,” he recalls.
“He wanted the reporters to appear out
of darkness. He didn’t want them
silhouetted, but wanted to know they
were there — then they gradually step
into the light. It was tricky figuring out
that transition from dark, to slightly lit,
to fully lit, and the actors all have differ-
ent skin tones.”
Further complicating matters,
notes gaffer Dan Riffel, “In Savannah,
the trees and foliage are so thick that it’s
hard to get light from high lifts through
it all. So the practice of hanging our own
2K open-face streetlights [on existing
light and utility poles] under that
canopy became a standard M.O.”
Night workhorses for lighting the
actors included Mole-Richardson 1K
62 December 2018
Baby and Tweenie Fresnels, often with
snoots. “When we loaded out of the
rental house, I had all these Fresnels on
my list,” Riffel recalls. “I said, ‘I want the
oldest Mole-Richardson lights. I don’t
care if they’re rusting, as long as they
work.”
The production hung pipe rigs
off a utility pole to get crosslight on
Hart and the reporters, while the inte-
rior and exterior lantern lights of nearby
homes provided practical highlights.
Blondes were hung from telephone
poles to create pools of light down the
alley, and condors — with six PAR cans
each — bookended the space and lit the
power lines in the background. “Instead
of using big, monster lights that blow
out everything at night, it’s nice to just
stack in some old-fashioned 1K PAR
cans and pick out pieces,” Riffel says.
The movie opens with another
American Cinematographer
night street exterior — a nearly three-
minute-long take set outside a hotel in
1984, as it becomes apparent that Hart
will lose the primary to former Vice
President Walter Mondale.
The camera, on a SuperTechno
50 crane on dolly track, starts on an
open news van and then, using crane
moves and zooms, angles toward a
group of TV media swarming
Mondale and his associates as they
weave their way into the hotel lobby,
just as members of Hart’s team exit.
The camera then passes a reporter
giving an on-camera interview, returns
to the news van, and zooms up toward
the window of a room in a hotel across
the street, where, inside, Hart absorbs
the loss.
The ambitious shot was mapped
out in a 3D model to see where they
could move the crane within their
limited space. They did several runs
during the day, then had to clear the
streets to accommodate rush-hour traf-
fic — as they were occupying a busy
Atlanta intersection — and then at
night they did it all over again. It took
nine attempts to achieve the shot.
“We figured since we were
rehearsing it during the day, we should
shoot it in case something went wrong
at night,” Steelberg recalls. “But we
always preferred it at night because it
would look more dynamic, and the
following scene — where we cut into
the hotel room — played better in the
evening.”
Some illumination came from car
headlights, while the lion’s share was
provided by the TV reporters’ camera
lights. Two-light and four-light Molefay
units on period-correct stands, and
Mickey-Mole 1K and Mighty-Mole
2K floodlights also supported the scene.
A large bounce frame across the street
provided ambience. Adding some HMI
color temperature to the tungsten,
Riffel’s team also set up Arri M90s on a
rooftop across the street to splash some
separating backlight on the crowd.
The actors in the van were lit by
practicals, which included the glow from
period-correct tube TV monitors. The
◗ Into Chaos
Steelberg preps a tracking shot — for a scene in which Hart joins an ax-throwing contest
while campaigning on the road — with (from left) A-camera operator Matthew Moriarty,
boom operator Craig Dollinger and 1st AC Sebastian Vega.
crew had also replaced the van’s swivel-
head globes with punchier MR12 halo-
gen bulbs. Ground-level Source Four
ellipsoidal spots ran streaks of light up
the building where Hart and his team
are camped out.
Some innovative thinking kept
the camera moving for a scene in which
Hart rides a limo to a convention where
he is to speak just after news of his
overnight guest has broken. He’s not
prepared for the mob of onlookers and
reporters he must navigate upon his
arrival. For this sequence, an XL2 was
stripped down to its basic elements and
held by Finot in the car, which had a
door removed to give the operator more
space. When the vehicle stopped and
Jackman got out, Finot handed off the
camera to Moriarty, who was standing
among the crowd on the sidewalk, and
Moriarty continued following Jackman
to the door of the building.
“We took the viewfinder off the
camera; used a small, onboard battery;
and operated it off a little video-assist
monitor,” Steelberg explains. “We put a
200-foot magazine on it, which gives
you less than two minutes of runtime,
and had to design the shot to fit that.
We made it so the operators could hold
the camera with the palms of their
64 December 2018
hands. It was still heavy but it worked
very well.”
The production had to balance
the car’s dark interior with the bright-
white building in front of which the
vehicle parks. Because they needed
battery-operated lights on the car, they
put a high-output, energy-efficient Arri
SkyPanel LED on the hood. A K 5600
Joker-Bug 800 HMI pushed in
daylight, and a custom-made 20-watt
HMI Fresnel in a Pepper housing gave
Jackman an edge light.
While tending to his duties on
the Netflix feature Dolemite Is My
Name, Steelberg made time to provide
feedback during The Front Runner’s
final grade. He had also prepared a
LUT for the grade, which he describes
as “skewing slightly warm and slightly
lifting the blacks.” The cinematographer
was happy with the shot-matching
performed by EFilm colorist Natasha
Leonnet.
The negative was scanned at
EFilm on an ArriScan, using the
double-flash process, at a resolution of
2048x1156. Leonnet employed
Autodesk Lustre 2018 software, work-
ing with 10-bit DPX files. She aimed to
maintain the balance between natural-
ism and beauty that the filmmakers had
American Cinematographer
strived for — a look inspired by The
Candidate as well as Gordon Willis,
ASC’s work on the feature All the
President’s Men.
A sequence in which Hart first
meets Rice aboard the infamous yacht
Monkey Business — shot at Tybee
Island, Ga., which stood in for Miami
— has a glow, achieved by shooting at
golden hour, that not only evokes an
image of paradise, but plays the scene
like a faded memory. “Jason associates
Miami with a certain richness, so the
yellows and cyans were amplified, and
that was [intended] to bring you into
that time,” Leonnet notes.
“At the Miami Herald office,
there is that same color separation and
an aqua mix,” the colorist continues. “At
The Washington Post offices, there is a
warmth in the skin tones to help create
separation [between the characters and
their] environment. In the campaign
office, the richness is pulled back
because those environments tend to be a
bit more ‘drab.’”
The Front Runner marks the
seventh feature that Reitman and
Steelberg have made together, and the
first based on actual events. As always,
the director was impressed by
Steelberg’s focus. “It requires the sacri-
fice of a ton of crew to make one of
these movies possible,” Reitman offers.
“What I love about Eric is that all of our
conversations are about the right thing
— storytelling — and he’s interested in
everyone on set having as good an expe-
rience as we do.” ●
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
3-perf Super 35mm
Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2
Angenieux Optimo;
Panavision Primo Zoom,
PVintage Prime
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
200T 5213
 Partners in Crime
Sean Bobbitt, BSC and director
Steve McQueen discuss their latest
collaboration, the Chicago-set
crime-drama Widows.
By Rachael K. Bosley
•|•
W
idows follows three women who become unlikely part-
ners in crime following the deaths of their husbands,
who were among Chicago’s most notorious criminals.
Previously unacquainted, Veronica (Viola Davis),
Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and Alice (Elizabeth Debicki)
66 December 2018 American Cinematographer
band together to change their fortunes after Veronica finds
detailed plans for her husband’s next job, a heist worth $5
million.
Directed by Steve McQueen and shot by Sean Bobbitt,
BSC, Widows is adapted from a series that changed the land-
scape of British television in 1983. “The show was incredibly
popular and very memorable,” says Bobbitt, who watched it at
the time. “It was the first TV drama of its scale written by a
woman [Lynda La Plante] and the first of its scale that had
leading ladies as opposed to leading men. On British TV in
the early Eighties, you did not see independent women
making their own way, particularly in the criminal world.”
For McQueen, another fan of the show, it resonated for
other reasons. “The women were trying to make their own
way through a world dominated by people who had ideas
about them before they even opened their mouths,” says the
 director. “I was going through that as a
black child in London at a time of high
racial tension.”
McQueen and Bobbitt began
collaborating 18 years ago on one of
McQueen’s art projects. In separate
interviews, the two recently spoke with
AC about Widows, their fourth feature
together; what follows are excerpts from
those conversations.

American Cinematographer:
Why did you set this story in Chicago?
Steve McQueen: I wanted to
steep the fictional narrative in a contem-
porary, modern city that reflects differ-
ent aspects of our everyday lives, just
heightened. Chicago has all I needed —
race, class, policing, political corruption.
My first museum show was at Chicago’s
Museum of Contemporary Art in 1996,
and I’ve been going back for 22 years.
Sean Bobbitt, BSC: There’s
quite a unique mixture in Chicago.
Extreme wealth and extreme poverty
are literally cheek by jowl, and it’s this
incredible modern city with wonderful
art galleries, theaters and orchestras, yet
on the South Side and the West Side
there are more people being killed than
on just about any other city in America.
There is also the political corruption,
which, oddly, many people in Chicago
Unit photography by Merrick Morton. All images courtesy of 20th Century Fox.
Opposite, from left: Veronica (Viola Davis), Belle (Cynthia Erivo), Linda (Michelle Rodriguez) and
Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) find a common bond following the deaths of their criminal husbands in
the feature Widows. Three of the four then partner to carry out what would have been
Veronica’s husband’s next job. This page: Director Steve McQueen (left) and cinematographer
Sean Bobbitt, BSC plan their next move.
in a city and get a real idea of the city? shooting. I take a lot of stills, grade
Chinatown is one example, and that was them, and show them to Steve and
our main reference in terms of other others so we can talk about the color of
films. I love the way its noir narrative is the space and the film’s color themes. It’s
steeped in the politics of 1930s L.A., a very exciting stage as it all slowly starts
and the way the main character winds to come to life.
his way through the city discovering all How did you approach
these little details. More importantly, Veronica’s apartment?
there’s a sense of the city as a matrix — Bobbitt: That was quite a unique
you have one idea of it, but there’s location, and the way the light worked
another idea going on at the same time, in there was amazing. The apartment

seem quite proud of. [Laughs.] All those
factors combined make it a sort of
microcosm of what’s happening in
America right now.
What was the creative brief for
the film?
McQueen: My brief to Sean and
[production designer] Adam
Stockhausen was, ‘Show me the reality.
Let’s embrace what’s there.’ That meant
capturing Chicago’s sense of expanse
and sense of enclosure — the highest
levels, like the skyscraper where
Veronica lives, and the lowest levels, the
projects, where you might see a 12-foot
fence around a schoolyard. There are
more than 60 locations in this film, and
you get a real sense of the city’s extrem-
ities and texture; that’s a credit to Adam
and Sean.
When do you ever see a movie set
just below the surface. If you want to
find it, all you have to do is look.
Bobbitt: Visually, the key was to
try to introduce a reality to the world the
widows inhabit and find strong, power-
ful frames within which the action could
happen. It wasn’t about a lot of shots
and quick cutting. If a simple pan would
move the story forward, then that would
be the solution.
Steve tries to get me in early on
prep, and I had about 10 weeks on this,
which I was very grateful for. We had
time to really look at the locations
together. With Steve, the whole idea is
to find the right space for the actors. I
visit a location multiple times to get a
sense of how the existing light works
there and then figure out how we’re
going to adjust it, capture it or hold it in
a way that’s relevant to the scenes we’re
overlooks Lake Michigan, and there’s
nothing on three sides of it, so the sky
and the lake affect the light coming in.
The walls are all white. On clear-blue-
sky days, there’s an amazing blue to the
natural light, which turns incredibly
warm as you drop into the evening. The
apartment is primarily north-facing, so
if it was sunny, a beautiful hard light
would come in from the back. But most
of the time there was a stunning, soft
ambience, and we tried very hard to
schedule our work so we could be there
for that light. We augmented it with
little bits of bounce here and there, but
the apartment had a low ceiling that’s in
shot a lot of the time, so we had to be
rather crafty about where we put the
light. We found that small China balls
worked quite well.
The husbands’ hideout, where

www.ascmag.com December 2018 67

◗ Partners in Crime
the women meet to plot their job,
doesn’t feel like any other space in the
movie.
Bobbitt: That was the idea. The
lighting is pretty clean everywhere else
in the film, but in the hideout it’s mixed
and grungy. It’s a very ‘male’ environ-
ment, which was interesting for the
widows to inhabit. We threw in an
incredible mix of color temperatures,
from cold turquoise hues to very warm
ambers, and Adam complemented that
with details in the set dressing and bits
on the walls.
The location was a garage with
no windows, and the existing lighting
was all fluorescent and very stark. It was
a matter of turning all that down and
making it a lot more interesting.
[Gaffer] Bill Newell removed about 75
percent of the fluorescent tubes and
replaced them with a mix of cool white
and warm white, and we also mixed up
tubes that had different levels of green.
A lot of those lights ended up in-shot.
Then we used small Fresnels, 650-watt
and 250-watt, for little accents. That
mix was the overall fill, and all those
lights were on dimmers set at slightly
different levels. Then, to make sure the
flesh tones didn’t go too blue or too
green or too warm, we keyed the
women with a central tungsten China
ball that was dimmed down just enough
to provide a soft, flattering, warm light.
The scene between Jack
Mulligan [Colin Farrell] and Siobhan
[Molly Kunz], after he makes a
campaign stop, is remarkable. The
camera stays outside their car for the
entire conversation, which ends when
they arrive back at his house. How did
that evolve from the page to the
screen?
McQueen: When you’ve worked
with someone for 18 years, you inspire
each other. Sometimes I don’t know
what’s my idea and what’s Sean’s idea,
but it’s a partnership. For that scene, I
knew I wanted to show the environ-
ment change as they talked, that sudden
Top: Veronica shares a moment with her husband, Harry (Liam Neeson). Middle: Jack (Colin shift from the ghetto to the mansions. I
Farrell, right) offers his condolences at Harry’s funeral. Above: Jatemme (Daniel Kaluuya, left)
and Jamal (Brian Tyree Henry) had unfinished business with Harry.
was thinking of putting the camera in
the car, framing the actors in slight

68 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 Left: Bobbitt
operates an
Arricam LT for a
shot of Erivo.
Below: The
cinematographer
sets his frame
for a shot with
Rodriguez as
1st AC
Christopher
Flurry checks
the focus.

profile and edging it more to show

what’s outside the car. I talked it over
with Sean, and the next morning he
said, ‘What if we put the camera on the
bonnet?’ That’s Sean. He realized what
I was really interested in was the envi-
ronment, not the conversation, and he
figured out a way to give me that. He’s a
genius.
Bobbitt: That shot is a good
example of why I love working with
Steve. There aren’t many directors who
would have the guts to say, ‘Yes, great,
let’s do a shot where we don’t see anyone
who’s talking and put it on the screen for
three minutes!’ [Laughs.] One of our
briefs was to show how close the city’s
poverty is to its extreme wealth. The
scene called for about a three-minute midst of repaving when we tested, and I talked through the basic idea of the
drive — Mulligan’s car goes three blocks by the time we came to shoot, the road scene, we knew the move was going to
up, turns right and then goes 11⁄2 blocks had been repaved. We got it in two be Steadicam, but we didn’t know
Bottom photo by Suzanne Tenner, SMPSP.

down to arrive at his mansion. We knew
we wanted to do it as one shot in real
time, and after discussing it with [key
grip] Art Bartels, we decided to shoot
with a Technocrane mounted on the
back of a tracking vehicle that was
towing the car. When we tested it, it
seemed to work, but that turn was rather
difficult to operate, and the state of the
roads was so terrible I thought we might
not pull it off. But they were in the
takes.
There’s another notable oner
early in the film, when the camera
circles Jatemme Manning [Daniel
Kaluuya] and two of his henchmen on
the basketball court before he
punishes them. How did you approach
that?
Bobbitt: That was a great loca-
tion, a field house that was built in the
1930s. Once we found it, and Steve and
exactly how we’d do it. When we got
there on the day, Steve and the actors
rehearsed the scene, and then I looked at
it and realized there was a great chance
to do it in one encompassing Steadicam
shot. Steve loved that idea, so we
brought in Dave Chameides, a great
Steadicam operator I’d worked with on
Shame and many other projects, and just
pieced it together. Because we had the
space and the performance, all we had to

www.ascmag.com December 2018 69

◗ Partners in Crime
do was break down the beats, see where
the camera should be and try to figure
out how to get it there at the right time.
A great operator like Dave just sees it
immediately and does it, and the result
is always impressive and satisfying. We
only did two or three takes.
There’s an idea Steve has played
with in his art installations and explored
in all his films, which is that if you keep
a shot running and don’t put a cut into
it, the audience is never reminded
they’re watching a film, so they’re more
emotionally drawn into the action.
Another example of that in Widows is
the opening scene, which shows the
husbands making their getaway and
then the explosion when the police
catch them. We wanted to do that in a
way that was different from the usual
series of quick cuts, so we decided to
make each segment of the action a
sustained shot. Luckily, our stunt coor-
dinator was Doug Coleman and our
special-effects supervisor was Michael
Gaspar; both of them are really open to
other people’s ideas and very keen to
make something work in the way in
which it was conceived.
We decided to shoot everything
inside the van handheld, and we had to
figure out how I could do that safely
because the camera moves from looking
out the back to looking out the side to
looking out the front. Art Bartels put
me in a chair on an 8-foot slider with all
sorts of safeguards that kept it from
whizzing out of control, and [dolly grip]
Kelly Borisy helped pull me up and
down with a couple of ropes. It was
great fun, and I think it feels real and
kinetic because it’s one shot.
We had three cameras running
on the explosion, but we shot everything
else single-camera. I must note that my
camera crew on this film — [1st AC]
Chris Flurry, [2nd AC] Summer Marsh
and [loader] Matt Hedges — are and
always will be my first choice when
filming in America. They’re consum-
mate professionals and do their work
Top: Veronica takes the wheel to carry out her late husband’s plans. Middle: Davis, Bobbitt and with great good humor and grace.
Flurry at work in the location for Veronica’s apartment. Above: Steadicam operator David Because I operate and light, I don’t have
Chameides maneuvers through a scene with Henry.
a lot of space in my head to tend to the

70 December 2018 American Cinematographer

◗ Partners in Crime
Bobbitt and
crew prepare for
a night exterior.
“When you’ve
worked with
someone for 18
years, you
inspire each
other,” McQueen
says of his
collaboration
with Bobbitt.
“Sometimes I
don’t know
what’s my idea
and what’s
Sean’s idea,
but it’s a
partnership.”
details of the camera department, and
they just take care of it all for me.
Did you consider shooting digi-
tally?
McQueen: Not really. Film is the
best for me. It’s precious. You become
more accurate in what you want to do,
like a golfer, because you know you don’t
have 10 goes — you have one go. It
changes how one even treats people; you
respect all your collaborators more
because you know you’ve got to get it. It
is a discipline. There’s a focus. For me,
it’s almost like a martial art. People say
they want digital because they want
choice, but why not go in knowing what
you want instead? You get far more
mileage out of that than that indiscrim-
inate sort of shooting.
Bobbitt: We tend to shoot 400-
foot mags instead of 1,000-foot mags.
There’s something about that discipline
of stopping, talking about it, organizing
things and then going again. It focuses
everyone’s attention. I shot as much as I
could on [Kodak Vision3] 50D [5203],
a beautiful stock with rich, silky colors
and a great exposure latitude; we could
put a very dark flesh tone next to a very
light one and the stock could handle the
72 December 2018
range. If I couldn’t use 50D on a day McQueen: The rushes were
interior, I used 250D [5207], which cuts inspiring! Sean did such a great job with
with it beautifully. I shot night interiors the lighting, there wasn’t much to do in
and exteriors with 500T [5219], which I the final grade, just enhance and
pushed quite often to 1,000 ASA with- emphasize. Tom Poole is absolutely bril-
out any visible increase in grain. liant, and he’s part of the family now.
How did you two collaborate on Bobbitt: It’s the people who
the grading? Did you watch dailies make the film. We had an exceptional
together? group of people working on this film,
Bobbitt: No, we each got rushes and I think it shows. ●
on a hard drive, and I watched mine on
a laptop calibrated to Rec 709. FotoKem
processed the negative, EFilm created
the rushes, and we did the final grade at
Company 3. Our rushes colorist, Matt
Wallach, was truly phenomenal. I sent
him the location stills I’d graded as a
guide, and he just got it. His rushes were
superb, and we used them as the basis TECHNICAL SPECS
for the final grade.
I’ve graded my last eight films 2.39:1
with [senior colorist] Tom Poole, who I
4-perf Super 35mm
think is the best colorist in the world
today. By now he and I can do a base Arricam ST, LT
grade on a film in three or four days, and
then we bring Steve in as soon as possi- Cooke S4/i
ble. Steve has an amazing eye for detail;
Kodak Vision3 50D 5203,
he will see things neither Tom nor I will 250D 5207, 500T 5219
ever see, and those things are important
to him. Digital Color Grade
American Cinematographer
 Royal Trappings
Robbie Ryan, BSC, ISC crafts an
unconventional portrait of a troubled
monarch and her closest courtiers in
director Yorgos Lanthimos’ period
feature The Favourite.
By Jim Hemphill
•|•
I
n early 18th-century England, two women — Lady Sarah
Churchill and servant Abigail Masham — compete for the
friendship and loyalty of a physically and mentally frail
Queen Anne, who is easily manipulated yet wields
immense power. Though the premise might sound ripe for a
“conventional” period piece, there’s nothing routine about the
feature The Favourite, which breathes new life into the tradi-
tions of historical drama with a bold visual style characterized
by extreme wide-angle lenses, dynamic movement and
unusual camera placement.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and shot by Robbie
Ryan, BSC, ISC, The Favourite stars Rachel Weisz as Lady

74 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 Opposite: Lady
Sarah Churchill
(Rachel Weisz,
right) enjoys great
power and
influence thanks
to her friendship
with the ailing
Queen Anne
(Olivia Colman,
second from left)
in the period
feature The
Favourite. This
page, left:
Cinematographer
Robbie Ryan, BSC,
ISC (left) and key
grip Andy
Woodcock. Below:
Director Yorgos
Lanthimos.
Unit photography by Atsushi Nishijima. Additional photos by Yorgos Lanthimos. All images courtesy of 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

Sarah, Emma Stone as Abigail, and

Olivia Colman as the queen.
Lanthimos says that between develop-
ing the script — which was written by
Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara
— and finding the right cast, The
Favourite took eight or nine years alto-
gether to make it to the screen. “During
that period, I met Robby a few times,”
the director says. “I always liked his
work, and he was always someone I had
in mind [to collaborate with], but
because of schedules and timing, it
never worked out [until] this one.”
“We met for coffee and a chat a
few years before The Favourite actually
happened,” Ryan remembers. “We were
going to make a short film together.
That didn’t work out, but then the script
for The Favourite was sent to me, and I
was excited to go on a journey with I like that I’ve done in the past but also of. He’s very keen on creating a language
Yorgos on that. It ended up happening things that I want to change consider- where you don’t really see the normal
a couple years later; he had done The ably.” angles that you would expect.”
Killing of a Sacred Deer in between.” For his part, the cinematographer Lanthimos concurs with that
Once preproduction was offi- found that it was sometimes easiest to assessment. “I don’t react well to angles
cially underway on The Favourite, Ryan determine what Lanthimos didn’t like. or lenses that feel ‘middle of the road,’”
quickly learned how to mesh with “He doesn’t like conventional coverage,” he offers. “In this film, I wanted to
Lanthimos’ distinctive style. “I come Ryan notes. “I don’t think he would ever create a world which felt quite absurd
with a lot of baggage,” the director do a shot and then a matching reverse and distorted.”
admits, “meaning that I have things that shot — it’s just something he’s not a fan In terms of his visual influences,

www.ascmag.com December 2018 75

◗ Royal Trappings

Favourite were shot from either

extremely high or extremely low angles,
with the camera’s view wide enough to
Above: Robert show all the action occurring in a room
Harley (Nicholas
Hoult, standing, at once. It was great because you just had
center) addresses a clear room,” Ryan recalls. “The forest
the queen. Right: of flags and things that usually build up
Lady Sarah’s place
of privilege with around the camera tend to suffocate a
the queen is location, so it was refreshing to have a
imperiled by the room that was very, very minimal, with
arrival of Abigail
Masham (Emma just the actors. The only thing I needed
Stone) into the to try and get right every time was the
royal court. panning, which was challenging because
it was all about precise timing. If I didn’t
get it right, then it was all on me to do it
again. That’s a challenge I quite
enjoyed.”
the director says he wanted to focus on whether or not they were actually simi- Most of the film was shot in
movies that wouldn’t ordinarily be lar films. We talked about how to use Hatfield House, a Jacobean estate in
thought of when making a period piece. framing that can make you focus more Hertfordshire, England. “It’s a location
“Robbie and I watched [Andrzej] on one person than another — in spite that’s been used an awful lot [for other
Zulawski’s Possession, and [Ingmar of using wide-angle lenses and includ- movies] over the last few years because
Bergman’s] Cries & Whispers, and Juraj ing multiple people in the frame — and it’s very close to London,” the cine-
Herz’s Cremator,” he explains. “Basically, how to do that with [camera] move- matographer says. “But because we were
we wanted to be inspired by people who ment as well.” shooting with such wide lenses and
had made bold and interesting choices, To that end, many scenes in The seeing the ceilings, we were able to show

76 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 Left: Lanthimos
checks a handheld
monitor as Ryan,
Woodcock and
crew prepare an
exterior dolly
move. Below: The
cinematographer
and director flank
1st AD Atilla Salih
Yücer, “one of the
best ADs in the
world,” Ryan says.

it in a way that it hadn’t been

photographed before. I don’t think
those other films used the rooms quite
so panoramically. Interestingly, I think
seeing the whole vista of the location
makes the film quite claustrophobic
because there’s nowhere to hide. As
you’re watching it, you start to feel like a
prisoner, just like the characters.”
Lanthimos adds that the location
also helped determine the film’s palette.
“What we tried to do was strip out a lot
of the things that were there and limit
the colors and clutter in those rooms,”
he explains. “Those rooms have been
there for years and have become very
busy with furniture, paintings and other
various objects. Once we stripped those
down quite a bit, that left us with the as possible. “It was really about what was change,” the cinematographer shares.
main color palette and texture of the there in front of the camera, and the “To even move a table was a big deal.
walls, the floors and the ceilings. The starting point was always the actual But [the location] worked beautifully
queen’s room, for example, had a very location, because each room in the because everything is connected, but you
distinct kind of green and golden hue palace was very colorful,” Ryan says. don’t really know the geography of the
because of the tapestries on the walls, “From my point of view, I was shooting palace. It’s a little bit like an Escher
which were the only things we kept. beautiful locations, beautiful costumes painting, where you just don’t know
And then we brought our furniture, and beautiful people — so it was hard where anything leads.”
which also had golden-hued drapes and not to make a good picture from it.” The use of candlelight also
bed covers and things like that.” That said, the location did have affected the overall palette. “It brings in
Working alongside production its limitations. “It’s a privately owned a whole new color,” Ryan says. “It’s
designer Fiona Crombie and costume building, so there were huge restrictions interesting to see what the place looks
designer Sandy Powell, Lanthimos and that Fiona was up against in terms of like at nighttime, what it looks like
Ryan strove to limit the palette as much what you’re allowed to move and during the day. I have to say, when you’re

www.ascmag.com December 2018 77

◗ Royal Trappings

The filmmakers
took advantage
of large windows
on location as
they strove to
work almost
entirely with
natural light. “I
don’t like
artificial lighting
unless it’s
absolutely
necessary to get
an exposure,”
Lanthimos says.
“My ideal set is
just a camera, a
microphone and
the actors.”

doing a period drama like this, it really is
a fun tableau to work from. You’ve
always got a lot of richness to tap into.”
One of Lanthimos’ mandates
early on was to shoot the film almost
entirely with natural light. “I don’t like
artificial lighting unless it’s absolutely
necessary to get an exposure,” the direc-
tor states. “I don’t like to work in an
environment where I’m surrounded by
tripods and lights and flags and diffu-
sion, and then when I need to move on
to a different shot, I need to change
everything around. My ideal set is just a
camera, a microphone and the actors.”
Although Ryan had embraced
natural light for some of his previous
projects, he took the approach to a
whole new level for The Favourite.
“Usually you have natural light with a bit
of balance,” he explains. “On this occa-
sion, it was frowned upon to have that
balance. It was amazing to see how the
film started out with very bright
windows backlighting an actress, and
then seeing that the faces were still
exposed — and they were, in effect, even
more beautiful. I learned a lot about the
value of not using anything.”
Ryan shot The Favourite on
35mm motion-picture negative, primar-
ily working with Kodak Vision3 500T
5219, and occasionally with 200T 5213
and 50D 5203. “We pushed the stock a
bit and we pulled the stock a bit,” he
says. “Because the lenses we were using
were so wide, we couldn’t use filters on
the front of them. We used the 50 ASA
stock for the horse-riding scene with the
queen and Lady Sarah, and we pulled it
two stops — I’ve never pulled stock that
much. The stock was very contrasty,
though; when you pull it, you lose the
contrast and it looks quite lovely.” For
interior and exterior night scenes, Ryan
would push the 5219 one or two stops.
Lanthimos adds that shooting on
film helped with the natural-light
approach: “I think film handles that
kind of difficulty much better because it
has more depth. Even if something is
underexposed, [film] just handles it
better, and can give it more texture and
separation and make it more alive. If
you’re using fast lenses, I don’t think
there are many circumstances where you
can’t get a great image.”
Working with Charlie Todman
and Hugh Whittaker at Panavision
London, Ryan elected to shoot with
Panaflex Millennium XL2, Arricam ST
and Arricam LT camera bodies. The
filmmakers preferred shooting with a
single camera, which Ryan would oper-
ate, but “when the schedule was against
us,” the cinematographer offers, two
cameras would roll simultaneously, with
Lanthimos operating the second
camera.
While making The Killing of a
Sacred Deer — which was photographed
by Thimios Bakatakis, GSC (AC March
’18) — Lanthimos fell in love with the
10mm lens, and on The Favourite he
wanted to take the wide-angle aesthetic
even further. Accordingly, focus puller
Andrew O’Reilly went to Panavision,
asked around, and, as Ryan explains, “It
was the classic story of dusting off a lens
that hadn’t been used in a very long
time. It was a 6mm [SF6 Fisheye Lens

78 December 2018 American Cinematographer

(T2.8)], and the actual manufacture of it
is so beautiful — it’s a work of art just to
look at it. When we put it on and looked
at the way it shot things, it was a no-
brainer.”
Indeed, that 6mm became the
production’s signature lens. “Once that
lens came out, everybody was in the
shot, so they had to go into another
room,” Ryan recalls, laughing at the
recollection. “My head would be in it as
well!”
In addition to the 6mm, Ryan
also carried a set of Primo spherical
primes ranging from 10mm to 100mm.
“I use [the Primos] a lot and love the
quality they have with celluloid,” the
cinematographer shares.
Lanthimos’ desire for a mobile
camera only added to the challenge, but
Ryan credits key grip Andy Woodcock
— who also served as A-camera dolly
grip — with helping to make it all work.
“He really rose to the challenge of
getting the camera moving in every
possible way,” the cinematographer says.
“Andy was using the Fisher 10 dolly in
various ways and guises, on track and on
dance floor, with a Libra head or a [Grip
Factory Munich shock-absorber arm]
and a Chapman Vibration Isolator
attached. His timing was brilliant. I
really can’t say enough good things
about him. He’s amazing.”
Paul Edwards operated a
Steadicam for some interior and exte-
rior shots, but for many of the scenes
requiring a moving camera, Ryan paired
the Millennium with “Rizwan Wadan’s
Double Helix rig with exoskeleton suit,” Ryan operates the camera as Woodcock maneuvers the dolly. “Andy was using the Fisher 10
says the cinematographer, who wore the dolly in various ways and guises,” the cinematographer notes. “He really rose to the occasion of
getting the camera moving in every possible way.”
rig himself. He describes it as “kind of
like a Steadicam vest, but there are two
articulated exoskeleton arms coming out came time to grade The Favourite, but Yorgos put his trust in him, and when I
the back of the vest with high-tension he could rest easy knowing that his found out he would be doing The
springs in them. They come down and frequent collaborator Rob Pizzey, senior Favourite, I knew I was in safe hands
hold the gimbal rig. I don’t know that colorist at Goldcrest in London, would because he knows my work well.”
we ever got [the rig] perfected, but the be at the controls. “When we were According to Lanthimos, the
shots are in the film, and they sit in with prepping The Favourite, Yorgos was in nature of the production meant there
the language very well.” post on Killing of a Sacred Deer and wasn’t much manipulation during the
The production’s negative was needed a grader,” Ryan recalls. “He grade. “We really went with what was
processed at Kodak Film Lab London, asked about Rob; he said, ‘Is he any there on the negative,” he explains,
then scanned at 4K by Company 3. good?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I really like “which had a lot of character anyway,
Ryan was on another project when it Rob.’ So Rob graded Sacred Deer, and because there were many different light-

www.ascmag.com December 2018 79

◗ Royal Trappings
Right: Steadicam
operator Paul
Edwards keeps
pace with Hoult
and Stone while
filming a night
exterior. Below:
The use of
candlelight “brings
in a whole new
color” to the film’s
palette, Ryan says.
“When you’re
doing a period
drama like this, it
really is a fun
tableau to work
from. You’ve
always got a lot of
richness to tap
into.”

edit, it really sharpens the camera move-

ment, to a point that you’re aware of it
but it serves the story as well. The
pacing of it is very important, and they
did a great job there.” Ryan is also
appreciative of the contributions of
another cinematographer, Stephen
Murphy. “He replaced me for a week
when I had a family bereavement,” Ryan
explains. “He did an amazing job step-
ping in at short notice. I couldn’t have
done it without his help.” ●

ing conditions. Some days were sunny,
so the color would be warm and golden;
other days were overcast and gloomy, so
it would be darker and cooler. We just
introduced some contrast to make it
look healthy and crisp and sharp, the
way film used to look when we were
making prints.”
Ryan was thrilled with the results
when he was able to see the finished
film. “Yorgos was so on top of it, and the
nature of shooting on film and on loca-
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
tion meant that there wasn’t a massive
amount to do [in the final grade],” the 3-perf Super 35mm
cinematographer affirms. “Yorgos does-
n’t really like pushing the grade too far, Panaflex Millennium XL2;
anyway. I think he’s very fond of film Arricam ST, LT
the way it is, pretty much out of the
box.” Panavision SF6, Primo
In addition to Lanthimos and
Pizzey, Ryan credits the work of editor Kodak Vision3 500T 5219,
Yorgos Mavropsaridis with making the 200T 5213, 50D 5203
most of his cinematography. “The way
they’ve constructed [the movie] in the Digital Color Grade

80 December 2018 American Cinematographer

 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.
Sony Extends Venice System
Sony is enhancing the usability and flexibility of its Venice
motion-picture camera — which boasts built-in features including
an 8-step mechanical ND filter system and Dual Base ISO
(500/2,500) — with the Venice Extension System and Version 3.0
firmware updates, both of which are slated to be available in Febru-
ary 2019.
Compatible with existing and new Venice cameras, the easy-
to-use, tethered Extension System (CBK-3610XS) is lightweight (4
pounds with PL mount and 3 pounds with E-mount) and allows the
camera body to detach from the image-sensor block from 9' or 18'
apart with no degradation in image quality, offering a highly config-
urable and portable method of operation that can be customized to
meet the needs of specific shooting scenarios, including use with
gimbals, remote heads, handheld stabilizers, underwater and heli-
copter housings, and 3D and VR rigs, as well as in tight and uncon-
ventional spaces, such as inside of vehicles.
After detailed discussions and further collaboration with
producer-director James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, a
prototype of the Venice Extension System was engineered to meet
production’s needs as Cameron and his crew — including cine-
matographer Russell Carpenter, ASC — begin shooting the Avatar
sequels. Since this hardware was first demonstrated at this year’s
Cine Gear in Hollywood, additional refinements have been made in
response to industry requests.
Compatible with existing Venice cameras with Version 3.0
82 December 2018 American Cinematographer
firmware installed, the Extension System consists of a front panel
cover, an image-sensor block case, a 9' cable and a 9' extension
cable. The Extension System adds an HD-SDI output as well as a 12-
volt or 24-volt output for powering accessories such as lens servo
motors. The system also comes with multiple screw holes on all
surfaces to enable the attachment of accessories and compatibility
with various rigs.
The free Version 3.0 firmware upgrade further augments
Venice’s capabilities, incorporating feedback from filmmakers and
protecting customers’ investment by allowing the camera to grow
with the user. Version 3.0 firmware will add a recording profile within
the X-OCN (Extended tonal range Original Camera Negative). This
new profile, called X-OCN XT, captures the highest-quality imagery
with the AXS-R7 portable memory recorder. For demanding visual-
effects work and productions requiring uncompromising image
quality, the new X-OCN XT profile maintains economical file sizes
comparable to Sony’s F55Raw file size, making the workflow afford-
able and efficient.
Other highlights of the Venice Version 3.0 firmware include
new imager modes, such as 6K 2.39:1 and 5.7K 16:9, for greater
shooting flexibility; additional de-squeezed ratios for various anamor-
phic lenses (1.25x, 1.3x, 1.5x and 1.8x); cache record for a maximum
of 30 seconds in X-OCN 4K 17:9 AXS Memory/HD MPEG 50 SxS
memory; 6G/12G-SDI switchable output, enabling 4K SDI output;
and wireless remote control with CBK-WA02 for wirelessly control-
ling and changing key functions and menu settings.
For additional information, visit pro.sony/venice.
Sekonic Announces C-800-U
Sekonic has unveiled the Spectromaster C-800-U, which
offers ultra-precise color-measuring performance designed specifi-
cally for the cine and photographic industries. Developed with input
from leading lighting manufacturers, filmmakers, photographers,
and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Science and
Technology Council, the C-800-U aims to solve the problems image
makers encounter when trying to understand the color properties of
light, and how different lights will reproduce colors on camera.
The C-800-U offers a wide array of color-rendering standards,
including the Academy Sci-Tech Council’s Spectral Similarity Index
(SSI), which gives users the ability to set any light as a standard, or to

use predefined standards (such as CIE D55)
and then gives other lights an SSI score
based upon how closely they will match.
The C-800-U also includes TLCI (Television
Lighting Consistency Index), TLMF (Televi-
sion Lighting Matching Factor) and TM-30-
15 (Technical Memorandum) — in addition
to CRI (Color Rendering Index), which can
be measured singularly or in two-light
comparison mode.
The Spectromaster C-800-U main-
tains a number of features of its predeces-
sor, the C-700, including a bold 4.3" touch-
screen, and the ability to read LED, HMI,
fluorescent, tungsten, natural light and flash
from 1,600 to 40,000 Kelvin. With its
CMOS linear image sensor, the C-800-U is
capable of measuring in 1-nanometer (nm)
increments to detect spikes using fluores-
cent or LED lighting. And with the same
ergonomic button layout, swivel head, and
built-in dark slide that enables easy use on
set, the C-800-U expands on the C-700’s
color-rendering standards, units of measure,
and memory.
The C-800-U offers more color-
control parameters specifically designed to
help match lights to one another. CIE1931
(x, y) has been added, giving users the ability
to measure and dial specific chromaticity
coordinates into lights from some major
brands. Hue and saturation units-of-
measure have also been added to better
match RGB LEDs to any light source. Addi-
tionally, new display screens provide easy
interpretation and understanding of the
new data fields.
Additional features include a wide
measurement range of illumination (1 to
200,000 lux in ambient light, 20 to 20,500
lux in flash light); various displays, such as
Text, Spectrum Graph, Spectrum Compari-
son, CRI, CRI Comparison, Lighting Filter,
Camera Filter, Multiple Lights Comparison
and White Balance Correction; measure-
ments including Kelvin, illuminance and
LB/CC filters (for camera lens or lighting
filters); and memory storage for up to 99
data measurements.
For additional information, visit
c800.sekonic.com.
Timecode Systems Syncs iPhones
Timecode Systems has introduced
the UltraSync Blue, which will generate
professional timecode for sound and video,
including 360/VR and motion-capture appli-
cations, when captured with iPhones.
Through wireless Bluetooth, UltraSync Blue
transmits timecode to up to four iPhones
and embeds it directly into video files
recorded in the Mavis app or sound
captured through the Apogee
MetaRecorder app.
“Imagine you’re out on a reality
shoot — there’s a pro camera filming the
main content, a sound recordist capturing
audio, a DSLR roaming, and GoPros rigged
around the set,” explains Paul Scurrell, CEO
of Timecode Systems. “You have a pulse
providing the master timecode from the
sound-mixer bag, an UltraSync One on the
big camera, a Ninja V with an AtomX Sync
extension on the DSLR, and SyncBac Pros on
the GoPros. Then the director asks for some
last-minute additional angles using iPhones.
What’s syncing the iPhone?
“We’re really excited to announce
UltraSync Blue with full compatibility with
both the Mavis professional camera app and
Apogee’s MetaRecorder app,” Scurrell
continues. “It fills a huge gap in the market
by allowing us to provide a very accurate,
neat, professional solution for crews who
find themselves filming with iPhones in this
situation.”
For additional information, visit
www.timecodesystems.com. ●
83
 INTERNATIONAL MARKETPLACE

84 December 2018 American Cinematographer

CLASSIFIEDS
CLASSIFIED AD RATES EQUIPMENT FOR SALE SERVICES AVAILABLE
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set in 4X5 85 Glass Filters, Diffusion, Polas etc. Greg Kendrick, DoP
bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per word. First
word of ad and advertiser’s name can be set in capi- A Good Box Rental 818-763-8547 Alexa Mini + Alexa Classic
tals without extra charge. No agency commission or Flypack and 5 Panasonic 3700’s
discounts on classified advertising.PAYMENT MUST World’s SUPERMARKET of USED
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 ADVERTISERS’
INDEX
20th Century Fox 7 Eastman Kodak C4 RPM Lighting, Inc. 83
AC Film Manual 8 Ernst Leitz Wetzlar Gmbh 55 RST Visions/Barger 42
Amazon 9 Filmotechnic 59 Schneider Optics 2
Arri 41, 53 F.J. Westcott 43 Selected Tables 86
ASC Master Class 85 Fluotec 84 Sony Pictures Classics 13
Astera Manufacturing Limited Focus Features 27 Technicolor 95
32a-p Formatt KT 35 Teradek, LLC C2-1, 49
B&H Photo-Video-Pro Audio Fox Searchlight 11 Tiffen 73
81 Fujifilm Optical Devices
USA, Inc. 61 Visual Products 84
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
8 Hollywood: PL 83 Warner Bros. 15
Blackmagic Design, Inc. 29 www.ascmag.com 8, 83, 86
Kino Flo 37
Canon C3 Koto Electric Co., Inc. 63 XEEN by Rokinon 71
Cavision Enterprises 84 Lights! Action! Co. 84
Chapman/Leonard
Studio Equip. 65 Mole-Richardson 84
Cinekinetic 84 National Geographic
Cinematography Channel 19
Electronics 8 NBC/Universal 51
Cooke Optics 39 NBC/Universal Pictures 5
Netflix 17, 21, 25
P+S Technik Feinmechanik
Gmbh 84
Paramount Pictures 23
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 84
Pro8mm 84

86
 2018 Index
by Cinematographer, Project Title, Format, Subject and Author

Compiled by Christopher Probst, ASC

7 Days in Entebbe, Mission: Impossible – Bakatakis, GSC, Thimios, Chressanthis, ASC, GSC,
April p. 100 Fallout, Sept. p. 30 March p. 61 James, March p. 64,
12 Monkeys, July p. 60 Quiet Place, A, May Ballers, Nov. p. 76 July p. 86
35MM (SUPER 35MM LISTED pp. 26, 30 Ballhaus, ASC, Florian, Christensen, Charlotte Bruus,
SEPARATELY) “Recent Anamorphic Sept. p. 50 May p. 26
Bad Times at the Lenses,” May p. 14 Baum, ASC, Gary, Nov. Christensen, ASC, T.C.,
El Royale, Nov. p. 60 Red Sparrow, April p. 84 p. 86 Dec. p. 96
Mission: Impossible – Star Is Born, A, Nov. Baumgartner, Robby, Aug. Christian, Elisha, March
Fallout, Sept. p. 30 p. 52 p. 50 p. 56
Quiet Place, A, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Beach Rats, March p. 57 Churchill, ASC, Joan,
May p. 26 Feb. p. 28 Beck, ASC, Mat, Sept. March p. 78
65MM White Boy Rick, Oct. p. 120 Cielo, Sept. p. 102
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, p. 62 Behrens, John, June p. 102 Circle, The, Aug. p. 66
Feb. p. 28 Annihilation, March p. 44 Beirut, May pp. 48, 54 Columbus, March p. 56
Adefarasin, BSC, Remi, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Bélanger, CSC, Yves, Aug. COMMERCIALS
Sept. p. 80 Aug. pp. 28, 32 p. 40 Dubai Holding, “Ramadan
Aguirresarobe, ASC, AEC, Arenson, Eli Ronen, Nov. Bennett, ASC, Bill, Jan. Mubarak,” Sept. p. 24
Javier, Oct. p. 36 p. 24 p. 118, Sept. p. 22, Costa, Carolina, Feb. p. 14,
Alberti, Maryse, May Argüelles, ASC, AEC, Dec. p. 94 Dec. p. 30
pp. 38, 42 Fernando, Dec. p. 94 Berkofsky, Ava, Nov. p. 68 Crothers, Jayson, July p. 14
Alexander, Harper, Aug. ASC CLOSE-UP Bessoir, Bob, April p. 68 Curb Your Enthusiasm,
p. 24 Baggot, King, Nov. p. 88 Birkeland, BSC, Ole Bratt, Jan. p. 80
All These Voices, Nov. p. 24 Beck, Mat, Sept. p. 120 June p. 86 Darkest Hour, Jan. p. 54
American Animals, Briesewitz, Uta, March BLACK-AND-WHITE Deakins, ASC, BSC, Roger,
June p. 86 p. 80 Captain, The, Sept. p. 50 Jan. p. 118, May p. 86,
ANAMORPHIC Christensen, T.C., Dec. Black Panther, March Oct. p. 78
American Animals, p. 96 p. 30 Delbonnel, ASC, AFC, Bruno,
June p. 86 Krepela, Neil, Feb. p. 88 “Blame the Author,” Aug. Jan. p. 54
Annihilation, March p. 44 Laskus, Jacek, May p. 88 p. 24 DeMarco, Frankie, June
Avengers: Infinity War, McNutt, Stephen, Jan. Blindspotting, Aug. p. 50 p. 70
June p. 32 p. 120 Blue Bloods, July p. 70 Derango, Johnny, Feb. p. 16
Bad Times at the Negrin, Michael, Aug. Bobbitt, BSC, Sean, Dec. Detroit: Become Human,
El Royale, Nov. p. 60 p. 80 p. 66 Aug. p. 58
Beirut, May pp. 48, 54 Neihouse, James L., Oct. Born, Eli, Feb. p. 14 Dibie, ASC, George Spiro,
Chappaquiddick, May p. 80 Boyd, ASC, ACS, Russell, Dec. p. 94
pp. 38, 42 Sakharov, Alik, April Feb. p. 54 DIRECTORS INTERVIEWED
“Deep Focus: p. 136 Braier, ASC, ADF, Natasha, Anderson, Brad, May
Anamorphic,” Sarossy, Paul, June May p. 86 p. 48
Jan. p. 20 p. 136 Briesewitz, ASC, Uta, Armstrong, Gillian, Feb.
Disaster Artist, The, Jan. Steiger, Ueli, July p. 88 March p. 80 p. 54
p. 90 Atkins, ASC, Paul, Dec. Call Me by Your Name, Bahrani, Ramin, June
Dubai Holding, p. 94 March p. 59 p. 52
“Ramadan Mubarak,” Austin, Eric, Aug. p. 14 Campbell, Tod, Nov. p. 42 Barrett, David M., July
Sept. p. 24 Avengers: Infinity War, Captain, The, Sept. p. 50 p. 70
Homecoming, Nov. p. 42 June p. 32 Carpenter, ASC, Russell, Cameron, James, Feb.
How It Ends, Sept. p. 62 Backdraft, July p. 18 Feb. p. 46 p. 46
I Think We’re Alone Bad Times at the El Carvalho, ASC, ABC, Lula, Chazelle, Damien, Nov.
Now, Oct. p. 26 Royale, Nov. pp. 60, 62 April p. 100 p. 30
Juliet, Naked, Sept. Baggot, ASC, King, Nov. Caso, ASC, Alan, Feb. p. 62 Cooper, Bradley, Nov.
p. 80 p. 88 Chappaquiddick, May p. 52
Last Taxi Dance, Dec. Bailey, ASC, John, April pp. 38, 42 Cosmatos, Panos, Oct.
p. 24 p. 134, June p. 134, Charpentier, SBC, Björn, p. 46
Legion, July p. 48 Sept. p. 90, Oct. p. 78 May pp. 48, 54 Curran, John, May
Mandy, Oct. p. 46 Chicago Fire, July p. 14 pp. 38, 42

www.ascmag.com December 2018 87

 Demange, Yann, Oct.
p. 62
DuVernay, Ava, April p. 32
Esmail, Sam, Nov. p. 42
Garland, Alex, March
p. 44
Goddard, Drew, Nov. p. 62
Guadagnino, Luca, Dec.
p. 30
Heineman, Matthew, Dec.
p. 44
Howard, Ron, July p. 28
Johnson, Rian, Feb.
pp. 28, 35
Krasinski, John, May
p. 26
Kuras, ASC, Ellen, July
p. 46
Lanthimos, Yorgos, Dec.
p. 74
Lawrence, Francis, April
p. 84
Layton, Bart, June p. 86
McAlpine, Alison, Sept.
p. 102
McQuarrie, Christopher,
Sept. p. 30
McQueen, Steve, Dec.
p. 66
Morano, ASC, Reed, Oct.
p. 26
O’Shields, David, March
p. 64
Padilha, José, April p. 100
Peretz, Jesse, Sept. p. 80
Reed, Peyton, Aug. p. 28
Reitman, Jason, Dec.
p. 56
Rosenthal, David M.,
Sept. p. 62
Russo, Joe, June p. 32
Schwentke, Robert, Sept.
p. 50
Shelton, Ron, Feb. p. 54
Thompson, Alexander,
Aug. p. 24
Valentini, Frank, April
p. 68
Vallée, Jean-Marc, Aug.
p. 40
Waechter, Caryn, Oct.
p. 22
Weir, Peter, Feb. p. 54
Weiss, Barton, March
p. 64
Weiss, Rob, Nov. p. 76
Weitz, Chris, Oct. p. 36
88 December 2018
Winterbauer, Christopher,
May p. 22
Yoder, Brayden, Dec. p. 24
Disaster Artist, The, Jan.
p. 90
DOCUMENTARIES
American Animals, June
p. 86
Cielo, Sept. p. 102
Forever Home, Jan. p. 30
Game Changers, The,
June p. 102
Dod Mantle, ASC, BSC, DFF,
Anthony, Feb. p. 86
Downing, Greg, Aug. p. 18
Downsizing, Jan. p. 68
Echazarreta, Benjamín, Sept.
p. 102
Ellmann, Connor, Jan. p. 30
Engels, Gene, July p. 70
Escape, Oct. p. 22
Fahrenheit 451, June p. 52
Favourite, The, Dec. p. 74
FILMMAKERS’ FORUM
“Consider the Stars,”
Sept. p. 102
“Digging Deep Into My
Vocation,” April p. 116
“Shooting Ballers,” Nov.
p. 76
First Man, Nov. p. 30
Förderer, BVK, Markus,
May p. 16, July p. 20
Forever Home, Jan. p. 30
Fraser, ASC, ACS, Greig,
Sept. p. 14
Front Runner, The, Dec.
p. 56
Fulton, Logan, Jan. p. 30
Game Changers, The, June
p. 102
Garcia, ASC, Ron, May p. 86
General Hospital, April
pp. 68, 70
Gezari, Sam, Aug. p. 20
Goi, ASC, ISC, Michael, June
p. 134
Goldman, ASC, ABC,
Adriano, Sept. p. 90,
Nov. p. 86
Gonzales, ASC, Dana, July
p. 46
Green, ASC, Jack, Nov. p. 20
Greenberg, Noah, Oct. p. 54
Greene, ASC, CSC, David,
July p. 60
Hall, Chapin, Dec. p. 24
American Cinematographer
Hardwick, Anthony, Nov.
p. 76
Hardy, BSC, Rob, March
p. 44, Sept. p. 30
Herrera, Christian, Sept.
p. 24
HISTORICAL
“From the Archive:
Mikael Salomon, ASC
on Backdraft,” July
p. 18
Homecoming, Nov. p. 42
How It Ends, Sept. p. 62
Howsepian, Favienne, Jan.
p. 30
How to Talk to Girls at
Parties, June p. 70
Hu, Ming Jue, Feb. p. 14
Huidobro, AMC, Paula, Nov.
p. 68
IMAX
Ant-Man and the Wasp,
Aug. p. 28
First Man, Nov. p. 30
Mission: Impossible –
Fallout, Sept. p. 30
Star Wars: The Last Jedi,
Feb. p. 28
IN MEMORIA
Kline, ASC, Richard H.,
Oct. p. 77
Stradling Jr., ASC, Harry,
Jan. p. 117
Woolsey, ASC, Ralph,
June p. 132
Insecure, Nov. p. 68
Inspectors, The, April
p. 116
INSTRUCTIONAL
“Beyond Borders,” Sept.
p. 90
Shot Craft, Jan. p. 18,
March p. 16, April
p. 16, May p. 14,
June p. 14, July p. 14,
Aug. p. 14, Sept.
p. 14, Oct. p. 14, Nov.
p. 14, Dec. p. 14
“Working With a Film
Commission,” March
p. 64
I Origins, July p. 20
Isle of Dogs, April p. 50
I Think We’re Alone
Now, Oct. p. 26
Ives, ASC, Tim, Nov. p. 86
Jensen, ASC, Johnny E.,
Jan. p. 118
Juliet, Naked, Sept. p. 80
Jun, Heyjin, May p. 22
Kauk, Sherri, April p. 116
Kidd, ASC, Neville, Oct.
p. 78
Killing of a Sacred Deer,
The, March p. 61
Kline, ASC, Richard H., Oct.
p. 77
Koenigswieser, Matthias,
Feb. p. 14
Krepela, ASC, Neil, Feb.
p. 88
Kuras, ASC, Ellen, July p. 46,
Nov. p. 86
Labisi, ASC, Joseph, July
p. 86
Lachman, ASC, Ed, July
p. 86, Sept. p. 106
Laskus, ASC, PSC, Jacek,
May p. 88
Last Dance, The, April
p. 26
Last Taxi Dance, Dec.
p. 24
Laustsen, ASC, DFF, Dan,
Jan. p. 36
Laverdière, Mathieu, Sept.
p. 102
Legion, July p. 46
Le Sourd, ASC, AFC,
Philippe, Feb. p. 86
Leyva, Rafael, Feb. p. 14
Libatique, ASC, Matthew,
Nov. p. 52
Lieberman, ASC, Charlie,
Sept. p. 108
Lighthill, ASC, Stephen, Feb.
p. 70
LIGHTING DIAGRAMS
12 Monkeys, July p. 62
Annihilation, March
pp. 46, 49
Black Panther, March
p. 37
“Diffusion Confusion,”
Oct. p. 14
How It Ends, Sept. p. 67
My Nephew Emmett,
June p. 28
“Pro Perspective:
WagFlags and
WagBags,” March
p. 18
Red Sparrow, April p. 96
Star Wars: The Last Jedi,
Feb. p. 37
Lizzie, Oct. p. 54
Loev, April p. 116
Louvart, AFC, Hélène,
March p. 57
Love, Benjamin, Oct. p. 46
Love, Laura Beth, Feb. p. 14
Macat, ASC, Julio, March
p. 78
Maddox, Tyler, March p. 64
Mandy, Oct. p. 46
Marsh, Nicola, Feb. p. 14
McGarvey, ASC, BSC,
Seamus, Jan. p. 118,
Nov. p. 60
McNutt, ASC, CSC,
Stephen, Jan. p. 120
Medencevic, ASC, Suki,
July p. 86, Sept. p. 90
Mindel, ASC, BSC, SASC,
Dan, Jan. p. 118
Miranda, ASC, Claudio, Feb.
p. 86, Aug. p. 66
Mission: Impossible –
Fallout, Sept. pp. 30, 34
Mohr, Melanie, April p. 68
Mojsovski, CSC, Boris, July
p. 60
Momenceau, Éponine, Feb.
p. 14
Montouchet, Aymeric, Aug.
p. 58
Moore, Ed, April p. 26
Morano, ASC, Reed, Oct.
p. 26
Morgan, ASC, BSC, Polly,
July p. 46, Sept. p. 118
Morgenthau, ASC, Kramer,
June p. 52
Morrison, ASC, Rachel, Feb.
p. 86, March p. 30, Aug.
p. 78
Mukdeeprom, Sayombhu,
March p. 59, Dec. p. 30
MUSIC VIDEOS
“Blame the Author,”
Aug. p. 24
My Nephew Emmett,
June p. 26
Negrin, ASC, Michael, Aug.
p. 80
Neihouse, ASC, MySC,
James L., Oct. p. 80
NEW ASC ASSOCIATES
Fasmer, Per D., Sept.
p. 118
NEW ASC MEMBERS
Argüelles, Fernando,
Dec. p. 94
Atkins, Paul, Dec. p. 94
Braier, Natasha, May
p. 86
Ives, Tim, Nov. p. 86
Kidd, Neville, Oct. p. 78
Labisi, Joseph, July p. 86
Morgan, Polly, Sept.
p. 118
Nobles Jr., Vern, Nov.
p. 86
Presant, Jaron, June
p. 134
Ruhe, Martin, Oct. p. 78
Nobles Jr., ASC, Vern, Nov.
p. 86
Nolan, John Hunter, June
p. 102
Oliver, Tristan, April p. 50
O’Loughlin, ASC, ACS,
Jules, Sept. p. 14
Opaloch, Trent, June p. 32
Operation Finale, Oct.
p. 36
Papa, July p. 24
Papamichael, ASC, GSC,
Phedon, Jan. p. 68
POSTPRODUCTION
“Advances in Drone-
Assisted Capture,”
Aug. p. 66
“Rediscovering Expo 67,”
Jan. p. 100
Povolotskiy, Egor, Feb. p. 14
Presant, ASC, Jaron, June
p. 134
Private War, A, Dec. p. 44
Probst, ASC, Christopher,
Dec. p. 20
Quiet Place, A, May
pp. 26, 30
Radcliffe, BSC, Tat, Oct.
pp. 62, 64
Rahmanian, Roham, Aug.
p. 16
“Ramadan Mubarak,”
Sept. p. 24
Red Ink, March p. 24
Red Sparrow, April p. 84
Richards, Joshua James,
March p. 60
Richardson, ASC, Robert,
Dec. p. 44
Rider, The, March p. 60
Riverdale, May pp. 58, 62
Roizman, ASC, Owen, Feb.
p. 78
Ruhe, ASC, Martin, Oct.
p. 78
www.ascmag.com
Ryan, BSC, ISC, Robbie, Steiger, ASC, Ueli, July p. 88
Dec. p. 74 Stewart, Patrick Alexander,
Sakharov, ASC, Alik, April Jan. p. 80
p. 136 Storaro, ASC, AIC, Vittorio,
Salomon, ASC, Mikael, July Sept. p. 118
p. 18 Stradling Jr., ASC, Harry, Jan.
Sandgren, FSF, Linus, Nov. p. 117
p. 30 SUPER 16MM
Sarossy, ASC, BSC, CSC, Beach Rats, March p. 57
Paul, June p. 136 Chappaquiddick, May p. 38
Schaefer, ASC, AIC, Roberto, First Man, Nov. p. 30
Sept. p. 14 SUPER 35MM
Schliessler, ASC, Tobias, All These Voices, Nov.
April p. 32 p. 24
Schneider, Logan, July p. 24 Call Me by Your Name,
Shape of Water, The, Jan. March p. 59
p. 36 Favourite, The, Dec. p. 74
Sharp Objects, Aug. p. 40 First Man, Nov. p. 30
Sicario: Day of the Front Runner, The, Dec.
Soldado, Aug. p. 66 p. 56
Simmons, ASC, John, June Killing of a Sacred Deer,
p. 134 The, March p. 61
Sissel, ASC, Sandi, March Quiet Place, A, May p. 26
p. 78 Star Wars: The Last Jedi,
Snowplow, Jan. p. 30 Feb. p. 28
Sobocinski, PSC, Michal, Suspiria, Dec. p. 30
Feb. p. 14 Widows, Dec. p. 66
Solo: A Star Wars Story, Suspiria, Dec. pp. 30, 36
July p. 28 TELEVISION
SPECIAL VENUE 12 Monkeys, July p. 60
“Rediscovering Expo 67,” Ballers, Nov. p. 76
Jan. p. 100 Blue Bloods, July p. 70
SPECIALIZED CINEMATOGRAPHY Chicago Fire, July p. 14
“Advances in Drone- Curb Your Enthusiasm,
Assisted Capture,” Jan. p. 80
Aug. p. 66 Fahrenheit 451, June p. 52
Ant-Man and the Wasp, General Hospital, April
Aug. p. 32 pp. 68, 70
“Beyond Borders,” Sept. Homecoming, Nov. p. 42
p. 90 How It Ends, Sept. p. 62
“Blame the Author,” Aug. Insecure, Nov. p. 68
p. 24 Inspectors, The, April
Cielo, Sept. p. 102 p. 116
Detroit: Become Human, Legion, July p. 46
Aug. p. 58 “Prestige Pioneer,” Feb.
Isle of Dogs, April p. 50 p. 62
Shot Craft, Aug. p. 14 Riverdale, May pp. 58, 62
Spinotti, ASC, AIC, Dante, Sharp Objects, Aug. p. 40
Aug. pp. 28, 32 Toll, ASC, John, Feb. p. 86
Squires, ASC, Buddy, March Tovoli, ASC, AIC, Luciano,
p. 78 Jan. p. 118
Star Is Born, A, Nov. Trost, Brandon, Jan. p. 90
pp. 52, 54 Uegama, CSC, Brendan, May
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, pp. 58, 62
Feb. pp. 28, 34 Valladao, Laura, June p. 26
Steelberg, ASC, Eric, Dec. Van de Sande, ASC, Theo,
p. 56 Dec. p. 94
Steib, Vincent, April p. 68
December 2018 89
 Van Hoytema, ASC, FSF, “Partners in Crime,” Dec.
NSC, Hoyte, Sept. p. 90 p. 66
Van Oostrum, ASC, Kees, “Time Independent,” July
Aug. p. 78, Sept. p. 106, p. 60
Dec. p. 94 “True Crime,” Oct. p. 54
Veloso, Adolpho, Feb. p. 14 Brinker, Kelly
Wages, ASC, William, “Gear Spotlight:
March p. 18 Litepanels LED
Wagner, ASC, BSC, Fabian, Panels,” April p. 70
Jan. p. 118 “The Never-Ending
Wardell, ACS, Velinda, Story,” April p. 68
March p. 24 Calhoun, John
Whitaker, Nicole, Oct. p. 22 “Rising Stars of Cine-
White Boy Rick, Oct. matography,” Feb.
pp. 62, 64 p. 14
Widow, Jan. p. 30 Dillon, Mark
Widows, Dec. p. 66 “Burn After Reading,”
Willems, ASC, SBC, Jo, June p. 52
April p. 84 “Drone Spotlight,” Aug.
Wolski, ASC, Dariusz, Aug. p. 32
p. 66 “Expedition Unknown,”
Woolsey, ASC, Ralph, June March p. 44
p. 132 “Heroes United,” June
Wrinkle in Time, A, April p. 32
p. 32 “Into Chaos,” Dec. p. 56
Wyrm, May p. 22 “Miniature Might,” Aug.
Yedlin, ASC, Steve, Jan. p. 28
p. 118; Feb. pp. 28, 35 Fish, Andrew
Young, ASC, Bradford, July “Long Road Home,” Sept.
p. 28 p. 62
“No Filter,” Jan. p. 80
Index by Author Goldman, Michael
“Across the Universe,”
AC Staff April p. 32
“Changing the Face of “Advances in Drone-
the Industry,” July Assisted Capture,”
p. 76 Aug. p. 66
Barnes, Kevin “Broken Memories,” Nov.
“Get Small,” Jan. p. 68 p. 42
Bosley, Rachael K. “Gear Spotlight: Arri
“Animal Kingdom,” Maxima,” April p. 36
April p. 50 “Global Pursuit,” Sept.
“A Career of Commit- p. 30
ment,” Feb. p. 70 “International Opera-
“Family Torment,” Aug. tion,” Sept. p. 34
p. 40 Hemphill, Jim
“Gear Spotlight: Canon “Crime Family,” July
EOS-1D X,” April p. 70
p. 54 “Cultural Immersion,”
“High-School Horrors,” Sept. p. 24
May p. 58 “Culture Shock,” Aug.
“Horrors of War,” Sept. p. 50
p. 50 “Operating in Concert,”
In Memoria, June p. 132, Nov. p. 54
Oct. p. 77 “Rising Stars of
“Optics Spotlight: Cinematography,”
Summilux-C Primes,” Feb. p. 14
May p. 62
“Royal Trappings,” Dec.
p. 74
“Shooting Stars,” Nov.
p. 52
“Spirit Awards Honor
Indie Cinematography,”
March p. 56
Heuring, David
“Shooting Ballers,” Nov.
p. 76
Holben, Jay
Shot Craft, Jan. p. 18,
March p. 16, April
p. 16, May p. 14,
June p. 14, July p. 14,
Aug. p. 14, Sept. p. 14,
Oct. p. 14, Nov. p. 14,
Dec. p. 14
Hunt, Aaron
“Big for Small,” July p. 24
Kadner, Noah
“Force Forward,” Feb.
p. 28
“Moon Shot,” Nov. p. 30
“Portrait of a Scoundrel,”
July p. 28
“Star Tours,” Feb. p. 34
Kaufman, Debra
“Rising Stars of
Cinematography,” Feb.
p. 14
“Student Honors,” Jan.
p. 30
Kauk, Sherri
“Digging Deep Into My
Vocation,” April p. 116
Kogge, Michael
“Daring Operation,” April
p. 100
“A Democracy of Ideas,”
Nov. p. 62
“Gear Spotlight: Using
Tungsten for Daylight,”
April p. 102
“Lighting With Color,”
Oct. p. 64
“Spying on the Guests,”
Nov. p. 60
“Teenage Kingpin,” Oct.
p. 62
Marcks, Iain
“Aesthetics and Identity,”
Dec. p. 36
“Burden of Dreams,” Jan.
p. 90
“Edge of Darkness,” Oct.
p. 46
“Life of the Mind,” July
p. 46
“London Calling,” June
p. 70
“Optics Spotlight: The
40mm,” May p. 42
“Rediscovering Expo 67,”
Jan. p. 100
“Season of the Witch,”
Dec. p. 30
“Truth and Conse-
quences,” May p. 38
“Warrior King,” March
p. 30
McAlpine, Alison
“Consider the Stars,”
Sept. p. 102
McLane, Betsy A.
“Prestige Pioneer,” Feb.
p. 62
“Working With a Film
Commission,” March
p. 64
Montouchet, Aymeric
“Electric Realms,” Aug.
p. 58
Mulcahey, Matt
“After Hours,” Dec. p. 24
“Gear Spotlight:
LiteMats,” April p. 86
“Seduce and Destroy,”
April p. 84
Oppenheimer, Jean
“Don’t Speak,” May
p. 26
“Hijinks & Heartbreak,”
Nov. p. 68
“Love on the Run,” Jan.
p. 36
“Optics Spotlight:
Modified Lenses,”
May p. 30
“Road to Justice,” Oct.
p. 36
“Vision Accomplished,”
Feb. p. 54
Pizzello, Stephen
“Leica Unveils Ernst
Leitz Wetzlar GmbH,”
Sept. p. 106
Prevost, Lauretta
“A Stranger’s Actions,”
March p. 24
“Tragic Night,” June
p. 26
“Trapped by Trauma,”
Oct. p. 22
“Young Love,” May p. 22

90 December 2018 American Cinematographer

Rhodes, Phil
“At All Costs,” Jan.
p. 54
“Holographic Memory,”
April p. 26
“In the Flesh,” Sept.
p. 80
“Up in the Air With
HFS,” Feb. p. 80
“Vitec Opens Production
Solutions HQ,” Sept.
p. 109
Silberg, Jon
“Passion for the Craft,”
Feb. p. 46
Stettler, Derek
“Magician’s Appren-
tice,” Aug. p. 24
Thomson, Patricia
“Audacious Caper,”
June p. 86
“Fearless Reporting,”
Dec. p. 44
“Friend in Need,” May
p. 48
“Into the Night,” Oct.
p. 26
“Optics Spotlight: Hand-
held Anamorphic,”
May p. 54
“Spirit Awards Honor
Indie Cinematogra-
phy,” March p. 56
Tonguette, Peter
“Aftermath in Images,”
Nov. p. 24
Williams, David E.
“Beyond Borders,” Sept.
p. 90
Willis, David Alexander
“Scriptation Streamlines
Production,” Nov.
p. 80
“Spotlight on LEDs,”
March p. 70
Witmer, Jon D.
In Memoriam, Jan.
p. 117
“Peak Performance,”
June p. 102
“Pro Perspective:
Lighting the Sky,”
Aug. p. 16
“XM2 Reaches New
Heights,” Aug. p. 70
www.ascmag.com
STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP,
MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION
Title of publication:
AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER
Publication no. 0002-7928
Date of filing: October 28, 2018
Frequency of issue: Monthly
Annual subscription price: $50
Number of issues published annually: 12
Location of known office of publication:
1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028.
Location of the headquarters or general business offices of the
publishers: Same as above.
Names and address of publisher: ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr.,
Hollywood, CA 90028; Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, Stephen Pizzello, 1782
N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028. Owner: ASC Holding Corp.
Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning
or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or
other securities: same as above.
Extent and nature of circulation: Total numbers of copies printed (net
press run): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12
months, 31,970; actual number copies of single issue published nearest to
filing date, 31,500.
Paid and/or requested circulation: Paid/Requested Outside-County Mail
Subscriptions stated on Form 3541: average number of copies each issue
during preceding 12 months, 26,325; actual number of copies of single issue
published nearest to filing date, 26,450.
Paid and/or requested circulation: Sales through dealers and carriers,
street vendors and counter sales, and other non-USPS paid distribution: aver-
age number copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 3,675; actual
number of copies single issue published nearest to filing date, 3,650.
Total paid and/or requested circulation: average number copies each
issue during preceding 12 months, 30,000; actual number copies of single
issue published nearest to filing date, 30,100.
Nonrequested copies distributed outside the mail (samples, compli-
mentary and other free copies): average number of copies each issue
during preceding 12 months, 1,650; actual number copies of single issue
published nearest to filing date, 1,200.
Total nonrequested distributions: average number of copies each issue
during preceding 12 months, 1,650; actual number copies of single issue
published nearest to filing date, 1,200.
Total distribution: average number of copies each issue during preceding
12 months, 31,650; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest
to filing date, 31,300.
Copies not distributed (office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled
after printing): average number of copies each issue during preceding 12
months, 320; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to
filing date, 200.
Total: average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months,
31,970; actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing
date, 31,500.
Percent Paid and/or Requested Circulation: average number of copies
each issue during preceding 12 months, 95%; actual number of copies of
single issue published nearest to filing date, 96%.
I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete.
— Stephen Pizzello, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher
December 2018 91
 MEMBERSHIP ROSTER
OFFICERS – 2018-’19 ACTIVE MEMBERS Curtis Clark Victor Goss Matthew Libatique Vern Nobles Jr.
Kees van Oostrum Thomas Ackerman Peter L. Collister Jack Green Charlie Lieberman Crescenzo Notarile
President Lance Acord Jack Cooperman Adam Greenberg Stephen Lighthill David B. Nowell
Marshall Adams Jack Couffer Robbie Greenberg Karl Walter Lindenlaub Rene Ohashi
Bill Bennett Javier Aguirresarobe Nelson Cragg David Greene John Lindley Daryn Okada
1st Vice President Lloyd Ahern II Jeff Cronenweth Xavier Grobet Jimmy Lindsey Jules O’Loughlin
John Simmons Russ Alsobrook Richard Crudo Alexander Gruszynski Robert F. Liu Thomas Olgeirsson
2nd Vice President Howard A. Anderson III Dean R. Cundey Rob Hahn Walt Lloyd Woody Omens
James Anderson Stefan Czapsky Gregg Heschong Bruce Logan Michael D. O’Shea
Cynthia Pusheck Peter Anderson David Darby Henner Hofmann Gordon Lonsdale Vince Pace
3rd Vice President Fernando Arguelles Allen Daviau Adam Holender Emmanuel Lubezki Anthony Palmieri
Levie Isaacks Tony Askins Roger Deakins Ernie Holzman Julio G. Macat Phedon Papamichael
Treasurer Paul Atkins Jan de Bont John C. Hora Glen MacPherson Daniel Pearl
Christopher Baffa Thomas Del Ruth Tom Houghton Paul Maibaum Brian Pearson
David Darby
James Bagdonas Bruno Delbonnel Gil Hubbs Constantine Makris Edward J. Pei
Secretary
King Baggot Peter Deming Paul Hughen Denis Maloney James Pergola
Isidore Mankofsky John Bailey Jim Denault Shane Hurlbut Isidore Mankofsky Dave Perkal
Sergeant-at-Arms Florian Ballhaus Caleb Deschanel Tom Hurwitz Christopher Manley Lowell Peterson
Michael Barrett Ron Dexter Judy Irola Michael D. Margulies Wally Pfister
MEMBERS Andrzej Bartkowiak Craig DiBona Mark Irwin Barry Markowitz Sean MacLeod Phillips
OF THE BOARD John Bartley George Spiro Dibie Levie Isaacks Steve Mason Bill Pope
John Bailey Gary Baum Ernest Dickerson Tim Ives Clark Mathis Steven Poster
Bill Bennett Bojan Bazelli Billy Dickson Peter James Don McAlpine Jaron Presant
Affonso Beato Bill Dill Johnny E. Jensen Don McCuaig Michael A. Price
Paul Cameron
Mat Beck Anthony Dod Mantle Matthew Jensen Michael McDonough Tom Priestley Jr.
Russell Carpenter Mark Doering-Powell Jon Joffin Seamus McGarvey Rodrigo Prieto
Dion Beebe
Curtis Clark Bill Bennett Todd A. Dos Reis Frank Johnson Robert McLachlan Robert Primes
Dean Cundey Andres Berenguer Stuart Dryburgh Shelly Johnson Geary McLeod Frank Prinzi
George Spiro Dibie Carl Berger Bert Dunk Jeffrey Jur Greg McMurry Christopher Probst
Stephen Lighthill Gabriel Beristain Lex duPont Adam Kane Steve McNutt Cynthia Pusheck
Lowell Peterson Steven Bernstein John Dykstra Stephen M. Katz Terry K. Meade Richard Quinlan
Cynthia Pusheck Ross Berryman Richard Edlund Ken Kelsch Suki Medencevic Declan Quinn
Josh Bleibtreu Eagle Egilsson Victor J. Kemper Chris Menges Earl Rath
Roberto Schaefer
Oliver Bokelberg Frederick Elmes Wayne Kennan Rexford Metz Richard Rawlings Jr.
John Simmons Michael Bonvillain Robert Elswit Francis Kenny Anastas Michos Frank Raymond
John Toll Richard Bowen Scott Farrar Glenn Kershaw Gregory Middleton Tami Reiker
Kees van Oostrum David Boyd Jon Fauer Darius Khondji David Miller Robert Richardson
Amy Vincent Russell Boyd Don E. FauntLeRoy Gary Kibbe Douglas Milsome Anthony B. Richmond
Natasha Braier Gerald Feil Neville Kidd Dan Mindel Tom Richmond
ALTERNATES Uta Briesewitz Cort Fey Jan Kiesser Charles Minsky Antonio Riestra
Jonathan Brown Steven Fierberg Jeffrey L. Kimball Claudio Miranda Bill Roe
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Don Burgess Mauro Fiore Adam Kimmel George Mooradian Owen Roizman
Stephen H. Burum Stephen H. Burum John C. Flinn III Alar Kivilo Reed Morano Pete Romano
David Darby Bill Butler Anna Foerster David Klein Donald A. Morgan Giuseppe Rotunno
Charlie Lieberman Frank B. Byers Larry Fong George Koblasa Donald M. Morgan Philippe Rousselot
Eric Steelberg Patrick Cady Ron Fortunato Lajos Koltai Polly Morgan Martin Ruhe
Sharon Calahan Greig Fraser Pete Kozachik Kramer Morgenthau Juan Ruiz-Anchia
Antonio Calvache Jonathan Freeman Neil Krepela Rachel Morrison Marvin Rush
Paul Cameron Tak Fujimoto Willy Kurant Peter Moss Paul Ryan
Gary Capo Alex Funke Ellen M. Kuras David Moxness Eric Saarinen
Russell P. Carpenter Steve Gainer Christian La Fountaine M. David Mullen Alik Sakharov
James L. Carter Robert Gantz George La Fountaine Dennis Muren Mikael Salomon
Lula Carvalho Ron Garcia Joe Labisi Fred Murphy Paul Sarossy
Alan Caso David Geddes Edward Lachman Hiro Narita Roberto Schaefer
Vanja Černjul Darren Genet Jacek Laskus Guillermo Navarro Tobias Schliessler
Michael Chapman Dejan Georgevich Dan Laustsen Michael B. Negrin Aaron Schneider
Rodney Charters Michael Goi Rob Legato James Neihouse Nancy Schreiber
Enrique Chediak Stephen Goldblatt Denis Lenoir Bill Neil Fred Schuler
Christopher Chomyn Adriano Goldman John R. Leonetti Alex Nepomniaschy John Schwartzman
James A. Chressanthis Paul Goldsmith Matthew Leonetti John Newby John Seale
T.C. Christensen Dana Gonzales Philippe LeSourd Yuri Neyman Christian Sebaldt
Joan Churchill Nathaniel Goodman Peter Levy Sam Nicholson Joaquin Sedillo

92 December 2018 American Cinematographer

D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 8

Dean Semler Mark Weingartner Scott Dale Debbie Kennard Sherri Potter Nazir Zaidi
Ben Seresin Jonathan West Marc Dando Glenn Kennel Howard Preston Michael Zakula
Eduardo Serra Jack Whitman Ross Danielson Robert Keslow Sarah Priestnall Joachim Zell
Steven Shaw Lisa Wiegand Carlos D. DeMattos Lori Killam David Pringle Les Zellan
Lawrence Sher Jo Willems Gary Demos Douglas Kirkland Doug Pruss
Richard Shore Stephen F. Windon Mato Der Avanessian Mark Kirkland David Reisner HONORARY MEMBERS
Sidney Sidell Alexander Witt Kevin Dillon Scott Klein Christopher Reyna Col. Edwin E. Aldrin Jr.
Newton Thomas Sigel Dariusz Wolski David Dodson Timothy J. Knapp Colin Ritchie Col. Michael Collins
Steven V. Silver Peter Wunstorf Judith Doherty Franz Kraus Eric G. Rodli Bob Fisher
John Simmons Tom Yatsko Peter Doyle Karl Kresser Robert Rodriguez David MacDonald
Sandi Sissel Steve Yedlin Cyril Drabinsky Ross La Manna Domenic Rom Larry Mole Parker
Santosh Sivan Robert Yeoman Matthew Duclos Jarred Land Andy Romanoff D. Brian Spruill
Michael Slovis Bradford Young Jesse Dylan Chuck Lee Frederic Rose Marek Zydowicz
Dennis L. Smith Richard Yuricich Kavon Elhami Doug Leighton Daniel Rosen
Roland “Ozzie” Smith Peter Zeitlinger Seth Emmons Lou Levinson Dana Ross
Reed Smoot Jerzy Zielinski Jonathan Erland Suzanne Lezotte Jim Roudebush
Bing Sokolsky Kenneth Zunder Per D. Fasmer Joe Lomba Bill Russell
Peter Sova Ray Feeney Grant Loucks Chris Russo
Glynn Speeckaert ASSOCIATE MEMBERS William Feightner Howard Lukk Kish Sadhvani
Dante Spinotti Pete Abel Chris Fetner Andy Maltz Dan Sasaki
Buddy Squires Rich Abel Jimmy Fisher Gary Mandle Steve Schklair
Terry Stacey Alan Albert Thomas Fletcher Steven E. Manios Jr. Peter K. Schnitzler
Eric Steelberg Richard Aschman Claude Gagnon Steven E. Manios Sr. Walter Schonfeld
Ueli Steiger Gerhard Baier Benjamin Gervais Chris Mankofsky Wayne Schulman
Peter Stein Kay Baker Salvatore Giarratano Michael Mansouri Alexander Schwarz
Tom Stern Joseph J. Ball John A. Gresch Gray Marshall Steven Scott
Robert M. Stevens Amnon Band Dan Hammond Peter Martin Yang Shao
David Stockton Carly M. Barber Jim Hannafin Robert Mastronardi Alec Shapiro
Rogier Stoffers Craig Barron Bill Hansard Jr. Joe Matza Don Shapiro
Vittorio Storaro Thomas M. Barron Lisa Harp Albert Mayer Jr. Milton R. Shefter
Gavin Struthers Larry Barton Richard Hart Bill McDonald Ryan Sheridan
David Stump Wolfgang Baumler Robert Harvey Dennis McDonald Marc Shipman-Mueller
Tim Suhrstedt Bob Beitcher Michael Hatzer Karen McHugh Leon Silverman
Peter Suschitzky Mark Bender Josh Haynie Andy McIntyre Rob Sim
Attila Szalay Bruce Berke Fritz Heinzle Stan Miller Garrett Smith
Masanobu Takayanagi Steven A. Blakely Charles Herzfeld Walter H. Mills Timothy E. Smith
Jonathan Taylor Joseph Bogacz Larry Hezzelwood George Milton Kimberly Snyder
Rodney Taylor Jill Bogdanowicz Sean Hise Mike Mimaki Stefan Sonnenfeld
William Taylor Mitchell Bogdanowicz Frieder Hochheim Michael Morelli Michael Sowa
Romeo Tirone Jens Bogehegn Bob Hoffman Dash Morrison John L. Sprung
John Toll Michael Bravin Vinny Hogan Nolan Murdock Joseph N. Tawil
Mario Tosi Simon Broad Jay Holben Dan Muscarella Ira Tiffen
Salvatore Totino Michael Brodersen Cliff Hsui Iain A. Neil Steve Tiffen
Luciano Tovoli William Brodersen Christine Huenergardt Otto Nemenz Arthur Tostado
Jost Vacano Garrett Brown Nichole Huenergardt Ernst Nettmann Jeffrey Treanor
Stijn van der Veken Terry Brown Robert C. Hummel Tony Ngai Bill Turner
Theo van de Sande Reid Burns Zoë Iltsopoulos-Borys Jeff Okun Stephan Ukas-Bradley
Eric van Haren Noman Vincent Carabello Alan Ipakchian Marty Oppenheimer JD Vandenberg
Hoyte van Hoytema Jim Carter Jim Jannard Walt Ordway Arthur Van Dover
Kees van Oostrum Elisabetta Cartoni George Joblove Ahmad Ouri Mark van Horne
Checco Varese Martin Cayzer Tor Johansen Michael Parker Dedo Weigert
Ron Vargas Leonard Chapman Joel Johnson Dhanendra Patel Marc Weigert
Mark Vargo Mark Chiolis Eric Johnston Snehal Patel Steve Weiss
Amelia Vincent Michael Cioni John Johnston Gary Paz Alex Wengert
William Wages Denny Clairmont Mike Kanfer Eliott Peck Evans Wetmore
Fabian Wagner Adam Clark Andreas Kaufmann Kristin Petrovich Franz Wieser
Roy H. Wagner Cary Clayton Marker Karahadian Ed Phillips Beverly Wood
Mandy Walker Dave Cole Frank Kay Nick Phillips Jan Yarbrough
Michael Watkins Michael Condon Dan Keaton Tyler Phillips Hoyt Yeatman
Colin Watkinson Grover Crisp Michael Keegan Joshua Pines Irwin M. Young
Michael Weaver Peter Crithary David Keighley Jorg Pohlman Michael Zacharia
William “Billy” Webb Daniel Curry Patricia Keighley Carl Porcello Bob Zahn

www.ascmag.com December 2018 93

 CLUBHOUSE
NEWS
Madrid. He was awarded a
Fulbright Scholarship and attended
the American Film Institute to study
cinematography.
After graduating from AFI and
shooting several movies, Argüelles
moved into television. His body of
work consists of television series,
miniseries and movies of the week,
and his credits include Prison Break,
Grimm, Hemlock Grove, Second
Chance and Scorpion. He is
currently in preproduction on the
DC Comics pilot and series Swamp
Thing, which is slated to premiere in
2019.
Fellow new member Paul
Atkins, ASC studied marine biol-
ogy and attended Florida State
University and the University of
Hawaii. Through his research,
Atkins developed a passion for the
ocean, which led him to pursue
underwater photography.
Early in his career, he served as a
cinematographer on television
documentary series and features,
including the BBC’s The Trials of
Life. Following this, Atkins collabo-
Top, from left: Fernando Argüelles, ASC, AEC and Paul Atkins, ASC. rated with his wife and producing
Middle: An ASC International Master Class is held in Colombia. partner Grace Atkins, and he
Above: Students visit the Clubhouse.
served as director and cinematogra-
pher on a number of National
Society Welcomes Geographic television documentary
Argüelles, Atkins features, including Hawaii: Strangers in
New active member Fernando Paradise, Great White Shark (co-produced
Argüelles, ASC, AEC was born in the by the BBC) and Dolphins: The Wild Side.
Asturias region of Spain and moved to Atkins has worked as a camera oper-
Madrid at a young age to pursue a career in ator for the BBC’s Planet Earth and provided
film. While there, he co-founded the additional photography on the Disneyna-
production company Los Films del Oasis ture feature Earth. He has provided second-
(Oasis Films), which produced numerous unit and additional photography on a
movies, including Best Seller — Argüelles’ number of narrative features, including
first feature. Master and Commander: The Far Side of
Argüelles graduated from Centro de the World, The Tree of Life and The
Instrucción Comercial e Industrial with a Revenant. His credits also include commer-
specialty in image and sound, and he also cials for clients such as Lexus, Toyota, AT&T
attended the Universidad Complutense de Wireless and Bank of Hawaii.
94 December 2018 American Cinematographer
International Master Class
Arrives in Colombia
The Society recently held a three-day
ASC International Master Class in Bogotá,
Colombia, with ASC instructors Bill
Bennett, Kees van Oostrum and Theo
van de Sande. Presented in partnership
with Arri, the ASC International Master
Class continues the Society’s mission to
educate the next generation of filmmakers
by offering advanced cinematographers a
unique opportunity to learn from the best.
ASC Opens Clubhouse
to Students
The Society recently welcomed
students from San Diego State University
and California State University, Northridge
to the historic Clubhouse in Hollywood for a
panel discussion as part of its ongoing
education and discussion programming.
The students heard from a panel of seven
ASC members — Russell Carpenter, Dean
Cundey, George Spiro Dibie, Bruce
Logan, Charles Minsky, Polly Morgan
and Rodney Taylor — who offered their
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.
insights into the life and career of a cine-
Master Class photo by Bill Bennett, ASC. Educational panel photo by Alex Lopez.
matographer. Dibie, the ASC’s Education &
Outreach Committee chair, moderated the
wide-ranging conversation, which was
based on questions generated by the
students.
The ASC has hosted similar opportu-
nities this year for students from Queens-
land University of Technology, located in
Brisbane, Australia, as well as from high
schools and colleges across the U.S. —
including Asbury University, Compass
College of Cinematic Arts, Chapman Univer-
sity, Loyola Marymount University, University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of
Visual Arts, Tulane University and Reseda
Charter High School.
For further coverage and additional
news, visit theasc.com/asc/news.
●
 CLOSE-UP
T.C. Christensen, ASC
When you were a child, what film
made the strongest impression on
you?
What’s Up, Doc? Amazingly funny.
Which cinematographers, past or
present, do you most admire?
Many. Notably, Néstor Almendros, ASC,
for introducing to me the naturalism he
was able to capture. Also, the work of
my friends I came up through the indus-
try with: Reed Smoot, ASC and Gordon
Lonsdale, ASC.
What sparked your interest in photography?
My dad’s home movies. I was fascinated by his ability to make that
little box record the dumb antics we’d do in our living room — and
a few weeks later, there we were doing the same dumb things
again… Magic!
Where did you train and/or study?
Brigham Young University, the University of Utah, and I began read-
ing American Cinematographer while in high school.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
Wally Barrus, Kieth Merrill and Reed Smoot.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
A college class by Tad Danielewski about subliminal messages in
films, including what was being said through the cinematography.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I made a film in college that won several festivals. After that, people
thought I knew what I was doing. I didn’t (still don’t), but they
started hiring me. Then Reed Smoot needed a B cameraman to
operate a 35mm Arri BL2 on a feature film. I thought I’d died and
gone to heaven.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
Watching the first dailies on my first Imax film. Imax films didn’t have
dailies — they had monthlies, so there was plenty of time to worry
about what had been shot. I was a bit insecure about it. At that first
screening, there was night-exterior work, day-interior work, and the
big vista shots Imax is known for. The director, Kieth Merrill, was
gushing. I done gooood.
Have you made any memorable blunders?
Twenty-five years ago, I was shooting Raquel Welch. She had a small
shadow at the corner of her mouth and she didn’t like it. She was
96 December 2018 American Cinematographer
very good at knowing when she
looked her best and when she did not.
My real blunder was that I took way
too long to realize what was casting
the shadow and fix it. I looked like a
wienie and I was a wienie.
What is the best professional
advice you’ve ever received?
As a college freshman, I went to see
my advisor. He asked what I wanted to
do. I told him, ‘a career in film.’ He
took 20 minutes telling me all the
reasons why I shouldn’t. ‘It’s too hard.
Too much competition. You’ll never make it.’ I walked out of there
thinking, ‘That guy’s an idiot. I’ll show him.’ I don’t know if I showed
him, but that was almost 50 years ago and I’ve never had another
job or worked a single day in anything other than film. Sometimes
negative advice can be a great motivator. Second-best advice: Early
in my career, I read an interview with Carol Burnett. In that article,
she said she never made a decision about taking a job based on the
money. For her, it was always based on, ‘Is this project good for my
career?’
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
Wonder, The Greatest Showman, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
I played in bands for many years. I’d love to do a musical.
If you weren’t a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
My wife says if I wasn’t a cinematographer, what I’d be is busy being
depressed. But I think I’d probably be one of those extras on the set
that is always hanging around staring at the camera and trying to
start up a conversation, working in words like ‘85N3’ and calling a
‘hi hat’ a ‘low boy,’ hoping they’d let me on their crew.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
I was fortunate to have been recommended and supported by three
very accomplished cameramen — Jeffrey Kimball, Bill Butler and
Photo by Eric Johnston.
Reed Smoot.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
Every time I see my name listed with all of those great cinematogra-
phers, I about start to cry. I realize I don’t deserve to be included on
that list — but sorry, I’m not resigning! ●