Introduction
The
moment's cinematography is very diverse in the sense that it has been
developing more rapidly towards digital cinema in the last years.
Digital cinematography and computer generated imagery are going hand
in hand. One aspect of making cinema now is that film-makers are
thinking out new ways to make creative worflow even more efficient in
terms of preproduction. The director and cinematographer are working
to imagine what would their vision look like and in the process, new
technological ways of working are invented, for instance digital
previsualization of the set, prelighting and previsualization of
actor's movements.
In the
process of preproduction and tests before the shootings, the
cinematographer in collaboration with technical advisors, special
effect supervisors and the director, are thinking of ways how to
realize the visuals and the story the best way they possibly can. If
something seems to be impossible to make, then there's a whole team
behind the film who are helping to make that impossible to become
reality. In the process, new technology and innovations are being
invented, for instance pre-programmed camera rigs with smooth heads
or moving sets with moving rigged lights and projections.
The
other side of film-making is to use already-extisting technical
innovations. The cinematographer and the team would use extisting
camera solutions as a tool to tell a story or to create an artwork of
a whole. Newer technology in cinematography are tools to manipulate
the image: to capture film in low light situations or with open
aparatures, to film with bluescreen or greenscreen or projection, to
capture image in 3D, to capture film in huge formats for stabilizing
or resizing it later, to capture images in narrow spaces or where you
possibly never could put a 35mm camera. Directors of photography use
these possibilities and get inspired by these technical innovations
creatively.
In
the latest years there have been arguments among film-makers whether
it's better to use celluloid film stock for image capture or to use
digital cameras. There are countless arguments what is considered to
be „better“. There are cinematographers who prefer celluloid film
over digital due to colour and dynamic range. But there are other
opinions on digital cameras that they are more flexible in tight
spaces and low light conditions. Of course these are only few
considerations that cinematographers have in mind when they choose
their medium, a tool of the trade – camera. But what kind of
cameras are really used in different productions nowadays?
Tools of the Trade
The following chapter will give an insight into
film productions, their nature and the choice of the cinematographer
what camera was used.
According to D. Kaufman's article in American
Cinematographer Magazine September 2014 issue, the cinematographer
Neville Kidd won Creative Arts Emmy Awards for Sherlock: His Last Vow
in cinematography last year. Neville says he used two Arri Alexas for
the majority of the show, as well as a Canon Cinema EOS C300.
According to Kaufman, Kidd also used a Vision Research Phantom camera
for some high-speed work. Neville says, „To depict Sherlock’s
mindset, we attached the C300 to Benedict [Cumberbatch] with a body
rig.“ According to the article, Kidd shot most of the show with
Cooke lenses, but also used extreme wide angles - Zeiss 10mm and 12mm
lenses, to convey Sherlock’s mindset at the right moments. (D.
Kaufman, September 2014)
Neville Kidd used two cameras for his film –
an Alexa and a Canon C300. Shooting for TV and DVD distribution, he
might have reduced his format size to HD, so he had plenty of cameras
to choose from. The choice of Alexa seems to be understandable,
because Alexa is known for its durability and colour sensibility.
Having used both cameras myself, I can understand why Canon C300 was
one of the choices. It can produce a sharp full sensor HD quality in
good light conditions and being lightweight and easily monitored at
the same time.
Ben Davis, the cinematographer of Guardians of the Galaxy, notes that
he used two Arri Alexa cameras on the film, with a third and fourth
added on occasion, D. Bankston writes about the cinematographer in
his article. “If it’s three, I’ll work a wide and a tight down
one axis and the third camera at 90 degrees. Over the years I’ve
become much more adept at lighting for multiple cameras.[...] I don’t
mind working with two cameras at 90 degrees from each other,” Davis
says. The cinematographer chose lenses with anamorphic artifacts,
aberrations, because he liked the look they gave to the image,
stating, „We had a 50mm that said T2.8 on it, but it was more like
a T4 and had a lot of edge distortion. I liked the look of it.“ (D.
Bankston, September 2014)
Ben Davis also worked on Arri Alexas, shooting multiple cameras at
once. Usually it is not that favourable to use multiple cameras, it
mostly depends on the collaboration of the director and the
cinematographer. The cinematographer has to be very clear and fast on
his/her lighting desicions when using multiple cameras. The subject
has to be lit on several angles and it makes the lighting hard for
the gaffer and the DP – where to set the lights. Sometimes you have
to give ground to other means, such as time and performance. In the
end, the most important is how the actors perform, so multiple camera
setup is mainly used to capture moments between the actors.
The film Gravity was shot by Emmanuel Lubezki
who shot most of the live-action material also with Arri Alexa
Classics and wide Arri Master Prime lenses. In an article about
Gravity written by Benjamin B, the cinematographer stated, “The
Alexa allowed me to shoot ASA 800 native, and it still looked great
if I pushed it to 1,200, which made it possible to use the LED
sources.“
According to Benjamin B's article, Lubezki shot
the actors inside a big LED Box where the crew put the camera on a
modified Mo-Sys remote head. The remote head was attached to a large,
motion-controlled robot arm that could be moved around the actor in a
preprogrammed trajectory.
Benjamin B wrote that addition to using the
digital camera, Lubezki shot a scene on 65mm, using an Arri 765 and
Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, to achieve an accent comparing to the rest
of the picture. (Benjamin B, November 2013)
Gravity has been one of the most innovative film in terms of on-set
technology and production workflow in the last years. Lubezki used
Arri Alexas for his production mainly because he was planning to
light the actors in a very specific and delicate way. He wanted to
use LED light souces, so he needed a light sensitive camera. Putting
the camera on a motion system remote head is also an impressive
technological tool to imitate the feeling of non-gravity.
Nine digital camera systems were used on Rush, the film that was
photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle, describes an article written by
M. Hope-Jones. „Cameras and recording
formats were as follows: Arri Alexas captured ArriRaw on Codex
Recorders and (as an initial backup) in ProRes 4:4:4:4 to SxS cards;
Canon C300s captured in MPEG2 8-bit CanonLog 1920x1080 24ps to CF
cards; Indiecam GS2K and POV cameras captured in 10-bit raw in 4:2:2
uncompressed QuickTimes to Hyperdeck Shuttle SSD; the Phantom Flex
(used by a splinter unit) captured in CineRaw 12-bit variable
resolution and frame rate on CineMags; the V.I.O. POV.HD captured in
QuickTime H.264; the Red Epic (used for visual-effects plates)
captured in Redcode 5K 5:1; and the Canon 1D and GoPro cameras (both
rarely used) captured in QuickTime H.264,“ is written about
different cameras and formats used for Rush. The cinematographer
states, „Three people staffed our mobile lab: a data wrangler, a
DIT and a colorist. At the peak of production, when the race unit was
filming, we had to double our manpower to have two shifts of three
people working around the clock.“ (M.
Hope-Jones, October 2013)
In a full length feature film like Rush, I
imagine how difficult it must be to handle all these camera formats
and sizes and put them to work on one timeline. But considering the
nature of the story, I understand the choices that Anthony Dod Mantle
made in terms of choosing the right cameras for the film. Arri Alexa
and Canon C300 are also represented, like in Neville Kidd's film. Red
Epics were used for visual-effects shots, Phantom Flex for slow
motion effects shots, presumedly. Considering the small HD cameras,
they were used for the simple reason why other cameras couldn't be
used – those could be used in tight spaces or fixed to speeding F1
vehicles.
Fincher's Gone Girl was photographed by cinematographer Jeff
Cronenweth, who used Red Epic Dragons for their production. In M.
Goldman's article about Fincher's film Gone Girl, Cronenweth's team
brought out several aspects why Red Dragon was their primary choice.
Cronenweth's camera operator Rosenfeld stated, “There were a few
occasions in Cape Girardeau when we shot so deep into dusk that most
cameras would not have handled it.” He continued, “The low-light
capability of the camera was outstanding, and the images we got in
those conditions looked beautiful.“
What is more, the cinematographer describes in the article that the
Dragon's 6K sensor size afforded them additional material information
to better control, manipulate, reposition and stabilize the frames in
postproduction themselves. That thought was also confirmed by Peter
Mavromates, Fincher’s longtime postproduction supervisor, “We
ended up with a 5K extraction out of a 6K field [that will] be
distributed in 4K and 2K. But the 4K and 2K are better when you
front-load the quality, which we were able to do with the 6K sensor.”
(M. Goldman, November 2014)
Cronenweth filmed Fincher's Gone Girl with Red Dragons, presumedly
due to its 6K sensor size and great performance in low light
situations. The 6K sensor size allows the film-maker to better
manipulate the footage in postproduction. It is possible to resize
the images if the film will be delivered either in 2K or 4K
resolution. 6K sensor size will allow the director to reframe and
stalilize the image if he/she likes to emphasize something on the
screen or wants to reduce the movement of the camera. These desicions
made in postproduction are connected with the cinematographer as
well. It is a common desicion of the director and the
cinematographer, whether to change the image that the cinematographer
had framed and moved in the beginning. I will be discussing this
phenomenon later in the article.
For Oblivion, shot by Claudio Miranda, Sony F65, Red Epic-M and Red
Epic-X were used, describes the article about the making of Oblivion
by J. Holben. “We wanted to
stay away from bluescreen and do as much in-camera as possible,”
says the cinematographer Claudio Miranda. In the article he says that
he nor the director likes the limitations of bluescreen composites on
a set and they didn't want to end up in a situation where most of the
set was made of CGI. Instead, Miranda had the idea of being old
school on a modern way and use frontscreen projection to create sky
all around the set with powerful video projectors. (J. Holben, May
2013)
Claudio Miranda used Sony F65 and
Reds for his film. The chosen digital cameras offer the right light
sensitivity, because the film-makers wanted to use projection
screens. If they wouldn't have used projection, they would have gone
with some other digital camera (if CGI would have been involved) or a
35mm camera (for built sets). Claudio Miranda states in the ASC
article,“That’s
one of the wonderful things about shooting digitally: you can work in
very low-light situations and get some beautiful images. I love film,
but I know I couldn’t have shot Oblivion on film.” (J. Holben,
May 2013)
Using projection is fascinating in a way that it offers a lot more
than bluescreen or greenscreen. There is also a side that concerns
the lighting – in fact you can light with the projection itself.
What is more, is the experience. The actors are able to experience
the environment and can give a much more naturalistic performance.
The cinematographer of Resident Evil Afterlife,
Glen MacPherson, talks about shooting his film in 3D in an interview
article by J. Hemphill. The cinematographer states it's a trend to
shoot 3D films digitally, because film-makers can monitor 3D live on
set. Considering camera choices he stated, „We worked with the Pace
Fusion 3-D rigs with Sony F35 cameras and Master Primes.“ The
cinematographer explained why he was using Master Primes – they
were sharp and had the right speed quality to them, especially when
he was using Pace rigs and loses a full stop of light through the
mirror on the 3D rig. He also used Phantom Gold for slow motion
shots. MacPherson stated, „I liked the sensitivity of the F35
cameras and the full size sensor. A lot of people will tell you you
need depth of field when shooting 3-D, but I like the look of shallow
depth when I want to use it in the story.“ According to the
cinematographer, his team was the first in 2010 to use long lenses
like the 100mm and 150mm Master Prime on a 3D mirror rig. „A lot of
rigs have mirrors that have trouble resolving anything over 50mm, but
Pace has an "organic" mirror that allowed us to use the
longer lenses,“ MacPherson says.
In the article he mentioned he liked the fact
the technology is dealt with all the way through post and so he can
concentrate on using his technology creatively. (J. Hemphill,
December 2010)
Glen MacPherson indeed uses his technology
creatively, due to the fact that he is shooting 3D on the set. He
likes to make his own desicions in shooting 3D imagery – how
shallow or deep something looks on the screen, what is focused, what
is not. A lot of film productions about to be released in 3D are
rendered in postproduction houses – these desicions aren't made by
the cinematographer anymore. The films where 3D is considered already
in preproduction and on the set, are definitely more refine than the
3D renders made in posthouses.
According
to an article about the making of Interstellar, written by I.
Stasukevich, Interstellar was shot both with 65mm IMAX or 35mm
Panaflex Millennium XL. Approximately 60 to 70 minutes of the film’s
170-minute run time was filmed in 15-perf 65mm Imax MSM 9802. The
article claims the cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema to focus his
large-format cinematography research on composition and operability.
For instance, he said,“Your principles of framing are simpler. The
Imax image is 1.43:1, so it’s more of a square. Because of the
size, the experience is more visceral than observational, so you end
up composing much more in the center of the frame.“ Hoytema
wondered how beautiful medium IMAX is, with so
much depth and clarity and size and how would it be like to do more
intimate things with close focus and a short depth of field. He said,
„It’s beautiful how the Imax lenses render faces. They’re like
big-format still portraits.”
(I. Stasukevich, December 2014)
IMAX is the most largest format in cinema now –
it passes a horizontal resolution size of 18K with its 15-perf 65mm
film stock. The IMAX film can be delivered into a 70mm negative for
distribution in IMAX theaters, 35mm negative distribution version for
ordinary theaters, to DCPs and variable deliveries, such as DVDs etc.
In the previous film productions, Christopher Nolan worked with Wally
Pfister on the films Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, The Prestige,
Memento where they formed a similar film language.
According to an interview with W. Pfister
published on DP/30 Channel in Youtube in 2011, Pfister talked about
the director Christopher Nolan and his constant desire to deliver his
films into large scale formats, such as IMAX. At a point where they
were in the middle of one of the film productions together,
Christopher wanted to shoot the film with IMAX camera and therefore
shooting it handheld, wanting to follow the actors. At that time
Pfister was sceptical about handling the IMAX handheld, because it is
a really heavy camera with a really heavy load and huge size. (DP/30,
February/2011)
The Dark Knight Rises was the last production
Nolan and Pfister worked together since 2012. In Interstellar,
Christopher was already working with Hoyte van Hoytema, who offered
solutions for handheld IMAX camera and IMAX attached on the actor's
body.
Digital
Capture – An Introduction
In the following chapter I will discuss about
digital film capture from examples above that used digital cameras
like Arri Alexas, Red Dragons, Red Epics or Sony F65 or F35. There
are many reasons why digital medium was used for those specific
films. For example, digital medium can either offer flexibility in
the editing room or colour grading. Once there is sufficient
material, the director can resize or stabilize or reframe the image
if needed. For the colorist, there is a possibility to manipulate a
6K image to have more clarity or colors in it. Digital medium offers
a more direct workflow when it comes to computer-generated imagery.
There are specifically engineered high-end digital slow motion
cameras, which are widely used for slow motion capture, for instance
the Phantom Flex. When it comes to films and stories, which are in
need of specifically small or lightweight cameras, it's possible to
use head-cameras or Go-Pro's – they could be attachable to almost
everywhere in tight conditions. Digital cameras are efficient in low
light situations and are favoured mainly because of that. They offer
beautiful image quality in low light with enough information in the
blacks in the image. An interesting aspect of using projection is
also introduced in the film productions below – digital cameras are
used to capture the actors' performance in an environment created and
illuminated by pre-shot footage on a projetion, without having a need
to put a separate keylight for any actor. All these technological
innovations inspire cinematographers to express their visuals through
this technology.
Techinal Possibilities That
Broaden Creative Realizations
There are a number
of film productions that use film technology to serve their creative
ideas. For instance, in Kaufman's article about the Emmys last year,
it was written that Neville Kidd was able to do things
in Sherlock that might have looked contrived in a normal drama,
including being extreme with framing, camera tricks and rigs. “There
aren’t many dramas where you can do that, because ordinarily, it
takes you away from the story,” Kidd says. “But with Sherlock, it
adds to the storytelling. (D. Kaufman,
September 2014)
Previously I wrote about Cronenweth's and Fincher's collaboration
Gone Girl where they used Red Dragon digital cameras to capture 6K
footage in order to manipulate the image in post production.
According to an interview with the cinematographer Cronenweth and
other cinematographers at a roundtable, the reason for manipulating
the image was for the sake of the Gone Girl's story.
(THR December/2014) In Goldman's
article about their film, Fincher said, „For us, collecting 6K was
simply a way to get to the most pristine 4K, because then we could do
all the stuff we wanted to do in post to emphasize the performances
we liked.“ Cronenweth adds in the article, “This has been
Fincher’s methodology all along: to use the system best equipped to
help us get the most appealing images through color science and
resolution.” (M. Goldman, November 2014)
The collaboration between the cinematographer Cronenweth and the
director Fincher is very sustainable and seems that Cronenweth is
happy with the outcome of that collaboration. On the other hand, it
seems that every year there will be more technical innovations in the
film industry and film-makers' thinking of how to tame that
technology for their own sake. Decades ago, when only celluloid film
cameras were used, there still was an industry where the
cinematographer was one of the most important collaboraters with the
director – still is, but the role has changed during the years.
When shooting with a celluloid film camera, the cinematographer was
the only person to have the right to look into the camera's
viewfinder and decide on whether the take was good or not, because it
was one of their responsibilities. The cinematographer was able to
make the desicions that now are made by someone else in post
production. The mentality was about mutual respect and trust.
According to assistant editor Tyler Nelson in Goldman's article about
Gone Girl, they edited Gone Girl with Adobe Premiere programme which
gave them the ability to transcode their media to a smaller format
and edit those files in a more smaller, 1920x800 timeline. (M.
Goldman, November 2014) This is a usual workflow to edit large
resolution raw material the most efficient way. In the article,
Nelson continued, „That allowed us to start editing by seeing only
what Jeff was framing for on set, and to manipulate the framing,
meaning we could move the image up, down, left, right and so on
without having to re-transcode the edit media.“ (M. Goldman,
November 2014)
There is always a reason, let it be intuitive or explained by some
methodology, for the cinematographer to compose and frame a shot. It
is extremely important how the camera is positioned in relation to
the actor – how the eyeline is set, what is the frame size, how is
the framing composed. These desicions are somehow important for the
sake of the story and for an artistic whole. It is the
cinematographer, who still has the right to decide which kind of
framing or camera movement to use. If that desicion is made knowing
that it will be your creative imput, but your creative desicions are
done over by someone else, then it's kind of not your own artistic
creation anymore.
What Works Well in Shooting 3-D
When it comes to making your own desicions,
then cinematographers tend to like making their own desicions on
visuals they are controlling.
The cinematographer Glen MacPherson talked
about 3-D film-making in Hemphill's article in ASC magazine. He was
talking about Resident Evil Afterlife, „There was never any talk of
converting to 3-D in post. Neither Paul nor I are big fans of that
process. I like to use 3-D on set as a creative tool. I don't like
the idea of shooting it flat and handing it off to a 3-D post house,
leaving those decisions to someone else.“ MacPherson stated, „You
learn very quickly what works and what does not in 3-D. There are all
sorts of things to look for while operating the camera. Objects on
the edge of the frame can be very annoying in 3-D. In extreme case,
an object can be in one eye but not the other. The camera operator is
seeing a 2-D image from one eye and may not know he has something on
the edge of the other eye. These are all things we look out for
collectively. Anderson loves symmetry in his compositions, and that
works very well in 3-D. Crazy shaky camera movements do not work well
at all. Very fast cutting can be annoying unless you reduce your I/O
to almost zero, close to 2-D. Our approach to the action sequences
was to slow down the editing pace and play a lot of it in slow
motion.“ (J. Hemphill, December 2010)
The
long shots or sequences in slow motion work well in 3-D, the viewer
simply is more focused on the central character or an object's
movements. Gravity was also released in 3-D. The choice of having a
very few cuts in the film and an extremely long shot in the beginning
had to do something that it was being released in 3-D. The desicion
was made both by the director
Alfonso Cuarón and the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki. In the
article written by Benjamin B. for ASC magazine the film-makers
described what they had learned from making the previous films
together. Lubezki states, “The main thing about the plano sequencia
[long sequence in Gravity] is that it is immersive. To me, it feels
more real, more intimate and more immediate. The fewer the cuts, the
more you are with [the characters]; it’s as if you’re feeling
what they’re going through in real time. This is something Alfonso
and I discovered on Y Tu Mamá
También
and Children of Men.” (Benjamin
B, November 2013)
Advantages
in Shooting With Projection
Projection screens are in fact a very versatile
way of working in the studio when film-makers want to create an
environment that can't be done with set decoration. It saves a lot of
post production hassle. There are a lot of advantages in using
projection. For instance, it's possible to light with projection
screens when powerful projectors are used. Futhermore, it creates an
atmosphere for the actors and it makes a lot more easier for them to
react to situations, because they know which context they are in.
Previously I brought an example how Oblivion's
cinematographer Claudio Miranda used front projection in his film.
Projection was also accepted by Christopher Nolan and Van Hoytema
during Interstellar production.
According
to I. Stasukevich's, Nolan raised the possibility of front projection
as an alternative to computer generated imagery and in collaboration
with the visual-effects supervisor Paul Franklin they decided to try
it. The cinematographer Van Hoytema described, “We have sequences
where the spacecraft dips toward a planet, and we could move the
content dynamically outside the windows while rotating the light
coming through the windows.” The article described the projection
elements were fine-tuned over the course of production and most of
these elements were still enhanced with visual effects in post
production. On the other hand, Van Hoytema notes in the article that
they always wanted to make it as good as they could in front of the
camera, (I.
Stasukevich, December 2014) like
has been Christopher Nolan's princible on most of his films.
Claudio Miranda follows the same princible in his Oblivion and wanted
to stay off of blue screens and green screens and focus on using
projections on the set. The director and the DP wanted to avoid the
situation that they had to make the environments in CGI. According to
J. Holben's article for ASC magazine, the
film-makers used a 270-degree projection around the entire set
and more than 60 layers of video were combined to create a final
blended image resolution of 18,288 x 1080 pixels. (J.
Holben, May 2013) The amount of the projection is impressive enough
to light the whole set, only having to use bounce once in a while in
a close-up. In the article the DP says, „I actually used the light
from the projections for much of the lighting in the sky tower. It
gave us a huge source that was very beautiful natural light. In some
cases, we’d use some additional bounce to bring that light closer
[to an actor], but that was it.” (J. Holben, May 2013)
The projection screens were big enough to cover
most of the exterior environments on the set, but these also had to
be rearranged in terms of the story and time of the day. What
concerns the footage on the projection screens, then Miranda talks
about them as well, “We sent a crew out to Hawaii to shoot
sky and cloud plates with three Red Epics, and those were stitched
together to create 15K motion plates for the projectors.”
The good thing about using projections is that you can use reflecting
substances: costumes, set design elements, shiny floors. Films that
are shot using green screens and blue screens and which are digitally
manipulated later, special-effects and CG graphics added, need test
shootings for costumes, make-up and skin tones, (not) to match the
keyed background and not to have non-fitting reflecting substances.
In Holben's article Miranda talks about using projection, “This
meant our production designer, Darren Gilford, didn’t have to
compromise in his design for the set — we could have all the glass
and shiny surfaces we wanted!” (J. Holben,
May 2013)
Technical
Innovations: Digital Prelighting and Preprogrammed Camera Moves
The
last, but not the least among the digital cinematograpy achievements
there is the film Gravity. In fact, it is thus far the most
technically innovative film-making of the films listed so far in
terms of creative progress and the technical side of cinematograpy.
The fun part of the whole film is that it won 7 Academy Awards
altogether in year 2014, among them is the Academy Award for Best
Achievement in Cinematography. To tell something about the film
itself, it must be that the only real elements that were shot are the
actors and their faces and the space suit imitations on them. Other
elements of the film is purely CGI.
According
to an article about the making of Gravity by Benjamin B., the
cinematographer Emmanuel
Lubezki was thoroughly involved in every stage of creating the film's
real and CGI images. In collaboration with his special-effects team,
digital gaffers and the director he created a visual simulation for
all the actors' movements, lighting and camera movements in the film.
“Working
with a lot of digital gaffers, I was able to design the lighting for
the entire film,” says Lubezki, having a team working with him at
all time. (Benjamin B, November 2013)
Because the film was shot considering it was
released in 3-D, some main principles of shooting 3-D were
considered. Like mentioned in the 3-D chapter, the movements and
actions were shot in very long takes, especially in the beginning. In
the film the shots were extremely fluid and seemed very real.
The
senior visual-effects producer Charles Howell explains in Benjamin
B.'s article for ASC magazine, “I think there were only about 200
cuts in the previs animation, [whereas] an average film has about
2,000 cuts. Because these shots had to be mapped out from day one,
many of the lengthy shots didn’t really change in the three years
of shot production. Because we did a virtual prelight of the entire
film with Chivo[cinematographer], the whole film was essentially
locked before we even started shooting.” The visual-effects
supervisor Tim Webber explains how they got the idea to build a
virtual simulation for the whole film. “We needed the freedom of a
virtual camera,” says Webber, “so we created a virtual world and
then worked out how to get human performances into that world.”
(Benjamin
B, November 2013)
In
large scale film productions where computer generated imagery is
involved, there are separate production advisor companies hired to
help film-makers create a virtual animation of their planned film.
Key persons for this kind of planning are the visual-effects
supervisor and special-effects advisors. Usually it is better to
start with storyboards which will lead into generating a 3-D
animation in a programme, to make clear what the cinematographer and
the director want exactly. After generating the animation, the
visual-effects supervisor, director and cinematographer arrange a
test shooting based on that same animation to see whether it's really
working with the needed equipment and technology like it is supposed
to. The Gravity workflow was similar to that, but much more refined
in the sense of how detailed the planning was in the animation
process – everything was fixed by the date the film-makers went to
the shooting: the choreography, very precise lighting, camera
movements.
The
cinematographer explains how they managed to plan the camera
movements.
“The camera moves are really complex, but we started in the most
simple way — first with storyboards, and then with a bunch of
puppets and toy versions of the International Space Station and the
space shuttle Columbia,” Lubezki states in Benjamin B's article.
The cinematographer notes that in addition to naturalism he wanted to
have an elastic feel to the camera that stretches back and forth from
one extreme to another. He explains in the article, “We wanted to
keep a lot of our shots elastic — for example, to have a shot start
very wide, then become very close, and then go back to a very wide
shot.”
What
concerns the lighting of the film, then it's very complex in a way it
had to match to the previsualized CG lighting and its environment
exactly, otherwise the look of the entire shot material would look
non-naturalistic and therefore would look artificial, uncanny. It was
extremely important for Lubezki to have a realistic look to the
actor's faces. „I
had the idea to build a set out of LED panels and to light the
actors’ faces inside it with the previs animation,” Lubezki
explained in the article. “When you put a gel on a 20K or an HMI,
you’re working with one tone, one color. Because the LEDs were
showing our animation, we were projecting light onto the actors’
faces that could have darkness on one side, light on another, a hot
spot in the middle and different colors. It was always complex, and
that was the reason to have the Box,” Lubezki explains the lighting
strategy on the LED box set.
The actor's movements had to match to the
previsualized animation exactly, because the motion system camera was
programmed to certain moves. According to Benjamin B's article, Arri
Alexa digital camera was put on a modified Mo-Sys remote head, which
itself was attached to a large, motion-controlled robot arm that
could be moved around the actor in a preprogrammed trajectory. Webber
adds in the article that they worked on adjusting their technology to
add increased flexibility to the system. For instance, to include the
ability to adjust the speed of the preprogrammed moves to be adapted
to the actors’ performances. More innovations were made to the
motion system - a special remote head was added for a camera operator
Peter Taylor to operate. The remote unit based on the Mo-Sys was
adapted to a smaller and lighter system, so that it would block less
light. (Benjamin B, November 2013)
These techological innovations, such as
preprogrammed Mo-Sys remote heads and robot arms and
previsualisations of the actor's movements in animation and a very
precise previsualisation of lighting the whole film, mark a huge step
in cinematography. It's a common thing to decide very early on in pre
production how much shots there will be or long will the they be, but
it is remarkable how precise these desicions had to be, to make the
film work that realistically. With a very specific planning in
choreography and CGI and choosing the right tools, the film-makers
were able to pull off with the visual achievements that haven't been
seen in cinema before. The ideas that they had in these
previsualisations were still only ideas, until maybe they were put up
with a fact that some things couldn't be done, but that's the least
thing film-makers can accept, right? So these creative ideas were
actually used to develop technological innovations to make their
creative ideas happen, which is, in my opinion, an amazing thing to
do.
Film
Capture on IMAX
Format and Anti-CG
One of the two film productions of my list used celluloid film in
their cinema productions. One of them was Gravity, where Emmanuel
Lubezki shot the film's very last scene on 35mm film stock. The
second film production is Christopher Nolan's epic Interstellar,
which was captured on 65mm 15-perf film stock, delivered into 70mm
IMAX format.
First things first, according to an article from ASC written by I.
Stasukevich, Van Hoytema was provided with large format
Hasselblad lenses from Imax and Dan Sasaki provided the
cinematographer two custom lenses of 50mm T2 close focus lens and
80mm T2 Mamiya (originally made for The dark Knight Rises). Hoytema
was accommodated with handgrips and a shoulder pad for IMAX camera.
A shortened MSM 9802 viewfinder was a neccessary change in order to
handle the 75-pound camera with a 1,000' magazine more easily.
Visual-effects supervisor Paul Franklin claimed in the article that
much of Interstellar’s imagery was photographed with miniatures and
that means that very little computer generated imagery was made. “We
saved digital for the stuff we could not do any other way, like a
wormhole or a 4,000-foot mountain of water,” says Franklin in the
article.
The incredible fact about the heavy IMAX cameras used for shooting
Interstellar, is that the film-makers could hard-mount the Imax
camera directly to the actors, like Nolan had wanted it on his
previous films. Van Hoytema claims,“We built body mounts that were
either suspended or placed on a pivoting rig, housing both the actor
and the Imax camera. The whole rig could then descend on cables
through the zero-G sets.[...] It let us [capture] visceral angles
that are normally only possible with a GoPro camera, but in 15-perf
65mm!” (I. Stasukevich, December 2014)
Conclusion
We
started to compare the different cameras cinematographers use for
their films. Most of the DP's in my list used digital cameras,
because most of their work was connected to either computer generated
imagery or other cinematic innovations, such as slow motion or
modern-day 3-D. The kinds of creative visual tools, such as using
projections or operating in low light conditions, put digital cameras
in advantage. Digital cameras offer a workflow that is convenient to
work with and the images can be easily manipulated with – they can
be resized, reframed or stabilized. It's still a matter of agreement
between the cinematographer and the director, and a matter of taste,
but it's still a creative tool as well.
Thanks
to the film-makers' ideas and the process of imagining what their
visions would look like, new technological ways of working are
invented. For instance, digital previsualization of the set,
prelighting and previsualization of actor's movements are used in the
course of pre-production. New innovations are being added to already
existing technologies, for instance remotes for pre-programmed smooth
camera heads or additions made to handle film cameras in a more
controlled way. Directors of photography and directors are either
influencing innovations with their creativeness or are influenced by
the innovations to get creative. There are thousands of cameras to
choose from, they are the tools for creativity. Anthony
Dod Mantle used 9 cameras for his film Rush, all of them were
digital. In Christopher Nolan's and Van Hoytema's case their creative
tool was IMAX 65mm on rigs that seemed impossible to handle. They
wanted visuals that would be as realistic as possible, with as
realistic colours as celluloid film could offer. And it is for the
sake of the creative output. The
arguments among film-makers whether it's better to use celluloid film
stock for image capture or to use digital cameras are shrinking into
the same thought in the end – it is best to use whatever is
suitable for the film production you are working on – it totally
depends on that.
Because in the end, does it really count
whether it's analog or digital, because the choices that are made are
in sake of the artwork and that's again very subjective – a
creative choice.
References
[1] Debra Kaufman. Primetime Prestige. ASC
September/2014
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[2] Douglas Bankston. Space Cases. ASC
September/2014
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[3] Michael Goldman. Questionable Circumstance.
ASC November/2014
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[4] Iain Stasukevich. Cosmic Odyssey. ASC
December/2014
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[5] Jim Hemphill. Q&A With Glen MacPherson,
ASC. ASC December/2010
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[6] Benjamin B. Facing the Void. ASC
November/2013
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[7] Mark Hope-Jones. Full Throttle. ASC
October/2013
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[8] Jay Holben. Surviving the Future. ASC
May/2013
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[9] DP/30 Youtube Channel. Interview with Wally
Pfister. February 3rd/2011
(accessed on January 10th 2015)
[10] THR Youtube Channel. The Cinematographers
Roundtable. December 2nd/2014
(accessed on January 10th 2015)