|
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
The major casino action was shot in the heart of Las Vegas, and to maintain the unnatural, garish world of the casinos, Carpenter simplified his lighting considerably. “I used [ETC] Source Fours as edgelights and Kino Flo Vista Beams through two layers of diffusion, one light grid and one full grid. I sometimes supplemented and shaped close-ups with a Kino Flo Barfly or [Lowel] Rifa-lite. Where I would normally use a 20K, I was using Kino Flos, and where I would normally work in about 20 footcandles of light, I was working in about 7! It’s a very different ballgame.” In one scene in Boston, as Campbell meets with the counting team at a diner to discuss their strategy, Carpenter ventured into new territory with lighting simplicity. “We walked into the diner, and above the table was a China hat with a single bulb in it,” he recalls. “I looked at it and thought, ‘Let’s shoot the scene with this.’ I’ve never done that before. We shot the scene with just that one bare bulb and sometimes a little bounce. We moved the China hat around a bit for close-ups, but that was it.”Before embarking on the shoot, Carpenter consulted with Dean Semler, ASC, ACS, who had just used the Genesis on the ASC Award nominee Apocalypto (AC Jan. ’07). “Dean was rating the Genesis at about 500 ISO, but I found it was more like 320 to 400 for me,” says Carpenter. “He helped me gain a lot of confidence in the system.”Not only was 21 Carpenter’s first digital production, but he had almost no time to prep and test the camera before shooting. He explains, “When the film was finally greenlit, there was immediately an issue with an actor’s availability, and suddenly we had to shoot really soon. I tested once in Las Vegas, and I did a day of tests at Panavision, where I ran exposure tests, almost like I would do with a new film stock. Then we shot some actor tests, and that was it. In a very short time, I had to get up to speed with the camera. Fortunately, Panavision has designed it so that someone who’s used to working with film cameras can step right in.“I also had a wonderful digital-imaging technician, Doug DeGrazio, who sometimes had to talk me down out of a tree! I could get flummoxed every now and again, especially with regard to dailies. The projection system we were using was not quite state-of-the-art, and there were limitations as to the representation of color and contrast. I’d see one thing on set and then not see it in [the dailies], and Doug was great about calming my anxiety. As projectors get better, those differences will disappear, but it was great to get into the editing suite and once again see what I’d seen on the set!” Carpenter says he would make a few changes to his approach on future digital shows. “I would build in a little more protection for my shadow areas. In fact, I’d probably have the on-set monitor crushed a little bit so that it forced me to fill the shadows a bit more. That way, I’d have room to bring them up in post if necessary.”One frustrating shortcoming in the technology, he continues, is a very subtle lack of smooth gradation between midtones and shadow details on an actor’s face. “At a certain point, when light transitions into shadows, the Genesis would sometimes start to block up a bit and lose saturation in that transition — I called it ‘the charcoal effect.’ It’s something that doesn’t happen on film. It’s very subtle, and it didn’t happen all the time, but it bothered me. After all, Kodak has been working for a very long time on rendering the nuances of fleshtones and transitions to shadow. I sometimes noticed the Genesis seemed to drop the color saturation in a person’s face just as the exposure slid into the toe. I would love to see this improved in the future.“I also noticed that when I used certain warm tones, ambers and oranges, I would see the color tones block up some in the faces during the digital intermediate [DI], almost like some kind of patina. I learned I had to back off the saturation in the DI in those moments to smooth out that blockiness.” (He graded the picture with colorist Stephen Nakamura at Technicolor Digital Intermediates.) In addition to the low lighting levels, Carpenter decided to shoot 21 with mostly long lenses. “We used the Primo 11:1 zoom and even pulled out the ‘Hubble’, the Primo 3:1. I was inside, shooting at a T2.8 at 450mm with people walking right at us. It was really crazy. But one of the beautiful things about digital is you can see it full resolution right there — you know you’ve got those shots. If I were shooting film and doing that, I’d be biting my nails off and certainly not sleeping nights until I saw dailies. I had an excellent focus puller, Erik Brown, who was up for the challenge, as was B-camera 1st AC Jorge Sanchez. It was exciting to have that kind of freedom and know we got the shot.”As Carpenter and his crew were setting up a dolly shot in one of the casinos, the camera, with long lens focused on the actors, dollied past a slot machine emblazoned with blinking LEDs. The image brought Carpenter up short, and he had the grips move the camera back to the slot machine. “All those colored LEDs way out of focus in the foreground created a wonderful effect, and I decided I wanted to extend that look for the whole shot. So we had the art department run around to all the souvenir shops and buy up all those little, blinking LED keychains, then we strung them up between two C-stands like a long necklace and used that in the foreground as we dollied past. It looked ridiculous on the set, but it was a fantastic effect in camera.”The filmmakers elected to compose 21 in widescreen 2.40:1 and crop the Genesis’ image from 1920x1080 pixels to 1920x800. “Honestly, I don’t miss the information,” says Carpenter. “The proof is when you see it on a large screen. That’s not to say I wouldn’t love to have the resolution of, say, the Dalsa [Origin], but the cropped 800-pixel image from the Genesis looks fantastic.”For select locations in Boston, Carpenter turned to more traditional lighting. Campbell is supporting himself with a job at a haberdashery in Harvard Square, and for that location, the production shot in the same store that was utilized in the 1970 hit Love Story. “It was a lot of fun to shoot there and be in a little place of cinema history,” Carpenter recalls with a smile. “We primarily lit through the windows using a couple of 18K and 12K HMIs that were underslung on Condors to get under the store’s awnings. “In the scene, Jill comes to persuade Campbell to join the team,” he continues. “I’ve been fortunate to work with some beautiful actresses who look phenomenal on camera, including Jessica Alba, Jennifer Lopez and, in this instance, Kate Bosworth. There’s a myth that you can just throw any light on a beautiful woman and shoot, but that’s just not true. I may be a bit old-school, but I feel it’s my job as a cinematographer to put an actress in her best light.“Kate has spectacular skin, and I wanted to overexpose her in this scene and make her glow,” he continues. “For her close-up, I brought a Chimera in close, just off the right camera frame, and in addition to using full grid diffusion, I put a 4-by-4 frame of light grid out in front of that. I kept all other ambient light off her, and on the left side of the frame, I had some negative fill for shape. I extended the light through the windows with a Source Four, hitting her hair to give the moment a romantic quality.”
|
|
| |
<< previous || next >>
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
