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Semler notes that although the Genesis output was set up to resemble 5218, the camera has considerably more sensitivity in the shadow end. He typically rates 5218 at 400 ASA, and he sets the Genesis at 640 ASA with a 180-degree shutter. The digital camera’s electronic shutter can be varied and even turned off completely. With the shutter off, the camera’s sensitivity is doubled to 1280 ASA, while motion blur is increased because the exposure time is 1/24 instead of 1/48. In extremely low-light situations, Semler increased the camera gain by as much as one stop, yielding an ASA of 2560. “This all sounds wonderful, but care must be taken to avoid noise and unwanted blurring,” he says. “At these extremely low light levels, the Genesis sees what your eye doesn’t, what you’ve never been accustomed to seeing. I prefer a 270-degree shutter and a 1/2 stop of gain for less blur and noise at an ASA of 1280, but in desperate times, I have gone all the way.” Semler recalls shooting a scene at the beginning of Apocalypto in which several villagers tease a neighbor who is having difficulty impregnating his wife. “The scene involved most of the principal actors and the whole village, men, women and kids. It was late afternoon, and we were losing light rapidly under the heavy jungle canopy. We’d only done a few takes, and even at 360 degrees and +1 gain, I’d run out of light. Mel really needed to go again, and obviously, we didn’t want to re-create it the next day. The camera boys quickly whipped the zooms off, put on primes, and removed the 85 filters. We shot two more takes wide open, and Mel got what he needed. I was amazed when I stepped out of the tent, because it was truly dark — my light meter read 2 1/2 footcandles, and this was a day scene! EFilm has since given me the ability to make color corrections in the trailer, so printing in an 85 for dailies isn’t a problem. I believe I had an extra hour or two of shooting on most days because of the Genesis’ low-end response. “I just wanted the village to look real, and I used very little lighting at the location,” he continues. “I didn’t want to change it, even when it got dark. Mimicking the light that was there would have required big sources above the jungle canopy. There’s no way I could’ve done that — the trees were massive.” The only practical alternative would have been “big soft sources that would fall off and leave the background black. Thanks to the Genesis, we could shoot longer and still have it look real.” The shooting conditions on Apocalypto were about as tough as it gets. The production shot in Veracruz, first in jungle locations near the small city in Catemaco, then on several locations and sets built near Veracruz City. In the jungle, the set had to be checked for poisonous snakes every morning. Then there was the weather. “We now know why it’s called a rain forest,” deadpans Semler. “For the first month or so, we were plagued by rain and sometimes high winds. Weeks went by where nothing much happened because of the rain. We shut down a couple of times, and other days we just sat around waiting for the rain to clear. It was very frustrating.” There was also extreme heat. “For a period of weeks, the temperature was 105-110 degrees every day with over 90-percent humidity. Thanks to Tony Rivetti and his team, the cameras and electronic equipment kept running smoothly. The same was true of the monitors, Colorstreamers and other software in the Digi Tent, which was maintained by Felipe Perez-Burchard. “Initially, what I liked about the jungle was the dappled light from the sun spearing through the leaves, with burning-hot highlights on the foliage and the rest in deep shadow,” he continues. “The contrast is just so beautiful. Because many of the village sequences were shot over a long period of time, and the dappled light was changing every five minutes as the sun moved, we couldn’t match take after take, so, with the help of the magnificent Mexican grips, I sacrificed the contrast for a softer and controllable look by covering big areas with multiple 20-by light grid cloths. Now, there’s a lot of dappled light during the chase in the last third of the movie. But whenever there was a pause in the chase, I silked out the area, so the characters are running in dappled light, and when they hit the brakes, they’re in soft light. That’s all I could do to give us the [necessary] shooting time in those locations, because the light moved across the jungle floor so rapidly.” The imagery in Apocalypto involves a certain amount of natural firelight. At the beginning of the picture, the villagers gather around fires to listen to an old storyteller and dance. For these scenes, Semler bounced an HMI gelled with White Flame Green and 1/2 CTO into an Ultrabounce 35' above the action to create a “dirty nightlight” 1-2 stops under the overhead ambience. “I then approached special-effects supervisor Jesus Duran and said, ‘Tonight, you’re going to be my gaffer!’” recalls the cinematographer. “He had his crew build six propane fires in the village to provide the main illumination. I was sitting in the tent, and my screen was black. Then the fires came up, and it was absolutely beautiful. My concern was that the fire would be too bright and the faces not quite bright enough, but the range was superb. I had no trouble in the highlights, and it didn’t flare out. The blacks stayed black; the faces were really beautiful, and I was able to stay on the zooms and shoot any direction without having to avoid lights hidden in logs and rocks.” There wasn’t a building in Veracruz tall enough to construct the cenote set, which was 25' deep. “I needed another 15-20 feet from the top of the hole to the TransLite [image of treetops], and then space above that for John Martens and the electrics’ rigging crew to mount a Kino Flo rig,” says Semler. “Once again, [rigging grip] Kim Heath and his crew came up with a brilliant solution, and basically built an entire stage using empty shipping containers. The set worked extremely well and survived some pretty violent weather as we headed into hurricane season. “Lighting the cenote was going to be either a pain in the ass or very simple,” he continues. “Thank goodness, it turned out to be the latter. I had the grips hang a hard reflector above the set against the TransLite, laid a sheet of Opal diffusion over it, and hit it with a 4K Par. The light reflected straight down into the bottom of the hole, and was really the only key source. We added a bit of fill from down below, and I added HydroFlex lights for the underwater shots, which were shot on film.” Semler praises Sanders’ 40-acre set for the Mayan city. “It was an extraordinarily meticulous design, and because Tom knows his angles and his lenses, it allowed us many fabulous choices for the cameras. The main temple in the city was over 50 feet tall and therefore impossible to use as a stage, so Tom built a full-sized set only 12 feet off the ground, where we filmed the sacrifices and eclipse sequence for several days.”
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