Exposure: Alan Ball
Many would argue the original programming that has come out of HBO in the last few decades has forever changed the face of television – for the better. Dating back two decades to the cable network’s airing of Robert Altman’s groundbreaking miniseries Tanner ’88, right on through more recent episodic series like David Chase’s The Sopranos, Darren Star’s Sex and the City, and David Simon’s The Wire, HBO has proven to be eerily prescient at finding the best talent in the industry and letting their creativity run wild in the night; an apt metaphor for their new show, True Blood, about vampires who live (nearly) normal lives among their mortal brethren in rural Louisiana. Created by Alan Ball, whose magical touch for juxtaposing the ridiculous with the sublime was off the charts in his last HBO effort, Six Feet Under, True Blood plays with genre, drama, Grand Guignol comedy, and who-knows-what-else in the most unexpected and visually entrancing ways. Currently shot by Matthew Jensen and Romeo Tirone in Los Angeles and on location in Shreveport, Louisiana, True Blood is, lest we forget, also the product of an Oscar-winning screenwriter [American Beauty], and Emmy-winning director [Six Feet Under], so to say Ball is a well-rounded filmmaker is a bit like saying vampires have fangs, as Matt Hurwitz found out in our May conversation.
Where No DP Has Gone Before
Cinematographer Dan Mindel “beams up” the latest entry in the venerable Star Trek franchise. By Margot Carmichael Lester
ICG May 2009
FEATURES
STAR TREK
DP Dan Mindel
By Margot Carmichael Lester
DRAG ME TO HELL
DP Peter Deming, ASC
By David Heuring
TRUE BLOOD
DPs Matthew Jensen & Romeo Tirone
By Matt Hurwitz
DEPARTMENTS
FLASH FRAME
Alan Gitlin
Susan Campbell
EXPOSURE
Alan Ball
GEAR GUIDE
Digital Filmmaking
SPECIALS
VFX SUPERVISORS
By Pauline Rogers
UNDER THE TENT
By Nic Gardner
RED CAMERA PERIPHERALS
By James Mathers
ICG April 2009
FEATURES
FAST & FURIOUS
DP Amir Mokri
By Jon Silberg
THE THIRD DIMENSION
By Kevin H. Martin
SUNDANCE 2009
By David Geffner, Nic Gardner, & Bob Fisher
DEPARTMENTS
FLASH FRAME
Gary Ushino
Steve Andrich
EXPOSURE
Vince Pace
GEAR GUIDE
3D
SPECIALS
3D CINEMA
By John Rootenberg
CONTENT 2 GO
By Margot Lester
Rage Against The Machine
May 6, 2009 by editor
Filed under Web Exclusive
Shane Hurlbut, ASC, gets his bluescreen on for the latest entry in the hyper-action franchise, Terminator Salvation. By Bob Fisher
“Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race.”
—Karel Capek, R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), 1921
R.U.R. premiered as a stage play in Prague with the premise that robots, created to serve mankind, turned against humanity in a quest to create a more perfect world. Terminator Salvation, the fourth chapter in a series of motion pictures about a life-and-death struggle between the remnants of the human race and Skynet, which leads an army of intelligent machines that are made of liquid steel, strikes ghostly visions of R.U.R.’s nihilistic world vision, and the film’s franchise original, The Terminator (1984), was actually a mirror image of Capek’s play. That screenplay was co-authored by Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron, who directed the film. The future California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger played the titular role, while Adam Greenberg, ASC was the cinematographer. Cameron, Greenberg and Schwarzenegger encored in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991); Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was directed by Jonathon Mostow (2003), with Don Burgess, ASC behind the lens.
Terminator Salvation takes place in 2018 in a post-apocalyptic world that is dirty, grimy and perpetually smoky. Most of humanity has been destroyed in a nuclear holocaust. The machines are around 7-½ feet tall. They use 600-foot long transporters to harvest human beings for Skynet’s experiments. The resistance among the surviving humans is led by John Connor, played by Christian Bale.
