No Place on Earth should be required viewing. The film takes audiences on a journey some 70 years back in history to a dark time when the Nazi regime murdered approximately six million Jews during the Holocaust. Thirty-eight Jewish men, women and children, from five families, survived for 511 days by hiding in a dark, underground cave in Ukraine. Some of the younger men ventured into the outside world at night to find food and fire wood.

Ukraine is a small country bordering on Russia, Poland and Hungary. The cave was discovered by Chris Nicola, an American who was searching for his ancestral roots. Nicola found a shoe, a key, a comb and other artifacts in the cave. His discovery was documented in an article published by National Geographic Adventure Magazine.

After reading the article, producer Janet Tobias contacted Nicola. He introduced her to Yetta Stermer, one of the survivors who migrated to the United States after the war.

“After hearing her memories, I decided this is a really important story that must be told,” Tobias recalls. “Chris and I had meetings with other survivors. I wanted to get a sense of the dynamic that motivated their family’s fight for survival.”

(L to R) Sam Stermer, Gustav Stibranyi, Saul Stermer, and Norbert Danko return to the cave outside of Priest’s Grotto, Ukraine, where they lived for more than 500 days during the Holocaust

The 83-minute documentary blends re-enactments of history happening in and around the cave and interviews with survivors. It was the first time directing for Tobias, whose previous experience included producing television news stories for 60 Minutes, Frontline and Dateline. She recruited five cinematographers to collaborate with her at the practical location in Ukraine and during interviews with survivors. They included Local 600 members Eduard Grau, Sean Kirby and Peter Simonite. Additional cinematography was done by Cesar Charlone, a South American native, who earned an Academy Award nomination for City of God in 2002, and Zac Nicholson, who shot memorable scenes in addition to serving as a camera operator.

Tobias worked with multiple DP’s because production was done during different journeys to Ukraine and interviews with survivors in the United States over a two-year period. “The drama was produced in three parts,” she details. “We shot re-enactment scenes in the cave when it was two degrees below zero outside. We also shot scenes during the spring and summer to get a sense of what it was like during different seasons.  A sound stage in Hungary was used for dangerous scenes featuring children.”

The filmmaker says the prime challenge of the project was to “give audiences a feeling for the darkness and claustrophobia inside the cave. There are faces and other things that we want them to see, so they get a sense of what it was like down there. People only left the cave at night. We shot those as day for night scenes.”

Actress Kati Laban portraying cave survivor Esther Stermer

The experience made an indelible impression on all of the cinematographers, whose work has been praised on the Web for “complimenting the telling of this story wonderfully … a world where hell had no barriers and deserved no place on Earth.”

Veteran non-fiction shooter Kirby [ICG November 2010] says the appeal of the project was “the incredible story of the survivors who experienced this ordeal and their stories about friends and relatives who didn’t make it. I was also drawn to the challenge of shooting in the longest known cave system in the world; not purely from a technical point of view, but also as a window on what the survivors went through. I relied on the location as a focal point of inspiration.”

Kirby, who also shot the interviews with surviving family members, says it was his first experience working on a Holocaust film. “I studied drawings and paintings by Jerome Witkin, an artist who focused on the Holocaust, and spent an extended time sitting in a very dark place thinking about how to define darkness for a film about people who went days on end without seeing the light from a candle,” he reflects.

Rafael Marmor, one of the producers, introduced Grau to Tobias.

“I felt that it was an incredible story that needs to be told,” Grau says. “I was also attracted by the visual challenges. I had long conversations with Janet about her vision. She emphasized that the darkness has to look and feel believable, so the audience has a sense of what the people went through.  We shot extensive tests before renting an ARRI Alexa digital camera with a Zeiss 1.3 lens.”

American writer Chris Nicola who discovered the caves

Grau shot scenes during the winter. He wasn’t available during the spring, so Grau introduced Tobias to Simonite who shot scenes in a cave near Budapest.

“I think [Tobias] felt I was a good fit, because of the second unit work I had done filming children in The Tree of Life, a feature film that Chivo [Emmanuel Lubezski, ASC] shot for Terrence Malick,” Simonite says. “There was going to be a good amount of filming with young actors in the Hungarian caves. Janet wanted to tell that part of the story through the children’s eyes.

Simonite says he was drawn in by Janet’s “intelligence and sensitivity to detail” that were the keys to telling the story. “Her interest in the symbolism of the cave and the metaphorical use of light and darkness also appealed to me,” the Texas-based shooter adds. “We had several Skype conversations while I was working on another project. I also spoke with Eduard about his approach to lighting the cave.  I was particularly interested in the challenge of maintaining a consistent photographic vision that tied together with the images captured by the other cinematographers. There were a lot of day for night exteriors, which were exciting.

“Eduard shot the winter exteriors and some cave scenes,” Simonite continues. “I shot most of the cave scenes and the finale, where people emerged from the cave. Cesar shot most of the footage with survivors. Kirby shot the interviews and Zac operated a second camera when we were covering complex scenes from different angles. He also shot several important scenes independently.

Simonite says the ALEXA with the 1.3 super-speed lens provided a softer look, while Nicholson used his own Canon EOS C300 for some extremely low light shots.

No Place On Earth director Janet Tobias

“We wanted to create a contrast between deep darkness and softness captured with handheld shots in the cave,” Simonite adds. “In the final scene, where the family emerges from the cave, I used an Ultra Prime lens for a sharper look with the camera on a Steadicam. One of our goals was to amplify the blinding light that the family saw and felt. The wider angle and smoother movement accentuated the feeling of release; the warmer color temperature accentuated the feeling of safety Janet wanted.”

In fact, Tobias cast people with interesting faces and spent a lot of time selecting their wardrobes. The interior of the cave and the countryside looked exactly the way they did during the 1940s. Scenes were also shot in a small museum-like village called Skanzen.

Tobias and Nicholson live in the same neighborhood in New York.  She saw a short film that he directed, which inspired her to contact him. At first, their conversations were general, and then Tobias told Nicholson about her plans for No Place On Earth.

“It isn’t an exaggeration to say that the story is mind-blowing,” he says. “The opportunity to work on a film that gives a fresh slant to a universally known human tragedy was more than tempting. Her unique approach to telling the story through detailed recreations sealed the deal for me.”

Nicholson says that his approach to telling stories with moving images has been influenced by authors, painters and choreographers as well as filmmakers. “My first full day in Ukraine, I found myself squeezing down a mud hole into the belly of the cave that is miles long,” he says. “It was a really tough environment. It was humid, slippery, dark and really dirty… certainly not a great environment for using sensors on lenses.

Survivors Sam Stermer and Saul Stermer inside Verteba Cave

“This was my first real use of the C-300 in a severely challenging environment. The camera only weighs about four pounds, and its low-light capabilities made it an obvious choice for this documentary. There were times when the main unit was using most of our lights, so we had to improvise. Someone from the art department would substitute as our gaffer by holding candles and lanterns. Sometimes we had three people holding candles around a subject to get the look we wanted.

“We didn’t only shoot in caves,” Nicholson adds. “There are scenes in the Slovakian National Forest, on sound stages in Budapest and in a historical village. When I wasn’t shooting on my own, I was Peter’s B-camera operator. There were a lot of day for night shots when someone would leave the cave to search for food. That gave us a lot of challenges with shadows. We shot exteriors as much as possible during magic hour.

Nicholson also shot behind the scenes footage in the Ukraine in 2010, some of which was used in the climactic scenes, and served as second unit cameraman when Kirby was shooting interviews in Florida and New York.

“Working on this film was an unbelievable experience,” the young filmmaker relates. “I travelled to the Ukraine with some of the survivors and spent a lot of time with them while they were experiencing the emotions of being there. During the interviews, there were plenty of times when Sean and I would be wiping teardrops off of our eyepieces. They were literally fogged with tears.”

Tobias asked Nicholson to direct, shoot and edit an epilogue for No Place On Earth’s television premiere on the History Channel. The epilogue is the story of what happened right after the war.

Chris Nicola in a cave in Georgia (USA)

“Two patriarchs of the Stermer family were murdered before they could get out of the Ukraine,” Nicholson concludes. “It is hard to fathom what these people went through, even after working so long on this film. I am glad that it was made and am honored to be part of it.”

No Place on Earth premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival. It subsequently won awards at the Hamptons and Palm Springs International Film Festivals before making its theatrical debut in Chicago in April. Magnolia Pictures is currently distributing the film to cinemas in the United States.

Tobias recently travelled to Germany where the documentary was being shown to cinema audiences. “Senator Films, our distributor in Germany did a nice job of dubbing voices rather than using sub-titles,” she observes. “Audiences there were very emotional.”

For more information check out: http://www.magpictures.com.

For his latest film, After Earth, M. Night Shyamalan tells the exciting tale of a son desperately trying to save his father, who is trapped in a wrecked spaceship on an apocalyptic Earth. Packed with action sequences, such as the ship’s being bombarded by asteroids and the son’s battling monstrous leopards and a cave creature, Shyamalan called on veteran cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, ASC, BSC, whose credits include Mars Attacks, A History of Violence, and perhaps the best film in all of the Star Wars franchise, The Empire Strikes Back. Interestingly, Suschitzky’s father, Wolfgang, shot such iconic action films as Douglas Hickox’s Theatre of Blood with Vincent Price, and Mike Hodges’ gritty Get Carter, starring Michael Caine. For After Earth, Shyamalan took the untested Sony F65 straight from the assembly line to capture the action in the humid jungles of Costa Rica. Ted Elrick talked with the writer/director about his first experience with a true high-resolution workflow, and how green-screen-heavy movies can impact creative flow.

Why did you select Peter Suschitzky to shoot this movie? M. Night Shyamalan: It was the way Peter used darks in Eastern Promises. There’s one scene of Viggo getting his stars, and he’s sitting on a chair, and the light is really strong on him. It’s a bold choice. Peter’s not afraid to do things to be noticed, yet they don’t look theatrical. And, of course, his work, going all the way back to The Empire Strikes Back, shows he could do any kind of genre I was going to need on this film. When I spoke to him about the movie and the screenplay, he really had a quiet understanding of it that I knew would translate well when it came down to dissecting how to make each scene work.

You originally leaned toward shooting on film, before making comparison tests with digital. I kind of did that as a courtesy to Peter. [Laughs.] But then during one test, I just fell in love with the Sony [F65]. The darks felt right, as did the richness of the colors, and I thought the system leaned to Peter’s strengths. Then I began to understand the practical benefits of shooting digital. Not for all movies, but for our movie. For example, when we were shooting in rainforest and redwood forest canopies, our gaze was very short. Even when there were really low levels of light, the Sony still gave us immense quality and information. It became a no-brainer: we were winning on the creative side and the practical side, and Peter seemed super-comfortable with it.

Did you prepare storyboards before Peter came on? Yes. I always do drafts of how the look of the movie will be and to find my way around how I want to shoot these scenes. When Peter came on, we went through the storyboards and talked through the emotions that I wanted to evoke with both the lighting and color. A lot of those discussions were meant to go into Peter’s head, like an actor compiling subtext. We walked through every scene that way, always looking for the emotional endgame.

Did you use any visual reference material? Peter is an amazing photographer, so we went down to the art department, where I had a year’s worth of look-book stuff. We talked through why I was drawn to a painting or why I was drawn to a photograph, and that would go into Peter’s subconscious and [hopefully] come out when we performed on the day. He came up with his ideas for the lighting and the look of the scene, and very rarely did I come in and say, “This approach is off from what I was thinking,” because we had spent all this intimate time going through it all.

Your production designer, Tom Sanders, said the introduction of biomimicry into the sets added a new level of interest, as if you and he were creating a new genre of science fiction. Tom is an original thinker, so we took a lot of chances, searching for something fresh that would inspire us. I think [our collaboration] made it feel authentic as filmmakers that we were doing something that was plausible; that was almost something that one would wish to be our future. The post-apocalyptic world turning out to be better is kind of an interesting idea that the movie is based on. Tom and I really connected and informed every other department from that – from cinematography to costumes – and everybody benefited from our year of noodling around, conceiving what the future would be like.

[A-camera operator] Mitch Dubin raved about how prepared you were, yet still adaptable to new ideas. Preparation has always been a way for me to work more freely.  I’m so secure that I have a version in my head that I’m more open to hearing a new idea, and when I hear a new idea that is better I go, “That’s it.” You might think all that preparation is constraining, but you know all your moves so you can improvise infinitesimally with each decision and thereby come up with interesting things. I have found in my camera departments, but specifically with After Earth, which kind of was a perfect collection of everyone with Peter and Mitch and Buzz who did the Steadicam, everyone was kind of ignited by this preparation-leading-to-inspiration approach.

There were quite a few green screen shots that needed to be incorporated. What about the 4K workflow eased that process? With the F65 you’re literally looking at a monitor in the jungle, and it’s unbelievably beautiful. It looks like a finished movie! Peter is there in the tent color-timing it as we’re looking at it, and it was so rich and beautiful from the first time that I never had to guess about what the film would look like.  I think the film is nuanced because of [the F65]; it has humanity to it that you wouldn’t necessarily see in an effects movie.

You haven’t done a film with this many CGI shots before. Having effects is hard because I literally have finished the movie before I have some 150 shots still to drop in. Then you see how the creature is going to move exactly, and you go, “Oh wow, I didn’t know that the ash was going to fall from the volcano that way,” or “I didn’t know that the silhouette of the person walking on the horizon was going to have that effect.” You say, “I might have held a little longer,” or “I might have done this.” You feel all those little incremental decisions you’d want to make when you see the finished project.

Taking an untested camera system straight into the Costa Rican rainforest is a gutsy move. What do you think, overall, about the performance of the camera? I’m probably going to be a little bit naïve because all my crew members protect me from all the things that go wrong on the set, so they don’t really tell me when something’s going wrong. I just will look over and say, “Is everything okay?” And they’ll be like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and then they’re working like madmen over the camera. [Laughs.] From my understanding, the few things that did go wrong in the jungle, Sony was right there with support. We never actually went down because of the cameras. And I was never waiting on the cameras at all, so I’d have to say my experience was pretty ideal.

Was there a single most challenging sequence? Without a doubt the hardest sequences are the ones that are all green screen and have a lot of action. That combination is difficult because I am an emotional director, and I like to react and come up with an emotional idea, but there is so little to react off of, and the actors have so little to react off of, so it gets into a different kind of skill set. In those moments you really have to rely on your preparation, the storyboards and the thought process that went into it. A lot of times those sequences are previs, and that was helpful. I really prefer storyboards because, for some reason, my initial inspiration is still there when it’s more 2D, and when it becomes prematurely 3D, I get a bit confused and rely on my original ideas.

What are your thoughts on how action and sci-fi work together? Are there any rules or limitations for something like this, set so far in the future, as opposed to contemporary stories bound by the more familiar world? I think action works very well across all genres, and it helps to bridge some of the issues that arise in sci-fi because of the unfamiliarity of the circumstances. Putting characters in jeopardy immediately connects the audience to the characters. Whereas maybe if they’re standing in a weird room, they won’t connect to it, as opposed to a contemporary room, where a person is standing in a kitchen, they immediately have an emotional reaction to that character, what they’re feeling; they identify. So when we put characters in physical jeopardy, and do a sequence, they relate, and that is a great way to bridge this problem.

Was the large digital rig flexible enough to get into tight spaces and catch all the action? I’m going to have to defer to my handheld guys, Mitch and Buzz, to see how they felt about it.  I thought the handheld work was exceptional, and I attribute that to our world-class operators. I didn’t hear a lot of complaints other than the “take 18” grumbles. [Laughs.]

The asteroid sequence in this film is a centerpiece, and it’s interesting that Peter shot the most memorable asteroid-field sequence to date in The Empire Strikes Back.  Any correlations? Man, now you’re making me feel nervous! I didn’t actually connect the two. For us, the kind of event that makes “the fishing trip” go wrong on this movie, our equivalent of “the fishing trip,” is really kind of fate working its hand on these two individuals to get them into this situation where they have to work out their internal demons. So a lot of our conversations are character-centered and not necessarily environment-driven.

Peter Suschitzky, ASC, BSC, blazes new digital trails for the sci-fi thriller After Earth. By Ted Elrick. Photos by Frank Masi, SMPSP. A thousand years after inhabitants flee from Earth due to a cataclysmic event, a ship crash-lands on a now strange and unfamiliar world. Kitai Raige (Jaden Smith) and his father, Cypher (Will Smith), are stranded, with Cypher critically injured and trapped within the ship. Teenager Kitai must embark on a perilous journey, encountering strange and vicious beasts as well as an unstoppable alien creature that escaped during the crash, in order to find help for his father.

The action-based father-son scenario is the latest from acclaimed director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs) who co-wrote the screenplay with Gary Whitta, based on a story by Will Smith. It incorporates over 700 effects shots including creating the current home of humanity, Nova Prime, and a new Earth completely devoid of anything that references humans.

For his DP, Shyamalan chose veteran British lenser Peter Suschitzky, ASC, BSC (The Empire Strikes Back, Mars Attacks and all of David Cronenberg’s films since Dead Ringers). Suschitzky’s photographic genes run deep, as his father, Wolfgang, and son, Adam, are also feature DPs.

Suschitzky says he and the writer/director clicked immediately, with Shyamalan relating his preference for long takes and camera movement based on the context of the scene.

“One of the reasons I’ve worked so much with David Cronenberg is that we believe that what makes the images meaningful is the context into which they’re put,” Suschitzky explains. “If I am working on a film that is not to my taste, then, however well I do my job, the images may be striking but they won’t tell the meaning in that beautiful context.”

Shyamalan wanted to shoot on film, using anamorphic lenses, until Suschitzky proposed a side-by-side test with digital. “Film suffers when it is digitized,” the DP explains. “It’s capable of producing a very fine and beautiful image, but that needs to be projected on film, and a very high percentage of theaters, certainly in North America, now all use digital projectors.”

The tests involved a Panaflex and an ALEXA and, as A-camera operator Mitch Dubin, who had worked with Suschitzky on the remake of The Vanishing, explains, “the Sony F65, as a kind of a lark, because it was a Sony picture and we thought we should reshoot some of the tests with this never-been-used camera.”

The film tests were digitized, and all were projected. To everyone’s complete surprise, Shyamalan chose the F65, and used Cooke S4s and Angenieux zooms.

“Everybody was terrified that Night had chosen the F65,” Dubin laughs. “There were no accessories; it was just a box that you point.

“We had about two weeks from taking the things out of the boxes to sending them on a plane,” recalls A-camera 1st AC John Kairis. “There’s so much going on with the physical prep of taking four cameras and lenses and supporting them internationally, let alone a camera system that has yet to be used. It’s not like we were going to London to shoot on stage. We needed to mash through rainforest – key word ‘rain,’ with its sidekick ‘mud’ – and work on slopes with a good pitch.”

“I had a similar experience on Next,” B-camera focus puller Steve Cueva adds. “We were shooting with the Genesis, and it hadn’t really been tested. The location was forecast to be 115 degrees, so we ended up switching to film for that week.”

Although problems were surprisingly few with the new system, Dubin says the main issues were power and environment. “You don’t want an unproven camera in the humidity of the jungle,” he states. “And I think half of Sony technical went down with us to help us through those first weeks. We had a few power issues, but it never failed.”

“The first cameras didn’t have frame lines, or the remote on/off capability,” Cueva continues. “So after we had spent weeks shooting hair, make-up, screen and costume tests, the guys from Sony came with their laptops, and as they’re plugging in the cables, said, ‘Well, this can either produce frame lines or it can wipe out the entire memory of this camera!’ We looked at them and said, ‘Guys, the operators need frame lines.’ It was pretty intense.”

Other aspects of the jungle location were unpredictable. “When we went to scout Costa Rica, it rained continuously,” key grip Charlie Marroquin relates. “Somebody said it rained 17 inches in a 24-hour period, and our guides kept saying, ‘Keep in mind, when you come back to shoot, it’s going to look totally different.’ For instance, the river we scouted was going to be 15 feet lower than it was at present. And, of course, there were all the snakes.”

“Eyelash vipers hanging at eye level,” B camera/Steadicam operator John “Buzz” Moyer laughs. “Every location we had to have a snake wrangler check around all the trees.

“The scary part,” VFX Supervisor Jonathan Rothbart adds, “was when we were on the scout tramping through the jungle and were alone. Then we’d come back and there’d be snake wranglers everywhere.”

Bringing in a Technocrane was not feasible, so the shoot employed the Giraffe Crane. “It breaks down into small pieces,” Marroquin says. “Everything had to be hand-carried in – one location, the ‘Hog Hole,’ was a three-quarter-mile hike straight downhill. My rigging grip, Craig Vaccaro, had a crew of mostly Mexican grips, and they were awesome. They carried anything and everything we asked.”

Another sequence called for the construction of a 30-foot-long platform, 15 feet high at one end, around the base of a volcano. Again, all materials were carried in and out.

Power was also a consideration, so gaffer Mo Flam introduced the Mac Tech 960, which employs 24 LED tubes and a limited power supply. “To me, they’re as powerful as an HMI and are very durable,” Flam says. “We could run this thing on a little 2,000-watt Honda generator.”

When production moved to a warehouse in Philadelphia, production designer Tom Sanders (Saving Private Ryan, Braveheart, Apocalypto) realized a year-long development process with Shyamalan that involved decisions every bit as daring as using the untested F65.

“I was so tired of seeing apocalyptic futuristic movies,” Sanders says. “I said, ‘Why can’t we see a future where we did something right, for a change?’ We had to go into space for a couple-hundred years to even find the right place to resettle, where we could create this beautiful world. And while we were in space, we had to use our brains and come up with a new plan for when we found this new place to live. There would be no resources, just organic bio-mimicry.”

This led to designs of a giant cave set, as well as a downed aircraft that used specially farmed fibers, strong enough for space ship hulls or skyscrapers on the new world, with some fibers having a phosphorescent glow that could actually store light and reflect it back as needed. It also led to a mantra of absolutely no gray, rust or stainless steel. Everything, from building to weapon, was made from this newly farmed cream-colored plastic. When the ship crashes, springs and metal bits do not explode from the controls. Organic material flies out.

Sanders worked closely with Suschitzky and Flam to incorporate practical lights into the ship’s interior. Low-heat Mac Tech LED lights were used under the plastic fibers. The light’s intensity could be remotely controlled, and, during later scenes, when Smith’s character is trapped, waiting for his son to get aid, the phosphorescence begins to dim, mirroring his outlook. In the cave, Flam used some ARRI MaxMovers remote lights so they could rig them under Condors and snake them into position to get the light where it was needed. “Everything has an organic feel to it,” Sanders relates.

During a bumpy ride through an asteroid field, an initial pass incorporated the Technocrane capturing all the jostling on the gimbal. Then, Shyamalan wanted to try it with the Steadicam.

“The ship was the length of two city buses, and 30 feet in the air on this gimbal, which was operated by a joystick, and this guy sat there and jerked the thing and the hydraulic pistons would cause the ship to pitch and veer everywhere,” Moyer recounts.

“I had no reference as to which way the ship was going; I was roped in from two points with two grips holding me and Night wanted a push in from all the way in the back to Will as he’s realizing the fate of the crew and his ship.  I kept the Steadicam away from me far enough so I wouldn’t fall forward, left, right or back. It was the most exhausting shot I’ve done in my career.”

“I remember that I first thought, ‘Why do we need this gimbal?’” Dubin smiles. “Then I saw it work, and I thought, oh, yeah, now I see. I was happy it was Buzz and not me.”

Other creative ways to expand the action scenes included Canon’s new 4K C500 strapped to a skydiver’s helmet. “Jaden base-jumps off the top shelf [of a continental rift between North and South America] and lands on another level, where he’s attacked by a giant bird,” Rothbart explains. “He’s carried back to the nest to be food for the bird’s babies. In the nest he’s attacked by these giant, evolved leopard-like creatures. We constructed the bottom half of the nest then shot footage of Jaden reacting against a green screen.”

The top part of the nest, and the creatures, were created by Tippett Studios. Aharon Bourland, Tippett’s visual effects supervisor, calls it “a pretty crazy sequence. We’re dealing with feathers and fur. I think the most complicated were the actual sticks. We had to build half of the nest and the tree in CG and had a lot of matte paintings for the surroundings.”

Bourland explains that by having the Suschitzky-shot F65 4K footage, they could get further in and/or repair camera shakes than with 2K origination. “We were also able to frame in on some of the shots to get the framing as they wanted,” he adds.

VFX Producer Jenny Fulle introduced another first for After Earth: Joust, a software program that streamlines the management of digital workflows. “The F65 was developed with a lot of thought toward the ACES workflow,” Fulle explains. “This made color management easier than on any other show I have worked on. Also, with the dynamic range of the 8K sensor, and the amount of detail we could get where half the frame is a dark jungle and the other half a bright sky, we could pull out the detail in both.”

Craig Mumma, digital pipeline supervisor, says RAW capture has allowed camera teams to move away from what he calls “NASA on the set,” the big video carts needed to engineer the video signal like a broadcast.

“With the advent of Raw, and cameras like the F65, you treat it like film,” Mumma says. “Back in the old days, you had your video tap, but it was for composition and lighting, not exposure. With Raw I teach DITs to trust their light meters. Once you calibrate the camera and you know where your indexes are, you can tell them an 800 ASA is probably equivalent to 1200 ASA on your light meter. So you don’t have to have all these moving parts on set.”

Although Suschitzky operated camera on all of David Cronenberg’s films, he knew the scale of After Earth called for a skillful camera operator.

“The person I thought of immediately was Mitch Dubin, with whom I worked twenty years before,” the DP shares. “I encouraged Mitch to choose his assistant, John Kairis, and to come up with the key grip, Charlie Marroquin, and gaffer Mo Flam. [Using a brand-new camera], I can’t say that we weren’t anxious, but after a few days, any initial problems were quickly overcome, and I’m very pleased with the images.”

Image quality notwithstanding, Dubin says the development of so many new digital camera systems often still fails to take into account the human element.

“It’s almost insulting how bad the eyepieces are,” he says. “They put all this research and money into the chip in the box, but they don’t think about what is necessary for the people who operate the machinery. That’s what was so great about Panavision. They made a system that respected the people who work it.  I know it’s still early in the game, but digital cameras need to go beyond the ones and the zeros, and put those on the set using them first.”

Indulge me some very personal ruminations this month about two people who recently passed away, both of whom helped to define the cinematographer I was to become and the man (and artist) I am today.

The first, George Jones, the legendary country singer, never even knew who I was, but he was important to me nonetheless. I was still in college at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design, and home for the summer, mostly just hanging out at various camera rental houses and reading American Cinematographer cover to cover.

Late one night I got a call from Ron Pitts, the rental manager at Beherand’s Camera, who said: “Kid, I know you want to get into the cinematography business. Are you available tomorrow?” He asked if I knew how to load an Éclair NPR, which I had never seen, and then, over the phone, gave me instructions on how to load one of the most difficult 16-mm magazines ever invented.

Ron said to be at Midwest Studio, in the northern suburbs, at 6 a.m. I would be the camera assistant for three operators shooting a half-hour pilot for a country and western music show with the Jones Boys. When I walked onto a replica Paramount stage, at dawn the next morning for my first-ever industry job, each operator handed me three magazines, and said, “There’s the darkroom. Go load.”

These were co-axial mags that only the French could make so tough to load. It took me an hour just to get the first one set, and then I figured out I had loaded it emulsion side in! Thank goodness (because of my stills background) I knew the difference and finally got them correct. Having worked little bit in stagecraft as a teenager, I then proceeded to help paint, put up lights, and stage two-hundred folding chairs, before we brought in the audience and shot the Jones Boys (singing two numbers) from a few different set-ups for coverage.

We started breaking everything down at midnight, and finished at sunrise with nothing more than a few runs to McDonalds to sustain us. Twenty-four hours had elapsed with no breaks. As I was walking out the door, the producer said, “Kid, you were so great! I’m going to pay you twice what I was going to when you came in. Here’s a check for $50 bucks.” (The check bounced, thus my first lesson on the importance of unions.)

Mike Grey was a partner in a boutique commercial production company in Chicago named Film Group, which specialized in shooting cinéma vérité commercials, when he gave me my first job as a cinematographer. Mike started in business, moved to advertising and eventually filmmaking. He was further politicized during the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention and made several important films, including American Revolution II (1969) and The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971). Mike went on to write and produce essential TV shows and features, like The China Syndrome. He became an investigative journalist, writing books like The Death Game: Capital Punishment and the Luck of the Draw (2003), about this nation’s death penalty.

I was looking for a job as a camera assistant when I showed Mike and his partner, iconic documentary cinematographer Mike Shea, a film I had shot in college. Afterwards, they said: “You know how to light.” And I said, “Well, I’ve been a photographer since I was 12, and I studied at Art Center.” “Great. We’ll hire you as a cameraman.” One week later I was shooting my first national spot for Kellogg/Leo Burnett.

George Jones never knew I existed, yet working his live show taught me that “where there’s a will, there’s probably a way.” I also learned the value of making a deal upfront and always having a Union at your back. I can’t even count all the lessons I learned from Mike Grey, whose passion for honesty and strength of character was second to none in this industry. Perhaps the most important thing Mike gave me is the knowledge that the integrity you bring to your work is even more important than the compensation.

Two lives passing that couldn’t be farther apart, yet both left indelible marks that, to this day, inspire me to be a more complete artist and human being.

Fraternally,

Steven Poster, ASC
National President
International Cinematographers Guild
IATSE Local 600

AFTER EARTH
DP Peter Suschitzky, ASC, BSC
by Ted Elrick

THIS IS THE END
Brandon Trost
by Kevin H. Martin

REAL TV
by Pauline Rogers

2ND UNIT DP DIARY

FISTS OF FURY

FLASH FRAME: Ron Hersey

ON LOCATION: Louisiana

GEAR GUIDE: Action Cinema

ON THE STREET: Key Grips

EXPOSURE: M. Night Shyamalan

DEEP FOCUS: Caleb Deschanel, ASC

Two thousand less attendees at this year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas was an ironic reminder that anyone touting 2K gear ran the risk of being left in the entertainment industry’s technological dust.

It was all 4K, all the time: Canon – including their new 4K lenses with a set of primes, the 30-300 mm zooms and the 4K anamorphic lens – Blackmagic Design, Sony, AJA – all attacked the NAB show floor like four walls closing in.

“By far this has been the most exciting NAB I’ve been at in a number of years,” said Local 600 President Steven Poster, who guided the third annual ICG-sponsored tour through the giant NAB showroom. “Digital acquisition and image processing is beginning to mature into delivery systems that will prove great for some parts of the industry and not so great for others. What it’s great for is content archiving and for the ability to manipulate image quality, but it’s not so great when you consider how much information needs to be stored and what it’s going to look like when you have an actor in front of a lens at 4K. The photographic skills of lighting and lensing will become that much more important as we learn to tell stories with 4K and beyond.”

ASC president Steven Lighthill leading NAB workflow tour

Poster and ASC President Steven Lighthill led show floor tours of upwards of 35 people, Monday and Tuesday, respectively. Poster’s group stopped off at Tiffen, The Mac Group, KinoFlo, GroPro, Steadicam, Canon, ARRI and Band Pro.

“This year anything 4K or that supported 4K was of the most interest,” observed BandPro’s Jeff Cree after the booth visit. “The new lenses expanding the Leica Summilux-C Prime family and the new soft light panels from Fill-Lite seemed to get the most attention from this year’s tour. We enjoy working with Steven and ICG as they are always so focused on the new products that will help them perform at their [best].”

Lighthill’s rounds, which were more focused on post and workflow than camera systems, included Element Technica, Carl Zeiss, Codex, MTI Film, AJA, Blackmagic Design, Sony, and ASSIMILATE, where Steve Bannerman, VP of Marketing said “SCRATCH artists have been delivering 4K features since 2010, but it’s always been a highly customized workflow. It’s exciting here at NAB to get our first peek at the democratization of 4K. From storage, to graphics, to displays and projectors, capabilities of the components around SCRATCH are going up, and prices are dropping fast. We believe that mainstream 4K workflows will be the catalyst the industry needs to realize the promise of the amazing RAW images delivered by digital cinema cameras.”

After attending Poster’s Monday’s tour L.A.-based camera operator Sam Ameen noted that, “I had a very small window to attend NAB, so I welcomed some intelligent and pragmatic filtration with respect to my craft.”

ICG Magazine’s Revolution Panel / L to R: Matt Doll, A-camera operator, Director of Photography David Moxness, ASC, CSA, Bad Robot Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Worth, Supervising Producer/Writer Paul Grellong

Postproduction heavyweights in attendance, Adobe, Avid and Media 100 (Apple has yet to have a presence at NAB), all used the annual trade show to position themselves at the head of the high resolution sprint, providing software offerings that import and edit native 4K, including in 4K RAW and 4K Codec.

AJA was also in the game with its KONA 3G card that captures and outputs uncompressed and compressed 4K, as well as their Ki Pro Quad, which pairs nicely with the Sony F5s and F55s, although it can be used with most 4K cameras, except the RED.

And speaking of Sony: They proudly showed off their new 4K cameras – the F5 and F55 – announced a couple months ago, but still gaining traction in the support categories with gadgets from companies ARRI to Z.

RED Digital was looking to be ahead of the curve with its 6K Red Dragon workflow. Along with Peter Jackson and others, footage at nine-times more resolution than HD and over 19 megapixels shot with the Dragon was displayed on RED’s long-anticipated REDRAY, the first-ever commercially available 4K professional cinema player.

Local 600 President Steven Poster, ASC, leading NAB show floor tour

The Phantom Flex 4K was perhaps the shiniest of new toys, but at $100,000 it was also one of the priciest (and won’t be available for public consumption until 2014). It boasts RAW 4K recording at up to 1,000 fps – a new technological feat.

“I usually don’t get very excited about the release of new cameras,” says cinematographer Greg Wilson, who was commissioned by Vision Research and Abel Cine Tech to shoot and produce the Phantom Flex 4K footage for NAB, Let Me Know When You See Fire. “But the image right out of the [Phantom Flex] was inspiring. It felt almost like shooting 65mm [not 35mm]. The depth is remarkable; and I haven’t seen skin tones look this good on a digital camera before – the color rendition is incredibly filmic, even compared to the Alexa. It’s very smooth but holds all this detail and with that resolution it’s the best looking, and the most versatile, digital cinema camera I’ve used.”

ECA Cocktail Reception guests / L to R: Vantage Camera Rentals co-owner Wolfgang Baumler, Local 600 1st AC Tammy Fouts, Cinematographer Daniel Pearl, ASC

The year’s NAB theme was Metamorphosis, as in a technological morphing into butterflies that can fly faster and see clearer than ever before. During the event’s keynote address on Monday morning, NAB’s Joint Board Chairman Paul Karpowicz opined that consumers are demanding content anywhere, anytime, on any device. That demand is pushing manufacturers toward borderless boundaries that may be difficult to achieve. Then again, when did the film and television industry not move too fast for its own feet?

Cinematographer David Moxness, CSC (aka “Moxy”) and A-camera operator Matthew Doll spoke to that affect on the ICG-sponsored panel, You Say You Want a “Revolution”? How Cinematographers and VFX Collaborate on the Hit NBC Drama. Like most fast-paced, big-budget TV shows, Moxness believes there is a strong desire in episodic television for lots of additional coverage and angles, which makes managing time a big challenge.

“You have to keep the story in mind all the time and ensure the visuals complement the narrative,” Moxness reminded everyone. “For me, often camera angles, focal lengths and image size play a big factor and are important elements leading up to and coming out of an exciting visual or event. I pay close attention to whether I’m in close-up with the character prior to the action, or cutting out wide for the event, whether I need to use a long lens or go close and wide. Speed is important as well – should I shoot any part of the sequence in slow motion? Those questions all go through my head. But I can’t get caught up in these big fancy [tech] events, when the most important goal is telling a story.”

The show’s VFX supervisor, Jay Worth, touched the rocky shores many VFX houses in Hollywood and beyond have washed up upon. Worth is based in Los Angeles with Revolution’s writers and editorial team, and said he’s thankful the studio gives him the flexibility to work with the vendors he chooses.

“It gives me the freedom to pick the artist based on specific expertise and taste as well as cost,” he explained. “The ability to take smaller fixes and shots to smaller companies saves us thousands of dollars over the course of the season, so more ends up on the screen in the end. There’s a lot of trust there,” continued Worth about his working relationship with Moxness. “Since Moxy and I have worked together on three shows now, the growing pains have gone.”

Shot in Wilmington, NC, on the Alexa, Revolution has integrated the largest amount of weekly VFX shots (about 60 to 90 per episode) into network television. And with Executive Producer J.J. Abrams’s track record for features, it makes sense that he’s coming into our homes now, too. “J.J. incorporates VFX into everything he does,” Worth added. “But he’s also just a real visual story teller. There’s a lot of collaboration on his shows between VFX crew, the writers and camera department.”

Paul Grellong, Supervising Producer and one of Revolution’s writers, spoke to that collaboration, revealing that from the minute the first draft of an episode script gets emailed around, they figure out the best way to prep a particular scene so that everyone is ready to put their best foot forward for the story and the visuals. “Early drafts are more descriptive than narrative,” Moxness added, “which is extremely helpful because we can instantly get a good visual of what road the team wants to go down.”

And if there’s one thing Local 600 knows best, its teamwork. In the second ICG-sponsored panel at NAB this year, two former Emerging Cinematographer Awards’ (ECA) honorees joined representatives from Tiffen and Canon for a conversation on technologies and toolsets, and how collaboration between manufacturers and end-users is more necessary than ever before.

As a child, Steve Tiffen used to come out to Los Angeles with his father as he met with heads of camera departments at the studios to talk about what they needed. “It was fascinating watching my dad come out and listen to their problems,” Tiffen recounted. “He’d go back to New York [Tiffen is headquartered on Long Island] with a fierce determination to solve those issues – creating the look they wanted with the control they needed. It’s not about what we want, it’s about what you the filmmaker wants and needs. If we do our job right, you’ll have the tools to do everything you want to do.”

Advisor for Film & Television at Canon, Tim Smith, reminded the audience that they’ve produced four cameras and 11 news lenses since November 2011 and stressed that all involvement is important, from the beginners to the veterans.

“You only have to look at the emerging DPs and know that we should be talking to them,” said Smith. “We’re not in this for two years, we’re in this for 50 or more.”

At the show’s opening address NAB President and CEO Gordon Smith had warned the crowd that the danger of being complacent is being left behind, and stressed that “we must continue to innovate and keep our eyes on the new doors that open.” Smith reassured everyone that the industry’s long-standing history to adapt and endure would continue to allow broadcasting, radio and television to thrive.

If Aristotle was right that nature abhors a vacuum, then the debut of large-format venue IMAX in 1970 seems, in retrospect, inevitable. Three-panel Cinerama had gone the way of the dodo, and that same year, David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (Oscar-winning cinematography courtesy of Freddie Young, BSC) became the last major studio feature to shoot in Super Panavision 70 (save for Far and Away, shot by Mikael Salomon, ASC, 22 years later). The 1970s also saw the end of the “event” film released on a limited number of screens, and the beginning of the multiplex era, which further helped to “shrink” the cinematic experience.

Filmed shorts made using the IMAX process combined large-format shooting (15-perf 65-mm film) with extremely tall or domed screens. While the venue of choice was niche – museums and amusement parks – the huge-screen stories made an impact on audiences hungry for a high-resolution spectacle. By the dawn of the new millennium, IMAX was also reaping dividends up-converting conventional features via a Digital Media Remastering (DMR) process. Then, a few years ago, IMAX cameras began to show up on narrative epics like The Dark Knight (shot by Wally Pfister ASC, BSC), kicking off a large-format trend that has enjoyed pre-release debuts at IMAX cinemas – a kind of return to the “event” films that existed in the 50s and 60s.

Imax Entertainment chairman and president Greg Foster says the company has defined parameters for what constitutes an IMAX movie. “One part involves a filmmaker with a genuine IMAX vision, who is able to design their film with our process in mind,” Foster explains. “While we have many incredible partners, ranging from James Cameron to Zack Snyder and Michael Bay, Christopher Nolan is the best example. After seeing what our DMR did for the conversion of Batman Begins, Chris was eager to shoot parts of his next two films in the trilogy with our cameras.” In fact, over 70 minutes of The Dark Knight Rises were captured in IMAX, while Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Star Trek Into Darkness [see cover story] have each featured about 30 minutes of native IMAX footage.

Two other key aspects inform IMAX involvement. “The studio needs to be excited about making IMAX a part of their campaign,” Foster elaborates, “so marketing the IMAX release as a premium way to see the film supports our role. And we need to answer the question, Does the movie take the viewer somewhere you may have dreamt of but will probably never get to see? Everybody wants to go into space or deep beneath the sea, or else to the Tolkien universe of The Hobbit, or to be James Bond. Implicit in each of these worlds is a sense of scope. Even though Silver Linings Playbook is one of my favorites, that isn’t an IMAX movie.”

Entering the narrative space is new for IMAX, whose bread and butter has been non-fiction spectacles that take audiences to real places – Everest, the International Space Station – that Hollywood dared not go. Foster says documentaries have always been an IMAX priority, hence the long partnership with MacGillivray-Freeman Films, whose co-founder Greg MacGillivray has directed and produced more than 30 IMAX films.

Managing director and producer Shaun MacGillivray (Greg’s son) says the logistics of their operation can often be daunting. “Because we shoot in the most remote locations, we can’t use commercial travel routes,” he explains. “So we charter cargo planes or a helicopter, and, as was the case on Into the Arctic, a good-sized ship to get around.”

The large-format systems MacGillivray-Freeman employs are extremely heavy, with the native 3D Solido unit weighing in at 250 pounds. While regular IMAX cameras weigh about half that, the 2D underwater rig is 350 pounds. “For our current project in the South Pacific,” MacGillivray smiles, “we wound up taking 16,000 pounds of film and equipment. That includes two topside IMAX cameras plus the Red EPIC 3D system.”

Cinematographer Brad Ohlund’s IMAX experience ranges from To the Arctic 3D to The Alps, and dates back to MacGillivray-Freeman’s To Fly!, made for the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. “A huge part of what we do involves delivering Hollywood-level production value on a documentary budget,” Ohlund explains. “IMAX film stock is the largest single line-item [$3,500 per processed roll], so if the scene isn’t working you may have to decide to stop rolling in mid-shot to avoid burning film indiscriminately.” While traditional documentary shooting ratios have ranged as high as 100:1, IMAX shows are usually closer to 20:1 or 30:1. “If we went to 100:1 on a consistent basis,” Ohlund adds, “all you’d see is footage of slates, because we couldn’t afford to go anywhere!”

The company partnered with IMAX to develop a camera capable of 110 FPS. But the unit is so cumbersome that it sees use only in special-case scenarios. Other IMAX cameras top out between 32 and 60 FPS. “Slow motion on that big screen registers more strongly than with conventional cameras,” Ohlund reveals, “so shooting 36 frames per second seems to give you a pretty good look for creatures in motion.” Aerial shoots are handled via Ron Goodman’s SpaceCam, a system Ohlund characterizes as “what suits us best.”

Before going on location, MacGillivray-Freeman filmmakers develop a shooting script to support the general concept, “but with the realization that on location something unanticipated can turn up and be just too good to ignore,” Ohlund outlines. “That can change your whole storyline, which is what took place on the island of Svalbard in To the Arctic.” Happening upon a mother polar bear and her two cubs, Ohlund spent five days documenting their perilous journey, which formed a new core for the film. “To coin an overused phrase, you have to become one with the animal you’re shooting, so anticipation is a pretty huge part of capturing the shot,” he adds.

Stephen Judson has worn many hats during his tenure with MacGillivray-Freeman, including writing, directing and editing. “Sometimes I don’t go out on location,” Judson notes, “because that lets me look at the footage fresh and remain unprejudiced by the knowledge of how hard it was to get any particular shot. With this format, being more image-driven than character-driven helps establish a magical sense of presence within these extraordinary environments. When the medium is working and fully immersive, the audiences are drawn in, as opposed to proscenium arch experiences where you’re on the outside looking in. A big part of our job is to design the films to work on 2D and 3D screens as well as digital and domed theaters.”

Moving the massive 3D IMAX camera was too problematic for the challenging locations of To the Arctic, which was largely post-converted. “We don’t convert all the aerials,” Judson observes. “If we’re flying along and a cliff swoops through frame, that would merit conversion, but for wider landscapes, it would be more distracting.”

Editing takes place at the company’s Laguna Beach office, while Sassoon Design often handles conversions. “They handled 2D-to-3D for us on Grand Canyon Adventure and Arabia,” Shaun MacGillivray states. “Since we scan at 8K and output at 4K or 5.6K, our partners have to be comfortable working with big files instead of 2K.”

IMAX’s conversion effort is driven by DMR, which undergoes periodic updating to maximize effectiveness. “Earlier versions of DMR focused on film-sourced content relating to grain and film-based artifacts,” says IMAX chief technical officer Brian Bonnick. “In the last four years we’ve addressed digital artifacts like noise, and now we employ a series of agnostic tools that work on all captures. Unlike other systems, DMR works in temporal mode, sampling multiple frames, which draws a higher level of fidelity as measured by MTF [Modulation Transfer Function.] Since we scan at the highest resolution level, we always have more information for input than needed for output. When your input is 4K or 8K, that kind of oversampling really helps make your 2K output look better than it otherwise would.”

Laser projection is poised to be the next big advance in theatrical venues. But rather than simply replacing the xenon projector lamp with a laser to get more light on screen, IMAX has bigger ambitions. In 2011 the firm bought 119 Kodak patents pertaining to laser projection, and is collaborating with Barco to develop a radically new system.

“For the last 20 years, the optical train has been roughly the same ride, which is, frankly, a coach-seat solution,” Bonnick remarks. “We want first-class, which means doing more than just changing out the engine. We’ve hired many of the Kodak engineers involved with these patents and opened IMAX Rochester to work with our Sheridan Park group outside Toronto and Barco.” Currently IMAX employs dual 4K projection, superimposing images over one another with sub-pixel registration for both 2D and 3D.

Ultra-high resolution is cinema’s newest buzzword, but in the large-format world, image quality is much more than pixel counts. “Modular transfer function [MTF] measures image fidelity, which is more than just resolution,” explains Bonnick. “For us, image contrast is king, which is why we are not currently offering 4K product – 4K projectors cannot put out the same level of contrast as 2K projectors. Because our laser development is from the ground up, we’re designing new optics optimizing contrast. Even if we get to where we want to be – with blacks so deep you can’t tell where the image stops and the background begins, you won’t be able to use existing or next-generation projectors with Xenon sources to do what we want to do, because those are cost-sensitive systems sold in massive quantities. We have to illuminate the largest venues in the world, which requires a more robust approach.”

Conventional systems monitor the image out of the projector, whereas the IMAX approach will report on what the viewer gets on-screen. “An industrial-grade camera feeds that data back to the image enhancer within our system,” Bonnick continues, “which ascertains that the brightness levels on both projectors are the same and that contrast and alignment are maintained.”

The company is also on-board with HFR. Bonnick says R&D is ready to upgrade the IMAX system to 60 FPS. “I think as filmmakers become more comfortable with the idea of high frame rate, you’ll see them electing to use it only on certain shots or sequences, perhaps alternating among 24 frames per second and 48 frames per second and 60 frames per second, depending on the scene,” he ventures. “Ultimately, quality of presentation at any frame rate revolves around the success of the immersive experience, and with advances in home theater, we must continue to deepen the cinema experience.”

Dan Mindel, ASC and crew fire back up the U.S.S. Enterprise for J.J. Abrams long-anticipated new entry in the Star Trek franchise. By Matt Hurwitz. Photos by Zade Rosenthal.

It’s hard to enlarge outer space, but J.J. Abrams’ 2009 hit reboot of Star Trek went where few other features in the franchise had. That said, fans of the venerable sci-fi adventure, whose classic characters first flickered across American T.V. screens for a brief three seasons in the 1960s, have expectations that Abrams (who recently announced he would be captaining the next Star Wars) would go even bigger for the hotly-anticipated sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, which takes the Enterprise crew on a hunt for an enemy from within Starfleet who threatens mass destruction. The chase travels to new environments – from a revamped Enterprise set to a number of worlds, each with its own unique look and enormous scale, this time visible in expansive detail, courtesy of both IMAX and 3D. The project reunites the 2009 Trek camera team, led by Dan Mindel, ASC, who had to weather several format changes throughout the ambitious new film.

Mindel, who says Abrams “dabbled” with native 3D capture three years back, but decided the systems were “too unwieldy for the way we like to shoot,” met with prominent 3D vendors, including an entire day with PACE Fusion founders James Cameron and Vince Pace.  “My question to both of them,” Mindel recounts, was, “‘How is this going to help us tell the story better?’ I suggested to J.J. that we pick certain sequences to shoot in native 3D and shoot the rest in 2D on film.”

The concern was that the bulky 3D gear would hinder Abrams’ notorious love for a spontaneous creative process. “We did some pretty extensive 3D tests, using all of the major systems – PACE, 3Ality, HD versus film,” recalls A-camera 1st AC Serge Nofield. “But it was clear the rigs weren’t going to work with the way J.J. likes to shoot, which is handheld and Steadicam. Factoring in lens changes, it just took way too much time to get them set up for each different shot.”

Abrams suggested RED, while Mindel leaned toward ALEXA. A post pipeline was set up for the project for HD acquisition, though, as Mindel notes, “One week before we were going to start, we still hadn’t decided on a format!” Abrams consulted with some peers, including Christopher Nolan, and opted to shoot anamorphic on film, with a post 3D conversion (though even that would change).

“We had been shooting for weeks [in January 2012], and then they dropped a bomb on us,” Nofield laughs: “‘We’re starting up on IMAX in a few weeks.’”

As for the 3D conversion, Abrams and team met with Stereo D, who, Mindel recalls, pointed out limitations that Abrams should employ during acquisition to permit the post conversion.  “J.J.’s eyes rolled back and he started playing Words with Friends on his iPad. They were telling him he couldn’t shoot the movie the way he wanted, and that wasn’t going to work for him.” Adds A-camera operator Colin Anderson: “That was the last time we thought about 3D acquisition.”

Ultimately, Abrams and Mindel settled on shooting scenes on-board the Enterprise in 2.40:1 anamorphic, using Panaflex Millennium XL2s and Kodak Vision 3 5219 (500T) and 5213 (200T) stocks – while anything off the ship, particularly in strange new worlds, would be captured on a pair of IMAX MSM 9802 15-perf 65-mm cameras (commonly referred to simply as a “15/70”).

“You’re seeing 35-millimeter anamorphic for interiors that feel like a more personal space,” explains ILM visual effects supervisor Roger Guyett, who also directed 2nd Unit. “Then, as the film goes to a large action sequence, you suddenly open the movie up by changing the aspect ratio. It’s a sudden and immersive experience.”

Due to their size and weight, the IMAX cameras were mostly on Libra heads atop Technocranes. “We had to figure out how we could incorporate them into the movie and still give ourselves the freedom of movement we’re used to with 35-millimeter systems,” Mindel shares. “We wanted to throw them around and track with them and do everything everyone tells you you can’t do with an IMAX camera.”

The 15/70s, which run 65-mm film 15 perfs per frame horizontally through the camera, were not the only large-format cameras in the mix. They were accompanied by a pair of Iwerks MSM-870s (both standard and lightweight models), which use the same 65-mm stock but run it 8-perf, vertically.

“Large format was uncharted territory for our department,” says Nofield. “There were some limitations that IMAX had that the Iwerks didn’t have, and vice versa.”

Like the run time per 1000-ft mag for the 15/70 lasting only 3 1/2 minutes, while the Iwerks goes nearly twice as long. Depth of field is twice as shallow on the 15/70, as B-camera 1st AC Keith Davis experienced firsthand on a complex walk-and-talk shot following Kirk and his nemesis (Benedict Cumberbatch) around a large circular corridor on the Enterprise set.

“Phil’s [B-camera operator Philippe Carr-Forster’s] camera was up on a crane, whose base was set at the center of the circular set,” Davis outlines, “and we were following the two actors – who were surrounded by ten others – for about 270 degrees.” Unable to trust his Cinetape measurements to identify which cast members it was grabbing, Davis skillfully used points on the set’s architecture, resulting, says Carr-Forster in “Zen focus [pulling] by Keith. Remarkable.”

The 870, which allowed for the same length of lenses as those used on the 35-mm anamorphic system, was the system of choice for large-format Steadicam. “The 15-perf is just too heavy,” Anderson relates. “And it’s got a rapid weight change, as the mag transfers from one side to the other. I used the 870 ‘Lightweight’ for Steadicam. But that was also unwieldy [due to inertia], to throw it around like I need to. When you have such a heavy camera, you start to compromise what Steadicam can do.”

In fact, a special plate was made by 2nd Unit 1st AC Nino Neuboeck to enable Anderson to set the camera onto the Steadicam sled. The operator also utilized an extendable post to allow him to lower the much-taller 870 down to eye level, and he added more counterbalancing weight to the bottom of the rig.

Loading the cameras also presented a challenge. “I loved working with 65-millimeter cameras, but the mag is heavy and hard to guide,” Nofield states. “You have to feather it, guide it into the slot, or it won’t seat properly, or you have to eject and start over. You can’t see the pull-down claws or registration pins – you have to massage the claw into place. Then you hit the ‘run’ button, and it sounds like a machine gun, and there’s film flying everywhere! You have to pull the movement, clean it out, make sure no belts are damaged, and try again, with jams resulting in delays of anywhere from five to thirty minutes.”

Combining IMAX and 35 mm also required the operators to be careful how they would frame actors’ faces, particularly in close-ups. “In a 2.40 frame, you put the top of the head at the top of the frame,” says Anderson. “But if you do that with IMAX, you’re forcing the audience to have to tilt their heads back uncomfortably in the theater. It’s more head height than [an operator] feels comfortable with, so it took getting used to.”

The opening of Into Darkness finds the Enterprise crew exploring a “Red Planet” (as it was referred to in production) whose primitive inhabitants end up chasing Captain Kirk (Chris Pine reprising his 2009 role) and Bones (Karl Urban) off a cliff. The planet was an outdoor set designed by production designer Scott Chambliss and built indoors at Raleigh Studios Playa Vista under lock and key. Once it was moved outside to the studio’s parking lot on shoot days, it was expanded via green screen by ILM digital matte supervisor Barry Williams.

The cliff jump was filmed with multiple cameras, highlighted by Carr-Forster’s Technocrane tracking the running actors aboard a mobile grip vehicle set on a 6-foot platform. C-camera operator John Skotchdopole picked up the pair via a long lens, while Anderson was operating the Iwerks 870, which tracked them from above, via a programmable NavCam cable system.

“The 870 would swing like a pendulum when it would start and stop,” describes Anderson, making it difficult to keep the actors in frame. On the second day of shooting, the crew shortened the drop cable that suspended the camera, permitting less swing, which helped, though, as Anderson adds, “Next time, the thing to do will be to make a longer cable run, so the camera starts sooner,” allowing the swing to dampen out by the time it reaches the actors.

ILM’s Guyett says shots like the cliff jump – starting close on the characters and pulling up to reveal a jaw-dropping environment – typify the brilliance of Abrams’ direction. “When you start out, you’re tight on the characters – and the audience feels like they’re running with them,” Guyett describes. “Then there’s a big crane-up that reveals where they are, and it changes the whole experience. It goes from being subjective to objective – and he does it without cuts.”

The Red Planet also serves as a backdrop for a magnificent moment where Spock is lowered down into an about-to-erupt volcano in a fireproof suit. The set was truly ablaze with heat sources – enough to make it impractical to bring the IMAX cameras in alongside actor Zachary Quinto (Spock). But while the 15/70s were safely aboard their Technocranes, somebody had to pull focus when the cameras dropped down to Spock’s level.

“I had a fireproof suit left over from another job,” reveals Nofield. “The cameras were flying around, in and out for close-ups, and somebody needed to identify the distance to the film plane. So it was just me in my fireproof suit and Spock in his $200,000 fireproof suit,” he laughs.

Another key set was Kronos, a derelict planet with dilapidated cityscapes that backdrop a major confrontation between the Federation and Klingons, and tested the ingenuity of gaffer Chris Prampin and key grip Charley Gilleran.

“J.J. wanted a massive pulsing light at one end of the city,” Prampin says. Inspired by an exhibit Chambliss had seen at London’s Tate Modern, Gilleran and his team built a large semi-circular truss wall, on which Prampin mounted 1200 yellow PARcans.

“Our lighting console programmer, Josh Thatcher, operated the PARcans with his Catalyst Media Server, after selecting an image from the system’s library which was to Dan’s liking,” Prampin says of the complex light rig. “Josh used pixel mapping, where each PARcan represents one pixel in the image on the media server. The image then rolled through the lights and gave added life.”

Prampin and Gilleran also built two flying lighting rigs – manned and unmanned – to represent the down-lights of  several spaceships (there were seven other fixed rigs as well). The rigs featured “intelligent” movement software that was programmed to match the action on the stage below. Lights used included Clay Paky Sharpys, Luminys Lightning Strikes, smaller Paparazzi Flashes, and other instruments. “It was pretty wild seeing these things flying around,” Prampin notes. “We definitely didn’t have anything like this in the first film.”

As he did in 2009, Al DeMayo at LiteGear provided LED ribbon panels built into the Enterprise set’s control stations. “Al’s LEDs are flicker-free, whereas a lot of the lights and dimmers out there are not,” Prampin adds, “so you can shoot any speed without a problem.” But, as Mindel points out, no LEDs are, as yet, spike-free.

“They’re uncontrollable, so you get blue, green and magenta spikes,” he remarks. “The difference this time around is that we decided that the greenish look fit nicely with the look of a place like the Enterprise.” Prampin gelled green to other fixtures, such as Kino Flos to bring them in line with the output of the LEDs.

Of course, no J.J. Abrams movie would be complete without the director’s signature lens flares, which Prampin jokes, “seem to have taken on a life of their own.” Created using a Xenotech Xenon flashlight (popularly labeled “Best in Show” by the crew), they were mostly handled by Mindel himself shining the flashlights into the lens at key moments.

“J.J. loves in-camera effects,” Mindel grins. “The flares, of course, and also banging on the film magazine to get realistic shake to Dutching the camera.”

One such scene harkens back to the original TV series, with the Enterprise shifting wildly as the camera moves from actor to actor while in motion. The shot forced Nofield to practice capoeira-like moves to stay out of frame, while pulling focus for Anderson. Observes Carr-Forster, “The Dutching was particularly difficult for Colin on Steadicam.”

Other subtle in-camera touches include Carr-Forster having the art department place cut glass elements (sometimes backlit) at measured intervals as he tracked laterally on the Enterprise set.

“You can’t tell what the objects are, but they help give the shots an incredible sense of depth,” Carr-Forster explains.

One big advantage for the Trek camera team was viewing dailies at various IMAX theaters around L.A. “Being able to see any film dailies is a treat these days,” notes Nofield. “But we were probably watching some of the last 65-millimeter IMAX print dailies ever produced.”

Most importantly, from the audience’s perspective, Anderson points out, is the sheer amount of detail present in the large-format image. “It’s actually scary,” he laughs. “On the Red Planet set, we had plants that were painted red and we had to be aware of things like peeling paint.”

“What I could see in the print in the theater,” Mindel concludes, “was truly spectacular. “It gave us the opportunity to see how much detail we could bring to the film, in real terms. Like the reflections on the volcano set of the sparks and explosions in Spock’s visor. The levels of texture that exist in the [IMAX] negative bring a sense of reality and realism to the film that would have been impossible using a smaller format.”

Last month I had the good fortune to attend the annual exposition sponsored by the British Society of Cinematographers (BSC), which took place on a stage at the venerable Pinewood Studios, located roughly 20 miles outside the heart of London’s Soho District. Pinewood is, of course, famous for scores of incredible movies, including the James Bond franchise and the classic cinema of Stanley Kubrick. It is always a thrill for me to walk into a workplace like Pinewood and feel such awesome movie history.

The BSC event showcases new technology and equipment, not unlike our shows here in the U.S. It provides an intimate and collaborative setting for moviemakers to exchange ideas. I had been invited there to participate on three panels, including one about mixing professional and prosumer systems on set, i.e., everything from Canon 7Ds and GoPros to ALEXA, and another about how the advance of 4K impacts cinematographers.

Not far from the stage where the BSC held its event is a Technicolor film lab, the last of its kind in the U.K. Although no firm date has yet been set, it was made clear to me throughout my time in London that the lab will soon close down, creating yet another obstacle for those British moviemakers wanting to shoot film.

There is no conspiracy or malice about the Technicolor plant at Pinewood being shuttered; there is only the economic reality that the profit center for this type of work is rapidly disappearing. The BSC and other U.K. filmmakers are speaking out with a loud and united voice about protecting film as an artistic option, despite the odds stacked against them. Hints that the BSC’s fight to preserve film in some meaningful way will continue came from the last of the three panels I was on, which centered on new lens technology versus old, and how so many cinematographers (and directors) are seeking this warm and familiar glass to dampen the hyper-clarity of 4K capture. British filmmakers, like many here in the U.S., want to put back in the creative and expressive nuances that high-resolution systems and super-sharp new lens technology have taken away.

While it would be wonderful to keep film as a creative tool, as we are doing with these legacy lenses, I have often said that I’m not particularly nostalgic about the diminishment of celluloid, nor am I antagonistic to the rise of digital. I am a little shocked by how rapidly the change has come, even if it is inevitable.

But if experiences like the BSC event are any guide, I have hope that there are still many dedicated people in our industry intent on keeping film alive as a creative choice. After all, who wouldn’t want the chance to be able to still shoot film at Pinewood?

Fraternally,

Steven Poster, ASC
National President
International Cinematographers Guild
IATSE Local 600

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS
DP Dan Mindel, ASC
by Matt Hurwitz

JAYNE MANSFIELD’S CAR
DP Barry Markowitz, ASC
by Pauline Rogers

DOWN ‘N PRETTY
by Valentina Valentini

SIZE MATTERS: LARGE FORMAT CINEMA

DIM & DIMMER

BOOK REVIEW

FIRST LOOK: Bradford Young

GEAR GUIDE: Lighting

DEEP FOCUS: Seamus McGarvey

ON THE STREET