FEATURES

ALICE IN WONDERLAND 3D
DP Dariusz Wolski, ASC
By Debra Kaufman

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON
DP Roger Deakins, ASC
By Debra Kaufman

PIRANHA 3-D
DP John Leonetti, ASC
By Bob Fisher

NAB PREVIEW
By Pauline Rogers

2010 CES SHOW
By Carolyn Giardina

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE 3D KIND
By Carolyn Giardina

EXPOSURE: Jon Landau

DEEP FOCUS: Peter Anderson, ASC

REPLAY: Step Up 3D

GEAR GUIDE: 3D Focus

DEPTH OF FIELD: The Caretaker 3D

For the first time in the 82-year history of the Academy Awards, the five nominees for cinematography each hail from five different countries, proving, in case there was any doubt, that filmmaking is truly the most global of media arts.

The films besides each DP’s credit range in genre from pure fantasy to hard-edged realism, with budgets from modestly funded independent features to a several hundred million dollar studio blockbuster.

In the opinions of members of their peer group in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the five nominees, Barry Ackroyd, BSC, Christian Berger, AAC, Bruno Delbonnel, ASC, AFC, Mauro Fiore, ASC and Robert Richardson, ASC have set the contemporary standard for artful cinematography. To put their accomplishments into perspective, consider the odds of being nominated in a field that not only includes many of the world’s most talented visual storytellers, but for the first time ever, double the amount of nominees in the Best Picture category, from which to choose.

Two of the selected shooters have travelled down this road before, many times before actually: this is the sixth nomination for Richardson, who took top honors for JFK in 1992 and The Aviator in 2005. His other nominations were for Platoon in 1987, Born on the Fourth of July in 1990 and Snow Falling on Cedars in 2000. It’s the third nomination for Delbonnel following in the wake of Amélie in 2003 and A Very Long Engagement in 2005. For Ackroyd, Berger and Fiore, the nomination is a first.

So here’s to the United Nations of Oscar – may their flags ever wave.

Barry Ackroyd, BSC - The Hurt Locker

Ackroyd was born and raised in Manchester, England. He enrolled at an art school with the intention of studying sculpting and making the fine art form his life’s work. His attention and major field of study shifted to cinematography after he saw Kes, which was directed by Ken Loach and shot by Chris Menges, ASC, BSC.

Starting as an assistant cameraman on documentary crews, Ackroyd traveled the world to cover a wide range of subjects. One of his first cinematography credits was for The View from the Windmill, a documentary directed by Loach. He shot countless non-fiction projects before moving into narrative filmmaking. A dozen of his 50 credits have been collaborations with Loach, including Riff-Raff, The Navigators and My Name is Joe. Ackroyd’s other credits include United 93, which earned an Oscar nomination for director Paul Greengrass.

The Hurt Locker was his first collaboration with director Kathryn Bigelow. The film tracks a U.S. Army bomb disposal unit in the heat of war in Iraq. Conflict arrives in the form of a brash young sergeant who thrives on the thrill of danger. The rest of the unit is concentrating on doing their duty and surviving the final month of their current tour.

“I’ve made a number of documentary films with soldiers,” says Ackroyd. “What you are looking for in all these people is their humanity. In my first conversation with Kathryn, we discussed the humanity of the soldiers, followed by the goal of making things believable and real for the audience. We’re trying to show that these characters have human feelings and interests and lives, and that they have to interact in dangerous situations, and make decisions that people should never have to make.”

Ackroyd insists that finding something that audiences can identify with is the approach he’s taken in every film he’s ever shot. To whit, Bigelow embraced the DP’s suggestion to produce The Hurt Locker in Super 16 format, using a mobile camera to create a realistic look. The critically acclaimed indie war drama has earned nine Oscar nominations, including one for best picture and best director.

photo by Douglas Kirkland / Kodak

Christian Berger, AAC - The White Ribbon

Berger was born in Innsbruck, Austria, where he was raised in an artistic household. His father was a painter and his mother was a dancer. Inspired by the French New Wave films of Jean Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut, the aspiring filmmaker purchased a 16 mm Bolex camera, and was soon shooting news film for television all over Europe. He organized a small company that produced short films and documentaries; one of the films he made between news assignments was well received at Cannes and led to his association with director Michael Haneke.

The White Ribbon is Berger’s fifth narrative collaboration with Haneke. The story takes place in an agrarian village in Northern Germany several years before the beginning of World War I, and depicts inexplicable and brutal events that seem to implicate the abused and suppressed children of the village. The town’s schoolteacher ponders whether the events contained the germs of the tragedies that followed, and the connection between the barbaric acts and the lessons taught to the children.

“We felt strongly that color images would not feel right for the period,” Berger says. “Also, black-and-white film has the power of abstraction. But we decided not to imitate the style of black-and-white films made during the early days of the industry, to avoid a feeling of nostalgia. Our goal was to create the clearest and crispest black-and-white tones possible. After testing, I decided that today’s 35 mm color negative film, combined with a 4K DI, gave us crisp images and rich contrast.”

photo by Douglas Kirkland / Kodak

Bruno Delbonnel, ASC AFC - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Delbonnel was born in Nancy, France. His family moved to Paris when he was 10 years old. He was interested in painting and wanted to go to art school, even though his father always imagined his son going into law. Delbonnel’s parents bought him a Kodak Instamatic camera when he was 15 years old. He took pictures of the Eiffel Tower, other architectural landmarks and landscapes. His interest in the cinema was sparked by films directed by Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, as well as The Godfather, shot by Gordon Willis, ASC, and Scarecrow, photographed by Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC.

When he was 18, Delbonnel wrote a script for a short film, and got a government grant to produce it. Legendary cinematographer Henri Alekan, AFC read his script and agreed to shoot the project. It was while watching Alekan render his script onto film, that Delbonnel was inspired to pursue cinematography. In 1980, he moved to New York City, where he met and was mentored by Nestor Almendros, ASC.

Within six months, Delbonnel returned to Europe and began his career as an assistant cameraman on commercials shot by Douglas Slocombe, BSC, Gerry Fischer, BSC and other cinematographers. His Oscar nomination for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, directed by Peter Yates, continues the story of the boy wizard as he finds a mysterious tome marked property of the titular prince. With the help of the book, Harry does well in potions class, and eventually takes lessons from Dumbledore to discover the single weakness of his nemesis Voldemort.

“I wanted to give the images a very dark mood, in tune with the subtext of the story,” recalls Delbonnel. “But the huge sets still required an incredible amount of light. I prefer to stay with wide lenses, but the large sets sometimes seemed to overwhelm the characters. So with my fantastic grader, Peter Doyle, we developed software tools to control depth of field using selective blurring. We stayed with a color palette that tended to gray. We tested a number of digital cameras, but the image quality was not as good as film.”

Mauro Fiore, ASC - Avatar

Fiore was born in Marzi, a town in southern Italy with a population of 1,500. His family moved to Chicago seeking broader opportunities when he was 7 years old. Fiore brought a passion for playing soccer to his new homeland. He says the sport taught him the value of teamwork, and that victory belongs to the last person standing. He was also an avid still photographer in high school. His specialty was abstract images.

The music videos Fiore saw on television as a teenager sparked his interest in cinematography, and he went on to study filmmaking at Columbia College in Chicago, later continuing his education at the American Film Institute (AFI). The DP began his career as a key grip for his classmate Janusz Kaminski on a Roger Corman movie. Fiore was the gaffer on the crew when Kaminski earned an Oscar for shooting Schindler’s List. Fiore got calls to shoot independent films and earned his first credit in 1993 for Drag.

The box office record breaker Avatar takes the audience on a 3D journey to a planet called Pandora with Jake, a paraplegic war veteran on a mission to earn the trust of the native race. Jake is supposed to betray the local populace when a private army invades the planet in a quest to steal its valuable natural resources. But, instead, he falls in love with a Pandorian native, and leads the planet’s resistance in an epic battle for survival.

“Jim Cameron saw Tears of the Sun, a film I shot on location in Hawaii that was supposed to be a jungle in Africa,” Fiore says. “It was the look he envisioned for the jungle on Pandora. The majority of Avatar was produced with motion control and CGI technologies, but Jim wanted live-action scenes with actors to have an organic look and lifelike feeling that isn’t crisp and pristine like something that came out of a computer.”

Robert Richardson, ASC - Inglourious Basterds

Richardson is a native of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and spent his youth in that state. He got hooked on movies while he was a student at Vermont University, where he became enthralled with the films of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and his long-time cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, ASC. After taking every film class that the school had to offer, Richardson transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design, where he majored in filmmaking.

The budding shooter continued his studies at AFI where George Folsey, ASC, Nestor Almendros, ASC and Nykvist were high on his short list of mentors. After graduation, Richardson began his career shooting documentaries, including one in El Salvador in the midst of that nation’s civil war. The subsequent documentary caught the attention of a young director named Oliver Stone, and the pair’s first co-venture was the gritty, political narrative Salvador.

Richardson’s third teaming with writer/director Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds, opens in France in 1941 with a Nazi officer relentlessly tracking down and murdering Jewish civilians. Three years later, the tide is turning, and a band of Jewish-American commandos parachutes into France and begins wreaking havoc that contributes to the destruction of the Nazi war machine. A revisionist version of history the likes of which cinema has never seen, Inglourious Basterds culminates in an unforgettable scene inside a Paris movie theater where Hitler and other members of the Nazi hierarchy have assembled to see a propaganda film. Instead, they are in for the surprise of their lives.

“Our aesthetic approach was determined by the script Quentin wrote,” Richardson says. “We both envisioned the story in 35 mm anamorphic format. For inspiration, we watched a number of French New Wave and spaghetti Western movies. Our discussions about those films helped to determine how we shot the beginning and the middle of Inglourious Basterds. We agreed that the final chapter of the film called for a look emulating the Technicolor three-strip dye transfer process.”

FEATURES

THE WOLFMAN
DP Shelly Johnson, ASC
By Matt Hurwitz

TEMPLE GRANDIN
DP Ivan Strasburg, BSC
By Bob Fisher

DP - DIT PARTNERSHIP
By Pauline Rogers

NEWS SHOOTERS
By Margot Carmichael Lester

AWARDS SEASON: GOVERNORS & ASC
By Bob Fisher

EXPOSURE: Rick Baker

DEEP FOCUS: Janusz Kaminski

FLASH FRAME: David Plakos

GEAR GUIDE: Awards Season

For our February Awards Seasons coverage in ICG Magazine, Bob Fisher profiled the 2010 ASC Award winners, who are all longtime ICG members: Lifetime Achievement Award honoree Caleb Deschanel, ASC, International Achievement Award for feature film cinematography Chris Menges, ASC, BSC, Career Achievement in Television Award honoree John C. Flinn, III, ASC and Presidents Award Winner Sol Negrin, ASC. The interviews, all rich and memorable, could not fit in their entirety in the pages of the magazine, so here for the first time is the full text of those conversations with these four remarkable cinematic craftsmen.

Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, ASC hovers over the Pacific Ocean on the set of My Sister’s Keeper. (Photo by Sidney Baldwin/distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures)

Caleb Deschanel, ASC

ICG: Where were you born and raised?
Caleb Deschanel: I was born in Philadelphia. My family moved to Annapolis when I was 11 years old. We lived there until I went to college.

ICG: What was your first experience with photography?
CD: I got a Brownie Hawkeye as a gift on my 11th birthday. I didn’t ask for a camera and didn’t particularly want one. I enjoyed taking photographs, but I never really thought much about any of the pictures I took until we got a family dog. It was just a puppy. We were using a big cardboard box as a doghouse. I remember taking a picture of the puppy and dog house. When that photo came back, I remember thinking that it was better than the other pictures I had taken. That inspired me to take more photographs and to try to figure out why some were better than others.

ICG: Where did you go to college?
CD: I studied at Johns Hopkins University.

ICG: Were you still a photography hobbyist at that stage of your life?
CD: I took pictures for the college newspaper and yearbook. My brother-in-law knew a photographer in New York. His name was George Pickow. I thought it would be great to get a summer job with him. I called but I was just 17 years old, and I was embarrassed about asking for a job. Finally, he asked me if I wanted a job! He hired me to come to New York to be his assistant but soon I started to take still photographs for everything from catalogs to record album covers.

ICG: Let’s backtrack for a minute. Did you enroll at Johns Hopkins because you were interested in a career in medicine? If so, what was your inspiration?
CD: There were doctors in my mother’s family for generations, including her father. I was good at science and math and loved analytic geometry, calculus, chemistry and physics. When I was a kid I used to build toy rockets and mixed chemicals for fuel. There used to be a 6:30 a.m. television program called Continental Classroom that taught chemistry and physics. My father and I would both get up early to watch that show. I did all the calculations with his help. It was really fascinating, but in college, chemistry was suddenly like studying quantum mechanics.

ICG: What steered you in a different direction than medicine and chemistry?
CD: My friends were mainly creative people who were interested in things like the history of art and writing, including Matt Robbins and Walter Murch who were a year ahead of me at Hopkins.

ICG: We recall hearing a story about how a picture of Stanley Kubrick in the student newspaper influenced your thinking about becoming a filmmaker.
CD: There was a picture of Stanley Kubrick when he was working on Dr. Strangelove. He was holding an Arriflex camera with a zoom lens on his shoulder. I saw it in some publicity that came into the Hopkins newsletter office about the film and I remember thinking that I would like to do whatever he’s doing. And I had no idea what that was. It just looked exciting. But the truth is I had no ambition to make Hollywood movies, because I didn’t particularly like them.

ICG: What put you on that path?
CD: I had a professor Richard Macksey who taught literature and history. He and another teacher helped organized film showings at Hopkins of French New Wave films, Italian Cinema, and Bergman. I remember thinking that maybe I could make that kind of film. Walter Murch and Matt Robbins graduated a year ahead of me and went on to the film studies program at the University of Southern California (USC). They encouraged me to apply to USC, and I did. Because of my background in stills, I started shooting student films right away.

ICG: What did you do after graduating from USC?
CD: I went on to AFI as a cinematography fellow. There were around 15 students in our class, and I was the only cinematographer.

ICG: Who were some of your mentors?
CD: Haskell Wexler (ASC) was sort of an unofficial mentor. Walter met him through Cal Bernstein, who was Haskell’s partner. He introduced me. I have vivid memories of both Haskell and Gordon Willis (ASC) sounding off about us ‘young guys’ not knowing anything about cinematography because we had never shot black-and-white film. I had shot a lot of stills in black and white but never a movie. I got a grant to produce, direct and shoot a short film called Trains in black and white. Haskell loaned me his black-and-white filters. I really learned a lot from doing that film, including the extent to which you have to separate images with contrast rather than just colors. There were shots that I really loved when I was shooting it, such as one with the train leaving the station in the fog. But what made it interesting was the grey of everything in the fog and the red light at the rear. This did not work in black and white. That film made me think about what I wanted to do with my life.

ICG: How did you meet Gordon Willis?
CD: I applied for an internship from the AFI. I wanted to do it with Gordon Willis. This was before he shot The Godfather, but I had seen his work and thought it was terrific. The folks at AFI said, ‘No, we don’t know who he is.’ When I persisted, they reneged on the internship, but I was making some money shooting educational films, so I did it on my own. My sister and brother-in-law lived in New Jersey. He was a record producer. He had an apartment in New York that he used when he was in the city that had a Murphy bed in it. That gave me a free place to stay during the time I spent with Gordon.

ICG: What did you learn during your internship?
CD: One of the big things that I learned was that Gordon used light to create separation of images even if it was a color film. If you study his films, you’ll see people who are lit against dark backgrounds. They suddenly go in the shadow when they walk and the background lights up. If you think about it, you realize that he is creating a three-dimensional effect by using contrast and lighting.

ICG: How did you meet Carroll Ballard?
CD: I was living in Venice (in Los Angeles). Carroll lived across the alley from me, and Ron Dexter (ASC) lived next door. Ron had gone to UCLA with Carroll. Ron got me started shooting commercials. Carroll and I were also working for the same educational film producer. Carroll was going to produce a short film called Rodeo. He had heard about me and asked me to come work with Steve Burum (ASC) who was the main DP. I ended up shooting a lot of that film. I guess Carroll liked my eye. I did a couple of other short films with him, and then he asked me to shoot The Black Stallion. That was my first feature film.

ICG: That was in 1979. Share a memory about that experience.
CD: Carroll and I were both convinced we were going to be fired from the beginning, because neither of us had worked on a feature length movie. We started shooting in Toronto where the crews were used to buttoned-down television schedules and not used to the way Carroll worked, which was much looser. I don’t think they thought Carroll was a very good filmmaker. We finished shooting the rest of the film in Italy with a very small crew, mainly with one camera filming the horse and the kid (except for the shipwreck at Cinecitta).

ICG: You followed The Black Stallion with Being There with Hal Ashby directing and a cast that included Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine. You earned your first Oscar nomination for The Right Stuff in 1983. It was a wonderful drama about NASA and the astronauts. Your next project was The Escape Artist, which you directed. Why did you decide to try directing?
CD: I’ve always directed, including student films at USC. I like going back and forth between directing and cinematography because you get to see filmmaking from different perspectives.

ICG: What appeals to you about directing?
CD: First of all I love working with actors. I really like thinking about performances and talking to them. I also like thinking about storytelling from an overall perspective. I like conceptualizing about how we are going to tell the story both visually and in terms of performances and everything else that goes into directing. One of the things that I learned from Gordon is that cinematographers have to be really good at conceptualizing the visual style of a movie, and the director must conceptualize how he’s going to tell the story. The magic happens when a cinematographer develops and executes a visual style that compliments the director’s vision for the story.

ICG: Around 1994, you organized Dark Light Pictures, a commercial production company. By then, you had shot Being There, The Right Stuff and you earned your second Oscar nomination for The Natural, in addition to directing another film and episodes of a television series. What motivated you to start a commercial production company, and what have you learned from that experience?
CD: I stopped shooting features when my kids became too old to take them out of school and take them on location. So I stopped shooting features for eight years. Commercials gave me an opportunity to use a lot of different tools and techniques. We were doing color correction and things like that in telecine suites long before there were DIs on movies. Directing and shooting 30-second commercials also gives you the discipline to concentrate on what’s really important to telling the story. And they only took me away from home for short periods of time.

ICG: We are just going to mention a few of your other films and see what memories they evoke. Can you tell us about Being There?
CD: Being There was my first Hollywood movie. It was a wonderful experience from every point of view. I felt from the beginning that we were making a really special film. Peter Sellers was terrific and funny all the time, Hal Ashby was a wonderful director, and I thought that I had the best crew that there ever was.

ICG: We mentioned that you earned your second consecutive Oscar nomination for The Natural in 1985. Will you share a memory from that film?
CD: It was about baseball, our national sport. It was a wonderful film to work on with a great director, Barry Levinson.

ICG:  Was Anna and the King a different experience?
CD: It was a totally different experience shooting a period movie set in Siam during the 1860s. The original version was shot in CinemaScope format by Leon Shamroy (ASC) during the 1950s. We were going to shoot in Thailand, where some of the original locations still existed, but Thailand still had a king, and didn’t like a story that treats him as human. We went to Malaysia instead — right next door, so similar scenery, different culture — where they designed and built sets recreating Siam in the 1860s. Jodie Foster and Chow Yun-Fat were absolutely great in the roles of Anna and the king. They made you care about and empathize with their characters. You felt like you knew them by the end of the picture. Isn’t that what filmmaking is about?

ICG: You shot the Oscar nominated The Patriot a year later, right?
CD: I loved working on The Patriot. I loved helping to tell a story that took place when the Revolutionary War was being fought. I enjoyed collaborating with (director) Roland Emmerich and Mel Gibson was terrific in the leading role. We didn’t want to glamorize the war. We wanted audiences to feel and understand what it was like to be there in 1776. Every minute of each scene had a purpose.

ICG: You earned your fifth Oscar nomination for The Passion of the Christ, which was directed by Mel Gibson. Can you share a memory?
CD: I studied a lot of art history in college. I love the way Caravaggio used light in his paintings. Mel produced the film in Aramaic and Latin so it freed him to cast great actors from Romania, Poland, Italy, France, North Africa and other places who you would never cast in an English language film. Every actor had to learn a dead language in order to be in the movie. I thought it was a brilliant idea. It created a feeling of reality that would not have been the same in an English language film.

ICG: This is a different topic. Have you heard or read the Academy’s Digital Dilemma report which sums up a two-year study comparing film and digital archiving?
CD: I have, and one of the things that strikes me is that negatives from films that the Lumière brothers produced in France during the 1890s are still around, but people who took digital photographs of their kids five years ago can sometimes no longer recover them. Digital technology has been a quantum leap forward in film restoration technology, but I wonder if today’s digital movies will be around for tomorrow’s audiences.

ICG: We are changing the topic again. What role do you think movies play? Are they just entertainment or something more than that?
CD: I didn’t get involved in filmmaking just because it is entertainment. I think that movies at their best can inspire us to be better human beings.

ICG: This isn’t an easy ICG, but we will ask it anyhow. If you could go back in time and pick out a deceased or older director to work with who would it be?
CD: You are right. That isn’t an easy ICG. I would have loved to work with (French director) Jean Renoir. He had a great understanding of the foibles of humanity and a wonderful sense of humor about the failings of mankind.

ICG: How do you respond when aspiring cinematographers ask you for advice?
CD: I tell them to look at visual images as much as they can, whether it’s paintings, photographs or movies, and shoot as much as they can. I am still learning every time I shoot a frame of film. When I’m not learning, I will know that it’s time to quit.

Chris Menges, ASC, BSC

ICG: Where were you born and raised?
Chris Menges: My grandfather was a violin player who was born and raised in Germany. He moved to England in 1890 to teach students to play the fiddle. I was born on a farm in Herefordshire, England. My family moved to London when I was 3 years old when my father became music director at The Old Vic Theatre.

ICG: You obviously didn’t follow in your father’s footsteps, but do you see a connection between creating music and cinematography?
CM: There is definitely a connection. Both music and cinematography are arts that require mastering a complex craft. I learned to trust my instincts, and above all, I learned that tone is more important than perfect technique.

ICG: When and how did you decide you were going to be a filmmaker?
CM: cameras and photography always fascinated me. When I was 17 years old, I went to work for our neighbor Allan Forbes. He was an American filmmaker who made documentary films for the cinema. Allan shot documentaries all over Italy, France and Britain. I was his assistant. I also recorded sound and helped him in the cutting room. Allan was a huge inspiration for me.

ICG: How did you get started as a cinematographer?
CM: I began shooting films for World in Action, a weekly current affairs documentary series, when I was 21 years old. I draw on those experiences every time I work on a new project.

ICG:  You were 22 years old when Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for leading an armed struggle and the African National Congress was made illegal in South Africa. You roamed the streets of Johannesburg dressed like a tourist shooting 16 mm film with a Bolex camera. You shot other documentaries in war zones all over the world, including The Opium War Lords in the jungles of Burma. Tell us about that experience.
CM: I spent two years in Burma on two different trips in 1963 and 1972 during a very brutal civil war between different ethnic groups who were pushed into the Union of Burma by the British. Those types of documentaries expose you to a different world. You learn about composition, and how it affects the story, and about natural lighting. You experience those things by observing. You also learn to fit into the environment with the indigenous people and that there is no one right way to tell a story. The experience of being a fly-on-the-wall while shooting documentaries helps you develop as a filmmaker. I think everybody who wants to be a filmmaker can benefit from shooting documentaries with a handheld camera.

ICG: That’s just a snapshot of your documentary endeavors, which also took you to places ranging from the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the war in Vietnam to the streets of Harlem. You mentioned Allan Forbes. Were there other films and cinematographers who influenced you during that early stage of your career?
CM: I recall seeing The 400 Blows which was directed by Francois Truffaut and shot by Henri Decaë, A Blonde In Love directed by Milos Forman and shot by Miroslav Ondricek, (ASC, ACK), and Medium Cool directed and shot by Haskell Wexler (ASC). They were awe-inspiring films with cogent stories that went into great depth. For a couple of years, I worked as (cinematographer) Brian Probyn’s assistant. He was another important mentor. I was his camera operator when he shot Poor Cow, an independent film directed by Ken Loach in 1967.

ICG: You shot Kes, your first narrative film, in 1969, with Ken Loach at the helm.
CM: The joy of Kes was in the writing, the brilliant performances and skillful storytelling. Brilliant! It was a special film and the kind of experience we dream about.

ICG: Kes was not a bad way to start your career as a narrative film cinematographer. That film won two BAFTA Awards and four other nominations. You followed Kes with a number of real- life dramas, including After a Lifetime, which focused on a family living in Liverpool, and Bloody Kids, a film about kids living on the south end of London. Were there other pivotal experiences during that period?
CM: In 1980, I shot a remarkable television movie called Made In Britain entirely with a Steadicam. Alan Clarke was the director. I also spent five months as the second unit cinematographer on Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. It was a great learning experience, working on a big budget film under the delightful team of (director) Irvin Kershner and (cinematographer) Peter Suschitzky (ASC).

ICG:  You came onto the international scene when you earned your first Oscar in 1985 for The Killing Fields. Share some insights about that film.
CM: Again, I was fortunate to work with an incredibly talented director. Roland Joffe had a clear vision for the story he wanted to tell. It’s a story about what happened in Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime when more than 2 million people were murdered. Roland wanted the film to tell the story of a dirty war and a time of pain and darkness for the people of Cambodia. I was thrilled at having that opportunity to work with Roland because he has such a strong visual sensibility. Many talented people worked on The Killing Fields, including production designer Roy Walker, and the best camera operator, Mike Roberts. That helped make the experience of working on this film very special for me.

ICG: You earned your second Oscar for The Mission in 1987, which was also directed by Roland Joffe. That film took place in the jungles of Brazil during the 18th century. Spain and Portugal had established colonies and had made the native people who were living in the jungle slaves. Jesuit priests from Spain built a number of missions above a waterfall with the goal of converting native people to their religion. The story takes a dramatic twist when an emissary from the pope said the native people have to leave the missions and return to the jungle. Please share some memories.
CM: It began with discussions with Roland and David Puttnam, who produced the film. I drew on memories of a television documentary called The Tribe That Hides From Man that was directed by Adrian Cowell. We shot that documentary in the Amazon jungle in South America in 1968. The air around the mission was thick with a white, steamy mist created by the waterfall. We recreated that look by using several water pumps to generate a fine spray of vaporized water, which reflected the beams of sunshine that came through the trees and created light and shadows on the ground.

ICG: The ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards began in 1987, and Feature Films was the only category. You were nominated for The Mission. The other nominees were Jordan Cronenweth, ASC for Peggy Sue Got Married, Don Peterman, ASC for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Jimmy Crabe, ASC for The Karate Kid: Part II and Tony Pierce-Roberts, BSC for A Room with a View. There was an awards dinner at the ASC’s Hollywood clubhouse hosted by legendary actor Gregory Peck. What do you remember about that night?
CM: It’s hard finding the right words to describe my feelings about that evening. I remember the sense of history that I felt being at the clubhouse, and the camaraderie that filled the air. I had been reading about the ASC and its members since I was an assistant cameraman when I was 18 years old. Now, I was meeting and talking with its members.

ICG:  You took a bit of a hiatus from cinematography in order to try your hand at the helm as a director. A World Apart was the first film you directed in 1988. You won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, The New York Film Critics Award as best director, and various other awards and nominations. You directed several other films after that.
CM: I was immensely proud of A World Apart, but the next three films I directed were rather depressing experiences.

ICG: You returned to cinematography when you collaborated with writer/director Neil Jordan on Michael Collins, a film about an Irish revolutionary. You earned your third Oscar nomination for that endeavor in 1997.
CM: Neil had shown me an early draft of the script in 1982 when I shot a movie called Angel with him. Michael Collins took place during the turn of the 20th century. Neil wanted to re-create the grimy, sooty look that was common in Dublin during that time in history. The streets were lit with carbon arc lamps, and there was smoke in the air from coal burning fires. I used smoke, cyan filters and the ENR process at Technicolor to help create a nearly monochrome look.

ICG: You followed Michael Collins with a number of interesting films, including The Boxer, The Pledge, Dirty Pretty Things and The Yellow Handkerchief. You earned your fourth Oscar nomination in 2009, which you shared with Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC for The Reader. Roger began shooting the film, but he had to leave because he had another commitment. Tell us about that ambitious endeavor.
CM: That was an unusual situation. Redmond Morris, the line producer called and told me what the story was about. I had read the book written by Bernhard Schlink that the movie is based on. The story is set in post World War II Germany. It involves a man’s relationship with an older woman who was accused of a war crime. I wanted to know more about what happened during that period. My grandfather was a German who migrated to England. I wondered if he would have gotten caught up in that insane and barbaric time in European history if he had stayed in Germany. I met with (director) Stephen Daldry and also watched the film that Roger had shot. I thought it was wonderful. I felt comfortable finishing the film because Roger and I think alike about using light and shadows to create a natural feeling. There is one thing I will never forget. We filmed a scene in the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. It was a heartbreaking experience. It was impossible to be there without crying your heart out.

ICG: In general, what are your thoughts about the collaborative process between cinematographers and directors?
CM: I don’t know a cinematographer, certainly not myself, who has won an award or contributed to a meaningful movie who wasn’t collaborating with a highly visual director. Part of it is luck, getting to work with the right director and script, and then it takes an incredible amount of hard work. The inspiration comes from the words, and from inside the characters. All you have to do is bring your soul and great energy.

ICG: One of the unique things about filmmaking is that it is a collaborative form of artistic expression. What are your feelings about that collaborative relationship?
CM: It goes beyond collaborating with directors. You are working with production and costume designers, makeup artists, gaffers, and of course everyone on your crew to get composition, camera movement and focus that delivers.

ICG: Tell us about the film which you just completed shooting.
CM: Route Irish is a story about a private security contactor in Iraq who rejects the official explanation of a friend’s death and tries to find out more about what happened to him. It’s the 12th collaboration between Ken Loach and me. We filmed the Iraq scenes in Jordan and other scenes in Liverpool, England. I think it’s an important and interesting story.

On the set of Magnum P.I.

John C. Flinn, III, ASC

ICG: Your family has been in the industry for generations. What do you recall about their careers?
John Flinn: My grandfather, John C. Flinn, Sr., was at Pathe Studios in New York for a while very early in the industry. Later, he became a producer and vice president of Cecil B. DeMille Productions, the forerunner of Paramount Pictures in Hollywood. My father, John C. Flinn, Jr., started his career as a publicist at Warner Bros. He moved on to Allied Artists and Columbia Pictures, where he was director of advertising and publicity. My dad received a Special Award of Merit from the Publicists Guild in 1984. In 1985, he received the Les Mason Award from the Guild, which is their highest recognition. I was so proud of my dad when he got that recognition.

ICG: Looking back, what did growing up in the industry teach you?
JF: I always knew that I wanted to work in the industry. It was part of my life while I was growing up. Producers and directors would come to our house to talk with my father. I’d be quiet and listen. I remember people dressed in tuxedoes coming to pick up my parents up on their way to the Academy Awards. My dad was working six days a week. He would go off to locations, and come home with stories.

ICG: Where did you live?
JF: We lived in the San Fernando Valley. A lot of the kids whom I grew up with ended up in the business. I had an 8 mm camera. I made little movies with my friends. I also had a 16 mm sound projector. My dad would get me prints of films and I would show them to my buddies.

ICG: Did you always know that you wanted to be a cinematographer?
JF: I thought I wanted to be an actor, but once I got onto sets, I knew I wanted to be part of the camera department. I’d watch the actors rehearse and realized that someone was bringing it to life with lighting and how they used the camera. Bill Widmayer was head of the camera department at Columbia Pictures. I told him I wanted to be a cameraman when I was 20 years old, but I lied about my age.

ICG: What happened next?
JF: A few days later, I got a call from Carolyn in the camera department. She told me to go to Columbia Ranch and report to Fred Jackman (ASC), who was shooting the TV series, The Wackiest Ship in the Army. That was my first day on a camera crew. My job as a second assistant was keeping the slate and marking the actors, carrying cameras, and doing the paperwork. It was tough getting started, because all the cinematographers had regular crews, but I worked with some great cameramen, including Conrad Hall (ASC), Bill Fraker (ASC), Bob Surtees (ASC), Harry Stradling (ASC), Richard Rawlings (ASC), Monroe Askins, (ASC), Matt Leonetti, ASC, Chuck Wheeler (ASC), Robert Morrison, and Richard Kline (ASC).

ICG: What were those experiences like?
JF: It was like a dream come true. I was working with great cinematographers on sets with Cary Grant, William Holden, Marlon Brando and other legendary actors and actresses. I’d wake up every day feeling that I had the best job anyone could have. You have got to love what you’re doing to do what I do for as long as I have. I have fun every day. I also got jobs as an actor.

ICG: How did that happen?
JF: I was observing Conrad Hall (ASC) shoot a scene for In Cold Blood, and it led to an opportunity to get my first bit part as an actor. I got my SAG card and eventually got roles in Get Smart, Gunsmoke, Babylon 5, and other TV series.

ICG: What other memories do you have to share?
JF: I was working as a second assistant on a TV show called The Hero. They sent me over to the next stage to see if I could borrow some film. Bobby Wyckoff was shooting the Get Smart TV series. I had worked with him on Bewitched. Bobby said, ‘Hey kid. My second assistant is leaving. Can you start on Monday?’ I was on Get Smart for two and a half years. In addition to working on the crew, I did some stunt work and had occasional speaking parts as a Chaos agent.

ICG: How long did you work on camera crews?
JF: I spent seven years as an assistant cameraman and eight as a camera operator.
I paid my dues, but felt I was the luckiest guy in the world. I had opportunities to work with some great people and learned a lot from them. I was one of, if not, the youngest assistants when I started and the youngest guy to become a Hollywood cinematographer.

ICG: What was your first film as a cinematographer?
JF: It was a 1979 television movie called The Flame is Love that we shot in Ireland. I’ll never forget it. It was a period picture with horses and carriages. It was beautiful in Ireland - the sky, the wind, the natural light and colors. I think there were 1,000 shades of green that were constantly changing. I don’t think you can describe that in a script.

ICG: What happened next?
JF: I got a phone call asking me to fly to Hawaii to shoot the last 12 episodes of Hawaii Five-0.

ICG: You started a run of hit television series, beginning with Hill Street Blues in 1981. How did that opportunity happen to come your way?
JF: Bill Cronjager (ASC) shot the first season. He created a very original look. When he moved on to another project, I was asked to come onboard. We had a great ensemble cast, including Veronica Hamel, who could talk with her eyes. All the actors were easy to communicate with, and Steven Bochco is a terrific writer and producer.

ICG: How do you decide what’s the visual grammar for a show?
JF: I can’t speak for anyone else, but I try to put myself into the story. I read the script and imagine myself acting and directing. Hill Street Blues was a lot of fun, but it was a hard show with eight or nine main characters in incredible areas to light and shoot, including Skid Row in Los Angeles. I took a lot of chances. There were times when I thought, ‘This could be my last day, but I have got to try it!’ We were shooting with a 200-speed film, and many times, I was rating it for 800. I lit for the words and the mood.

ICG: We’re not going to ask about all of your experiences shooting different films and TV series, because it’s a long list. But can you share a memory or two about Magnum P.I.?
JF: Magnum P.I. was a joy to shoot. It was on the air for a couple of years before I came onboard, but it was a drama, so they gave me the freedom to try different looks. I used some diffusion, because we were shooting in Hawaii and wanted to show the beauty of the islands. I had a four-and-a-half year run on that show. Tom Selleck was a terrific leading man. He was also executive producer during the last couple of seasons. Tom had me direct a couple of episodes. That was an interesting new experience dealing with budgets and schedules as well as developing a vision and collaborating with the cast, crew and various other people. I basically applied my experience as a cinematographer.

ICG: You also worked on Jake and the Fatman. What do you remember from that experience?
JF: They brought me onboard when the show was moved from Los Angeles to Hawaii. After a while, the show moved back to Los Angeles. They were moodier stories in Los Angeles. It was about the relationship between two detectives who solved crimes. A lot of the drama was in the dialogue, in their eyes and in the subtle expressions that visually punctuates their wisecracking dialogue. I also directed four episodes.

ICG: How about Babylon 5 - that had to be a different experience?
JF: Babylon 5 was a pure science-fiction series. Part of the fun was that there are no rules in outer space. Nobody knows what it looks like, so I had the freedom to play with colors and looks. I spent five years on that show. We had interesting conversations about what characters and environments on different planets looked like, and then I did my best to transport audiences to those remote places, so it felt believable. In addition to cinematography, I directed 10 episodes.

ICG: A few years after Babylon 5 you shot The Gilmore Girls. Tell us a little about that series.
JF: It was a bright, cheery series that we shot on stages at Warner Bros. We shot it in Super 16 format. I thought the film held up great on HDTV screens.

ICG: You are working on Saving Grace, another interesting episodic series about an angel who helps an interesting character, played by Holly Hunter, solve crimes.
JF: I shot the last three episodes of the second season, the entire third season, and will shoot the upcoming episodes for the fourth season. Nancy Miller created the show and was a main scriptwriter. She and her writing staff give every word a meaning. Holly Hunter plays Grace, and is also an executive producer. After we wrap 12 or 13 hours of shooting, she is in the editing room. One of the things that I love is that it is an obviously improbable theme, but it’s believable. It is a great experience.

ICG: Have you figured out how much television you have shot?
JF: I have shot close to 500 hours of primetime television.

ICG: That’s the equivalent of shooting more than 250 movies for cinema screens, and you are still going strong.
JF: I am going to be disappointed if I’m not shooting film 15 years from now.

photo by Owen Roizman

Sol Negrin, ASC

ICG: When did you realize you wanted to be a cinematographer?
Sol Negrin: My father was in the garment business, which I detested. I was going to a New York public school that was a prep high school because I wanted to be a naval architect. I used to build boats and design my own things at home. I wanted to get into the Naval Academy or Webb Institute because those were the two schools that taught naval engineering or architecture. As it turned out, my math skills weren’t good enough. I had a grade advisor who asked whether I had an avocation. I told him that I liked photography, and he suggested I pursue that. It was good advice. I took the exam for the High School of Industrial Arts and passed. I showed some of my artwork, and I got in. It was the only school that taught still photography and motion picture filmmaking as well, and I gravitated to the film work. I shot short films for the school, which had a lot of Army surplus equipment, including 16 mm Cine Special cameras.

ICG: How did your professional career begin?
SN: I got a job while I was still in high school, but it was darkroom work and I didn’t like it. I stayed there part time for two months, and then started knocking on doors, including Hartley Productions, a company who produced industrial films and commercials for Pan Am Airways, Irish linens, and about a dozen other businesses. Hartley also had produced many training films for the government during the war. They gave me a part-time job. I started off at $5 a week sweeping the floor and doing anything to learn about film production. This was my internship. I gradually moved up, and after a year and a half I was an assistant cameraman. After I graduated high school, I started working full time at Hartley Productions. I got a ground floor, hands-on experience about everything related to 16 mm and 35 mm filmmaking. I worked on commercials, documentaries, industrial film and, eventually, feature films and television.

ICG: As an assistant, you worked with some of the most renowned ASC cinematographers, some of them from the silent and early sound eras, including Lee Garmes, Charles Lang, Jr. and Hans Koenekamp, to name a few. What did you learn?
SN: The best part about being an assistant is that you get to observe. From Lee Garmes, I learned simplicity. He had an eye for composition and good taste. He knew his diffusion. He was a master in every respect. I worked with Hans Koenekamp on some visual effects shots for Damn Yankees. He really knew his effects, and was a master lighting cameraman as well. With Charles Lang, Jr., we were doing a shoot where Joan Crawford spoke to stockholders of the Pepsi-Cola Company, which she had taken over from her late husband. In this informational film, Charlie photographed her as if it were a feature film using all the diffusion nets and glass as needed. She was always concerned about her neck, and he had a finger net over the key light that cut across her neck so it wasn’t so pronounced. Working with Charles Lang, Jr., was an education. Boris Kaufman was from a different generation; he was a master of hard light. Like Harry Stradling, Sr., he knew how to use one large source and make that lamp do the work of many. He had a European sense of composition and depth. Some of what Boris did in On the Waterfront reminds me of Gregg Toland’s work on Long Voyage Home.

ICG: You were working at MPO and Filmex when the television commercial as we know it today was being invented. What are your memories of that time?
SN: MPO was the MGM of commercials. I was an assistant. There was a lot to learn, and the work was steady and paid well. I learned a lot, but it could be exasperating work. I traveled a great deal. Later, after I had become a director of photography, I was on staff for three years at Filmex. Often, I flew to California on Monday and took the red eye home on Friday to be with my family on the weekends.

ICG: You have a close friendship with Torben Johnke. How did that come about?
SN: I worked with him as an assistant when he first arrived in this country from Denmark, and later I worked for him as a director of photography when he became a producer and director. He was one of my mentors. It was nice that he remembered and hired me. He had his own techniques, and he taught me a lot. We’re still friends, and I see him whenever I get to Toronto. I worked with Torben on one of the last Technicolor monopack films. It was at the old Fox Studios on 53rd Street. We had the Bell Telephone Orchestra with about 70 musicians. The film was actually Kodakchrome reversal. When it was processed, they made three strips out of it. It was the forerunner to Eastman color negative monopack film. The exposure index was 10 or 12. There were so many arc lamps that they had to bring in projectionists to operate them because there weren’t enough electricians who knew arc lamps! We needed 1,200 footcandles just to get a T2.8 exposure. We were photographing the well-known violinist, Zino Franciscotti. It was a dolly shot into a close-up of the bow and strings of his violin, and because of the heat of the lights, we thought the violin might be damaged. It was a very difficult shot. We had to wait for the dailies because the film had to be sent to California to be processed. We were biting our fingernails, hoping it was in focus. We had been promised a new BNC camera checked out by Technicolor to be sure it met their specs, but the delivery was late, so we had to use an older Mitchell Standard, which had to be put in a blimp that made it very cumbersome. But, we did the picture with it, and I was proud that it went smoothly, with no problems.

ICG: During the 1970s, you were photographing Kojak, one of the most popular television shows of that era. Your work on that show led to three of your five Emmy® nominations. What are some of your memories?
SN: While shooting Kojak in New York, I worked with many different directors and often received their praise for a job well done. Part of our task was to capture the flavor of New York City. While working with these directors, I absorbed many of their techniques in order to produce the best visual images. I enjoyed collaborating closely in order to achieve a mutual understanding about the lighting and composition in order to make each story as interesting and exciting as possible. The Emmy nominations were very gratifying, but my greatest satisfaction came from knowing I had done my best.

ICG: By the 1980s, you were shooting with modern, fast film stocks and other improved technology. What’s your take on the relationship between technology and creativity?
SN: The changes have been dramatic, but I don’t envy the new people coming into the industry. They have to learn and absorb so much new technical knowledge to make things work in order to capture the vision they are trying to achieve. I find film more user-friendly. With digital, each camera is different, and before you realize it, the camera may become obsolete. There’s a different workflow for every project. Film has its own distinctive look and is still a different palette. It’s more organic. There is a different feel and look to the image itself. Creativity will always be intertwined with any new technology.

ICG: What has membership in the ASC meant to you and your career?
SN: In 1942, I read my first issue of American Cinematographer, which featured many well-known cinematographers of the time. I knew at that moment that I wanted to be an ASC member, and that became my aspiration. The day that I was accepted as a member was one of the most memorable times of my life. The camaraderie of being in the company of such talented individuals is something I never expected. To receive this award from such a distinguished society means so much to me. I’m honored and very happy.

ICG: You spend a lot of time and energy teaching tomorrow’s filmmakers. What is your advice to them?
SN: Learn all you can. Every day is an education. You have to keep up. Absorb it all. It’s a very competitive profession. Some of my students are still very much into the film process, and that delights me. We teach both worlds – film and digital. There is always something new on the horizon, and you have to learn to adapt. That’s the way it’s always been, from the silent era to the sound era, from black and white to color. What remains the same is that it continues to be all about the visual image of storytelling.

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC & Hector Moreno

The critical partnership between the DP and DIT explained…  By Pauline Rogers

Before last year’s feature State of Play, Rodrigo Prieto, ASC (Academy Award nominee for Brokeback Mountain) had done only one digital feature (Ten Tiny Love Stories with director Rodrigo Garcia), comprised of a series of monologues that were shot with a single angle per scene. “The digital part of State of Play (directed by Kevin MacDonald) required many lighting situations and environments,” recounts the Oscar-nominated cinematographer. “And I was concerned that additional cables, monitors, and workstations would be a burden in comparison with the rest of our movie, which was done with hand-held cameras in a very free fashion.”

Prieto says it was DIT Hector Moreno who relieved him of such a “huge burden,” and made the shoot flow. “What I liked about digital was the possibility of grading on the set,” Prieto continues. “So, Hector worked closely with Yuri Neyman to get the Gamma and Density system working properly with the Genesis. By transferring my grading to tape, we had dailies that were very close to what we intended. With Hector there, I always knew things would be ready for me when I needed them, even if there were the inevitable glitches we all face.”

One of those glitches was when the Steadicam rig malfunctioned, recalls Moreno. “While Rodrigo was concentrating on what he does best, we immediately rerouted cables and redirected the video source to an HD on-board monitor in place of the down-converted signal,” he shares.

And then there was the added challenge of providing an image in a timely manner, shooting on a Washington D.C. train filled with extras. “While Rodrigo and director Kevin Macdonald were mapping out the shot,” Moreno adds, “the challenge became power related to generators. A simple switch to battery and neither of them knew we’d had a glitch.’”

What is it about train sequences that always seem to create challenges for the HD team? New York-based DIT Barry Minnerly references a similarly challenging moment on Hachiko: A Dog’s Story, directed by Lasse Hallström and shot by Ron Fortunato, ASC.

“We were running out of time and Lasse wanted to set one camera up 1,000 feet away, shooting down toward the train, and another Steadicam with the train coming through the shot,” Minnerly explains. “As Lasse and Ron mapped out the shot, I had to provide them an image. In other situations, the usual thing would be to break off the camera and put a deck on the back.” Knowing video tap doesn’t cut it with most DPs, Minnerly’s solution was to run fiber optic cable 1,000 feet, under the railroad track, instead of moving gear on gravel and stones.

“Barry allowed us to see the full resolution picture and stay where we were, shooting off a central monitor,” recounts Fortunato. “I don’t understand how anyone who shoots HD can even consider not having a DIT. Hachiko was a perfect example of the value of both of my DITs, Abby Levine and Barry Minnerly. It was much more than the challenges we experienced with the train sequence. We had a tremendous amount of exteriors, some of which were covered with snow, so exposure in the highlights was critical. Working with Barry and Abby was extremely helpful in determining exactly when detail would be lost. Some people say you can just read the scope, but as a DP I’d rather be concentrating on the lighting than be glued to a waveform (monitor).”

Observes Abby Levine: “Ron is one of the most vocal proponents of the DP/DIT partnership in the industry. On both Hachiko and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, it was far more than setting up the camera and making a LUT table for the Genesis that would carry into post. I’ve gotten to know his likes and dislikes, so there are things that I pay attention to and, when we look at a scene together, I’m ready to give him what he wants. Ron welcomes the input, because sometimes I make a suggestion he hadn’t thought of.”

Minnerly, who began his TV partnership with Fortunato on 100 Centre Street, and is now working with him on the CW series Gossip Girl agrees, saying, “Ron relies on the (DP/DIT) partnership because he wants the best image he can get from the monitor. He always has his hands on the control, often doing the iris pulls himself. He is constantly trying something new and will turn to me to ask what I can give him to accomplish his new concept.”

The Art and Soul of the Team

“Our DITs are artists,” insists cinematographer Frank Prinzi, ASC, who rotated on Mercy with Dejan Georgevich, ASC for the first part of season one of the New York-based series. “And I simply couldn’t do Mercy without Lewis Rothenberg. Like a DP works to get into the head of his director, a good DIT like Lewis will get into the DP’s head – my head – and interpret what I want, weighing emotional content, logistics, and technical challenges. He or she is ready to weigh everything together, and give me even more than I am looking for.”

Georgevich agrees, describing his collaboration (with Rothenberg on Mercy) as, “a joy that allows me to create a look in the moment …much like having the color timer on the set. It’s great to have that extra set of eyes contributing to the highest possible production values in visual story-telling.”

Rothenberg says the key to his success on the show has been because the DIT is considered a key collaborator, as important as the gaffer or key grip. “Frank knows that he doesn’t have to think about the technical,” Rothenberg explains. “And that I have his back – first on Cashmere Mafia, then several pilots, and now on our back-breaking schedule for Mercy.”

“One of the most important parts of my job,” the DIT continues, “is creating an appropriate workflow that will give post as finished a product as possible. It is a challenge to make sure what was created on the set is followed in post, especially when (post) is either 3,000 miles away, or when we have to relinquish the material, knowing that we simply don’t have time to be there.”

Lewis Rothenberg and Frank Prinzi, ASC, Gene Engels and Kurt Rimmel

Rothenberg’s words echo those of every DIT and DP working in the hyper-paced world of episodic television. There is an obligation on the D.I.T.’s part to keep the creativity in the image in the hands of the camera team, often a struggle when some post houses are either not familiar with what the DP (and DIT) see as they are shooting, or take it upon themselves to lend their own creativity, at times going in a different direction than originally intended. For a DP to relinquish his/her image to post without the details a DIT can provide, opens up the possibility for misinterpretations when the final product airs.

“Part of my partnership with (cinematographer) Paul (Maibaum) is to be the technical authority, especially in post,” says West Coast-based DIT Andy Lemon, who worked with Maibaum on two TV projects in 2009, My Boys (a half-hour romantic comedy) and Sons of Anarchy (a one hour drama). “Post questions come directly to me, which allows Paul to keep from getting bogged down in the small day-to-day things that pop up. This also holds true with technical issues with the camera equipment. If there is a problem, Paul will look to my recommendations on whether a piece should be downed for a short time for me to fix or to replace it all together. Keeping that line of communication allows him to adjust his schedule.”

Maibaum concurs, adding that when you are shooting a one-hour show in seven days you simply can’t afford any down time. “In one of last year’s episodes of Sons, we had a giant biker party,” the DP relates. “We noticed a bad pixel in the A-camera on the 24-inch monitor, and ran the camera’s pixel masking software, which usually fixes the problem, in essence replacing the dead pixel. At some time during the two-minute process, a herd of background extras kicked out the power to the cameras. And after scrambling to repower, the camera had no image!”

With the first team coming in, Lemon had to reset the eight or so parameters thrown off by the power outage. He managed to get the last setting fixed and the image up just as the AD called roll. “Without him there, we would probably have had to send the camera back to Panavision,” Maibaum says. “But, because he was there and knew the electronic process, Andy could get it up and running so I could make the day.”

Lemon points out that working in episodic television is all about finishing the required number of pages within the shooting day. “It is my job to help Paul achieve that,” he insists. “From creating efficient onset signal distribution to post workflow, I work toward eliminating any technical distractions so that Paul can get down to the creative task at hand.”

Digital Glue

Keeping a production on-track is key to any DIT/DP partnership. Or as Frank Prinzi wonders: “Can you imagine the time we would lose if a camera goes down and either we don’t know it or we can’t fix it?” Prinzi says DITs are always on top of their equipment, and their focus is always to make sure that their gear works smoothly – to catch it if something happens – and to fix it, before irretrievable time is wasted on-set.

“We are the digital glue that bonds the multitude of technical, creative and workflow requirements,” reiterates DIT Tony Salgado, who partners with cinematographer Flor Collins on many high-profile commercials. “The proliferation of constantly evolving cameras, formats and standards has made (our roles) critical, because DITs are not only a technical liaison with all aspects of production, post production, workflow and delivery, we are a conduit to various production personnel (from camera to client) and rental houses, especially when multi-format is often the norm in the commercial world,” Salgado emphasizes.

Cinematographer Collins backs this up, noting that even before a commercial awards he’s in touch with Salgado about sensor sizes, lens mounts, recording formats, post paths and overall camera selection for the spot. “We don’t get a lot of time on commercials, so it’s essential to have carefully thought out the right piece of gear for each shot,” Collins adds.

Tony Salgado

In fact, the cinematographer says that Salgado’s blackout tent is the on-set sanctuary for viewing the image in the best conditions. “On a recent job, we were shooting quickly at an airport concourse with a lot of sunlight bouncing around,” Collins recalls. “The grips were busy and didn’t have time to flag the on-set monitors. One of the agency-creatives was wondering just how much detail was going to be in the shadow areas and in the hot windows. I was able to reassure him by taking him into the tent and showing him what we were going to get. And, also, in that case, Tony had done a rough grade to show the look we were going for.”

Such examples are one of the unappreciated benefits of having a DIT on a commercial, which even without much budgeted shooting time in the example Collins cites, enjoyed the luxury of showing the client an image that will be very close to the finished, graded look. “It’s one of those little things that can help a director get repeat business,” Collins concludes. “Yet, it’s not something you can put a number on when making a budget and deciding if there is money for a DIT.”

On that last point every cinematographer polled for this article agrees: there is an inherent flaw in thinking that eliminating the DIT saves money. The ledger may appear lighter on the front end. However, any cost savings vanish when technical delays come in to play, thus curbing the on-set workflow between the DP, director, and all other key creative heads. Salgado puts it best when he describes the crucial partnership between DP and DIT to that of a medical team, where the cinematographer is the surgeon, the DIT the anesthesiologist, and the production the patient. Would you want to go into a challenging, time-constrained “operation,” he asks, without a key member of the medical team present?” I sure wouldn’t.”

If there is one person in Hollywood worthy of laying claim to the crown worn by Jack P. Pierce – Universal Studios’ makeup genius of the 1930s and ‘40s (Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man) – it is Rick Baker. The special effects makeup designer grew up watching monster movies on late night television, and burst into prominence while still in his 20’s, winning an Emmy Award® for his startling aging makeup for Cicely Tyson in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974). Just seven years later, Baker won the first of his six Academy Awards® for John Landis’ horror comedy, An American Werewolf in London. With The Wolfman, starring Benicio del Toro, Baker not only barks back up the same tree that first earned him Oscar gold, but he puts his own spin on Pierce’s 1941 classic, which starred the legendary Lon Chaney, Jr. Matt Hurwitz went throat to nuzzle with the master of creature makeup to hear about Baker’s designs for the newest incarnation of Hollywood’s favorite monster, as well as his thoughts on the classic films that first fired his imagination.

ICG:  How old were you when you saw Jack Pierce’s most famous makeup work, Frankenstein? Rick Baker: I decided I wanted to be a makeup artist when I was 10 and had seen photos of Frankenstein, but I don’t think I actually had seen the movie yet.  I was one of those first generation kids to grow up in front of the TV, and in those days, shows like that were on later than my parents would let me stay up. They would take me out with them because we didn’t have money for a babysitter.  So I’d often get stuck in a room in somebody’s house waiting for my parents.  I remember I came home one night when Frankenstein was on, and begging them to let me watch. I wasn’t scared; I was just fascinated.  I had seen photos of the makeup so much and wanted to see it in action.

Silent era actors like Lon Chaney, Sr often did their own makeup designs. I’ve asked a lot of people who were around in Chaney’s day, (and are now gone), who said there was a fellow named Cecil Holland, who apparently was involved with Chaney, Sr.’s makeups.  I’d like to think he did the makeup initially (for such films as Universal’s Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame), but makeups fabricated out of putty require constant repair and maintenance; I would think it would be very taxing on Chaney, Sr. to not only give his performance, but to have to look in a mirror and make sure his face was still on. So he may have had assistance from Cecil Holland. But, with or without help, the makeups were outstanding, and beautifully photographed.

How do you think the cinematography of that era helped canonize those characters? For example, James Whale’s introduction of the Frankenstein Monster, having him come up the stairs backwards and turn around in a stepped reveal, as photographed by Arthur Edeson (ASC). I always thought that was an interesting way to show the Monster.  First of all, you don’t know what the hell you’re looking at.  And he slowly turns around, and you’re shocked.  And then it’s, like, “Oh, yeah?  Well, wait – look at this closer!”  Bam-bam-bam, and then there he is, right in your face. It’s such a great film, and, again, beautiful photography and beautiful makeup.

There are a number of such shots in The Mummy, released the following year and directed by cinematographer Karl Freund (ASC). There’s one shot in that film – a close-up of Karloff, with just a little band of light across his eyes – that is such an iconic frame.  While I was doing Greystoke (The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes) in England (1984), I would come home after shooting at night and, with only two channels on TV there, ended up doing a painting of that Mummy shot to keep myself entertained.  It eventually turned into a Frankenstein’s Monster instead, because I’ve always been more of a Frankenstein fan than a Mummy fan.

James Whale seemed to be a fan of similar shots, particularly for introducing characters, as seen just a few years later in Bride of Frankenstein. That may be one of the few sequels better than the original movie. All of it is beautifully photographed (by John J. Mescall, ASC), and you see the gradual exposure of a character, the bride (Elsa Lanchester). They have a close-up of her bandaged face, and then rip off the bandages, and you see those eyes, nicely lit, opening up in there. They also had all those crazy shots of her and the others looking up from below with “Dutch” angles.  Like the series of shots with the bride cocking her head with the movements she said were based upon the movements of a swan that she saw in Regents Park, or the ones of Dr. Frankenstein or Pretorius as they bring her to life. I remember seeing those angled shots and going, “Why is the camera so crooked?” I didn’t quite understand it, but I knew I liked it.

In 1941, Pierce created another iconic makeup for The Wolf Man, although that was not his first werewolf. No, he actually had done another one for Werewolf of London in 1935. Oddly enough, Pierce had designed a makeup very similar to what The Wolf Man ended up with six years later.  But they had decided it covered up actor Henry Hull too much. I used to call it the “Elvis werewolf,” because he had sideburns and this widow’s peak. When The Wolf Man came along, Pierce ended up doing what he had wanted to do on Werewolf of London, which was essentially this hairy-faced man with a dog-like nose.  The nose was just hollow rubber, like a Halloween mask, and glued onto Chaney’s nose and upper lip, which is hard to keep on, and it’s not on all the time in the movie!

The wig and forehead and facial hair was loose yak hair that was glued onto Chaney’s face on a daily basis with spirit gum, and trimmed and dressed with a Marcel iron, a curling iron, that looks like a pair of scissors, that you heat up to a very hot temperature. Pierce is known to have burned Chaney several times with that thing. I’ve burned myself with them several times. The finishing touch was actually burning the hair – he heated up the iron too hot, and then ran it across the top of the hair and just singed it, giving it a kinky and fuzzy, animal-like look. Yak hair is good to use, because you get a good blend from hair to skin.  I actually went from yak hair to a much finer hair and even lighter color, closer to the skin color.

What was the process for developing the makeup for this new Wolfman? I was hired early on to do some design, even before they had a finished script.  I said, “You know there’s going to be a wolf man in it, let’s figure out what that is,” and I’d hoped to do it in a couple of weeks. The very first thing I did was paint, in (Adobe) PhotoShop, over a photograph of Benicio, basically, like Lon Chaney, Jr. A lot of people don’t know that Benicio has wanted to play the Wolfman since he was a kid – he was one of those guys who had a big poster of Chaney, Jr. over his bed when he was a boy. Benicio was always coming in to the studio with monster magazines that he’d just bought off of eBay, every time we made him up!  We’d spent too much makeup time looking at those things. And we did get in some arguments.  He thought Glenn Strange (the actor who played the Frankenstein Monster in Universal’s last three Frankenstein films in the 1940s) was the best Frankenstein.  I’m, like, “What the hell are you talking about? You just lost all my respect!” (Laughs.) But we came to an agreement on that (Strange) was very good in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

So, after I did those images over Benicio’s photo, I did my own ideas, and then another series that shows the spectrum from man to wolf, to try to narrow down where in the range we all thought the wolf man should be. If man is No. 1 and wolf is No. 10, is he a 5?  Or is he an 8 or is he a 3?  They kept wanting it narrowed down between “this one and that one.”  It ended up eating up all our pre-production time.  In the end, once Joe (director Joe Johnston) came onboard, we still didn’t have an approved design. So, I just did what I wanted to do in the first place as we had run out of time.

Acting through heavy effects makeup can be difficult for some actors.  How did you make sure Benicio’s portrayal could be seen? I’ve been doing this for more than 40 years, so I kind of know what you can and can’t do. Also, because I’ve made myself up so many times, I know firsthand what works, as far as trying to get a performance through it. Though we often use silicone gel-filled appliances, because it’s a very good synthetic flesh, in this case, for the sake of Benicio’s comfort and ease of removal, we used foam rubber pieces. And we still used yak hair, just like Pierce. Nothing innovative here, just really old school approach. As for acting through the makeup, Benicio was great. It’s often frustrating when you do a great makeup on an actor, and they just freeze up. They’ve got something on their face, and they feel like they can’t move, even though they can.  But Benicio’s attitude – and he said this throughout – was “more is more.”  He goes all over the place and puts himself out there.  I loved watching him do his performance and what he did with the makeup.

You’ve won six Oscars® for your makeup designs.  How has this helped your career? The whole problem with winning an Oscar is that people then think you’re going to be very expensive afterwards. In that respect, it hasn’t really helped my career. But to this day, I still can’t believe that I have these awards. My job is what I did for fun, as a kid. And I get to make toys and play with them, and get paid for it, and get free food!  Then when people give you awards on top of that, you get all this praise.  But I don’t do this because somebody gives me an award.  When I started out, there weren’t makeup awards anyway. I do it because I love it, and I try to be as perfect as I can, every time.

Photo by Frank Connor

Johnson, ASC and Johnston resurrect one of Hollywood’s most fabled fanged creatures for Universal Pictures’ The Wolfman. By Matt Hurwitz

“Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.” -Werewolf legend, Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941) and The Wolfman (2009)

Thus has been the plight of Lawrence Talbot ever since Lon Chaney, Jr. portrayed the suffering man-beast in Universal’s 1941 classic, The Wolf Man.  For Universal’s newest incarnation, starring Benicio Del Toro and Sir Anthony Hopkins, Talbot is forced to deal with the mal-effects of the monthly full moon and seeks only to end his misery (at the hand of a loved one and a silver bullet), though not before resolving a few family issues.

Bringing the lycanthrope back to the screen in a faithful update has been the creative challenge set by the studio for years, now respectfully rendered by director Joe Johnston and director of photography Shelly Johnson, ASC.

“Of the Universal classics, The Wolf Man was always my favorite,” states the director, who previously collaborated with Johnson on Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo and the upcoming Marvel feature, The First Avenger:  Captain America. “It reminds us that there’s a beast in all of us. Underneath the surface, there’s a monster.”

The Wolfman was originally to have been directed by Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) and shot by Alvwin Kuchler, though in February 2008, after a seven month prep period and just three weeks prior to start of production, the studio shifted direction, bringing in Johnston to direct and, with him, Johnson.
“I was on my way to the airport,” recalls the cinematographer of his trip to London, where the film was shot, “and I got a call from Universal’s Donna Langley.  She said, ‘Now, Shelly, I just want you to know this movie needs to be dark – I mean, really dark.  Can you do this?’  I told her, ‘Donna, do you have any idea how many cinematographers dream of getting this phone call?’” he laughs.

“I told Shelly ‘I want this to feel cold,’” Johnston says, “so that when there is a happy scene – and there’s really only one – I want it to contrast. It’s a love story that you know is going to end badly, no matter what happens.”

Moonlight Becomes Him

Johnston says that original director Romanek had already made a number of good decisions, including casting and some locations, as well as the visual look of the film (largely the efforts of production designer Rick Heinrichs). And while the 1941 The Wolf Man was shot almost entirely on stages at Universal – even the film’s iconic forest scenes - Heinrichs opted for a more modern approach.

“I love the kind of theatrical reality old Hollywood films have,” he says.  ”But what we wanted to make the idea of a man turning into a wolf into something compellingly real.” Johnston agrees. “The original film, while it’s atmospheric and moody and iconic, feels stage-bound and artificial.  We wanted this to feel as out there in nature as we could make it.”

To bring that natural darkness to life, the director entrusted his cinematographer almost completely, a manner in which the duo had already comfortably partnered.

“I tend to give him a minimal amount of input, and say, ‘This is the way I think the film should look,’ and let him decide how he’s going to achieve that,” reports the director. “I really like to give (Shelly) as much flexibility and creative freedom as I possibly can, from capture to post.”
Adds the cinematographer about his working mate: “Joe doesn’t go for eye candy.  He’s not trying to shoot a video game. The audience is living in a world with the characters, so we really wanted the story to live in its own unique world, one that didn’t share any rules with anyplace else.”

That meant lighting spaces that reflected the torturous dichotomy in which Talbot lives.  “He’s constantly being pulled between animal savagery and love; between confusion and fear and immense power, all at once,” remarks Johnson.  “There are so many opposites contained in the same scene, and that’s something I wanted to represent visually. Warm and cool, black and white, light and dark, all in the same frame.”

Like the historic Victorian-era mansion, Chatsworth, which played the role of Talbot Hall, where Heinrichs says, “the many clerestories and skylights allowed Shelly to create an interplay between what falls into the light and what falls out of the light.” In fact, Johnson was able to light interiors almost equally as dark for both daytime and nighttime scenes.  “And anywhere we were able to remind the audience of the external lighting at night, we did,” he adds. “The moon is obviously a recurring theme.”

“We had foreground, where we had rich blacks and grayer blacks in the background,” Johnson continues. “And then we would integrate the (color palette) by introducing warm tones in the foreground and cooler tones in the background.” Key to such scenes is the use of candlelight as a source.

“The period of this film – 1891 – straddles the pre-electrical age,” explains Heinrichs.  “So, in the city, you actually would have electricity. But candlelight was still very much something that existed in the country. So the journey from London into the country is a journey into the past – going from the light to the dark, from civilization to nature and superstition.”  Although the light created by the double-wick candles was not without its challenges for the DP, Heinrichs says. “You’re really playing along the margins of where things fall off and where they’re illuminated.”

Johnson says the solution lay in careful pushing of his film stock, in this case, Kodak Vision3 5219 (500T), which was used for most of the film except day exteriors, for which Vision2 5217 (200T) was implemented.

“This was the first time I’d been out with 19,” Johnson recalls. “We did a makeup test, and I liked very much the bite that it had, how it rolled into the blacks. It reminded me of the very first 93 stock, which had been discontinued shortly after its release, that everyone loved.”

While pondering how to shoot such candlelit scenes, Johnson found himself filming a scene on location at Chatsworth at “magic hour.”  After getting what he thought was the master, Johnston requested a reverse that wasn’t planned. “The light was gone. My meter read ‘E,’” says Johnson. “So we put a new roll up (of 5219) and pushed it to ASA 800.  We were losing our location and had no choice.”

After receiving dailies back from London’s Ariom Labs, Johnson was more than pleased.  “It was beautiful, and you could not tell the stuff was pushed. I turned to our gaffer, John Higgins, and said, ‘Okay, we just figured out how to shoot our candlelight.’  We frequently did our candlelit interiors lit with just one candle – sometimes that was the sole illumination. I just shot wide open on a Primo, which is a 1.9, and rated the 19 at 800,” drawing as much out of the shadows as possible.

Black Magic

Gaslight also proved an interesting ally, most notably in a scene in a medical theater in which doctors attempt to prove to Talbot that this werewolf nonsense is “all in his mind” (hint: this is where the film’s major transformation sequence occurs).

“We modeled it after oil paintings of the period, focusing on two by Thomas Eakins, The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic,” explains Joe Johnston. “Shelly’s lighting perfectly captures the soft and eerie look of gaslight.”

“What’s great about the gaslight is that the light really does fall off in places in a way that it would have in that era,” notes Heinrichs.  “The set kind of creeps out of the darkness to where the focus is.”

Johnson typically shot with a pair of Panavision Millennium XLs. Irish operator Des Whelan, with whom Johnson had worked previously, and Pete Cavaciuti ran A and B cameras, respectively.
“Operators in England are traditionally more a part of the creation of the shot than they are in the States,” Johnson explains.  “In most cases, the DP is the lighting cameraman. We’re used to working in a completely different way, but I wanted to respect their system and included them in our discussions after rehearsals as much as I could.”

A-camera most often found itself mounted on a Technocrane, a favorite of Joe Johnston’s, in combination with Panavision Primo 4:1 zoom lenses. “The camera lives on a Technocrane when it’s me and Shelly,” Johnston says simply.

The pairing of the Technocrane and zoom lenses accommodates the director’s preferred working style. “Joe’s constantly making adjustments between takes to accentuate moments within the scene,” shares Johnston. “He’ll want the shot to move tighter or wider, and doesn’t like to be locked into anything. If he wants to pan over where I’ve got equipment, I tell him, ‘Don’t worry about the equipment. Let’s figure out where we want the shot to be, and I’ll figure out a way to work it out.’ He likes the idea that he can go anywhere.”

Johnston calls the Technocrane “the most flexible piece of equipment” on the market. “It’s got more axes than a dolly – up, down, side to side, in and out,” the director states. “The cameras are basically floating in the air, and that allows me total freedom. I know there’s this feeling that the Technocrane is a giant piece of equipment, and that it will slow you down. But I think the opposite is true. Once you’ve got a crew that uses it well, it really speeds things up.”
The versatile rig was also favored for exteriors, including the many forest sequences, shot at Bourne Wood, where gypsy camp scenes were filmed, as well as Black Park, located just outside the film’s home base at Pinewood Studios.

In keeping with his visceral approach, Johnson lit the forests in an unorthodox manner.  “The first thought was to have moonlight coming in from the top, but it just restricted us too much, when we wanted to say so much more with the imagery.”

So, instead Johnson lit from below, filling in depressions in the ground with 30 or 40 20Ks and shooting into backlit fog.  “In most cases when you’re doing night exterior, the first thing you’re thinking about is, ‘Okay, where am I going to put these cranes?  How high can I tilt up before I start seeing equipment?’ Here, the sky’s the limit.  We wanted to be able to see the treetops and beyond, and silhouette foreground characters against this world.”

Completing the eerie imagery is something Johnson refers to as “black layer luminance technique.”
“When you’re creating a complex visual language that’s outside the norm, there needs to be one element that integrates everything,” he explains. The technique, which Johnson created in PhotoShop on his laptop, “creates a sort of pearlescent look to the highlights, where they have a luster to them. They’re not necessarily bright, but there’s a glow and depth. The story exists in the shadows, and I wanted those shadows to have a certain life and an unexpected nature to them.”

To produce the look, Johnson turned to Technicolor Digital Intermediates colorist Jill Bogdanowicz. “He wanted the blacks to feel velvety and rich,” she explains. “Not over-powerful, where you feel that everything is fuzzy, but just really dark, while still maintaining the detail.”

To achieve such a look, Bogdanowicz used a luminance key to isolate the darkest parts of the image and then rendered a defocus, often applying more highlights to punch any detail present through the defocus effect. “The whole movie has this really dark, spooky look that’s kind of silvery,” the colorist says. “We have a lot of desaturation,” adding a slight amount of cyan to complete the look. “Which tends to isolate the darkest blacks and bring them a little bit lower, without losing detail or any of the fog.”

Crafting the unusual look of The Wolfman required Shelly Johnson to create a language that was both canine and human, terrestial and otherworldly.

“The look is not real at all, but it does follow an emotional logic, so the audience won’t question it,” he says.  “It can’t be random. You have to create rules that mean something to the storytelling. While lighting in an unorthodox way, I might ask myself, ‘My God – is this going to work?’ And it does because we say it does. All that matters it that is make sense in the wolfman’s world.”

Photos by Frank Connor

We titled this web exclusive 600 at Sundance not for the obvious reason, but more because ICG’s massive presence (at the world’s preeminent party celebrating filmmaking of independent vision and spirit) feels like an army descending upon Park City’s snow-bound streets. From short films to competition narratives and documentaries, to midnight genre flicks and everything in-between, the sheer creative breadth of work shot and crewed by IATSE craftsmen and women is remarkable. Consider that the Guild experience meter at Sundance this year ranges from multiple Oscar nominees like Roger Deakins, ASC and Seamus McGarvey, BSC to a first time feature by Texas-based shooter Peter Simonite (Skateland), and a sophomore Sundance effort from Patti Lee, now returning with a documentary (A Small Act) that she both shot and produced, and was picked up by HBO before a single flake of snow has fallen on the festival. Of course having an army (or armada depending on how slushy Main Street becomes) of Local 600 members to blanket Sundance this year isn’t all that surprising: indie filmmaking is an arena filled with warriors, and not for the faint of heart nor craft.

(Note: this listing was compiled with the most up-to-date information possible prior to the start of the festival. We apologize in advance for omissions of names not provided to www.icgagazine.com by Web publishing date)

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION

Blue Valentine – DP Andrij Parekh shot this intimate and shattering portrait of a disintegrating marriage. On the far side of a once-passionate romance, Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) are married with a young daughter. Hoping to save their marriage, they steal away to a theme hotel. We then encounter them years earlier, when they met and fell in love—full of life and hope. Moving fluidly between these two time periods, Blue Valentine plays like a cinematic duet whose refrain asks, where did their love go? The other Local 600 members featured in the production include operator Oliver Cary, A.C.’s Spencer Gillis and James Daly, and still photographer Davi Russo.

The Dry Land – Cinematographer Gavin Kelly shot this drama about a soldier returning to his home in Texas and struggling to reconcile his experiences in war overseas with the life and family he left behind. Shot in Super 16mm, with a D.I. and 35mm finish, Kelly used what he describes as, “an intimate handheld style” that worked to capture the rich contrast and nuanced color tones of the Texas and New Mexico locations. “We pushed Kodak 7205 and 7219 to their limits in terms of exposure latitude,” the DP notes. Local 600 member Sterling Wiggins was also on-board as 2nd A.C.

Happythankyoumoreplease – Seamus Tierney shot writer/director Josh Radnor’s romantic comedy about six New Yorkers negotiating love, friendship, and gratitude at a time when they’re too old to be precocious and not yet ready to be adults. Other ICG crew members on the show, which was shot on the RED camera using Hawk anamorphic lenses, were: Parris Mayhew, Steadicam operator and B-camera operator, David Isern, Steadicam operator and B-camera operator, Kathryn Comkowycz, 1st A.C., A- camera, and Marlen Schlawin, 1st A.C, B-camera and 2nd A.C., A-camera.

Hesher – DP Morgan Susser was behind the lens for this tale of a mysterious trickster who descends on the lives of a family struggling to deal with a painful loss. Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Natalie Portman, with a full union crew that included operators Tommy Lohmann and Torry Tukuafu, 1st A.C.’s Sal Coniglio and Jason Garcia, 2nd A.C.’s Joey Maloney and Rigney Sackley, DIT Nate Kalushner, and still photographer Merrick Morton. Operator Martin Layton and A.C. Kevin Blair Rogers were both day players on the project, which was shot with the RED camera system and anamorphic lenses.

Howl – Academy Award winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman bring their dramatic re-telling of the life of poet Alan Ginsberg (played by James Franco) as a young man: finding his voice, the creation of his groundbreaking poem, HOWL, and the landmark obscenity trial that followed its publication. Shot by Edward Lachman, ASC with a Local 600 team that included operator Gerard Sava, A.C.’s Rick Gioia (1st), Chris Patak (2nd - first week only), Dan Keck (2nd), loader Jordan Levie, and still photographer JoJo Whilden.

Night Catches Us – In 1978, complex political and emotional forces are set in motion when a young man returns to the race-torn Philadelphia neighborhood where he came of age during the Black Power movement. David Tumblety shot this indie drama.

Obselidia - Zak Mulligan shot this story of about a lonely librarian who believes love is obsolete until a road trip to Death Valley with a beguiling cinema projectionist teaches him otherwise.

Skateland – Writer/director Anthony Burns’ story is set in the early 1980s, in small-town Texas, where dramatic events force a 19-year-old skating rink manager to look at his life in a very new way. Shot by Peter Simonite, with a large ICG team that included stills photographer Steve Dietl, operators Grayson Austin, Gary Jay, Don Reddy, A.C.’s Brice Reid, Peter D. Roome, Bryan DeLorenzo, Jeff Taylor and loader Tonja Greenfield.

Sympathy for Delicious - Mark Ruffalo directed this tale about a newly paralyzed DJ who gets more than he bargained for when he seeks out the world of faith healing. The stellar cast includes Orlando Bloom, Mark Ruffalo, Juliette Lewis, and Laura Linney. Local 600 members on-board included cinematographer Chris Norr, operator and 2nd Unit DP, Jon Delgado, operators Jay Levy and Jennifer Stuart, A.C.’s Bobby Brown, Cheli Clayton, Mark Colicci, Kristen Eccker and Erik Emerson, loader Noah Thomson, and still photographer Sam Urdank.

Welcome to the Rileys – Cinematographer Chris Soos, 1st A.C. Michael Charbonnet, 2nd A.C. Jonathan Robinson, loader Amy Vincent, and still photographer Patti Perret brought their many combined years of experience to this story of a “damaged soul” (James Gandolfini) making a business trip to New Orleans and seeking salvation by caring for a wayward young woman. Directed by Jake Scott and also starring Kristen Stewart and Melissa Leo.

Winter’s Bone – DP Michael McDonough lensed this indie drama about an unflinching Ozark Mountain girl who hacks through dangerous social terrain as she hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family intact. McDonough’s Local 600 crew included operator Alan Pierce, 1st A.C. Mike Burke, 2nd A.C. Megan Morris, and loader Jeff Pinette.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

CASINO JACK & The United States of Money - Cinematographer Maryse Alberti continues her creative partnership with non-fiction producer/director Alex Gibney in this probing investigation into the lies, greed and corruption surrounding D.C. super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his cronies.

I’m Pat _______ Tillman - Director Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary examines the story of professional football star and decorated U.S. soldier Pat Tillman, whose family takes on the U.S. government when their beloved son dies in a “friendly fire” incident in Afghanistan in 2004. The film was co-shot on S16mm, HDcam, and with archival materials by cinematographers Sean Kirby and Igor Martinovic with Ludovic Littee as camera assistant.

A Small Act – When Hilde Back sponsored a young, impoverished Kenyan student, paying roughly $15 dollars per term to keep him in primary school she never expected to hear from him again. But Chris Mburu never forgot this small act of charity that helped propel him to Harvard, and become a respected UN human rights lawyer, dedicating his life to battling genocide and crimes against humanity. Mburu tries to replicate Hilde’s generosity by starting his own scholarship fund, which will educate bright kids in his village so they can also succeed and give back, but he is stunned when only two new students qualify for sponsorship. Simultaneously, Kenya falls into ethnic-based electoral violence, and Chris knows that ignorance fuels ethnic hatred and education has never been more important. Cinematographer Patti Lee shot and produced this feature length non-fiction profile that was picked up in advance of the festival by HBO. (Lee will be part of the Women In Film panel discussion - “Choosing Artistic Freedom” – Jan. 24th, 350 Main Street, 12-2 p.m.)

Smash His Camera - From filmmaker Leon Gast comes this story of Ron Galella - sued by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, punched out by Marlon Brando - the actions of the nation’s most notorious and reviled paparazzo opened up a Pandora’s box of constitutional issues, from right to privacy to freedom of the press, not to mention the ever-growing vortex of celebrity worship that has now consumed American culture. Cinematography by Don Lenzer.

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN - Last year’s Sundance winner for Documentary Cinematography, Bob Richman, is back, working with fellow 600 DP Erich Roland, in this examination of the crisis of public education in the United States. Writer/director Davis Gugenheim’s film is told through multiple interlocking stories - from a handful of students and their families whose futures hang in the balance, to the educators and reformers trying to find real and lasting solutions within a dysfunctional system.

PREMIERES

Abel – Mexican film star Diego Luna co-write and directs this story about a peculiar young boy, who while blurring reality and fantasy, assumes the responsibilities of a family man in his father’s absence. Shot by cinematographer Patrick Murguia.

The Company Men - Series television pioneer John Wells writes and directs this tale about three company men who attempt to survive a round of corporate downsizing while trying to fend off its effects on their families and their identities. The powerhouse cast includes Ben Affleck, Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones, and Chris Cooper. Cinematography was by 7-time Oscar nominee Roger Deakins, ASC, with Guild camera assistants Andy Harris, Matthew Haskins, and Zack Shultz.

Cyrus - The Duplass brothers return to Sundance with their singular brand of filmmaking, suffused with pathos, romance, irony, and a dollop of horror. Alone and acutely depressed, having just learned of his ex-wife’s wedding plans, John encounters beautiful and charming Molly at a party. The two get along famously and launch a passionate affair, until Molly’s 21-year-old son, Cyrus, enters the scene. Will Molly and Cyrus’s deep and idiosyncratic bond leave room for John? Cinematographer Jas Shelton leads a full ICG crew that included operators Tod Campbell and Tom Clancey, 1st A.C.’s Keith Jones and Rick Lamb, 2nd A.C. Ron Elliot and RED camera technician Gavin Wynn.

The Extra Man – Sundance veteran Terry Stacey, ASC, returns once again, working with writer/directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini for this New York comedy about a down-and-out playwright, who escorts wealthy widows in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, taking a young aspiring writer under his wing. The cast includes Katie Holmes, John C. Reilly, and Kevin Kline. The Local 600 crew working with Stacey included operator Oliver Cary, 1st A.C. Craig Pressgrove, 2nd A.C. Linda Slater, loader Ahnna Lee, and unit stills shooter JoJo Whilden.

Get Low - Robert Duvall and Bill Murray star in this film, equal parts folk tale, fable and real-life legend, about a mysterious hermit living in 1934 Tennessee who arranges his own funeral…while still alive. Anamorphic cinematography by David Boyd A.S.C., with an ICG crew that included operators John Priebe and Brian Gunter, 1st Camera Assistants Lee Blasingame and Julie Lenox Donovan, 2nd Camera Assistants Ross Davis and Hugh Brasselton, Film Loader Sherri Leger and Still Photographer Sam Emerson. Directed by Local 600 cinematographer Aaron Schneider, also starring Sissy Spacek, Lucas Black, and Bill Cobbs.

Jack Goes Boating - Philip Seymour Hoffman stars and directs this romantic comedy about a limo driver’s blind date sparking a tale of love, betrayal, friendship, and grace between two working-class New York City couples. Shot by Mott Hupfel III with a New York based crew that included assistants David Flanigan, Dan Hersey, Larry Huston, Elizabeth Singer and Kyle Repka, Guillaume Renberg handled motion control and remote operator duties, while Craig Haagensen operated A-camera. David Knox was the underwater director of photography and K.C. Bailey was unit stills.

Nowhere Boy – Seamus McGarvey, BSC, goes behind the lens for this U.K. story about a teenaged John Lennon confronting wrenching family secrets as he finds his musical voice in late 1950s Liverpool, England. Starring Aaron Johnson and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Please Give - Director and screenwriter Nicole Holofcener returns to Sundance with this comedic story set in New York City about a husband and wife who butt heads with the granddaughters of the elderly woman who lives next door. Shot by Yaron Orbach with assistants Spencer Gillis, Robert DiGiacomo, and Brett Walters, operators Jeff Muhlstock and Afton Grant handled Steadicam chores, Ludovic Littee was the B-camera operator and Pitor Redlinski was the still photographer.

The Runaways - In 1970s LA, a tough teenager named Joan Jett connects with an eccentric producer to form an all-girl band that would launch her career and make rock history. Starring Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, the indie feature was shot by Benoit Debie with assistants Jay Hardie, Randy Stone, Forrest Thurman and Tony Villalobos. Michael Stumpf handled A-camera and Steadicam, with additional Steadicam by Andy Shuttleworth. Stills were by David Moir.

Twelve – Director Joel Schumacher comes to Sundance with this chronicle of the highs and lows of privileged kids on Manhattan’s Upper East Side that involves sex, drugs and murder. Kiefer Sutherland and 50 Cent head up the cast. Cinematographer Steven Fierberg, ASC, was behind the lens with a Guild crew that included assistants Rene Crout, Rob Koch and Elizabeth Singer, D.I.T. Sam Kretcher, operators Chris Hayes and Alex Jarnagin.

NEXT

Armless – New York based Guild member Jonathan Miller was the operator and additional cinematographer for this dark comedy about a man who has Body Integrity Identity Disorder (a real-life psychological condition), which drives him to find a doctor who will cut off his arms. The man’s wife thinks he’s having an affair, and he can’t tell anyone his dark secret. Miller says the micro-budget (under $500,000) project was shot in 15 days with a skeleton crew. “We shot on an HDX900,” Miller states. “The camera starts out on dolly and sticks and as the story gets crazier we were handheld for the final act.”

SPOTLIGHT (new section for 2010)

Mother & Child – Xavier Grobet, ASC, shot writer/director Rodrigo García’s story about the lives of three women – a physical therapist, the daughter she gave up at birth three decades ago, and an African American woman seeking to adopt a child of her own – that intersect in surprising ways. The strong cast includes Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Jimmy Smits, and Samuel L. Jackson.

Countdown to Zero – Robert Chappell was one of five shooters to photograph Lucy Walker’s fascinating and frightening exploration of the dangers of nuclear weapons. The documentary feature exposes a variety of present day threats and features insights from a host of international experts and world leaders who advocate total global disarmament.

Teenage Paparazzo – Adrian Grenier presents this documentary about a 13-year-old paparazzi boy who snaps a photo of Grenier, leading the actor to explore the effects of celebrity on culture. Steven Fierberg, ASC was one of the cameramen on this multi-year project.

PARK CITY AT MIDNIGHT

Buried – Eduard Grau shot director Rodrigo Cortes’ film about a U.S. contractor working in Iraq, who awakes to find he is buried alive inside a coffin. With only a lighter and a cell phone, it’s a race against time to escape this claustrophobic death trap. Ryan Reynolds stars in a film Grau describes as, “an absolute technical and narrative challenge,” that overtakes Hitchcock´s Lifeboat for the Guinness world record of the most contained movie ever produced!

Frozen - Will Barratt shot this story for director Adam Green about three skiers who are mistakenly stranded on a chairlift and forced to make life-or-death choices that prove more perilous than staying put and freezing to death. The 1st A.C. was David “D.R.” Rhineer.

HIGH school – Mitchell Amundsen shot story about Jr., about a random drug test that coincides with a high school valedictorian’s first hit of pot. The offbeat cast working for director John Stalberg included Adrien Brody and Michael Chiklis. Michigan locations throughout with a Guild crew supporting Amundsen of 1st A.C. Andy Hoen, 2nd A.C.’s Will Brick and Gregg Horvath, loader Nick Gilbert, and still photographer Neil Jacobs.

The Violent Kind – James Laxton shot this feature story about two second-generation members of an outlaw biker gang, Cody and Q, who take a break from their busy schedule of sex, drugs, and stompin’ fools to attend a party at a secluded cabin. The soirée soon goes to hell, people start dying, and a fine biker mama gets possessed by . . . well, by something foul indeed. It’s all more perverse fun from the utterly demented minds of writers/directors the Butcher Brothers (aka Phil Flores and Mitchell Altieri). Reuniting with much of the cast from their cult favorite The Hamiltons, the Butchers continue to surprise and offend in delightfully equal measures.

NEW FRONTIER

ODDSAC – Local 600 young gun Ryan Samul, who screened The Missing Person at Sundance 2009, returns with this experimental narrative, directed by Daniel Perez, which is infused with the band Animal Collective’s aural and musical sensibilities.

U.S. DRAMATIC SHORTS

Gone to the Dogs – Quenell Jones was the camera operator on director/screenwriter Liz Tuccillo’s short film about a dinner party that turns ugly when one of the guests brings her dog along.

Laredo, Texas – Two-time Emerging Cinematographers Award Honoree Eduardo Mayen hits Sundance with this short documentary-style film, written and directed by Topaz Adizes, that takes place in the border town of Laredo, Texas. Sam trains Juan for his first day at his new job, fixing pay phones. However, tensions boil as Sam suspects that Juan is an undocumented worker.

Little Accidents – Cinematographer Rob Hauer, along with A.C.’s Jason Cleary, Chris Wessinger, and Cai Hall, shot director Sara Colangelo’s short film about a desperate young factory worker who recruits a mentally disabled ex-boyfriend to steal a pregnancy test. Hauer used 35mm anamorphic (Kodak 5229) with 100 percent skip bleach applied to the negative. Other IATSE members involved in the shoot included Key Grip Brian Deutsch of Local 80, and Best Boy Grip Dawn Richards and Best Boy Electric Fred Young, both with Local 481.

RENEGADES - Writer/director Jim Hosking enticed a union crew to help produce this ultra-low budget short that cinematographer Martin Tedin relays, “the 35mm print (12 minutes) struck for Sundance cost more than the total budget of the project!” The 2-day L.A. shoot covered 4 locations. Local 600 crew included 1st A.C. Daniel “Double Bacon” Ferrell, 2nd A.C. Lucas Deans, and loader Alan Gwizdwski.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY SHORTS

Para Fuera – ICG director of photography David Morrison teams with filmmaker Nicholas Jasenovec (Paper Hearts) for this intimate portrait of Dr. Richard J. Bing on his 100th birthday. Para Fuera is the story of an accomplished man, his wealth of knowledge and the ultimate realization of what is truly important. The film has also been selected to screen on You Tube in conjunction with the festival allowing Guild members to see the 7-minute short on-line.

The Poodle Trainer – Cinematographer and Emmy Award winner Marc Greenfield teams up with DGA director Vince Malone for this non-fiction profile of Irina Markova, a solitary Russian poodle trainer who reveals her transcendent relationship with her dogs, the childhood tragedy that sparked a lifetime of working with animals, and the welcome isolation behind the red velvet curtains of the circus.

ADDED FILMS

The Kids Are All Right – From Sundance veteran Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon, High Art) comes this tale about two children, conceived by artificial insemination, who bring their birth father into their family life.  The stellar cast includes Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, and Annette Bening. Shot by Igor Jadue-Lillo with an ICG team that included A.C.’s Mark Figueroa, Leoncio “Loncho” Provoste, Gaston Richmond, and loader Aaron Ticheron.

The Romantics – Sundance producing veteran Gail Niederhoffer (Grace is Gone, Lonesome Jim, Dedication) directs a film based on her own novel – a generational comedy that takes place over the course of one night at a deluxe seaside wedding. The director of photography was Sam Levy, with a Local 600 crew made up of 1st A.C. Nicola Benizzi, 2nd A.C. David Feeney-Mosier, loader Dan Merrill, and still photographer JoJo Whilden

SLAMDANCE

Local 600 shooter David McFarland has two features premiering at Slamdance 2010: Cummings Farm is an awkwardly hilarious farce that centers on six people casually deciding to get together for an evening of group sex. Set on the bayou of south Louisiana at an old strawberry farm, the film follows characters taking their last steps away from sexual freedom and irresponsibility into committed and monogamous relationships - some more reluctantly than others. Although the participants initially act casually about the affair, as the insane prospect of actually having to go through with it approaches, their true colors shine. Drones features Brian Dilks as an office worker, who spends his days at OmniLink in comforting monotony; facilitating the movement of product around the country, faxing, copying, joking with his best friend, Clark, and harmlessly flirting with fellow cubicle-mate, Amy. After discovering an improbable secret about his best friend, everything in Brian’s safe life of workplace detachment is no longer an option. Close encounters of the office kind, like sales or intergalactic war, are an uncertain business.

X- DANCE

Academy Award-nominated director of photography Don Burgess (Spiderman, Forrest Gump, Contact, Terminator 3, The Polar Express, Castaway, and The Book of Eli) teams up with Chris Woods (who has directed over 400 commercial campaigns for clients like Jeep, Budweiser, Corona, Toyota, Visa, and Mountain Dew) for this exciting interactive panel discussion at the X-Dance Action Sports Film Festival (Jan. 21-26, Salt Lake City). Launched in 2001 with the support of major sponsors, X-Dance has grown to become the premier action sports film festival in the world. While the films and the athletes change from year to year, the mission of X-Dance remains constant: To nurture the growth of action sports filmmaking and to honor achievement on both sides of the camera.  Sponsored by GoPro Cameras, the panel discussion is January 23, 4:30 p.m., at the Off-Broadway Theater (272 South Main St.) located across from the Gallivan Trax stop. A full X-Dance film schedule and event listing can be found at: www.x-dance.com

Photo Credits:

Happythankyoumoreplease photo courtesy of KT Comkowycz

Howl and The Extra Man photos by JoJo Whilden

Welcome to Rileys photo by Patti Perret

Photo of Don Burgess courtesy of X-Dance

Gone to the Dogs courtesy of Quenell Jones

The Runaways photo by David Moir

A Small Act photo courtesy of Patti Lee

Sympathy for Delicious photo by Sam Urdank

Blue Valentine photo by Davi Russo

Obselidia courtesy of Zak Mulligan

Get Low photo by Sam Emerson

FEATURES

THE BOOK OF ELI
DP Don Burgess, ASC
By Margot Carmichael Lester

THE SPY NEXT DOOR
DP Dean Cundey, ASC
By Robert Allen

MODERN FAMILY
DP James Bagdonas, ASC
By Jon Silberg

iPHONE APPS FOR CINEMATOGRAPHY
By Andrew Takeuchi

WHAT’S HAPPENING IN NYC
By Pauline Rogers

EXPOSURE: Albert Hughes

DEEP FOCUS: Terry Stacey, ASC

FLASH FRAME: Erik Bright

GEAR GUIDE: Indie Focus

James Chressanthis, ASC, talks about his travels on the indie film festival circuit - from Cannes to Buenos Aires and everywhere in-between…
By Bob Fisher

No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo and Vilmos, is a feature documentary conceived, produced and directed by James Chressanthis, ASC, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2008, and it has subsequently visited 22 other festivals, on four continents, since; and not without its share of fanfare. “(In all my travels) No one has ever asked me who Vilmos and Laszlo are,” Chressanthis observes. “They have become legends in their own time.”

Critics, too, have embraced the project. Like this blurb from Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly: “Last night on PBS, I caught (this) reverent and fascinating documentary…a look at the art, influence, and longtime brotherly friendship of two of the most fabled Hollywood cinematographers of the 1970s. …I knew who these two men were, understood a few things about their art, and had a dim awareness of the fact they were both Hungarian émigrés. I was amazed at how much I didn’t know.”

The 86-minute film, which aired on PBS stations in September 2009 as part of the Independent Lens series, and which earned Vilmos Zsigmond, ASC, the network’s Vanguard Award, for its tales of seemingly impossible dreams realized, spans 50 years in the lives of the titular characters, Zsigmond and Lazlo Kovacs, ASC. The movie tracks back to when the men escaped their native Hungary in the wake of that nation’s October 1956 uprising against the Communist regime, and the brutal repression that followed. It included comments from some 70 individuals who crossed paths with Kovacs and Zsigmond, images from their films and a range of other clips.

“Some filmmakers and fans at festivals knew about Vilmos and Laszlo before they saw the film,” Chressanthis explains. “But I’ve gotten blank stares when attempting to explain Laszlo’s and Vilmos’s contributions to people outside of the industry. Then, I reel off some of their films: Easy Rider, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Paper Moon, Deliverance, The Deer Hunter, Ghost Busters and everybody’s face lights up.”

When I asked how he managed to get the project into so many different festivals, in so many different countries, beginning with the granddaddy of all, Cannes, he replied: “I don’t have any secret strategy for getting accepted. Generally, (the programmers) don’t want referrals, copies of reviews or explainations. They want a DVD of the movie and your fee!”

Break Out The Bubbly

Chressanthis explains that Cannes was the right festival for his world premiere because Easy Rider debuted there in 1969. The rave reviews for Easy Rider at Cannes were followed by a successful run at the box office. That provided the impetus that brought Kovacs into the mainstream a dozen years after he arrived in the United States.

“The president of the Cannes festival personally informed me that our film was chosen,” Chressanthis remembers. “It was an overwhelming, thrilling experience. I walked the red carpet with our producing team. We felt so happy that we premiered at the same festival which brought Laszlo Kovacs on the global scene.”

A consistent theme of the movie is the brotherhood that linked the two cinematographers. Kovacs shot That Cold Day In The Park with Robert Altman at the helm in 1969. “When Altman asked Laszlo to shoot his next film, he told him that he had another commitment, and recommended Zsigmond, who he described as his mentor,” Chressanthis explains. Which is how Zsigmond transitioned from shooting films with titles like Five Bloody Graves and Horrors of the Blood Monster to the Altman classic McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The artful western was his first studio film and it could very well have been his last, as Zsigmond shared in a scene from No Subtitles Necessary.

The DP explained to Altman how Freddie Young, BSC, had a lab flash the film in order to create a desaturated look for a project he was shooting. They shot a test, and agreed that was the right visual grammar for McCabe and Mrs. Miller. When a studio executive wanted to fire Zsigmond, because dailies looked desaturated, Altman lied and blamed it on the lab.

“Our film is filled with those behind the scenes anecdotes that movie fans, and even people in the industry don’t typically hear,” Chressanthis says, who adds, that enthusiastic news coverage and reviews at Cannes was the catalyst to being invited to festivals in North and South America, Asia and Europe.

It’s a list that continues to grow to this day, including the Santé Fe Film Festival, Starz-Denver Film Festival, Big Bear Lake Film Festival, CamerImage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography, Palm Springs International Film Festival, Sedona Film Festival, Buenos Aires International Film Festival, Thessaloniki Documentary Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Salem Film Festival, Kansas City FilmFest, Lake Arrowhead Film Festival, Seattle True Independent Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival, Los Angeles Greek Film Festival, Oakland Underground Film Festival, Napa Sonoma Wine Country Film Festival, New Orleans Film Festival, Hollywood Film Festival, Hungarian Film Festival of  Los Angeles and Oslo International Film Festival.

Guild and Industry Support

ICG sponsored the premiere West Coast screening of No Subtitles Necessary at the Fine Arts Cinema, in Beverly Hills, in September 2008. Following the screening, ICG president Steven Poster, ASC introduced Chressanthis, Zsigmond and Peter Fonda who engaged in a dialogue with the audience. The screening and discussion resulted in the first major American press reviews and news stories, which helped to propel Chressanthis’ remarkable journey through the independent film festival circuit.

One clip from the movie features former ICG president George Spiro Dibie, ASC introducing Zsigmond at an ICG lighting seminar. “Vilmos left his wife to be with us today,” Dibie announces. Whereupon Zsigmond replies, “I have to correct George’s English; I left (my wife) at home (to be here today). But I didn’t leave her!”

Aside from sponsoring its West Coast premiere, ICG has also screened No Subtitles Necessary for members at the Tribeca Film Center in New York and at the Gene Siskel Film Center, in Chicago. There was also a special screening that played to a packed house at the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art.

Its creator was invited to fly to London with Zsigmond for a special screening for members of the British Society of Cinematographers.  Another invitational screening is scheduled in Athens, Greece in 2010 in conjunction with a seminar for filmmakers and students conducted by Chressanthis and Zsigmond.

“One consistent theme in the media’s coverage of the film,” Chressanthis relays, “is that it helps people who are not filmmakers understand the important role that cinematographers play. It’s a revelation for them to see images Laszlo and Vilmos created and hear actors, directors and movie critics talk about how they helped to tell stories.

“I was a little surprised, and humbled by the response,” he adds. “One review said to the documentary was the ‘right poetry’ for the story of Laszlo and Vilmos. The reviewer spoke about how (the movie’s subjects) created compelling images for entertaining films that also told stories about the human condition.”

Inspiration for the project dates back to 1984, when Kovacs visited AFI, where Chressanthis was a student, to share his aesthetic approach to shooting Paper Moon.

“Both the film and Laszlo made a deep impression on me,” he reports.

Two years later, Chressanthis interned with Zsigmond during the production of The Witches of Eastwick, when Zsigmond and Kovacs hosted a lunch for the cast and crew celebrating the 30th anniversary of the uprising against the communist regime in Hungary.

“They toasted the spirit of the revolution and those who had given their lives in a quest for freedom,” Chressanthis recalls. “I was struck by their optimism and generosity of spirit. Their affection for each other affected me deeply. I remember thinking that someone ought to produce a documentary about them.”

When he heard that UCLA was hosting a 50th anniversary celebration of Vilmos and Laszlo arriving in America at the Billy Wilder Theater in Los Angeles, Chressanthis decided the timing was ripe. He arranged to film interviews with the cinematographers, as well as other participants, at the celebration, which included screenings of clips from the UCLA archives.

“Laszlo was skeptical,” he smiles. “Various other people had previously told him that they were going to produce a documentary about him and Vilmos. I am grateful that we had opportunities to interview him, and am so sorry that Laszlo didn’t get to see the film before he died.”

There was no production company in the beginning, but Chressanthis doesn’t claim to be an auteur. Various people who shared his dream, including cinematographer Anka Malatynska and many film industry companies rallied to support his ambitious endeavor. With their help he filmed more than 50 hours of interviews.

The short list includes Karen Black, Peter Bogdanovich, Sandra Bullock, Dennis Hopper, Richard Donner, Peter Fonda, Tatum O’Neal, Bob Rafelson, Mark Rydel, Sharon Stone, Jon Voight, John Williams, Irwin Winkler, Rob McLachlan, ASC, CSC, Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC, Steve Poster, ASC, Allen Daviau, ASC, Ellen Kuras, ASC, Owen Roizman, ASC, Haskell Wexler, ASC, Ray Dennis Steckler, Crayton Smith, Leonard Maltin, Todd McCarthy, Audrey Kovacs and Susanne Zsigmond.  Their comments are artfully woven with shots culled from movies shot by Kovacs and Zsigmond and still photographs.
The filmmaker estimates that about 75 percent of the interviews were produced in Super 16 format. The other interviews were produced in digital HD format, and behind the scenes footage was filmed with a Super 8 camera provided by Pro 8MM, in Burbank.

It was no small endeavor trimming it down to 86 minutes.

“An amazing number of people helped us make this dream come true,” Chressanthis concludes. “We couldn’t have done it without them. I realized while we were on the festival circuit that the story of how Laszlo and Vilmos overcame incredible obstacles on their paths to success is inspiring young filmmakers around the world to be persistent and follow their dreams. I know they inspired me to make this film.”

No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo and Vilmos is now available in DVD format at http://www.laszloandvilmos.com.