2015 05

M AY 2 0 1 5
An International Publication of the ASC
On Our Cover: An artificial intelligence named Ava (Alicia Vikander) dreams of a

world beyond the lab where she was born in Ex Machina, shot by Rob Hardy, BSC.
(Image courtesy of A24.)
FEATURES
32
44
58
68
73
More Than Human

Rob Hardy, BSC frames the advent of artificial intelligence
for Ex Machina
Accelerated Action
Stephen Windon, ACS and Marc Spicer, ACS burn more
rubber on Furious 7
Without Fear
Matthew Lloyd, CSC turns his lens on a Marvel superhero
with the series Daredevil
58
The Academys Sci-Tech Awards honor pioneering technical

achievements
Celebrating Art and Science
A pictorial recap of this years ASC Awards events
Leading Lights
68
DEPARTMENTS
10
12
14
20
86
90
91
92
94
96
44
Editors Note
Presidents Desk
Short Takes: Puzzled
Production Slate: The Age of Adaline Humpback Whales
New Products & Services
International Marketplace
Classified Ads
Ad Index
Clubhouse News
ASC Close-Up: Jon Joffin
VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM
73
LOOK FOR MORE AT WWW.THEASC.COM
WEB EXCLUSIVE:
The Water Diviner

Oscar-winning cinematographer Andrew
Lesnie, ASC, ACS pens a first-person
account of his collaboration with
director/actor Russell Crowe on The Water
Diviner, a period drama produced in Australia and shot in Australia and Turkey.
Set in the wake of World War I, The Water
Diviner follows a farmer from the Outback
who travels to Turkey in search of details
about his three sons, who were all reported
missing in action in the battle of Gallipoli.
The productions unique locations included
the Pichi Richi Railway in Australia and
the Blue Mosque in Istanbul.
www.theasc.com
Photos by Mark Rogers, courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, RatPac Entertainment, Seven Network Australia,
Megiste Films, DC Tour, EJM Productions, Axphon.
Coming in May
M a y
2 0 1 5
V o l .
9 6 ,
N o .
Visit us online at www.theasc.com
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

Stephen Pizzello
EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Jon D. Witmer
ASSOCIATE EDITOR Andrew Fish
TECHNICAL EDITOR Christopher Probst
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, John Calhoun, Mark Dillon, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray,
David Heuring, Jay Holben, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer, Iain Stasukevich, Patricia Thomson
ART & DESIGN

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Marion Kramer
PHOTO EDITOR Kelly Brinker
ONLINE
MANAGING DIRECTOR Rachael K. Bosley
PODCASTS Jim Hemphill, Iain Stasukevich, Chase Yeremian
BLOGS
Benjamin B
John Bailey, ASC
David Heuring
WEB DEVELOPER Jon Stout
ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann
323-936-3769 Fax 323-936-9188 e-mail: angiegollmann@gmail.com
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce
323-952-2114 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: sanja@ascmag.com
CLASSIFIEDS/ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Diella Peru
323-952-2124 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: diella@ascmag.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina
CIRCULATION MANAGER Alex Lopez
SHIPPING MANAGER Miguel Madrigal
ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR Patricia Armacost
ASC PRESIDENTS ASSISTANT Delphine Figueras
ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER Mila Basely
ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE Nelson Sandoval
American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 95th year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by
ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A.,
(800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.
Subscriptions: U.S. $50; Canada/Mexico $70; all other foreign countries $95 a year (remit international Money Order or other exchange payable in U.S. $).
Advertising: Rate card upon request from Hollywood office. Copyright 2015 ASC Holding Corp. (All rights reserved.) Periodicals postage paid at Los Angeles, CA
and at additional mailing offices. Printed in the USA.
POSTMASTER: Send address change to American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078.
American Society of Cinematographers

The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but
an educational, cultural and professional
organization. Membership is by invitation
to those who are actively engaged as
directors of photography and have
demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC
membership has become one of the highest
honors that can be bestowed upon a
professional cinematographer a mark
of prestige and excellence.
OFFICERS - 2014/2015
Richard Crudo
President
Owen Roizman
Vice President
Kees van Oostrum

Vice President
Lowell Peterson
Vice President
Matthew Leonetti
Treasurer
Frederic Goodich
Secretary
Isidore Mankofsky
Sergeant At Arms
MEMBERS OF THE
BOARD
John Bailey
Bill Bennett
Curtis Clark
Dean Cundey
George Spiro Dibie
Richard Edlund
Michael Goi
Matthew Leonetti
Stephen Lighthill
Daryn Okada
Michael O Shea
Lowell Peterson
Rodney Taylor
Kees van Oostrum
Haskell Wexler
ALTERNATES
Isidore Mankofsky
Karl Walter Lindenlaub
Robert Primes
Steven Fierberg
Kenneth Zunder
MUSEUM CURATOR
Steve Gainer
8
Narrative perspective is a key element of filmmaking

thats often overlooked or underrated. In Ex
Machina, a sci-fi drama shot by Rob Hardy, BSC, a
deft use of this visual tactic helps the filmmakers shift
audience expectations as they build the onscreen
relationship between Ava (Alicia Vikander), an
advanced artificial intelligence, and Caleb (Domhnall
Gleeson), a programmer tasked with testing the
depth of her human qualities.
Citing John Carpenters The Thing (shot by
Dean Cundey, ASC) as a key influence, Hardy notes,
You never know whos who, and your allegiance is
constantly shifting between the characters. Thats
why Im an advocate of the single camera over multiple cameras. It focuses your visual manifesto. In this
case, [that included] the geometry of the frame, the
bodies, the landscape, and how to position those things to elicit a cold, observing eye or a
warm, human emotion. However, as Hardy adds in a piece by Iain Stasukevich (More Than
Human, page 32), subtlety is advised when employing such strategies. Its important to have
a strong point of view, to guide the eye a little bit, but it should be done without forcing people
to think in a specific way. The [viewers] need to experience the moment on their own.
On some projects, of course, multiple cameras are virtually mandated by the material.
On Furious 7, ACS members Stephen Windon and Marc Spicer supervised the cinematography
on a complex show that required splinter units to capture far-ranging action with a style familiar to fans of the franchise. As Spicer notes in Michael Goldmans coverage (Accelerated
Action, page 44), The difference [between Furious 7 and the previous films] is not so much
in the palette as the story, which slowly starts to expand out of the Mojave Desert, out of California and then out of the U.S. it gets global when we go to Abu Dhabi. So it is a bigger
story in that sense, with a global military theme. But visually, we try to take [the characters]
back to their roots.
Matthew Lloyd, CSC worked to create a dark, gritty visual palette for Daredevil, a New
York-based Netflix series that reframes the Marvel Universe legend of a blind vigilante. The
cinematographer tells Noah Kadner (Without Fear, page 58) that the productions bold,
edge-of-darkness approach to the material was fully supported. I give a huge amount of
credit to Marvels creative team for backing what we set out to do, Lloyd says. Its easy to
say, We want something dark, sinister and adult, and then dumb it down to a PG level. They
really went the distance, from the stunt sequences to the look and even the casting.
This issue also recaps two big awards-season events: the Academys Scientific and Technical Awards (Celebrating Art and Science, page 68) and the 29th annual ASC Awards
weekend (Leading Lights, page 73). Once again, the Societys ceremony was a hot-ticket
sellout where industry icons helped shine a spotlight on the art of cinematography. Every
director needs a partner someone to support his or her vision and thats the cinematographer, said Board of Governors recipient Barbra Streisand, who added, I have such
profound respect for your craft. I cherish your artistry, and I look forward to working with you
again.
10
Stephen Pizzello
Editor-in-Chief and Publisher
Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.
Editors Note
Even though reading for pleasure seems to be a rapidly declining habit among our populace, Id like to recommend a number of books written by cinematographers that are well
worth seeking out. Instead of technical manuals, each is a personal memoir that recounts
the lives and careers of some incredibly talented and interesting individuals. Their narratives
vary in style, but they all offer a detailed glimpse at what it was like to be engaged in what
was once an exceedingly romantic occupation. Leaf through any one of the following titles
and Im sure youll be reminded of why you got into this business in the first place. I
certainly was.
One Reel a Week (Arthur Miller, ASC with Fred Balshofer; 1967): With seven Academy Award nominations and three wins Miller is one of the giants of ASC history.
He started as an assistant to his lifelong friend and co-author Balshofer in 1908 and
worked on some of the best films produced by Hollywood for the next four decades. His
amazing account paints a vivid picture of the time during which cinematographers were
encouraged to make up the rules as they went along. Interesting sidelight: Millers own
camera, which he used to shoot The Perils of Pauline (in 1914!), is still on display at the
ASC Clubhouse. The book also features a foreword by fellow Society member Kemp R.
Niver, longtime curator of the ASC Museum.
Billy Bitzer: His Story (Billy Bitzer with Beaumont Newhall; 1973): For another glimpse
into the earliest days of the film industry, this rollicking autobiography is a fabulous place
to start. Bitzer is best known as cinematographer for the majority of D.W. Griffiths films, including Birth of a Nation and Intolerance.
To this day, Bitzer remains one of our greatest innovators; he is in fact the creator of many effects and conventions that Griffith is
often credited for. Added value is provided by the perspective of his co-writer, who was a giant in the field of photo curation.
The Light on Her Face (Joseph Walker, ASC and Juanita Walker, with a foreword by Barbara Stanwyck; 1984): Another fabulous entry to the canon, this time from perhaps the most unsung genius in ASC history. Walker spent most of his career at Columbia
Pictures, where he shot more than 140 films, including 24 with Frank Capra. In addition to his four Oscar nominations, he was also
an inventor who held 20 patents for camera-related equipment. Use this book as a guide to seek out examples of his best work;
I guarantee you will be blown away by his artistry.
Every Frame a Rembrandt: Art and Practice of Cinematography (Andrew Laszlo, ASC and Andrew Quicke; 2000) and Its a
Wrap! (Andrew Laszlo, ASC; 2004): When he retired, Andrew embarked on a writing career that included several wonderful works
of fiction. That same talent is on display in both books as he imparts much of the wisdom he earned during a life behind the
camera. His great humor and sharp observations are present in abundance and make this depiction of a more recent era a delight
to read.
The Lion and the Giraffe: A Naturalists Life in the Movie Business (Jack Couffer, ASC; 2010): For something completely
different, try this one. An early pal and collaborator of ASC legends William A. Fraker and Conrad Hall, the authors career as a
wildlife cinematographer eventually took him to every corner of the world. In addition to a fruitful period writing, directing and
shooting episodes of The Wonderful World of Color for Walt Disney, his footage has appeared in countless features. In 1973 he
was Oscar-nominated for his work in Jonathan Livingston Seagull; his writing style is evocative of that movies breezy tone.
If those are not enough, here are some others youll enjoy: Conversations With Jack Cardiff: Art, Light and Direction in
Cinema (Justin Bowyer; 2003); Huston, We Have a Problem: A Kaleidoscope of Filmmaking Memories (Oswald Morris, BSC with
Geoffrey Bull; 2006); Take One: Tales From Behind the Camera (Alex Thomson, BSC; 2008); and Freddie Francis: The Straight Story
From Moby Dick to Glory (Freddie Francis, BSC with Tony Dalton; 2013).
After a tough winter throughout most of the country, its good to know the days of sun, sand and surf are right around
the corner. Its not too early to start compiling your summer reading list, so get to it!
Richard P. Crudo
ASC President
12
May 2015
American Cinematographer
Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
Presidents Desk
Short Takes
Gleaming the Cube

By Phil Rhodes
Writing, directing and shooting the short film Puzzled proved

to be quite a brave decision, reflects filmmaker Oliver Kember.
Theres a reason its not common. The story focuses on Oscar
(Ryan Turner), an outcast at school who seeks entre with his peers
by demonstrating an astonishing prowess at solving the Rubiks
Cube. Set in 1980, the eight-minute film was photographed over
one weekend in September 2012 and required both period environments and special consideration for its cast of young actors.
Kembers beginnings as a filmmaker, he recalls, were similarly
single-handed. When I was 8, playing with my dads camera, I
didnt even understand the concept that there might be other
people [involved in making a movie]. You see all these names on the
credits, but youre just one person who wants to have a go. Its good
in one sense because you learn how to do everything, but you soon
realize other people are important.
Producer Cameron Lawther proved to be particularly important for Puzzled. Lawther, Kember explains, had worked on feature
films, so he pulled in an amazing team of ADs and runners. Other
Lawther contacts included executive producer Matthew Jenkins and
production designer Rebecca Milton, whose sense of duty to the
films period feel impressed Kember. She built this whole world, he
notes. Its great to be able to trust someone to take the project even
more seriously than you do.
A key asset to the camera department was operator Ed
14
May 2015
Moore, whom Kember describes as a good friend and a great

director of photography in his own right. I felt it was necessary to
get a camera operator, and he kindly came and gave me two days
of his time. The productions complete staff, Kember estimates,
tallied something like 35 crew and another 20 parents, chaperones
and all the kids.
With his collaborators generous assistance, Kember was
able to exercise tight control over the films look. I wanted to shoot
it quite classically and formally, he explains. I storyboarded everything out, but Im not an artist, so nobody gets to see those!
Key to his photographic approach was a desire to imbue the
frame with warm, brown tones, albeit under an overcast sky. I
wanted it to have that overcast, English, slightly grim, low-contrast
feel, Kember describes. But otherwise, he says, for me, that time
period was very warm. The playground bricks are really warm, the
orange car Oscars cleaning thats a 1979 Volkswagen Scirocco.
The owner drove for two hours to get to London by 7:30 a.m.
Enjoying good luck with the weather, Kember says he took
full advantage of the consistent overcast, embracing the ambient
light, filling and negative filling, with a bit of an eye light here and
there, and shaping with a couple of HMIs. (The productions lighting package included 1.2K and 2.5K HMIs, along with 650-watt and
1K Arri Fresnels, and 2' four-bank Kino Flos with daylight and tungsten tubes.) The U.K.s famously changeable weather would not
have been so kind even a day on either side of the shoot dates. On
the Monday when I was driving equipment back to Arri, the heavens opened, and then it was sunny for a week, Kember recalls.
All images courtesy of the filmmakers.
Oscar (Ryan Turner) is an outcast who astonishes his peers with his prowess in solving the Rubiks Cube in the short film Puzzled.
Cast and crew

prep for a
classroom scene
in which Oscar
demonstrates
his skills.
Given the productions period

setting, Kember says he would have
preferred to shoot film, but he couldnt
make the numbers work. Instead, he
opted to pair a first-generation Arri Alexa
with Zeiss Super Speed primes, which he
tended to keep between T4 and T5.6. The
camera package was supplied by Arri
Media in Uxbridge. (The rental facility has
since been rebranded as Arri Rental U.K.)
On the Friday before principal
photography, the producer and I got a van
each and drove to Arri, then headed the
shoot for two days, and on Monday we
took the gear back, says Kember. Its
funny you can be on such a high for two
days straight, then youre on the A40 to
Uxbridge, which I think provides a really
16
May 2015
healthy sense of perspective, to be

reminded that sometimes youre just a van
driver!
Arri, Kember says, was introduced
to the production by Jenkins, who had
worked previously with the rental facility.
They were very generous and supportive,
Kember enthuses. As a filmmaker making
a short film, you try to go to the small places
thinking theyll sympathize, whereas actually its the big places that can afford to help
you out because theyre doing the commercials and features. Ill be going back to Arri.
The crew recorded Arri Log C to
ProRes 4:4:4:4 files via the Alexas internal
SxS module. That flexibility is the dream,
says Kember. You can go so many different ways in the grade. By committing to
something on the day, you do yourself a

disservice, I think. You miss out down the
line on the buzz of knowing you can
conjure up all these different images, and
the ability to stay open as an artist. Any
decision that doesnt have to be made in
the chaos of the shoot is best left until a few
months down the line, once youve slept.
Giving yourself options is what filmmaking
is all about.
Kember monitored the shoot on a
17" Panasonic display, using two feeds
from the camera so he could switch
between viewing Rec 709 and Log C. Digital-imaging technician Harry BennettSnewin used a system based around a Mac
Pro, which was generously donated by
Mission Digital as [the shoot] happened
over a weekend, Bennett-Snewin says. He
used the Al3xa Data Manager to copy and
validate the data, and Assimilates Scratch
to QC and generate the offline Avid DNxHD
36 files, which used a standard Rec 709
look-up table. [Kember] was very busy on
set both directing and shooting, so he was
unable to oversee an on-set grade,
Bennett-Snewin adds. We felt, however,
that the Rec 709 look was perfectly suitable
for the dailies.
The edit for Puzzled, Kember recalls,
rubbed shoulders with the greats. Our
Top: The crew

sets up an
exterior scene.
Bottom:
Directorcinematographer
Oliver Kember
lines up a shot.
editor, Myles Robey, was working on Skyfall

at the time, so it was us in one room and
Sam Mendes next door.
With the edit almost complete,
Kember says he realized that we didnt
have a colorist yet. I was walking past The
Mill, so I went in and asked if I could speak
to someone about grading a short film.
After sending over a rough cut, Kember
quickly received a positive response, and
then forwarded an edit decision list and the
original ProRes footage. I guess they liked
the cut, and said theyd do it. You dont ask,
you dont get!
18
May 2015
The productions brownish tones

were emphasized at this stage by colorist
Jim Bracher, who worked in FilmLights
Baselight. Says Bracher, We were aiming
for an early-Eighties London feel, something
I can remember firsthand. [Kember] had a
very clear idea in his own mind how he
wanted the film to look. We kept the colors
fairly muted, with warmth in the highlights
and an emphasis on the colors of the
Rubiks Cubes, making them pop. To
further the period feel, Bracher added a
subtle grain using Baselights built-in tools.
Kember describes this as doing everything
I could so it felt like 1980. There was hopefully nothing that could take you out of the
era that the story is set in. The grade can be
a really big help in that regard, along with
all the production styling.
Kember supplied the resulting 8GB
ProRes file to festivals. We finished it mid2013, and it went to festivals worldwide for
a year and did well, picking up some
awards along the way.
Despite his own technical achievements, Kembers principal memories from
the production are of his collaborators
embracing his story. I had the best time
Ive had on a shoot, he says. What can be
better than dreaming something up in your
bedroom and having people give their time
to help you tell that story? If you dont have
a budget, people have got to be into the
story. I feel lucky that people were up for
taking a punt on me the cast and crew
and the parents. Thats what makes it the
best feeling in the world. Buying someones
time is one thing; having them donate it is
really special.
To watch Puzzled, visit the website
oliverkember.com.
Production Slate
Youth Without End

By Jean Oppenheimer
The Age of Adaline is a romantic drama about a 29-year-old

mother who survives a car accident that mysteriously leaves her
immortal and forever young. Decades pass, but Adaline Bowman
(Blake Lively) never ages a day. Lest anyone discover her secret, she
opts to lead a reclusive life, avoiding relationships and moving any
time her ever-youthful appearance begins to draw attention. Her sole
confidant is her daughter, Flemming, whom Adaline watches grow
from childhood (Julia Torrance) to adulthood (Cate Richardson) to old
age (Ellen Burstyn).
Although the movie opens in the present day, its story jumps
back and forth in time, from Adalines birth in San Francisco in 1900
to her marriage and widowhood in the 1930s, her hippie days in the
1960s, and back into the 21st century, when she meets and falls in
love with a handsome young philanthropist named Ellis Jones
(Michiel Huisman). In the present, Adaline must decide whether to
run away again or to finally reveal the truth about herself.
Director Lee Toland Krieger and I wanted to give the different time periods a very subtle contrast of tone and looks, says cinematographer David Lanzenberg, who had previously collaborated
with Krieger on two shorts and the feature Celeste and Jesse Forever.
Born in France, Lanzenberg spent his childhood in Spain, then moved
20
May 2015
to New York when he was 13. He started his career as a production

assistant and later a coordinator for MTV before finding his niche
behind the camera. His cinematography credits include music
videos, commercials, the feature The Signal and the pilot for
Married.
Lanzenberg and Krieger initially pushed to shoot with an Arri
Alexa, but Lakeshore Entertainment, which co-produced the
feature, mandated the use of a Red camera, so the filmmakers
instead worked with two Red Epic Dragons. Cinematographers
should be able to work with different cameras, Lanzenberg opines,
and this gave me an opportunity to learn, which was exciting. We
were able to formulate an interesting look with [the Epic Dragon].
After weeks of testing, Lanzenberg opted for a mix of lenses
to define the [different] periods, he says. For present-day scenes,
he employed Vantage Films Hawk V-Lite 2x anamorphic primes
(ranging from 28mm to 140mm) and a V-Series 180mm. The Hawk
lenses, Lanzenberg observes, are crisp and clinical, which is well
suited for [a contemporary feel].
For the period from 1940 through the late 60s, Lanzenberg
turned to Kowa anamorphic primes (ranging from 32mm to
100mm). Theyre softer than the Hawks and brought a warm,
romantic tone, producing a more classical feel overall, the cinematographer says. For the pre-Forties period, however, anamorphic lenses didnt seem appropriate because they didnt exist back
The Age of Adaline photos by Diyah Pera, courtesy of Lionsgate. Additional images courtesy of Finn King.
In the romantic
drama The Age
of Adaline, a
young mother
(Blake Lively,
right) survives a
terrible car
accident,
becoming forever
young. Her aging
daughter,
Flemming (Ellen
Burstyn), is her
sole confidant.
Top: Born in
1900, Adaline
remains a
youthful 29year-old
throughout the
decades.
Bottom: In the
present day,
Adaline runs
into a man
from her past,
William Jones
(Harrison Ford),
and his family.
then. We opted instead for [Bausch &

Lomb] Super Baltar spherical lenses [ranging
from 20mm to 100mm]. With a laugh,
Lanzenberg confesses, We actually
cheated a bit with the Kowas, since they
didnt come out until the early Sixties.
The cinematographer was especially
pleased with how the Baltars looked with
the Epic Dragon. Due to the Red Dragons
larger sensor, the outer edges [of the image]
would vignette in a sort of blur and a fall-off
in exposure that produced a portrait-like
quality and a very turn-of-the-century feeling, he explains.
First AC Doug Lavender was tasked
with keeping the three generations of
22
May 2015
lenses at the ready. Lavender, in turn, has

high praise for Clairmont Camera Vancouver, which supplied the entire package and
did a great job of getting all the lenses to
work on the Red Dragon.
Additional gear from Clairmont
included an Angenieux HR 50-500mm T5.6
anamorphic zoom and a Cooke 25-250mm
MK III T3.7 spherical zoom, both for aerials,
as well as a hand-cranked Arri 16 SR3 Super
16mm camera outfitted with a 1.85:1
ground glass and an Angenieux 9.5-57mm
T1.9-2.8 zoom. The 16 SR3 was loaded
with Kodak Tri-X 7266 black-and-white
reversal stock to capture newsreel-like
footage of Adalines birth in 1900; this
footage was combined with archival film of

early 20th-century San Francisco. (The Tri-X
footage was processed at Yale Film and
Video in Valencia and scanned at Company
3 in Santa Monica.)
Although a number of present-day
exteriors were shot in San Francisco, the
movie was predominantly shot in and
around Vancouver, and almost entirely on
practical locations. The 39-day production
was augmented by two pre-shoot days,
when the most logistically complicated
sequence in the picture the car accident
that leaves Adaline immortal was scheduled. In the sequence, Adaline is driving her
Model A along a winding forest road late at
night when the car skids off the path,
crashes through a wooden fence, tumbles
down a ravine and lands in a frigid pond.
We had three crews working all night in
the forest, dealing with stunts and a huge
lighting and grip setup, says Lavender.
The production found a perfect
stretch of road in a forest on the outskirts of
Vancouver. It felt desolate but also had
beautiful twists and turns we wanted
the Model A to come in and out of frame,
details Lanzenberg. Rigging gaffer Jarrod
Tiffin and his team did a great job of prerigging the day before we shot. [They laid]
thousands of feet of cable in the woods and
along a ridge, and had some 20 Arri T12
tungsten Fresnels pushing light through the
trees to give a sense of separation between
the car and the woods. Additionally, a 10K
tungsten balloon was floated over the crash
site.
Five Epic Dragons rolled on the
crash, including one on a 50' Technocrane
that sat atop a Taurus base off to the side of
the road; this camera captured high-angle
shots of the Model A in the distance. For
another setup the crane arm was lowered
so that the camera was just a few feet off
the ground, looking directly down the road
as the Model A rounds a bend and heads
straight toward the lens; the crane then
booms up and over as the car speeds
directly underneath.
The stunt car had two [Epic Dragons] in steel crash housings, relates Acamera/Steadicam
operator
Dean
Heselden. One was inside the vehicle, over
the stuntwomans shoulder. The other was
mounted behind the cars rear bumper,
Top: Adalines Model A on a greenscreen stage.

Bottom: Cinematographer David Lanzenberg on the car-crash set.
raking the side of the car as it plows into the

fence. After the vehicle careens off the
road, it flips over several times. Key grip Finn
King credits special-effects coordinator Paul
Benjamin and his team with building a
24
May 2015
hydraulic rotisserie that could roll the car

continuously. The [cab of the car] was placed
about 4 feet off the ground and attached to
forks on a hydraulic drive system that rolled
it over and over.
Close-ups of the car sinking in the

pond and Adalines drowning and resurrection were shot onstage at Vancouver Film
Studios. Lanzenberg lauds the work of
production designer Claude Par and his
team. They did a fantastic job of building
the pond and the surrounding area, which
included a 25-foot-high ravine to show
how far the car tumbled. The pond was
built at ground level out of Styrofoam
blocks. We used a mixture of tungsten and
daylight fixtures for a kind of moonlit ambience: HMI Jem Balls and 5K and 10K tungsten units on Condors.
Another huge setup was a New
Years Eve party set in the present, during
which Adaline meets Ellis for the first time.
This was shot in the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver in a giant ballroom and its adjacent
lobby. Production was worried about
shooting there because the room easily
could accommodate 600 people and we
only had 150 extras, recalls Lanzenberg.
But Lee was adamant about using it
because the room had these beautiful, tall
windows. We had to shoot the scene
during the day, so we blacked out the
windows to make it look like nighttime.
According to gaffer David Tickell,
the ballrooms overall ambience was
achieved with helium lighting balloons.
We had two 3,700-watt hybrid Ellipse
balloons, each containing one 1,200-watt
HMI and one 2,500-watt tungsten bulb,
and a 7,400-watt tube balloon containing
2,500-watt HMI and 5K tungsten bulbs.
The hybrid [balloons] gave us the ability to
quickly change looks we could have just
tungsten, just HMI or a mix of both. In addition, we had Barger-Lite 6-Lites with honeycomb grids to focus on the actors.
Lanzenberg favored soft light
throughout the film, aided by smoke, diffusion (usually Half, Quarter or Light Grid) or
sometimes both. The only time hard light
was used was for the brief black-and-white
16 SR3 footage. We used Barger 6-Lites a
lot, as well as 2K and 750-watt Arrilites with
Chimeras, notes Tickell. We always used
30-, 60- or 90-degree honeycomb grids to
help direct the light.
Lanzenberg affirms he wanted the
film to have a kind of dreamy feel. He
sometimes added Tiffen 1 8 or 1 4 Low
Contrast filters to the lens but relied primar-
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture and Super 16mm
Red Epic Dragon, Arri 16 SR3
Vantage Film Hawk V-Lite, V-Series; Kowa;
Bausch & Lomb Super Baltar; Angenieux;
Cooke MK III
Kodak Tri-X 7266
Digital Intermediate
26
May 2015
The Imax film Humpback Whales explores the communication, mating,

parenting and migratory behaviors of the giant mammals that were once hunted
into near extinction.
Majestic Mammals
By Mark Dillon
Humpback Whales provides an intimate look into the world of the sublime
mammals nearly hunted into extinction a
half-century ago. The 39-minute Imax film,
narrated by actor and activist Ewan McGregor, tracks the communicating, mating,
parenting and migratory behaviors of the
giant marine creatures.
The movie marks the 38th Imax
release from MacGillivray Freeman Films,
joining other such aquatically themed spectacles from the Laguna Beach, Calif.-based
production company as Dolphins, Coral
Reef Adventure and Journey to the South
Pacific. Humpback Whales continues the
mission of director and company president
Greg MacGillivray, who also chairs the ecofocused One World One Ocean Foundation. Im a surfer and diver, and through
Imax 3D films I want the public to understand the importance of keeping the
oceans healthy, he says. We were looking
to create this character of the humpback
that people would respect and understand
so they would say, These are worth helping
so theyll survive the next 10,000 years.
Above-water shooting was led by
director of photography Brad Ohlund,
whose work for the production company
dates back to the 1976 blockbuster historyof-flight documentary To Fly! (AC July 76).
Howard Hall, a 20-year MacGillivray Freeman collaborator and director of the Imax
hits Into the Deep and Deep Sea 3D, served

as director of underwater photography.
Ohlund and MacGillivray, also a cinematographer, switched between the
productions 2D Williamson W4 and Imax
Mark-II 15-perf 70mm cameras. Additionally, crewmember Robert Walker operated a
Red Epic Mysterium-X, recording in 5K
Redcode raw with compression ratios
between 5:1 and 12:1 to 256GB and
512GB RedMags. MacGillivray estimates
that 20 percent of the film was captured
digitally. The finished film with its mix of
formats was converted for Imax 3D and
Imax Dome presentation.
As always with wildlife material, the
filmmakers were at the mercy of what
unfolded before their cameras. We create
a script that [serves as] a point of departure, Ohlund says of the preproduction
process. (Stephen Judson is the movies
writer.) Then we start thinking about what
were filming and how to deal with that
color palette. Here were mostly shooting
the ocean, so we consider as much as possible introducing elements of color that will
correspond to our underlying blue palette.
That includes cutting to a school of yellowand-black-striped fish, or the maroon sails
of a passing catamaran, or wide shots
revealing Hawaiis lush greenery.
Cameras began rolling in 2011 for
about 180 shooting days spanning three
years. MacGillivray had scouted Hawaii and
the Pacific island of Tonga looking for sufficient humpback populations. I picked loca-
Humpback Whales photos by Brandon Cole, Michele Hall, Barbara MacGillivray and Meghan MacGillivray, courtesy of MacGillivray Freeman Films and Pacific Life.
ily on smoke. Every interior has a bit of a

gauzy tone that we then took down and
crushed a little more in post, the cinematographer explains. It definitely gave a
sense of diffusion in the air; you can really
notice it with all the practicals because it
lent them a nice, bloomy effect.
The Age of Adaline was one of the
first features to shoot with a Red Dragon 6K
sensor. Digital-imaging technician James
Notari details, When shooting spherical,
we shot a 2.40:1 [aspect ratio] with a 5percent reduction, which gave us a window
of 5837x2432. This enabled post to move
the image around if needed. We used a 4K
setting when we were using anamorphic
lenses and a 6K [full-frame setting] for the
spherical lenses. Each day we would create
looks that I ingested into the camera. We
shot on both 128GB and 256GB RedMag
SSDs. I worked on a Light Iron Outpost cart,
color grading and transcoding media
through RedCine-X Pro, using RedColor3
and RedGamma3.
Lanzenberg was very pleased with
his Canadian crew, and credits Adaline
executive producer/line producer David
Kern with putting together a great group
of keys and leading a fantastic production
team. The final grade was overseen by
visual-effects supervisor James McQuaide
(who also served as second-unit director),
working with Company 3 digital colorist
Stephen Nakamura, who graded the raw
files in DaVinci Resolve 11. We started
from scratch with the raw files, using the
dailies grade that David and the DIT had
created as a guide, remarks Nakamura.
David saw what we did in the final, and he
was very happy with it, which is always gratifying to hear!
Top: A mother
humpback and
her calf show
their flukes off
the coast of
Maui. Bottom:
Cinematographer
Brad Ohlund
(left) and camera
assistant Robert
Walker capture
the whales from
above water.
tions for color, water clarity, contrast and

time of year, he says. We needed
weather thats right for Imax, meaning
beautiful blue skies with few clouds. You
need strong, hard light.
The crew traveled to Alaska to pick
up additional footage, which will also be
featured in a forthcoming movie about
national parks; there, they captured slowmotion establishing shots of the environment, including seals and salmon, on a
Phantom Flex4K in the Cine raw format to
2TB CineMags. The whales travel to the
polar waters for the abundant summer
food supply so abundant that it was too
dense to shoot underwater.
MacGillivray says that in prep, he
watched every humpback-whale movie
ever made and recognized the great
potential for capturing the creatures via
28
May 2015
aerial photography. For airborne tracking

the crew used the SpaceCam DCam 65-15,
a camera that installs into SpaceCams Large
Format Gyro Stabilized System on a helicopters nose.
The W4 was the crews workhorse.
It has a beefy construction, a spinningmirror viewfinder and it seldom, if ever,
fails, Ohlund explains. The Mark-II uses a
beam-splitter viewfinder, where one-fifth of
the light goes to the viewfinder and fourfifths to the film, so you lose a partial exposure stop. Its also difficult to shoot highcontrast [situations] like sunsets with it
because youll get a double image off the
beam splitter. But the Mark-II is less cumbersome and easier to get in [tighter] places.
The crew ran Kodak Vision3 200T
5213 and 500T 5219 65mm stocks through
the large-format cameras, and they usually
shot around T16 to T22 to optimize the

depth of field for the Imax format. We like
bright sunshine, Ohlund says, so thats a
common range for us, especially when
were shooting with the Mark-II. We dont
like shooting wide open, but sometimes
had to.
They used Hasselblad and Zeiss
lenses (30mm-500mm), reconfigured with
Imax mounts and with special cages on
them. The 350mm captured whales at a
distance, and an extender made a 720mm
out of the 500mm for even longer shots,
but mostly the crew used wider lenses.
Numerous shots from the boat deck with a
30mm covered plenty of ground with a
resulting fisheye effect. Many Imax [cinematographers] dont like the distortion, but
we find it a very experiential lens that puts
the audience into the environment, and
theater exit polls show the audience feels
the same, Ohlund says. The 40mm still
gives that experiential feeling and corresponds [more closely] to typical human field
of view.
For zooming, the crew called on a
Schneider Variogon 75-150mm f4.5 lens
designed for Bronica and Rollei mediumformat cameras. Schneider 85 filters helped
yield natural colors on the tungsten stock,
and otherwise the crew used graduated ND
filters. We use gel filters that we stack
across the back of the lens so that were
really just using them on the sky and theres
no filtration over the sweet spot of the
frame, Ohlund explains.
The crew usually amplified natural
light with artificial sources unless the
camera was pointing at the water but
the 30mm lens doesnt allow much space
to hide fixtures, and Ohlund often lit with
only a couple of sources from his small kit.
For a few shots featuring researchers inside
boats, he would use an 800-watt HMI as a
kicker, and a 400-watt HMI with a couple of
layers of Opal and natural light through the
window as fill.
The Epic came into play for shots of
breaching whales, which required patience
and a constantly recording camera.
MacGillivray estimates that shooting 65mm
film stock runs $10 per second, making it
prohibitively expensive in such cases. The
digital camera was also ideal for breaching
shots because of its higher frame-rate capa-
Underwater cinematographer Howard Hall frames humpbacks in Tonga.
bility; this footage was generally shot at 48

fps. A humpback usually moves at 10 miles
per hour, MacGillivray elaborates. One
flick of its tail will jet it away from you and
suddenly you wont even see it. Sometimes
theyre around you for a minute or less, so
you want to shoot in slow-motion to get
enough of a shot.
Midway through production, Red
added a pre-roll buffer function to the Epic,
whereby the camera is constantly recording
footage that is not permanently saved
unless the operator presses the trigger. Once
the camera begins standard recording, the
pre-roll footage is then committed to storage as well. For Humpback Whales, the
crew set the camera for a 6-second pre-roll;
Ohlund calls the feature earth-shattering
for wildlife shooters waiting for animals to
act while avoiding data waste.
The production paired the Epic with
its set of Zeiss Compact Prime CP.2 lenses
(ranging from 15mm to 135mm) and a Red
Pro 300mm, and rented a Fujinon Premier
PL 75-400mm T2.8-3.8 zoom for the
Flex4K.
Underwater cinematographer Hall
spent three weeks with the crew in Tonga,
diving with a Mark-II that was encased in a
special housing he built, capturing whales at
the cameras maximum 36 fps. Whales
seem to move too fast in real time, Hall
notes. It makes them look smaller than
they really are.
A 30mm converted Hasselblad
30
May 2015
served as his underwater lens. I used an 85

filter with the tungsten film, and I would use
an 85 and a CC40R for scenes of coral reefs
and other colorful subjects, Hall explains,
adding that he eschewed any artificial light
sources. I can get good colors on film with
just ambient light at depths of up to 30 feet,
assuming bright sun directly overhead.
Veteran cameraman Peter Kragh
worked alongside Hall, shooting with an
Epic. Perhaps surprisingly, it wasnt proximity
to the whales that posed the greatest safety
risk, as the underwater shooters had
enough experience to anticipate the
animals movements. The most dangerous
aspect is doing camerawork while freediving, Hall explains. Youre just holding
your breath and going down. Peter and I
would be down 50 feet getting a great
shot, and you tend to push the dive longer
than you should. Passing out is a risk, but
we never got close to that.
The filmmakers were blessed with
good weather and much whale activity. In
Hawaii, they captured uncommon events
such as a heat run, during which a female
swims fast and far trailed by multiple males,
presumably determining the strongest and
best mate. The crew shot it both in 65mm
and digitally, from the air and their boat.
Due to choppy conditions, one of the selfleveling Imax camera mounts broke, necessitating a switch to the Epic.
Later, the female and winning male
approached the crews boat, circling each
other in an apparent mating dance. The

crew covered the sequence from a helicopter and their boat, as well as in the
water thanks to Jason Sturgis, a cameraman associated with education center
Whale Trust Maui, who used an Epic. They
also were able to shoot a whale being
rescued from a fishing net by Ed Lyman of
the Hawaiian Islands Entanglement
Response Network.
A default grade was applied to the
digital footage in RedCine-X Pro for dailies.
The large-format stock was processed at
Burbanks FotoKem, which struck a 35mm
one-light the filmmakers later screened at
MacGillivray Freemans office. (The 3D
conversion was performed by Sassoon Film
Design and FotoKem.)
The movies digital footage and
some film footage went through a postproduction process led by David Keighley, who
serves as Imaxs chief quality officer and
executive vice president, as well as president
of Imax Post/DKP Inc. in Santa Monica. The
film elements were digitally transferred into
10-bit Cineon format at 8K using a FilmLight Northlight 65mm scanner. Keighley
performed coloring on a Baselight system
and recorded the filmout using a Solitaire
Cine III film recorder at resolutions of
5616x4096 and 4096x3016. Wide shots
tend to need more resolution, so they
would be filmed out at 5616, especially if
captured on film, Keighley explains.
The filmmakers shared ecological
aspirations in their approach, although their
top priority was to tell a compelling story.
We want people to be entertained by our
films first, Ohlund offers. We want them
inspired second and educated third. And if
we can achieve those goals, then our films
are successful for us.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.33:1
15-perf 65mm and Digital Capture
Williamson W4; Imax Mark-II; SpaceCam
DCam 65-15; Red Epic Mysterium-X;
Phantom Flex4K
Hasselblad, Schneider Variogon, Zeiss CP.2,
Red Pro, Fujinon Premier
Kodak Vision3 200T 5213, 500T 5219
More
Than
Human
Cinematographer Rob Hardy, BSC
details the making of Ex Machina, a
thriller about an A.I. coming of age.
By Iain Stasukevich
|
hotographed by Rob Hardy, BSC, writer/director Alex

Garlands Ex Machina tells the story of Caleb (Domhnall
Gleeson), a bright young programmer seemingly chosen
at random by his reclusive tech-mogul employer, Nathan
(Oscar Isaac), to be whisked away for a one-week stay at the
latters wilderness redoubt. Once there, Caleb is enlisted to
conduct a series of Turing tests on Nathans newly created
A.I., Ava (Alicia Vikander). These tests purport to determine
whether Ava truly bridges the uncanny valley by demonstrating intelligence indistinguishable from that of a human,
32
May 2015
but as the tests progress, Caleb begins to suspect other motives

are at play.
Ex Machina was captured with Sonys CineAlta F65
and F55 cameras, which Hardy paired with a mix of Cooke
Xtal Express, Kowa and Angenieux Optimo anamorphic
lenses. I favor film for no other reason than I just really enjoy
shooting it, the cinematographer offers. In the case of Ex
Machina, though, film wasnt even presented as an option by
production for economic reasons. But in a strange way, I felt
that the digital format was going to offer me something different, and if there ever was an appropriate time to [use the
format], it was now.
During preproduction, Hardy tested an Arri Alexa XT,
a Red Epic and a Sony F65 before opting to use the latter. In
the U.K., the F65 was used a little bit on TV but rarely for
features, so even that decision was a bit of a fight at first,
Hardy recalls. The Alexa looked great, but it seemed to
negate all of my lens choices. The Red was also great, but it
didnt quite render the landscapes in the way I wanted. The
F65 was the first time a digital format felt different, closer to
the way my eye sees things. In my mind, film had finally found
Unit photography by Liam Daniel, courtesy of A24.
its digital companion. Our goal with the

F65 was to keep it simple and shoot it
like film.
With both the F65 and F55,
Hardy captured 16-bit 4K raw files
using look-up tables created with senior
colorist and regular collaborator Asa
Shoul at Londons Molinare. Shoul
spent considerable time with Hardy in
the weeks leading up to production,
consulting not just on LUTs but even
on such details as the color of the
carpets used on set. Additionally, Hardy
provided Shoul with reference images
from photographers such as Saul Leiter.
Jay Patel from 4K London served as the
productions digital-imaging technician,
and Pinewood Digital handled the
dailies.
The Xtal Express anamorphic
lenses were sourced from Panavision via
Top left: Ava (Alicia Vikander), an artificial intelligence created by tech mogul Nathan, grapples with
the meaning of her existence in the feature Ex Machina. Top right: Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a
talented programmer, is tasked with conducting a series of Turing tests on Ava. Bottom:
Cinematographer Rob Hardy, BSC (gesturing) envisions a shot alongside director Alex Garland on
location in Norway.
Movietech Camera Rentals, which also

supplied the productions camera
bodies. Originating as Cooke S2 and S3
spherical lenses in the 1930s and 40s,
the Xtal Express lenses were re-housed
and modified with front anamorphic
elements by Joe Dunton in the 1980s;
each lens looks slightly different from
the other, and each set is completely
different.
www.theasc.com
While discussing Ex Machinas

lens package, Hardy references a scene
from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in
which Eli Wallachs Tuco uses parts
from different guns to build his own.
Thats basically what our 1st AC,
Jennie Paddon, did when she put
together our set of anamorphics at
Panavision U.K., he remarks. We
needed to find a look with its own
May 2015
33
More Than Human

distinct texture and personality to
counter the clean lines in Mark Digbys
production design and [set decorator]
Michelle Days sets.
Another film Hardy mentions is
John Carpenters The Thing (shot by
Dean Cundey, ASC). You never know
whos who, and your allegiance is
constantly shifting between the characters, he notes. Ex Machina plays a similar shell game with its characters
trustworthiness, and to effectively
accomplish this misdirection, Hardy
needed to first lock the audience into a
specific point of view. Thats why Im
an advocate of the single camera over
multiple cameras, he explains. It
focuses your visual manifesto. In this
case, [that included] the geometry of the
frame, the bodies, the landscape, and
how to position those things to elicit a
cold, observing eye or a warm, human
emotion.
At the same time, Hardy
expresses a wariness of overtly manipulative filmmaking: Its important to
have a strong point of view, to guide the
eye a little bit, but it should be done
without forcing people to think in a
specific way. The [viewers need] to
experience the moment on their own.
As an example, Hardy points to a
session between Caleb and Ava during
which they stand opposite each other,
separated by glass. Ava wants to know if
theyre going to make it out of the facility alive, and as she closes in on the glass,
her reflection appears. On one level, its
simply a cool shot, says Hardy. On
another, its almost like shes speaking to
herself. Thats one of the key moments
in the film when you realize shes taking
[Caleb] for a ride.
Indeed, the characters spatial
relationship to each other proved as
emotionally important as their spoken
dialogue. Hardy mentions that in
Garlands script, Avas room was divided
by a wall of glass, creating an observational dynamic between her and Caleb.
As the filmmakers continued to develop
Caleb and Avas relationship, however,
the room was reconfigured to incorporate a glass box in which Caleb is fixed
Top: Caleb
receives an
invitation to
spend a week at
Nathans redoubt.
Middle and
bottom: Caleb
arrives at his boss
wilderness
hideaway. The
living room seen
here was part of a
private home the
production found
in Norway.
34
May 2015
in a relatively stationary position, while

Ava despite being confined to her
quarters is able to walk around him.
Hardy points out, It asks the question,
Whos observing whom?
Principal photography was
scheduled for six weeks: four weeks on
three sound stages at Pinewood Studios
and two weeks on location in Norway,
where the Valldalen valley provided the
vast landscapes that comprise Nathans
property. Nathans retreat was originally
scripted to be located in Alaska, but the
finished film places it in an unnamed
wilderness. Hardy strove to photograph
all of the exteriors with what he
describes as a strong manifesto. One
could argue that every single landscape
was from Avas emotional point of view.
We needed to find
a look with its own
distinct texture and
personality.
Caleb finds
Nathan (Oscar
Isaac) working
off a hangover
on the back
patio (top and
middle). Scenes
set here and in
the dining room
(bottom) were
shot in the Juvet
Landscape Hotel
in Norways
Valldalen valley.
I told our second-unit cinematographer,

Stuart Howell who was also our
Steadicam operator that youve got to
imagine youre viewing [the exterior] for
the first time, almost as if its an alien
landscape.
For each day of 2nd-unit photography, Hardy sent Howell out with one
Xtal Express lens and asked for six
amazing shots instead of 12 good ones.
The Xtal Express set included an
18mm, 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm,
75mm and 100mm lens, with no
backup primes save for the Kowa
anamorphics (which were rarely used),
so Hardy would have to plan his day of
1st-unit production around whatever
focal length he sent out with Howell.
All of Howells compositions were to be
anchored by an object in the center of
the frame, whether its a mountain, a
www.theasc.com
May 2015
35
More Than Human
Top: Nathan
invites Caleb into
his lab and
reveals the work
hes been
conducting in
the field of
artificial
intelligence.
Bottom: Garland
discusses the
scene with Isaac,
who stands
opposite the
productions
Sony F65
camera.
tree, or a small furry animal, says Hardy.

Similarly, aerial director of
photography Jeremy Braben was tasked
with designing symmetrical frames,
almost as if nature is being tamed by the
composition, Hardy elaborates. You
come up over the top of a glacier like
youre on a set booming up on the end of
36
May 2015
a jib arm.
Well before the audience gets its
first glimpse of Ava, the film establishes
a motif of the interplay between the
natural and the artificial. One of the two
practical locations nestled deep within
the Valldalen fjord was the Juvet
Landscape Hotel, whose forest exterior,
riverside patio and dining room provided

portions of Nathans hideaway. The rockface living room was part of a private
home belonging to a Norwegian businessman. I had a strong picture in my
mind of the connection between the
interior and the exterior, says Hardy.
Theyre so vastly different from each
other, [but] I wanted it to feel like they
were the same place.
Outside, Hardy would lower the
F65s sensitivity to ISO 250, 320 or 500,
but interiors were photographed at a
consistent ISO 800. The CineAlta
PMW-F55 was used for handheld work,
and at the time had a base ISO of 1,250,
which was compensated for with a Tstop adjustment or ND filters. I shot
most of the movie at a T2.8 or, for exteriors, a T4, and sometimes a T5.6 for the
big exterior shots, Hardy notes.
Depending on how trippy we wanted [a
landscape shot] to be, Id ask Stuart to
shoot at T11 to get everything sharp and
just really weird.
The filmmakers allowed the
camera to represent the emotional point
of view of the respective characters, and
Hardy used the lenses optical qualities

to underscore any given scenes particular perspective. The cinematographer
offers the example of the scene in which
Ava describes her dream about a blackand-white room, from which she steps
into nature for the first time. We played
with things a little bit in the DI, but I
also shot that exterior wide open, he
reveals. The bokeh on those Xtal
Express lenses creates these concentric
circles in the background that seem to
converge to the center of the lens.
The subterranean bowels of
Nathans retreat assume a decidedly
more clinical air, and include windowless bedrooms, a lounge, Nathans laboratory and Avas observation room, all of
which were built onstage at Pinewood
Studios. Nathan monitors all of the
rooms in his house via CCTV; Hardy
employed GoPro Hero3 Black cameras
to capture this footage.
Caleb familiarizes himself with Nathans work. Hardy opted for fluorescent lighting in Nathans lab,
which was built onstage at Pinewood Studios. This is Nathans headspace, he explains, and we
needed a whiter, cleaner light in that environment.
www.theasc.com
May 2015
37
More Than Human

Each set was enclosed so it could
be treated as an actual location with four
walls and a roof, and most of the lighting in these environments was built into
the sets, which were first designed to
accept Kino Flos. Someone must have
assumed that science fiction equals fluorescent light or LEDs, says Hardy. But
in my mind it was always going to be
tungsten light. Like the [Xtal Express]
lenses, theres a gauziness to it, a
texture.
Because tungsten bulbs produce
more heat than fluorescents and LEDs,
Digby and Day needed to exchange
their translucent Perspex surfaces for
glass and other more heat-resistant
materials. Over the course of two weeks,
gaffer Lee Walters and his team
installed approximately 7,000 40-watt
bulbs on battens directly into the sets.
Each batten contained 20 bulbs strung
together with heat-resistant wire and
mounted to 8' strips of medium-density
fiberboard. Dimmer control was wirelessly routed to a handheld unit operated
by Walters.
Dimming a tungsten lamp does
shift color, but you can use that in a very
subtle way, Hardy notes. Even though
you might be in the same part of the
spectrum, maybe the back of one room
could be a different color than the foreground. You can reshape environments
in seconds.
Nathans lab was the one set that
did utilize fluorescent light. We had
first made the decision to light it with
tungsten bulbs, Hardy recalls, but then
we sat back and thought, This place is
different. Its clinical and lacks emotion.
This is Nathans headspace, and we
needed a whiter, cleaner light in that
environment.
Contrast was added to scenes
primarily with negative fill, though
Hardy did occasionally bring standing
lights onto the set, including a selection
of 500-watt, 650-watt and 1K Lowel
Rifas. The Rifa works as a great beauty
light, the cinematographer says. Its
my get out of jail card.
Diffused tungsten light was used
to a more expressive effect for a day-
Top: Nathan takes

a breath of fresh
air while
marveling at the
wonder of his
creation. Bottom:
Hardy and 1st AC
Jennie Paddon
prepare to shoot
alongside the
waterfall.
38
May 2015
interior scene during which Nathan and

Caleb get drunk in the living room.
Hardy removed the cameras matte box
and positioned a Rifa just outside of the
frame, so that its flare created a soft,
hazy effect, which often works well for
digital formats where youre working
hard for any kind of texture.
In conveying his approach, Hardy
contrasts the style of a painter like
Vermeer, who favored strong, directional
sources, to that of Rembrandt, whose
light seemed to emanate from within
the frame. I remember Lee [Walters]
had one LED light that he brought in
because he owned it, Hardy says. We
used it once, and I diffused it so much
Theres a
gauziness to
tungsten light,
a texture.
that it could barely read. I had five

standing frames of Full Grid with about
10 inches between each frame. It did
look beautiful once youd taken away the
element of it being a light.
Throughout the film, power
outages plague Nathans facility; whenever an outage occurs, the interior is
flooded in a deep red light. The red
lights were actually a part of the built-in
lighting, Hardy explains. Wed use
double battens, or every other bulb in a
single batten would be a red bulb. We
could make the light sweep down a
corridor or change instantly. How we
did it was based on what we liked, and
what worked for the environment.
Beyond its association with emergency, the red-light look serves two
other storytelling purposes. First, its
appearance changes Ava; she becomes
shifty and wary, and reveals her mistrust
of Nathan. The gray mesh suit Vikander
wore on set which is visible in the

finished film as Avas opaque body
pieces was designed to respond to
UV light, and during the first few
Turing sessions, the shift to red also
incorporated a UV lamp. We ended up
dialing a lot of it out in the DI, Hardy
notes. Even though it looked cool, it
didnt really serve the story. If anything,
it detracted from her performance.
In another instance, when Caleb
confronts Nathan about his seemingly

abusive behavior toward Ava, Nathan
deflects the accusations and with the flip
of a switch transforms his lounge into a
dance floor. The room is bathed in red
light as Oliver Cheathams Get Down
Saturday Night is piped in over the
speakers. Nathan changes the whole
nature of the red light, Hardy observes.
Complemented by pulsing RGB LED
panels recessed into the wall, the red
More Than Human
Nathan flips
a switch,
transforming his
lounge into a redlit dance floor,
where he and his
assistant, Kyoko
(Sonoya Mizuno),
tear it up to
Oliver Cheathams
Get Down
Saturday Night.
light serves here as an ironic brush-off

to the mounting danger.
Because the story relies so heavily
on the ambiguity of Avas emotions, the
filmmakers goal was to photograph her
like a human, says Hardy. We can sit
back and look in awe at the spectacle of
40
May 2015
her creation but at the same time see her

in a natural way.
No blue- or greenscreen was used
to render Avas mechanical components,
and no motion capture was performed
on set. We wanted to film her scenes as
we would any emotional piece of drama,
without the phantom of having to

manipulate it later, Hardy elaborates.
[Visual-effects supervisor] Andrew
Whitehurst from Double Negative was
a great enabler. He let us shoot [Avas
scenes] the way we wanted to and
worked around it.
After making virtual maps of
Hardys lenses, Whitehurst and his
team of artists rotoscoped and tracked
digital arms, legs, a torso, neck and skull
onto Vikanders performance. Hardy
recalls that the original design of
Vikanders gray mesh suit called for the
mesh to cover Avas neck and skull, but
it was ultimately decided to render these
areas transparent and exposed, like you
could see what shes thinking.
The visual-effects workflow also
enabled Hardy to use filtration a
Tiffen 18 Black Pro-Mist for his
close-ups with Ava, as well as subtle
zooms made with an anamorphosed
Angenieux Optimo 48-580mm T4
zoom. There are maybe three zooms in
the whole movie, the cinematographer
reports. One of them comes during the
scene in which Ava explains to Caleb
her ability to discern micro-expressions

on the human face. Every shot in the
film is moving at some point, Hardy
adds. I wanted to subtly get the idea
across that youre leaning forward or
moving through a space. The zoom is
leaning in, but in a psychologically different way I like that idea of something
pressing in on you, but without shifting
your perspective. You can barely see it,
but you can feel it.
In the film, Caleb conducts six
Turing-test sessions with the A.I., and
each session is lit in a subtly different way.
Hardy posits that Ava has the ability to
manipulate light, to make herself more
beautiful or simply different. The cinematographer recalls reading Garlands
We wanted to film
Avas scenes as we
would any emotional
piece of drama.
script for the first time and receiving a

striking mental image: A medium closeup of Ava through the glass, looking up
at her. I didnt even know what she
looked like at that point, but her face is
partly obscured by abstract lines of color,
and theres a real sadness to her, a sort of
longing and melancholy and also
hope. That was the image I kept with me
throughout the production, and one we
eventually photographed in the second
session, just after Caleb tells her that he
lost his parents in a car crash. You can see
the slight change in her demeanor, and
its the first time she shows an obvious
emotion.
The reflective surfaces of Calebs
observation tank serve as a constantly
changing barrier between the audience
and Ava, with its arrangement depending
on the session or her emotional state. To
dress multiple layers of reflection into the
More Than Human
From left:
Hardy, Garland
and gaffer
Lee Walters plan
their next move.
sessions, Hardy used 15-bulb battens

diffused with frosted Perspex, similar to
the ones installed in the sets. At the
time, he recalls, I was looking at a
Russian abstract artist called Kazimir
Malevich, who worked with lines and
geometric abstract art. He is a continu-
42
ing influence on me.

Ex Machina is filled with
complex compositions. Medium and
wide shots are frequently composed in
one-point perspective and often contain
multiple levels of frames within frames;
shot-reverse-shots tend to be weighted
heavily to one side of the frame, favoring

negative space. Im really into the subtle
power of composition, Hardy observes.
Every single inch means something.
For me, the mid-shot is everything
its got the ambience and structure of the
wide yet it can capture the emotion of
the close-up all in one frame. The Xtal
Express 32mm was my key lens, particularly for the interiors, because it hit that
mark, and thats where we found a lot of
our opportunities to create frames
within frames. I would love to do an
entire movie just in mid-shot at some
point.
Molinares post pipeline for Ex
Machina was set up for a 4K workflow,
while visual effects from Double
Negative were handled at 2K, the resolution of the final 2:40:1 DCP. In addition to the basic grade, a number of
subtle effects were applied to blur the
line between the films practical and
digital elements. Using Baselights
D-fuse plug-in, Shoul added screen
flares to composited monitors, motion

blur to make rain disappear, and a video
de-grain filter to clean up dark duskfor-day shots. A beauty pass removed
skin blemishes and, as needed, made
skin appear to be more artificial.
Hardy and Garland supervised
the better part of a two-week grade
during which Shoul completed a first
pass, then added grads and shapes and
tracked faces. After six days the filmmakers gave Shoul a day on his own to
finesse color and contrast. After the
theatrical grade was completed, it was
tweaked for HD deliverables.
Of his body of work, Hardy
regards Ex Machina as a personal
favorite, along with features like
Testament of Youth and Boy A. All of my
favorite films send you on a journey,
the cinematographer muses. I also see
Ex Machina as a companion piece to
films like Under the Skin or Her. I think
that in the end, it all came together.
Every component works: the great
Garland prepares
a scene with
Vikander, who
wore a gray mesh
bodysuit on set
that was partly
replaced in post
with visualeffects elements.
performances, the superb script, the

direction, the sound, the image. Thats
all you want, really to make a film
that works. If everybody says, It looks
great, but , youre only half doing
your job.
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Sony CineAlta F65, F55;
GoPro Hero3 Black
Cooke Xtal Express, Kowa,
Angenieux Optimo
43
Accelerated
Action
ACS members Stephen

Windon and Marc Spicer help
James Wan propel Furious 7
across the finish line.
hen director James Wan stepped out of the indie world

to take the helm of Furious 7 his first tentpole
action feature and the latest installment of the highoctane Fast & Furious franchise he remembers
initially feeling incredibly excited by the chance to play in a
big sandbox with all the cool toys and let my imagination run
loose. Two grueling years later, though, Wan mainly wants to
emphasize the great crew, and the hard work and effort that
went into making this film come together in the end. After all,
we had to discover and feel our way along to make it work.
In part, Wan is referring to the ramifications of the
tragic death of one of the films co-stars, Paul Walker, in late
2013, before principal photography was completed. The event
stunned the entire production and put it on an extended hiatus
that altered many aspects of its schedule, staff and logistics
when shooting finally resumed in April 2014. Even beyond
that, the sheer complexity of executing the multiple action set
pieces that the franchises audience has come to expect was, as
Wan puts it, unprecedented.
44
May 2015
By Michael Goldman
|
The productions hiatus resulted in some reshuffling

among the crew in order to complete principal photography.
Director of photography Stephen Windon, ACS who has
been with the franchise since 2006s The Fast and the Furious:
Tokyo Drift was unable to return after the hiatus and
handed cinematography duties to Marc Spicer, ACS. Marc
was already shooting visual-effects plates for the Abu Dhabi
sequence, and he has also been my operator for about 25
years, Windon says. So we have pretty much the same
process and the same shooting style. To me, it just seemed like
a natural thing to hand over completion of the movie to him,
and I was thankful that the studio and James Wan embraced
that. Marc supported finishing the movie in the way I wanted
to see it finished.
Similarly, 2nd-unit cinematographer Igor Meglic, ZFS
shares credit with Jacques Haitkin, and gaffer Dan Cornwall
Unit photography by Scott Garfield, SMPSP and Jaimie Trueblood, SMPSP, courtesy of Universal Pictures. Additional images courtesy of Michael Ambrose.
tackled the 1st-unit work in Atlanta

before Michael Ambrose, the primary
2nd-unit gaffer, joined the main unit for
the Los Angeles-based portion of the
shoot. Some camera assistants, operators
and digital-imaging technicians also
shifted places along the way.
One of the first sequences that
Marc completed is from the first act,
when the characters revisit their old
stomping ground the Race Wars car
rally, Windon explains. Marc shot that
entire sequence and embraced it as firstunit cinematographer. But we talked it
through, and the same with Igor and
Jacques. We always tried to scout
together and talk through everything. I
really enjoyed that collaboration, working with three other amazing cinematographers. It was the only way to do
something this challenging to do it as
a group, doing whatever is best for the
visual style of the film.
That visual style was in many
ways determined by the films locations,
although Wan adds that, of course,
Opposite and
this page, top:
Brian OConner
(Paul Walker),
Dominic Toretto
(Vin Diesel) and
their crew are on
the hunt for an
enemy who
killed one of
their own in
Furious 7.
Bottom:
Cinematographer
Stephen Windon,
ACS lines up a
shot with
director James
Wan.
Furious 7 is movie-star driven, so you

do need beauty photography within the
context of an action film. Even though
the actors are beaten up and getting into
hair-raising action sequences, you have
to keep in mind that the fans love these
www.theasc.com
people, and they have to look good

within the context of the situations we
have them in.
Furious 7 mainly takes place in
California and Abu Dhabi, and so the
palette, according to Spicer, is warmer,
May 2015
45
Accelerated Action
Top: Toretto is
back behind the
wheel of his
infamous Dodge
Charger. Middle
and bottom: A
camera-crane
vehicle was
utilized to capture
scenes between
Letty Ortiz
(Michelle
Rodriguez) and
Toretto.
a kind of golden California throwback

look. We wanted to remind fans where
[the characters] come from, with Race
Wars and hot cars, guys on motorcycles,
sexy girls in the golden California sun
and all that. The difference [between
Furious 7 and the previous films] is not
so much in the palette as the story,
which slowly starts to expand out of the
Mojave Desert, out of California and
then out of the U.S. it gets global
when we go to Abu Dhabi. So it is a
bigger story in that sense, with a global
military theme. But visually, we try to
take [the characters] back to their
roots.
The filmmakers shot primarily
with Arri Alexa XT cameras, and
certain sequences called for as many as
10 Alexas on set. Additional cameras
included Alexa XT Ms, Sony F55s and
Red Epic Dragons. Arri 235 and
Arricam LT film cameras were used for
select action sequences, and second unit
also employed Arri 435s, 35 IICs and
IIIs, as well as Bell & Howell Eyemos.
The film cameras rolled Kodak Vision3
250D 5207 and 50D 5203, framing for
2.40:1 in 4-perf Super 35mm.
Two vendors Panavision
Woodland Hills and Otto Nemenz
were needed to supply all of the
46
May 2015
Top: Letty at the

ready. Bottom:
The crew preps
a scene with
Rodriguez.
required lenses. First AC Julie Donovan

says the 1st units primary lens package
included a range of Arri/Zeiss Master
Primes 12mm-135mm with
extensive use of an Arri/Zeiss 10mm
Ultra Prime. They also used Angenieux
Optimo 28-340mm (T3.2), 15-40mm
(T2.6) and 28-76mm (T2.6) zoom
lenses and a Fujinon Premier 18-85mm
(T2.0) zoom.
Second unit, however, faced a
wider array of applications, and among
their tools were a set of Panavision
Primo primes (14.5mm-150mm), and a
zoom collection consisting of Fujinon
Premier 18-85mm; Arri/Fujinon Alura
15.5-45mm and 30-80mm (both T2.8);
Optimo 15-40mm; and Primo 17.575mm (T2.3), 19-90mm (T2.8), 24275mm (T2.8) and 135-420mm (T2.8)
zooms. A variety of Nikon Nikkor,
Zeiss Super Speed and Panavision
Primo lenses were also used on the crash
cams. Greg Luntzel served as 2nd units
key 1st AC, and he notes, We had four
camera trucks and a camera crew of 18
personnel that traveled together for well
over nine months, to Colorado,
Georgia, Arizona and California.
For certain action scenes, pulling
focus in the midst of so many people, so
much equipment and so many competing requirements was extremely challenging, according to Donovan. We
did a lot of long-lens work on moving
dollies, which is always difficult. In

particular, we did push-ins on each of
our main characters while they were in
their respective vehicles; we did this on
probably five or six characters over a
two-month span. We would have two
grips on the dollies, running at full
speed, while the dolly went from 35 feet
to about 10 feet. The entire time, Acamera operator Geoff Haley was
zooming in from a medium shot to an
extreme close-up. It took a few attempts
to figure out a system to do this, because
its not something you do every day.
Steve Windon was generous on the
stop, which gave me a fighting chance.
www.theasc.com
Sometimes we also had challenges in just finding space for the focus
pullers to be, Donovan continues.
Everyone has their own system of how
they like to work, but often we had to
adjust to fit the scope of this movie.
In the face of such complexities,
DIT Chris Cavanaugh and second-unit
DIT Brook Willard plus four additional DITs handling splinter units
were tasked with managing all of the
cameras. For the most part, they all
followed the same basic workflow,
taking advantage of the convenience of
fiber-optic cabling. The fiber ran from
the cameras to my cart, where I used
May 2015
47
Accelerated Action
Top: Captured by two Alexa XTs hanging from overhead rails, cars were dropped from a C-130
at 15,000'. Middle: The crew films a scene with actor Tyrese Gibson inside the cargo hold.
Bottom: A cars parachute landing is filmed against a bluescreen with actor Ludacris.
48
May 2015
[Pomforts] LiveGrade to grade the

cameras Log C output, Cavanaugh
explains. We used ASC CDLs to save
the looks, and transferred that information to post. Using LiveGrade and
multiple
[Blackmagic
Design]
HDLinks, we could grade and match
up to eight cameras at a time; that was
very useful on our larger setups and
stunt work. The graded image was then
passed to video assist, the directors
monitors and a producers village.
The fiber allowed us to run long
distances with little line loss, maintaining a high-quality signal for grading,
Cavanaugh adds. The fiber cable had
four channels, so we could receive
picture from camera and simultaneously
return a graded image back to camera.
This meant the image on camera was
close to what we were seeing in the DIT
tent. That was very helpful to the 1st
ACs, who could pull focus using the
graded image versus viewing the lowercontrast Log C camera output.
The filmmakers recorded 12-bit
ArriRaw to the Alexa XTs and XT Ms
onboard Codex Capture Drives, shooting in 4:3 mode with a 2.40:1 extraction. Since we used spherical lenses, the
extra vertical resolution recorded could
be used for shot repositioning and
visual-effects work as needed,
Cavanaugh notes. (The productions
Epic Dragons recorded Redcode raw
R3D files to RedMag SSDs in 6K reso-
lution with a 4:1 compression ratio.)

EFilm and Company 3s joint onlocation service, EC3, further supported
data management near the set. Data was
transferred each day using high-speed
RAID shuttle drives to EC3s Atlanta
unit, located in that citys Company 3
facility, where dailies were generated
based on a LUT that had been developed with EFilm DI colorist Tom
Reiser; dailies were then uploaded to the
Pix online dailies viewing platform.
(Reiser conducted the final digital grade
at EFilm in Los Angeles.)
Most of the films car races
through the streets of Los Angeles were
actually shot in Atlanta, which created a
challenge for the lighting team. To suit
our color tone, we ended up changing a
lot of existing fixtures in Atlanta and
adding additional ones downtown in
both cities, Windon relates.
Ambrose elaborates that the
production often had to light several
city blocks at a time, and that Windon
wanted to shoot night exteriors on what
was meant to be the streets of Los
Angeles in the cooler blue, slightly
green color that is represented by the
recently completed LED retrofit of
most of the streetlights in Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, Atlanta still uses highpressure sodium, and some sections of
streetlights werent working. We ended
up using metal-halide replacement
Torettos Dodge
Charger was
rigged to a
gimbal and shot
on an exterior
bluescreen stage
(middle), and
also dropped
from a cablepulley system on
location
(bottom), to
capture the
landing for the
snatch and
grab action
sequence.
www.theasc.com
May 2015
49
Accelerated Action
OConner rescues
Ramsey (Nathalie
Emmanuel,
middle) during
the cat and
mouse chase
sequence.
ballasts and bulbs in every streetlight

that was in our shots, [with help from]
Atlanta electrical contractor [BBH
Electrical].
For in-car lighting applications,
Ambrose says the production relied
heavily on LiteGear LED LiteRibbons
in various configurations, including
high-density VHO Pro 120x6 hybrids
configured for maximum color-temper50
May 2015
ature control. And for softer and wider

light, they used low-density VHO
ribbons, because they spread the LEDs
across more space, which creates a larger
light source, Ambrose explains. Those
ribbons are so versatile and flexible, they
can be pinned or taped to any interior
part of the car, run on small battery packs
for long periods of time, and are dimmable without color-temperature shift.
The films action centerpiece,

dubbed the snatch and grab, involved
dropping five cars from a C-130 cargo
plane so that they could parachute onto
a winding mountain highway and
immediately transition into a gutwrenching chase sequence that also
involved a motorcade of armored vehicles. It was decided to film the car-drops
practically and then piece them together
with staged car landings, with a practically staged chase sequence to follow.
Meglic prepped the sequence, but
he had to stay in Atlanta to prepare for
a large nighttime chase scene. So,
collaborating with second-unit director
Spiro Razatos, Haitkin served as cinematographer for the two-day aerial part
of the shoot, which was staged in Mesa,
Ariz. He says real cars were specially
gutted to reduce their weight and to
balance them properly for military-style
parachute drops from the cargo plane.
Rigged with specialized parachutes, the
vehicles were first shot inside the cargo
hold of the C-130 by two underslung
Alexa XT cameras mounted on Talon
remote heads and hanging from 25'
overhead rail systems; as each vehicle
rolled out of the cargo door at 15,000',
the cameras could track with it and then
pan back to the next car.
I operated one of the tracking
cameras, and the second tracking
camera was operated by [Onofrio Nino
Pansini], Haitkin explains. We had a
chopper for air-to-air photography on
every sortie, and we had a ground
Accelerated Action
The camera is
mounted on a
crane for a
driving scene
through the city.
camera team that was mobile, with one

camera mounted on sticks in the back of
a pickup truck to catch the parachute
deployments just moments before the
landings. We also used four skydiving
helmet-cam operators who used Red
Epic Dragons while the cars were in the
air; those cameras had Canon EF
mounts and Canon Primes from 14mm
to 50mm, depending on the sortie.
Second unit shot the landing
portion of the sequence, which features
stunt drivers visible in the cars. Meglic
says the special-effects team rigged a
cable-pulley system, so that wires strung
on four large cranes and positioned
about 1,000' apart and about 6-8' off the
ground could release the cars to simulate
the action of a hard parachute landing.
(Additional footage was shot on a giant
exterior bluescreen stage, which
Windon estimates to have measured 40'
high and 370' in length.)
The cat-and-mouse chase that
follows the aerial drops was also quite
unusual, according to Meglic, because
it takes place over very severe terrain:
the steep sides of hills and mountains
you can barely walk down. Luntzel
52
May 2015
adds that this portion of the sequence

was shot on Pikes Peak, at elevations of
9,500 to 12,500 feet, for three weeks.
Then we moved to Salida and Monarch
Pass [in Colorado] for another four
weeks of shooting.
Meglic notes that the chase
involved lots of cars going in different
directions, so there are lots of mini stories
about who is chasing whom. We had to
cover them with helicopters, cable-cams
and ground cameras that we had positioned around the course on location, as
well as cameras mounted inside and
outside the cars. The area was so steep,
even the guys setting up cameras on the
hill had to wear safety ropes while working there. Ably handling the camera
rigging for this and other action
sequences was 2nd-unit key grip Peter
Chrimes and his crew.
The chase also required 360degree background plates of the Pikes
Peak location. To get these plates, the
second unit shot from a tricked-out
camera car that comprised a strippeddown Corvette chassis and engine
with no body fitted with a front and
rear deck. The car supported a camera rig
of six Alexa XTs configured with six
matching wide-angle Primo lenses
(usually 17mm or 21mm), allowing the
crew to record seamless 360-degree
panoramic plates. The front deck had a
three-camera array, with a camera looking straight forward, a camera looking
approximately 120 degrees left, and a
camera looking approximately 120
degrees right, Haitkin explains. An
identical array was rigged on the rear
deck, so when the front array is stitched
together digitally with the back array, a
360-degree panorama is achieved, he
adds.
Haitkin presided over the background-plate work in instances that
called for camera operating, but he notes
that credit for the hands-on work of
camera alignment and execution of the
shots when the cameras were locked off
which was most of the time goes to
camera assistants Jack Ellingwood and
Arturo Rojas. And credit for the design,
development and execution of the entire
Accelerated Action
Top: OConner
and Toretto
hunt down
their enemy in
Abu Dhabi.
Middle and
bottom: The
camera
captures a
scene between
Letty and
Toretto.
background-plates operation goes to

the visual-effects department, led by
visual-effects supervisor Mike Wassel.
Haitkin says the need to capture
360-degree, high-resolution backgrounds for such sequences speaks
directly to the issue of how background
plates are handled these days in action
films. Staging events in 360 degrees is
huge, so that when the main unit gets
onto the green- or bluescreen stage, they
can put or move their camera anywhere
and have a background that perfectly
matches the action recorded by second
unit.
One of the most complex jobs the
production had to accomplish in
Atlanta involved a nighttime shootout
in a factory, which Wan wanted lit only
by such sources as muzzle flashes and
emergency lights to underscore the
stealth-combat nature of the sequence.
Its shot very practical lots of craziness, Windon explains. Because of the
strobe effects, which would have caused
[rolling-shutter artifacts with the Alexa
cameras], I decided to shoot the scene
on film. So we used Arri 235 [and
Arricam LT] film cameras and filmed it
in combat mode, at the hip, guerilla
style, handheld, very energetic.
Another big chase was shot on
the streets of downtown Los Angeles,
54
May 2015
terminating at the Rykoff Building.

Spicer shot the sequence and credits
Ambrose and L.A. key grip Michael
Price for lighting the building to give the
ambience of an old-fashioned sweatshop,
using 150 single-tube fluorescent fixtures
scattered throughout the facility and
more fittings on the walls. But when we
shot in there, we often only turned two or
three of them on and lit through the
windows, and then negative-filled areas
so that we could control it, he says. We
had Arri M40s and M18s [gelled with
or CTO and Plus Green] spread
across two 125-foot Condors and three
30-foot scissor lifts, slashing in through
beautiful, dirty, stained-glass windows.
The real trick was making it look like it
More than one

Step ahead!
All these operators

would look like a
ballet troupe, the
way they were
moving around.
was just the light from the LED [streetlights from outside], which we achieved
by choosing camera angles that kept the
action lit against dark backgrounds, and
by shooting straight into the lights and
silhouetting the action against the dirty
glass. We also used a couple of red exit
signs, a yellow conveyor-belt light from
our art department, and a bit of smoke
with about three fluorescents, which
enabled us to give it the look we wanted.
The work the visual-effects
people had to do would sometimes mean
there would be another five cameras
placed strategically, in addition to our
four production cameras, Spicer continues. That meant in our master shots and
often in our singles, our cameras would
pan past the capture cameras other
Alexas so it took clever choreography
and camera placement to make that
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Accelerated Action
Luke Hobbs
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a Gatling gun.
work. You might see a wide master shot

from our A camera, and you would see
seven cameras in the shot and our actor
moving past them, along with our operator and focus puller. Visual effects
could take the operators and focus
pullers out in post, but it was tricky
lighting-wise, because you cant remove
56
shadows that physically touch the

actors.
We had to develop a master
plan, run little rehearsals, and choreograph the cameras telling one camera
to move left 2 feet, another camera to
come toward us, and so on, Spicer
adds. We would be almost in hysterics
because all these [operators] would look

like a little ballet troupe, the way they
were shuffling and moving around.
Sometimes we would have marks on the
floor, so that once an actor passed a
certain point, then a particular camera
would have to pull out just at that exact
moment, because another camera pans
on and we didnt want the other camera
blocking his mark. It was sort of multicam to the power of three.
Indeed, the camera department
was intimately linked to the visualeffects needs of the show right up until
the movie was finally locked. To help
ensure that the overall color palette
matched throughout the post chain and
across the hundreds of visual-effects
shots provided by several different
vendors, Windon and Reiser created a
color bible that consisted of a series of
DPX reference stills for all major visualeffects sequences. Ive been doing that
from Fast 5 onward, Windon says. I
spent about a week with [Reiser], creat-
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture and
4-perf Super 35mm
Arri Alexa XT, XT M;
Red Epic Dragon; Sony F55;
Arriflex 435, 235, 35 IIC,
35 III; Arricam LT;
Bell & Howell Eyemo
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime,
Ultra Prime; Arri/Fujinon Alura;
Angenieux Optimo;
Fujinon Premier;
Panavision Primo; Nikon Nikkor;
Zeiss Super Speed
The production preps for a nighttime graveyard scene with Rodriguez and Diesel.
Kodak Vision3 250D 5207,

50D 5203
ing a color bible for the big action and
visual-effects sequences, so the tone, the
look, the contrast, the color palette was
established before visual effects got
involved and sent material out to
dozens of vendors. This way, each
vendor can source the material and

check on the look that James Wan and
I wanted.
57
Without
Fear
Matthew Lloyd, CSC brings a

film-noir aesthetic to the superhero
series Daredevil.
By Noah Kadner
|
arvel Comics Daredevil character debuted in 1964 as

the crime-fighting alter ego of Matt Murdock a
blind New York City lawyer by day and a fearless vigilante by night. Combining his enhanced remaining
senses with martial-arts prowess, Daredevil serves as the citys
best defense against evildoers like the nefarious Kingpin.
Marvel recently joined forces with Netflix to develop
Daredevil into a series for its streaming service, and Matthew
Lloyd, CSC was tapped to shoot all 13 episodes of the first
season. It was a six-month marathon of New York-based location and stage production that shot from July through
December 2014, with the goal of creating a dark and gritty tale
thats decidedly not for kids. (And with an eye on the long
game, Netflix is releasing Daredevil as the first of four superhero
58
May 2015
shows, with the intent to combine them into the crossover

project The Defenders.)
Charlie Cox stars as Murdock/Daredevil, with Deborah
Ann Woll as Karen Page, Rosario Dawson as nurse Claire
Temple, and Vincent DOnofrio as Wilson Fisk a.k.a.
Kingpin. Veteran cinematographer and series director Phil
Abraham (The Sopranos, Mad Men) helmed the first and
second episodes of the series, which served as pilot and origin
story for the fearless sentinel.
Though he admits hes not a comic-book aficionado,
Lloyd greatly admires the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Furthermore, having acquired a taste for television through his
numerous collaborations with director Adam Bernstein, Lloyd
says he couldnt pass up the opportunity to shoot Daredevil.
My agent got me a meeting, he recalls, and I went in and
met with [executive producers] Karim Zreik and Jeph Loeb.
They were looking to create something outside of the typical
scope of broadcast. Showrunner Steven DeKnight also said
they wanted to really push the boundaries and I was well suited
for that kind of a task.
Abraham says, I saw Matts work on Fargo and thought
he was a great choice for Daredevil. He started a few days after
I did and we had a very tight schedule with about three weeks
of prep. We looked at many of the classic New York street
Unit photography by Barry Wetcher, SMPSP, courtesy of Netflix.
Opposite: Matt
Murdock (Charlie
Cox) is a blind
New York City
lawyer by day
and a fearless
vigilante by
night in the
series Daredevil.
This page, top:
Murdock with
associate Foggy
Nelson (Elden
Henson). Bottom:
Cinematographer
Matthew Lloyd,
CSC (holding
camera) and
director Phil
Abraham
(pointing to
monitor) line up
a frame with
Cox.
movies for reference and inspiration, like

Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, The
French Connection, Marathon Man and
Serpico. Daredevil is a modern-day film
noir, so I also showed Matt a British vigilante crime film, Harry Brown [AC June
10]. It has a lot of visceral camera movement and stylistic lighting from sodiumand mercury-vapor sources in a very realistic setting without cinematic romanticism.
Daredevil shot on location in New
York City with stage work at Broadway
Stages in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Netflixs
delivery requirements stipulated a 4K
master for both 1080p HD streaming
and to accommodate the companys
nascent Ultra HD streaming rollout.
With the incredibly physical reality of
an action show, the only 4K option at the
time was the Red Epic Dragon, notes
Lloyd. It had durability, flexible size and
reconfigurable modes. Id also recently
done Project Almanac on Red cameras
with a similar set of requirements: lots of
moving camera, nights, high-speed work
and 4K delivery. Panavision New York
was able to make a tethered configuration with most of the required gear in a
backpack, leaving a compact 10-to-15-
pound body, viewfinder and lens that the

operators could more easily handhold.
The Epic Dragons recorded 4K
raw Redcode files at 5:1 compression to
onboard RedMag SSDs. Lloyd notes
that 4K was chosen rather than the 6K
the Epic Dragon is capable of because
we were delivering in 4K. We were also
shooting a lot of high-speed [footage],
and I didnt want to be constantly
switching resolutions that can be
www.theasc.com
messy for the post folks.

Lloyd chose Arri/Zeiss Master
Primes to go with the Epics. Ive never
really encountered another set of lenses
as robust, well-made and durable as
Master Primes, Lloyd says. We had a
full range of every available focal length
and we were shooting very dark night
scenes with a lot of stunts and fast movement. With the bulk of the show shot
between T1.4 and T2.0, our ACs were
May 2015
59
Without Fear
virtuosos at hitting focus under
extremely challenging conditions.
The production also carried a set
of Angenieux Optimo zooms, including
the 15-40mm (T2.6), 28-76mm (T2.6)
and 45-120mm (T2.8). Panavision New
York provided all of the productions
lenses. Lloyd shot at a 16:9 aspect ratio,
mostly handheld, along with some
Steadicam, 25' and 50' Technocrane, and
40' Louma Crane work. Key collaborators included Lloyds longtime key grip
Jim McMillan (who also served as
action-unit cinematographer), Acamera focus puller Marc Hillygus, digital-imaging technician Patrick Cecilian,
gaffer Rusty Engles and production
designer Loren Weeks.
The first episode of Daredevil
opens with a major fight scene featuring
a shadowy figure battling a series of
thugs on a waterfront dock, shot in the
Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn
with a view of Manhattan across the
river. The script has [Daredevil]
popping in and out of very deep shadows, pulling bad guys out of the light,
knocking them out off camera and then
throwing them back out into the light,
Lloyd explains. I knew wed get killed if
we tried to do localized lighting for all
those scenes, so instead we placed huge
units very far away. Peter Girolami at
SourceMaker custom-built an 8-footby-8-foot air-filled balloon cube with
two independently controlled 1,000watt sodium-vapor football globes
inside.
I had the crew frame the cube
with speed rail, like a soft box, with an
LCD egg crate on the bottom, he
continues. It was a very soft, directional
box that gimbaled off the end of our
Jekko crane. The cube included a 5K
tungsten globe on a dimmer to help
clean up the parts of the color spectrum
where sodium vapor peaks. It provided a
nice, focused, authentic night light.
Rusty and his team also ran
cables along the rooftops and set up a
variety of Arri T12 tungsten Fresnels,
Lloyd adds. We also had a couple of 60foot scissor lifts with 12 very narrowspot Par cans per lift. We used Lee 179
Top: Murdock
with colleague
Karen Page
(Deborah Ann
Woll). Bottom:
Murdock uses a
cane to navigate
New York City
by day.
60
May 2015
Chrome Orange, 100 Spring Yellow and

combinations of Half CTB and Half
Plus Green to match the tungsten lights
to the industrial vapor units. Phil was
also very specific about [the look] being
very patchy in terms of what youd see
and not see. So we used the big units to
pick up a nice background piece behind
the characters and let everything else fall
off to darkness.
Dark is a subjective thing,
observes Abraham. Matt and I
provided each other with the moral
support and confidence against that
creeping notion that things were getting
too dark. A cinematographer needs to
feel empowered to go for it and be
daring, as thats how great things are
achieved. With film you also have the
doubt of not knowing exactly how
underexposed you might be, but shooting digitally, everyone is seeing the image
on the monitor.
Throughout the first two
episodes, flashbacks portray Murdocks
childhood as he slowly goes blind, braving the ordeal accompanied by his father,
a morally upstanding professional boxer.
The production chose a compact, splitlevel railroad apartment with narrow
hallways in Queens to represent the
heros childhood home. It was the
smallest set we had to work with by far,
Lloyd says. We tried to do as much as
possible through the windows and via
motivated sources. We removed all the
fixtures from the ceiling and wired
everything through existing house power
to avoid cables, crossovers and boxes.
Inside, we built covered wagons with
skirted, unbleached muslin and batten
strips of four to eight household sockets
with a variety of globes to produce a
slightly uneven soft source.
To augment the overheads, we
added SourceMaker 2-foot-by-2-foot
LED Blankets in closets and washing
down stairways, he adds. Outside the
apartment, we horizontally mounted
[Kino Flo] Image 85s gelled [with]
Industrial Green aiming onto the flat
blinds that the art department added.
The set also had a lot of practicals and a
Kelvin Tile LED fixture to simulate the
Top: The crew preps a scene with Cox. Bottom: Murdock ventures out at night as his vigilante alter ego.
modulated wash from a TV as Matt

watches his dad boxing. It was our best
attempt at a Gordon Willis look
with everything very dark and motivated.
Abraham adds, We liked the
idea of being mostly handheld in
present time while the flashbacks could
be a little more rooted on traditional
dollies or a crane. I had a lot of reticence
about filming in an actual apartment
due to the size, but it really made the
www.theasc.com
relationship between father and son

resonate.
Another key fight sequence ends
the first episode, as Daredevil defends
Karen Page from assassins at her apartment. It was a running fight that goes
from a studio set of Karens apartment,
continues down the side of a building on
location, and ends up at a construction
site nearby all in pouring rain,
Abraham explains. We shot some parts
of it at 96 fps to heighten the action;
May 2015
61
Without Fear
Top: Lloyd (holding bounce board) adjusts the lighting on actor Vincent DOnofrio.
Bottom: DOnofrio portrays Wilson Fisk.
anything higher than that becomes eye

candy.
That was the darkest scene of the
series and the darkest thing Ive ever
shot, notes Lloyd. We started in
Karens apartment with people fighting
in the dark against windows. There was
a heavily diffused Arri T12 with a
mercury-vapor gel pack on the front
above each window creating pools of
light and long bay lights with household
62
May 2015
bulbs dimmed to just above zero IRE

inside.
Next, the fight moves outside
onto a scaffolding that Loren built both
into the set and onto the real building
exterior to bridge the two locations, the
cinematographer continues. The scaffolding included practical overhead fluorescent lamps combined with 4-foot
two-bank Cool White Kino Flos
wrapped in diffuse plastic. Across the
street, we used Arri M90 lightweight 9K

HMIs with Max reflectors to create a
huge overall wash.
The fighting continues at a
construction site, Lloyd adds. We
brought back in the SourceMaker
mercury-vapor cube from the opening
scene, along with pairs of M90s in a
120-foot Condor on the other side of
the block. Everything ended up incredibly high up in the air due to all the rain
towers in play. They were at 60 feet, so
we had to put our lights at 80 to 100 feet
to keep them dry. There was so much
second-unit work on those fight scenes
Jims contribution as our second-unit
director of photography cannot be overstated.
To depict Daredevils signature
heightened perception at key moments,
Lloyd chose an old-school optical
approach. We used a Century Optics
Swing/Shift system, he reveals. The
system, Lloyd explains, included rehoused Hasselblad lenses; you adjust the
tilt and pan of the focal plane by sliding
[and/or tilting] the lens itself away from
the sensor. It was like making a
daguerreotype, with the actors holding
very still as I adjusted dials and the
bellows. You end up with a shot where
you have very shallow focus, say on
Daredevils eyes, and then some important detail very far off in the distance and
nothing else. [The effect is] like a variable split-field diopter.
A final major fight scene, which
bookends Daredevil s second episode, is
a nearly six-minute-long continuous
take. The camera follows Daredevil as he
fights his way through successions of
baddies in a basement hallway to rescue
human-trafficking victims. Once the
creative team signed off on the concept,
it was up to Abraham and Lloyd to
practically achieve the shot.
The idea, subconsciously or not,
probably initially came from the
extended, single-take fight sequence in
Oldboy, notes Abraham. Otto
Preminger also used a lot of long,
languid takes in Where the Sidewalk Ends
and Laura. It adds real tension to the
performances because youre witnessing
something unfold from a single point of

view. Youre dealing with the pressures
and tensions of a long single take and
adding a fight, with 10 to 12 guys from
Chris Brewsters stunt team going full-on
in a very narrow hallway set.
Initially, Phil suggested it could be
done on Steadicam or perhaps with
moving set walls, says Lloyd. I worked
with Loren and Jimmy to devise another
option: build a very rigid set with a scaffolding shelf, reinforced by water drums,
and on top an I-beam bridge with a rail
dolly system that held A-dolly grip Dan
Beaman and a Fisher 10 dolly. The ceiling
had a 1-foot channel for an underslung
Epic on a Mini Libra head. Rigging key
grip Dave McAllister engineered the
scaffolding system that supported the set
and Jimmy built the I-beams spanning
the set, enabling the dolly to roll overhead
on an offset riser. High-tension wire was
added to reinforce the walls and prevent
any flexing or wobbling as the dolly
maneuvered above the action.
With the physical configuration
solved, the next hurdle was lighting the
narrow space as the camera made multiple 360-degree turns. The set was built
as a real hallway with no lighting positions and nothing wild, so it became a
strategic practical situation, Lloyd
explains. The hallway featured two side
rooms, each with two dead-hung Image
85s with Cool White fluorescent bulbs
lighting the room and pushing out into
the hall. As Daredevil busts into the
rooms and rips the doors off the hinges
and fights, you get shafts of light coming
out of the rooms.
The hallways on either end had
open-faced 2K Blondes bouncing into 4foot-by-8-foot foamcore, creating a soft
rake at 90 degrees to the wall to bring out
the texture Loren built into the walls, he
continues. The room at the end also had
a 2K Blonde gelled Primary Red to foreshadow Daredevils signature costume. It
was an Expressions DMX dimmer-board
dance, because when you spin around
with a suspended camera you cant have a
light on behind you or youll see the
camera shadow on the hall and on the
actors.
Fisk, the most

feared and
powerful crime
lord in New York
City, is also
known as
Kingpin.
www.theasc.com
May 2015
63
Without Fear
We had a 100-watt frosted household bulb mounted at 90 degrees on the
side of the wall right at the front entryway
and a fluorescent housing over the door at
the back fitted with a Mac Tech LED
tube, Lloyd adds. That enabled a
smooth ramp from 0 to 100 percent on
both the fluorescent and incandescent
units at either end of the hall. Our board
operator, Jim McNeal, looked like he was
playing a perfectly timed game of PacMan, riding two faders as the camera
panned up and down [the hallway]. Its a
really incredible sequence to watch when
you think about all the mechanics, and yet
the moviemaking is completely invisible.
Lloyd chose to operate the complex move
himself, which the crew nailed in a single
day in seven takes after plenty of
rehearsal.
Colorist Kevin Krout supervised
most of the series dailies at Encore in
New York after taking over for Rob Bell
and Lloyds longtime colorist, Andrew
Geary. Lloyd communicated his desired
look for specific scenes by grading stills in
Photoshop on his laptop. We punched
out a pretty unique look for the show,
recalls Krout. Id take the raw 4K Red
R3D files into my system via Encores
SAN, apply a LUT that Matt created
previously for use with Red Epic shows,
and color dailies based on Matts stills.
From the graded dailies, we delivered Avid DNx36 1080p files, Krout
continues. We also uploaded H.264
QuickTime files at 720p to the Pix dailies
review system. We usually received raw
footage from the production between 10
p.m. and midnight and had to deliver
dailies by the next morning. Krouts
hardware included a Pioneer Kuro plasma
monitor in one of Encores calibrated
rooms and a Red Rocket-X PCI card to
help speed the processing of R3D files.
Were at a strange point where
many productions seem to ignore the role
of the DIT and dailies, Lloyd notes.
They just apply Rec 709 as a preset and
figure it all out in post. I think doing it
that way takes away some consistency and
diminishes the process. It is much more
cost- and time-effective for production to
get the look there in the dailies; it greatly
Top and bottom:

Blinded as a
young boy,
Murdock uses his
heightened
remaining senses
to fight crime on
the streets of
Hells Kitchen.
Middle: Murdock
battles Piotr
(Paul Mann).
64
May 2015
Without Fear
Cox discusses a
scene with director
and executive
producer Steven
DeKnight.
reduces the amount of heavy lifting

required in the DI.
Senior colorist Tony DAmore at
Encore Hollywood supervised the final
grade for every episode of the season. He
worked with DaVinci Resolve 11 using
66
DPX frames derived from the original

Red R3D files with the Redcolor3 preset
applied during the transcode. Id start
with Kevins CDLs and Matts LUT
and initially duplicate what theyd done
in dailies, explains DAmore. The
looks Matt created were a great way to set

a consistent deep, dark tone for the show.
I also know what Matt likes from our
work together on Fargo. The end result
was a gritty, distinctive look. We kept a
lemon-lime color palette, with subtle skin
tones for a subdued, surreal environment.
I balanced everything toward green,
combined with Matts amber or yellow
source to achieve skin tones that were just
under key and not super poppy.
Whats nice about grading with
Resolve is that I can color inside of a
LUT, versus other systems that do not
allow me to modify the parameters of a
LUT at all, DAmore adds. For example, in some shots lit by an exterior source,
the initial LUT clipped the highlights. I
was then able to open the input LUT and
lower the white levels to bring back detail
from shot to shot. Im not a big believer in
LUTs, although they can be very helpful
as a starting point and to maintain the
attributes of the Red capture.
As the grades were completed,
Lloyd was able to review DAmores

work remotely while he shot further
episodes. Wed often stream directly
from Encore Hollywood to a suite at
Encore in New York for Matt, says
DAmore. All the gear and monitors in
both locations are calibrated the same.
Executives from Marvel and Netflix
screened final versions for approval with
DAmore on a Sony XBR-65X950B 65"
Ultra HD monitor in 3840x2160 resolution via a Blackmagic Design Mini
Converter. Final deliverables included
4K DPX masters along with Rec 709
1080p down-conversions.
Abraham views the Netflix
concept of releasing all episodes of a
season simultaneously as the way of the
future. Its brilliant and the only way to
do it, he says. When Netflix first
started this distribution model, I worked
with them on Orange Is the New Black.
Its very viewer-friendly; you watch as
much or as little of an entire season
whenever you want.
As a filmmaker, I find [that the

simultaneous-release strategy] does
present some unique challenges, and you
need to consider the different modes of
consumption, Abraham adds. What
you do at the end of episode two could
be followed immediately afterwards by
someone watching episode three. So, for
example, you have to be really careful
about reusing locations, because you
dont have that weeklong viewer
memory lapse to fall back on. But overall, I think every broadcaster should do it
this way.
Similarly, Lloyd sees challenges
and benefits in shooting every episode of
an entire season. Normally, I dont do
full series, he says. I generally stop after
the first couple of episodes and hand off
to another cinematographer. To see an
arc through 13 hours of moviemaking,
and then feel as great about the last hour
as you do about the first, was a fulfilling
journey.
It was also incredibly hard for the
crew and me, but ultimately very

rewarding, Lloyd continues. I give a
huge amount of credit to Marvels
creative team for backing what we set
out to do. Its easy to say, We want
something dark, sinister and adult, and
then dumb it down to a PG level. They
really went the distance, from the stunt
sequences to the look and even the casting. Throughout all of it, everyone really
believed in what we were doing.
TECHNICAL SPECS
1.78:1
Digital Capture
Red Epic Dragon
Arri/Zeiss Master Prime,
Angenieux Optimo
67
Celebrating
Art and Science
Front row (from left): Allan Padelford; Robert Nagle; ASC associate Iain Neil; Andr de Winter; actor/co-host Margot Robbie; actor/co-host Miles Teller;
David Gray; Sci-Tech Awards Chairman Richard Edlund, ASC; AMPAS President Cheryl Boone Isaacs; Dr. Larry Hornbeck; Greg Pettitt; Bill Werner and
John Frederick. Second row: Philip Peterson, Dan Piponi, Kim Libreri, George Borshukov, James OBrien, Marco Revelant, Shane Cooper, Steven Krycho,
Frank Poradish and Magnus Wrenninge. Third row: Greg Croft, Michael Sechrest, Chris King, Peter Braun, Ron Fedkiw, Brice Criswell, Ben Cole, Eric Parker,
Nafees Bin Zafar, Stephen Marshall and Reiner Doetzkies. Fourth row: Nicolas Popravka, Cary Phillips, Colette Mullenhoff, Alasdair Coull, Jeff Budsberg,
Mihai Aldn, Erwin Coumans, Ken Museth, Karl Rasche, Scott Peterson and Mitsuru Asano. Fifth row: Brad Walker, Michael Fecik, ASC associate Steven Tiffen,
Jeff Cohen, Ken Pearce, Bob Myers, Jonathan Gibbs, Masahiro Take, Mitsuyasu Tamura, Ichiro Tsutsui and Thomas Lianza. Back row: D. Scott Dewald,
Greg LaSalle, Roger van der Laan, Tim Cotter, Peter Cucka and Robert Bridson.
The Academy salutes the

industrys technological pioneers
at the Scientific and
Technical Awards.
Written and compiled by Jay Holben
|
68
May 2015
he weekend before the ASC held its annual awards gala,

the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
presented the 87th annual Scientific and Technical
Awards. The ceremony which this year returned to
the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in the heart of Beverly Hills
honored the pioneering technicians working behind the
scenes of the motion-picture industry. Actors Miles Teller
(Whiplash) and Margot Robbie (The Wolf of Wall Street) served
as the evenings hosts, ably delivering the evenings technical
jargon with equal parts humor and panache as 59 individuals
were honored over the course of the ceremony.
While presenting a Scientific and Engineering Award
Photos by Todd Wawrychuk, Michael Yada and Matt Petit, courtesy of AMPAS.
(Academy Plaque) to ASC associate

Iain Neil and Andr de Winter, for the
optical design and mechanical design,
respectively, of the Leica Summilux-C
series of lenses, Robbie ad-libbed, Can
we all notice for a second that I have all
the hard things to say? Teller quipped,
Im just here as the eye candy.
Returning to the award at hand, Robbie
continued, The Leica Summilux-C
lenses deliver ultra-high optical performance for film and digital cameras.
They incorporate novel telecentric
multi-element aspherical optics and ...
this full series of prime lenses delivers
unprecedented optical and mechanical
performance.
What she said, added Teller,
who then noted more seriously, The
aspherical elements in each lens create a
telecentric path of light allowing more
illumination across the entire field.
Accepting the award, revered
optical engineer Neil spoke first. All
that telecentric stuff, eh? he joked. He
then went on to thank ASC associate
Otto Nemenz for the concept and original specification of the lenses. De
Winter kept things brief, noting as he
admired the plaque, Theres gold in
them thar hills!
An
Academy Award of
Commendation (Special Plaque) was
presented to ASC associate Steven
Tiffen, Jeff Cohen and Michael Fecik,
for the development of dye-based filters
that reduce IR contamination when
neutral-density filters are used with
digital cameras. The Tiffen Co. identified the problem and rapidly engineered
a series of absorptive filters that ameliorated infrared artifacts with lenses of all
focal lengths. These widely adopted
filters allow cinematographers to work
as they have with film-based technology.
The last time the Academy
awarded this special plaque was in 2007.
Accepting the award, Tiffen noted, We
proudly accept this award of commendation and honor the memory of my
father, Nat Tiffen, our companys
founder, who instilled in each of us the
passion to listen to professional image
Top: Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs and Richard Edlund, ASC, chairman of the Academy
Sci-Tech Awards Committee, greet the audience. Bottom: Actors Miles Teller and Margot Robbie
co-host the ceremony.
makers [and] visual storytellers, and [to]

develop products that help create the
worlds greatest images.
We stand committed to continuing to support this industry that we
love, Tiffen continued. And we find it
so wonderfully pleasing in this world of
digital technology, this world of hightechnology, that were being given this
honor for a wonderful piece of glass.
www.theasc.com
The team at Texas Instruments

received three awards over the course of
the evening. The first, a Technical
Achievement Award (Academy
Certificate), was presented to Harold
Milligan, Steven Krycho and Reiner
Doetzkies, for the implementation
engineering in the development of the
Texas Instruments DLP Cinema digital
projection technology. Second, a
May 2015
69
Top (from left):

Michael Fecik,
ASC associate Steven
Tiffen and Jeff Cohen
accept an Academy
Award of
Commendation for the
development of dyebased filters that reduce
IR contamination when
neutral-density filters
are used with digital
cameras. Bottom (from
left): Andr de Winter
and ASC associate Iain
Neil accept the Scientific
and Engineering Award
for the respective
mechanical and optical
design of the Leica
Summilux-C series
of lenses.
Scientific and Engineering Award

(Academy Plaque) was given to Brad
Walker, D. Scott Dewald, Bill
Werner, Greg Pettitt and Frank
Poradish, for their contributions
furthering the design and refinement of
the DLP Cinema projection technology. Finally, one of the evenings highest
honors went to Larry Hornbeck, who
received an Academy Award of Merit
(Oscar Statuette) for the invention of
digital micromirror technology as used
in DLP Cinema projection. The Digital
Micromirror Device (DMD) is the core
technology that has enabled Texas
Instruments DLP Cinema projection
70
May 2015
to become the standard of the motionpicture industry.

During his speech, Hornbeck
recalled, My father, with only an
eighth-grade education, by his example,
taught me to ask the question why, and
to go out and find the answer an
incredible experience for a young child
who was naturally curious. Its
extremely gratifying to work for a
company that allows its employees to
bring their passion and creativity to life
and in this case to bring it to life on
the big screen! I humbly accept this
award on behalf of any engineer who
has had a dream and to the more than
30,000 TI employees from around the

world. Texas Instruments and its
creative engineers are a wonderful
family.
The Academys Gordon E.
Sawyer Award is presented to an individual whose technological contributions have brought credit to the motion
picture industry. This years honor went
to David W. Gray, Dolbys vice president of global services and industry relations. Gray had previously been
awarded the Academys John A. Bonner
Medal of Commendation in 1998.
The Sawyer Award was
presented by Academy President
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who said, One of
the primary missions of the Academy is
to honor individuals who played a
pivotal role in developing technology
that shaped the way we experience
movies. Few people have had as much
impact on cinema sound as David
Winchester Gray. Today we take for
granted that movies will sound the same
from dubbing stage to dubbing stage,
from dubbing stage to theater, and from
one exhibition chain to another. That
was not always true. Thanks to David, it
is now.
Taking the podium and accepting
his award, Gray noted, I am so proud
to not only receive the Gordon E.
Sawyer Award, but to be in the same
crowd as the [other Sci-Tech Award
honorees]. Im in awe and Im incredibly
humbled. I want to thank the late John
Bonner for showing and teaching me
the whys and wherefores of the industry.
Technologically speaking he was a great
mentor. He is also the one who sponsored me and encouraged me to get
involved in the Academy.
My sentiment is simply a love
for our industry and, more specifically, a
love for sound in motion pictures, Gray
concluded. Our industry is such an
incredible, unique marriage of the arts
and sciences, epitomized by events like
this, and I am amazed every day by that
union. For me, I doubt that I will ever be
more proud than I am right now, and I
probably wont ever be as excited!
The other awards presented

during the ceremony were:
Technical Achievement Awards

(Academy Certificates):
To Peter Braun, for the concept
and development of the MATTowercam Twin Peek, a portable,
remote-controlled, telescoping column
that smoothly positions a camera up to
24' vertically. This small cross-section
system from Mad About Technology
can operate from above or below the
camera, achieving nearly impossible
shots with repeatable movements
through openings no larger than the
camera itself.
To Robert Nagle and Allan
Padelford, for The Biscuit Jr. selfpropelled, high-performance, drivable
camera and vehicle platform. The
Biscuit Jr. features a unique chassis and
portable driver pod that enable traveling
photography from a greater range of
camera positions than previously possible, while keeping actors safe and the rig
out of frame.
To Cary Phillips, Nicolas
Popravka, Philip Peterson and Colette
Mullenhoff, for the architecture, development and creation of the artist-driven
interface of the ILM Shape Sculpting
System. This comprehensive system,
which has become a crucial part of
ILMs production workflow over the
past decade, allows artists to quickly
enhance and modify character animation and simulation performances.
To Tim Cotter, Roger van der
Laan, Ken Pearce and Greg LaSalle,
for the innovative design and development of the MOVA Facial Performance
Capture system. The MOVA system
provides a robust way to capture highly
detailed, topologically consistent,
animated meshes of a deforming object.
This technology is fundamental to the
facial pipeline at many visual-effects
companies, allowing artists to create
character animation of extremely high
quality.
To Dan Piponi, Kim Libreri and
George Borshukov, for their pioneering
Left: Dr. Larry Hornbeck receives an Academy Award of Merit for the invention of digital micromirror
technology as used in DLP Cinema projection. Right: David W. Gray receives the Gordon E. Sawyer
Award honoring an individual whose technological contributions have brought credit to the
motion-picture industry.
work in the development of Universal

Capture at ESC Entertainment. The
Universal Capture system broke new
ground in the creation of realistic
human facial animation, producing an
animated, high-resolution, textured
mesh driven by an actors performance.
To Marco Revelant, for the
original concepts and artist vision, and
to Alasdair Coull and Shane Cooper,
for the original architectural and engineering design of the Barbershop hairgrooming system at Weta Digital.
Barbershops unique architecture allows
direct manipulation of full-density hair
using an intuitive, interactive and
procedural toolset, resulting in greatly
enhanced productivity with finergrained artistic control than is possible
with other existing systems.
To Michael Sechrest, for the
modeling design and implementation;
to Chris King, for the real-time interactive engineering; and to Greg Croft,
for the user interface design and implementation of SpeedTree Cinema. This
software substantially improves an
artists ability to create specifically
designed trees and vegetation by
combining a procedural building
www.theasc.com
process with the flexibility of intuitive,

direct manipulation of every detail.
To Scott Peterson, Jeff Budsberg
and Jonathan Gibbs, for the design and
implementation of the DreamWorks
Animation Foliage System. This toolset
has a hierarchical spline system, a core
data format and an artist-driven modeling tool, which have been instrumental
in creating art-directed vegetation in
animated films for nearly two decades.
To Erwin Coumans, for the
development of the Bullet physics
library, and to Nafees Bin Zafar and
Stephen Marshall, for the separate
development of two large-scale destruction-simulation systems based on Bullet.
These pioneering systems demonstrated
that large numbers of constrained rigid
bodies could be used to animate visually
complex, believable destruction effects
with minimal simulation time.
To Brice Criswell and Ron
Fedkiw, for the development of the
ILM PhysBam Destruction System.
This system incorporates innovative
research on many algorithms that
provide accurate methods for resolving
contact, collision and stacking into a
mature, robust and extensible producMay 2015
71

and deformation simulations. These
tools established finite element methods as a new reference point for believable on-screen destruction.
To Magnus Wrenninge, for
leading the design and development of
Field3D. Field3D provides a flexible
and open framework for storing and
accessing volumetric pixel (voxel) data
efficiently. This allows interchange
between previously incompatible
modeling, simulation and rendering
software.
To Robert Bridson, for early
conceptualization of sparse-tiled voxel
data structures and their application to
modeling and simulation. Bridsons
pioneering work on voxel data structures and its subsequent validation in
fluid simulation tools have had a significant impact on the design of volumetric tools throughout the visual-effects
industry.
To Ken Museth, Peter Cucka
and Mihai Aldn, for the creation of
OpenVDB, a widely adopted, sparse
hierarchical data structure that provides
a fast and efficient mechanism for storing and manipulating voxels.
Top (from left): Frank Poradish, Greg Pettitt, D. Scott Dewald, Bill Werner and Brad Walker receive the
Scientific and Engineering Award for their contributions furthering the design and refinement of the
DLP Cinema projection technology. Bottom: Reiner Doetzkies (left) and Steven Krycho accept a Technical
Achievement Award for the implementation engineering in the development of the Texas Instruments
DLP Cinema digital projection technology.
tion toolset. The PhysBam Destruction

System was one of the earliest toolsets
capable of depicting large-scale destruction with a high degree of design
control.
To Ben Cole, for the design of
the Kali Destruction System; to Eric
Parker, for the development of the
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May 2015
Digital Molecular Matter toolkit; and to

James OBrien, for his influential
research on the finite element methods
that served as a foundation for these
tools. The combined innovations in Kali
and DMM provide artists with an intuitive, art-directable system for the
creation of scalable and realistic fracture
Scientific and Engineering

Awards (Academy Plaques):
To Ichiro Tsutsui, Masahiro
Take, Mitsuyasu Tamura and Mitsuru
Asano, for the development of the Sony
BVM-E Series Professional OLED
Master Monitor. These precise, widegamut monitors allow creative image
decisions to be made on set with the
confidence that the desired images can
be accurately reproduced in postproduction.
To John Frederick, Bob Myers,
Karl Rasche and Tom Lianza, for the
development of the HP DreamColor
LP2480zx Professional Display. This
cost-effective display offers a stable,
wide color gamut, allowing facility-wide
adoption in feature animation and
visual-effects studios.
Leading
Lights
Photography by
Alex Beatty, Kelly Brinker, Evan Cox, Artur Gubin,
Christian Herrera, George Leon, Alex Lopez, Kim McBride,
Danny Moloshok and Hector Sandoval
he 29th ASC Awards celebration, co-hosted by ASC

member Matthew Libatique and ASC presidents assistant Delphine Figueras, was staged on Feb. 15 at the Hyatt
Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The event was a
hot-ticket sellout with some high-profile guests among the
1,600 attendees. Luminaries on hand to salute the art and craft
of cinematography included Barbra Streisand, who received the
Board of Governors Award, and her husband, James Brolin;
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, supporting Unbroken cinematographer Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC; The Imitation Game director
Morten Tyldum, supporting nominee scar Faura; actor
Nathan Fillion and The X-Files creator Chris Carter, cheering
on Career Achievement in Television recipient Bill Roe, ASC;
actors Sarah Paulson, Tony Revolori and Giovanni Ribisi, who
served as presenters; film critic Leonard Maltin; filmmakers
Peter and Bobby Farrelly, saluting Presidents Award recipient
Matt Leonetti, ASC; and Lawrence Kasdan, who introduced
Lifetime Achievement Award winner John Bailey, ASC.
In her acceptance speech, Streisand singled out many of
the prominent ASC members shes collaborated with over the
course of her career as both an actor and director, offering anecdotes about their personalities, skills and contributions. Im
grateful to the American Society of Cinematographers for
giving me this award, she added. I have such profound respect
for your craft. I cherish your artistry, and I look forward to working with you again.
In addition to Streisands honor and the others listed
above, special ASC Awards handed out during the event
included the Bud Stone Award of Distinction, presented to
ASC associate members Denny Clairmont and Otto Nemenz;
and the International Award, presented to Phil Mheux, BSC.
Following the ceremony, Panavision sponsored a packed

afterparty that didnt shut down until the wee hours of the
morning. Prior to the Awards, the ASC hosted a series of events
at its Clubhouse headquarters in Hollywood: a Nominees
Dinner on Feb. 13 and a Sponsors Breakfast and Open House
on Feb. 14.
Here are the nominees in all of the evenings competitive
categories, presented in alphabetical order, with winners highlighted in boldfaced type:
ASC Spotlight Award: Peter Flinckenberg, FSC, Concrete
Night; Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC, The Immigrant; Daniel
Landin, BSC, Under the Skin.
Television Movie/Miniseries/Pilot Award: David Greene,
CSC, The Trip to Bountiful; John Lindley, ASC, Manhattan
pilot; David Stockton, ASC, Gotham pilot; Theo van de Sande,
ASC, Deliverance Creek.
Television Series Award: PJ Dillon, Vikings, Blood Eagle;
Jonathan Freeman, ASC, Boardwalk Empire, Golden Days
for Boys and Girls; Anette Haellmigk, Game of Thrones, The
Children; Christopher Norr, Gotham, Spirit of the Goat;
Richard Rutkowski, Manhattan, Perestroika; Fabian Wagner,
BSC, Game of Thrones, Mockingbird.
Theatrical Release Award: Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC,
Unbroken; scar Faura, The Imitation Game; Emmanuel
Lubezki, ASC, AMC, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of
Ignorance); Dick Pope, BSC, Mr. Turner; Robert D. Yeoman,
ASC, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
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May 2015
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4
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Opposite: Lifetime Achievement Award recipient John Bailey, ASC. This page: 1. Awards Chairman Lowell
Peterson, ASC greets guests during his speech. 2. John Simmons, ASC introduces the evenings opening clip
reel. 3. ASC associate Dana Ross introduces the International Award. 4. Phil Mheux, BSC accepts the
International Award. 5. Rodney Taylor, ASC presents the Spotlight Award. 6. Cinematographer Peter
Flinckenberg, FSC accepts the Spotlight Award for his work on the Finnish feature Concrete Night. 7. Actor
Tony Revolori outlines the Television Movie/Miniseries/Pilot category. 8. John Lindley, ASC accepts the
award for the Manhattan pilot. 9. Co-hosts Matthew Libatique, ASC and Delphine Figueras entertain the
crowd. 10. Directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly greet their friend and collaborator Matthew Leonetti, ASC.
11. Leonetti accepts the ASC Presidents Award.
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May 2015
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1. Andrzej Bartkowiak, ASC presents the Board of Governors Award to his longtime friend
Barbra Streisand. 2. Streisand charms the crowd with her fond memories of
cinematographers shes worked alongside. 3. Actor Sarah Paulson presents the Television
Series award to Jonathan Freeman, ASC for his work on the Boardwalk Empire episode
Golden Days for Boys and Girls. 4. Freeman offers his effusive gratitude for the honor.
5. Toting his Career Achievement in Television Award, ASC member Bill Roe shares a
moment with actor Nathan Fillion at the evenings official afterparty. 6. Fillion greets Roe at
the podium after roasting him fondly. 7. Roe exits the stage to the triumphal strains of the
USC Trojans Fight Song. 8. ASC President Richard Crudo thanks event sponsors and Society
staffers. 9. ASC Vice President Kees van Oostrum takes the stage to present the Bud Stone
Award of Distinction. 10. Bud Stone Award co-recipients Denny Clairmont and Otto Nemenz
express their delight at the surprise honor. 11. The industry icons pose with their plaques.
11
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May 2015
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1
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1. Filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan introduces the Lifetime Achievement
Award. 2. Kasdan presents the Lifetime honor to his friend John Bailey,
ASC. 3. Bailey waves in appreciation. 4. Bailey and Kasdan appear at
the afterparty. 5. Actor Giovanni Ribisi presents the Theatrical Release
award to Emmanuel Chivo Lubezki, ASC, AMC. 6. Lubezki hoists his
trophy after the ceremony. 7. Bartkowiak and Streisand demonstrate
their mutual affection. 8. Flinckenberg and Taylor reunite at the
afterparty. 9. Nominees PJ Dillon (Vikings, Blood Eagle) and Fabian
Wagner, BSC (Game of Thrones, Mockingbird) share the spotlight.
10. Ribisi, Figueras, Libatique, Mimi Rossi and Kasdan watch the show
from backstage.
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May 2015
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1. From left: Mona Roizman; Owen Roizman, ASC;

honorary ASC member D. Brian Spruill; Eric Roizman;
and Spruills wife, Joanne. 2. Film critic Leonard
Maltin and his wife, Alice, share a table with Connie
Peirce and her beau, Russ Alsobrook, ASC. 3. Rita
Taggart; Haskell Wexler, ASC; and ASC associate Mark
Kirkland. 4. Lubezki shares a moment with his
daughter, Alejandra. 5. Taylor with honorary ASC
member Larry Parker. 6. From left: Meredith
Emmanuel hobnobs with cinematographer and past
ASC Award winner Blake McClure and his wife, Sarah
Beguiristain McClure; American Cinematographer
editor-in-chief and publisher Stephen Pizzello;
cinematographer Svetlana Cvetko; and journalist
David Heuring. 7. The Imitation Game director Morten
Tyldum and his nominated cinematographer, scar
Faura, flank Shari Shankewitz. 8. Pizzello with
Figueras, his wife of 12 years, who serves as the ASC
presidents assistant when shes not onstage.
9. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
President Cheryl Boone Isaacs with offstage host
Milt Shefter and his wife, Joy.
8
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May 2015
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1. Steven Fierberg, ASC and his wife, Shielu (left) with
Dean Cundey, ASC and his wife, Patricia Cowmeadow;
2. Brian Holt and ASC associate Beverly Wood.
3. Nominee David Greene, CSC (The Trip to Bountiful)
and Karen Wilson. 4. Steven Overman, Anne Hubbell
and Wayne Martin. 5. Nominee David Stockton, ASC
(Gotham pilot) and Eagle Egilsson, ASC flank Egilssons
wife, Denice. 6. Nominees Fabian Wagner, BSC; Anette
Haellmigk (Game of Thrones, The Children) and
Jonathan Freeman, ASC. 7. Jacek Laskus, ASC and
Robert McLachlan, ASC, CSC. 8. Michael Brodersen,
Michael Mintz and Mark Doering-Powell, ASC.
9. ASC associate Mark van Horne and Bruce McCleery.
10. Nominee Theo van de Sande, ASC (Deliverance
Creek) and Bailey with Clyde Bryan and his wife,
Maureen.
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May 2015
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1. Van Oostrum and Crudo with van

Oostrums son Raphael. 2. James Brolin with
Streisand. 3. Nominee Roger Deakins, ASC,
BSC (Unbroken) with Stephen Goldblatt, ASC,
BSC and nominee Dick Pope, BSC (Mr.
Turner). 4. Daryn Okada, ASC and Roizman.
5. Victor J. Kemper, ASC; Megan Stacey; Bill
Bennett, ASC; and Bill Wages, ASC.
6. Nominee Robert Yeoman, ASC (The Grand
Budapest Hotel) and his wife, Sheridan
Farrell. 7. Maria Carpenter and Jeff Pentek.
8. Mary Seward and Christian Sebaldt, ASC.
9. Cean Okada and Curtis Clark, ASC.
10. Leonetti surrounded by family
and friends.
10
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May 2015
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7
6
9
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1. Raphael van Oostrum and his parents, Kees van Oostrum,
ASC and Ester Spitz, with Michle Ohayon and nominee Theo
van de Sande, ASC. 2. Crudo with Owen and Mona Roizman.
3. Janet Parks and Michael Margulies, ASC. 4. Matthew
Libatique, ASC flanked by his son, Zeke, and daughter,
Audrey. 5. Janice Simpson and ASC associate Grover Crisp.
6. ASC associate Franz Wieser and his wife, Philo. 7. James
and Roger Deakins flank Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
8. ASC associate Tim Smith with Rodney Charters, ASC, CSC.
9. Sant Amar; Checco Varese, ASC; Angarag Davaasuren;
Oliver Bokelberg, ASC, BVK; American Cinematographer
circulation director Saul Molina; and Carmen Cabana.
10. Michael Goi, ASC with his wife, Gina; 11. ASC associate
Frank Kay and his wife, Sharlene. 12. Libatique and Figueras
grab cocktails after the show.
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May 2015
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1. Guests mingle in the lobby just outside the Century
Plazas banquet hall. 2. Andrew Evenski and ASC associate
Kimberly Snyder. 3. Kenneth Zunder, ASC with his wife,
Julie. 4. Nominee Christopher Norr (Gotham, Spirit of the
Goat) and Andrea Ashton. 5. ASC associate Bruce Berke
and his wife, Darlene. 6. Larry and Pam Parker. 7. Bert
Stilman and Judy Stone. 8. John and Suzanne Shook with
George Spiro Dibie, ASC. 9. David Darby, ASC and his
wife, Pat. 10. Robert Primes, ASC and his wife, Theo. 11.
Members of the Panavision team toast their late friend
Scott Fleischer, an ASC associate who served as the
companys vice president of marketing in New York.
11
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May 2015
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1. During the annual Nominees Dinner, Crudo and Peterson posed for photo ops with
various nominees, including Daniel Landin, BSC (Under the Skin). 2. Andrea Stockton
accepts a plaque on behalf of her husband, David Stockton, ASC. 3. Longtime friends
James Deakins and Beverly Wood catch up. 4. Christopher Norr. 5. David Greene, CSC.
6. Robert Yeoman, ASC. 7. Richard Rutkowski (Manhattan, Perestroika). 8. ASC
associate Tom Fletcher and his wife, Cindy. 9. Kenneth Zunder, ASC accepts a plaque
on behalf of John Lindley, ASC. 10. Steven Fierberg and his wife, Shielu, with Crudo
and journalist Carolyn Giardina.
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www.theasc.com
1. Isidore Mankofsky, ASC with his trusty camera.

2. Phil Mheux, BSC with Wolfram Parge.
3. Owen Roizman, ASC greets Dick Pope, BSC, as
Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC looks on. 4. Bill Roe,
ASC and his wife, Kathy, flank longtime friends
Owen and Mona Roizman. 5. Robert Primes, ASC
chats with Stephen Lighthill, ASC and his wife,
Veronika. 6. Nominee Theo van de Sande, ASC
takes the podium. 7. Nominees and honorees
assemble for a group photo on the front steps of
the ASC Clubhouse. 8. Yeoman shares a convivial
moment with fellow ASC member Dean Cundey.
9. Yeoman accepts his plaque.
May 2015
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1. Crudo addresses guests at the annual Sponsors Breakfast
prior to the ASC Open House event on the day before the
awards. 2. Bill Bennett, ASC welcomes guests. 3. Karl Walter
Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK with Kees van Oostrum, ASC. 4. Jon
Fauer, ASC and John Bailey, ASC encounter Dean Cundey, ASC
and Bill Taylor, ASC. 5. The Sponsors Breakfast in full swing.
6. Van Oostrum with David Darby, ASC. 7. ASC associate Mark
Bender with Gil Hubbs, ASC. 8. Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC poses
with a group of admirers. 9. John Schwartzman, ASC shares
his wisdom with a visitor. 10. Guests enjoy the warm weather
during the Open House. Chatting at lower left are Caleb
Deschanel, ASC and Camerimage Film Festival director and
ASC honorary member Marek Zydowicz, who had recently
honored Deschanel with the festivals 2014 Lifetime
Achievement Award.
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May 2015
THE AMERICAN SOCIETY
OF
CINEMATOGRAPHERS
Thanks Our Sponsors for Their Support of the 29th Annual ASC Awards
A&J Cases
AbelCine
Active Camera Systems
AJA Video Systems
Alternative Rentals
Angarag Davaasuren
Anton/Bauer
ARRI, Inc.
ARRI Rental Group
Artistry
Autoscript
Barbizon Lighting Company
Best Audio
Birns & Sawyer
Blackmagic Design
Camera Dept., The
Camera House, The
CamTec
Canon U.S.A., Inc.
Cartoni
Chapman/Leonard Studio Equipment, Inc.
Checkers Industrial Safety Products
Chimera
Cine Gear Expo
Cine Lab
Cinelease, Inc.
Cinema Shot
Cinemills Corporation
Cineverse
Claire Best & Associates
Clairmont Camera
Codex Digital
Columbia College Chicago
Company 3
Cooke Optics Ltd.
Creative Technology
CW Sonderoptic GmbH Leica
Dattner Dispoto and Associates
Daufenbach Camera
Dedotec USA, Inc.
Digital Bolex
Dolby Laboratories
DPS Production Specialists
EFILM
Encore Hollywood
FJS International
FotoKem
Fox Searchlight
Fujinon
GEO Film Group
Gersh Agency, The
Global Artists Agency
Green Hasson Janks
HBO
Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel
IATSE Local 600
IATSE 667 & 669
IATSE Local 728, Set Lighting Technicians
ICM
Ignite PR
Illumination Dynamics
IMAX Post/DKP Inc.
Innovative Artists
J.L. Fisher, Inc.
JVC ProHD
K5600, Inc.
Keslow Camera, Inc.
Kino Flo, Inc.
Kodak
Koerner Camera
Law Offices of Stephen D. Marks
Lee Filters
LiteGear
Litepanels, Inc.
Local 817, Teamsters IBT
Luminys
Maccam Inc.
Mac Tech LED
Matthews Studio Equipment
Modern VideoFilm
Mole-Richardson Company
Motion Picture Studio Mechanics, Local 52
MPS
Murtha Agency
NBCUniversal
Nikon
OConnor
Osram
Otto Nemenz International, Inc.
Panasonic
Panavision
Paskal Lighting
PC&E
Pixar Animation Studios
Power Gems Corp.
Preston Cinema Systems
PRG Production Resource Group
ProTapes and Specialities
Rag Place, The
RED
Rosco
Rose Brand
Sandra Marsh & Associates
Service Vision
SESLER
Shadowstone
SIM Digital
Sony Electronics
Sony Pictures Classics
Studio Depot
Technicolor
Thales Angenieux
Tiffen
TWC The Weinstein Company
Universal Pictures
UTA United Talent Agency
Vantage Film GmbH (Hawk)
Vision Research (Phantom)
Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging
West Coast Cine Video, Inc.
William F. White
WME
Worldwide Production Agency
Zeiss
With Very Special Thanks to DPS Production Specialists, Illumination Dynamics, Mole-Richardson Company and Technicolor
www.theasc.com
May 2015
85
New Products & Services

Arri Adds Mini, SXT to
Alexa Family
Arri has unveiled the Alexa
Mini, which combines a compact
and lightweight form factor with
the image quality of the Alexa
camera range. Designed for
specialized shot making, the Alexa
Mini allows crews to eliminate the
complications of integrating thirdparty camera systems into a
productions workflow.
To deliver rugged build quality in the small camera, the Alexa
Mini incorporates a number of unique design solutions. These
include highly integrated and environmentally sealed electronics, a
lightweight carbon housing, and a solid titanium PL mount that
connects directly with the new internal sensor mount to ensure a
super-stable flange focal distance even when using large lenses.
The Alexa Mini can be operated in a number of ways: by
wireless remote control; as a normal camera with the Arri MVF-1
multi viewfinder attached; or with an onboard monitor and the
user-button interface on the camera body. Light enough to be
comfortably held at arms length in a hand rig, the cameras
compact size and extremely quiet operation also make it ideal for
tight shooting conditions. The symmetrical design permits shooting
in any orientation, including upside down and in portrait mode,
while multiple accessory points enable creative mounting solutions.
Additionally, the Alexa Minis interchangeable lens mount can be
replaced with any mount designed for the Arri Amira, allowing the
use of B4 video and EF-mount stills lenses.
Equipped with a 4:3 sensor, automatic de-squeeze mode for
anamorphic productions, and frame rates of 0.75-200 fps, the Alexa
Mini records ProRes (including 4K UHD ProRes) or uncompressed
ArriRaw either in-camera to CFast 2.0 cards or to a specially
designed external Codex recorder that can record image streams
from up to four Alexa Minis simultaneously a useful option for
multi-camera setups such as 360-degree plate shots.
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May 2015
SUBMISSION INFORMATION
Please e-mail New Products/Services releases to
newproducts@ascmag.com and include full contact
information and product images. Photos must be
TIFF or JPEG files of at least 300dpi.
A built-in lens motor controller allows new active lens motors

to be connected directly to the titanium PL mount, while Arri Lens
Data System technology provides frame-accurate metadata that can
save time and money both on set and in post. Wi-Fi connectivity
means that iOS or Android devices can be used to remotely control
camera functions such as the motorized internal ND filters, which
permit rapid responses to changing light conditions without adding
bulk to the camera configuration.
The body design is optimized for use with new-generation
brushless gimbals, multicopters and other specialized rigs. It is
compact enough in the lens direction to allow the use of standard
PL-mount lenses even on lightweight and space-constrained rigs,
such as gyro-stabilized aerial systems. The cameras low-light performance makes it an excellent option for underwater work.
In addition to the Alexa Mini, Arri has also introduced Alexa
SXT (Super Xtended Technology) cameras, which represent the next
step in the continuing evolution of the Alexa family. Alexa SXT
cameras offer ProRes 4K UHD (3840x2160) and ProRes 4K Cine
(4096x2637) recording, improved image quality, powerful color
management, and three fully independent HD-SDI outputs. The full
range will comprise Alexa SXT EV, SXT Plus and SXT Studio models,
replacing the current Alexa XT cameras (though the Alexa Classic EV
will remain in the lineup).
Alexa SXT cameras keep the 3.4K Alev III sensor of previous
Alexas and add the state-of-the-art electronics of Arris Alexa 65
camera. These high-performance electronics combine the latest
generation of FPGA processors with a lightning-fast internal backplane and form the basis of a completely overhauled image-processing chain, advanced pixel correction and optional noise reduction.
Like their XT predecessors, Alexa SXT cameras retain the Open Gate,
4:3 and 16:9 sensor modes, which can be recorded in ArriRaw or
ProRes.
Utilizing the color-management engine developed for the Arri
Amira camera, the Alexa SXT cameras introduce a new type of look
file, the ALF-2 (Arri Look File 2), which contains an ASC CDL and a
3D LUT. (ALF-2 files and the tools that create them are compatible
between Alexa SXT, Alexa Mini and Amira cameras.) The previewing
of looks on set has also been improved with the option to use the
wide color gamut of Rec 2020 gamma.
The Alexa SXT cameras incorporate an SXR (Super Xtended
Recording) Module; the revised Codex recording engine is similar to
the system that is built into the Alexa 65 and supports the latest SXR
Capture Drives, which offer a 20GB/s data rate. Existing XR Capture
Drives will also work with Alexa SXT cameras. Alexa SXT cameras
also feature a new media bay, developed by Codex, that features
adapters for XR and SXR Capture Drives, SxS cards and CFast 2.0
cards.
For additional information, visit www.arri.com.
om or call for our latest Maglinerr product catalog

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Marshall Electronics Unveils

Monitor, Cameras
Marshall Electronics has added the VLCD70-AFHD camera-top monitor to its 7"
monitor family. The high-resolution 1024x600
monitor brings together many of Marshalls
trademark features in one versatile monitor,
including multiple inputs, picture-in-picture,
image flip, screen markers, peaking filter, false
color and zebra filters.
The V-LCD70-AFHD has a bright 500
cd/m2 screen and 700:1 contrast ratio. The
intuitive menu is fully accessible from the front
of the monitor, where adjustments can be
made to color, exposure, picture orientation,
or aspect ratio from full screen to 4:3, 14:9
and 16:9. Additional features include one
HDMI input that is HDCP compliant, 3G-SDI
input/loop-through output, composite and
component inputs/outputs, two channels of
embedded audio, and a stereo headphone
jack.
The company has also unveiled two
new HD mini broadcast cameras. The CV3505XB 2-megapixel HD-SDI/HDMI camera
boasts 5x optical zoom aided by a Canon
Auto Focus System to maintain a clear, crisp
picture while zooming from 4-20mm. The
CV200-MB is a compact lipstick camera with
multiple Full-HD formats and an IP67 weatherproof body. Both cameras offer unique
feature sets and complement the Marshall
POV Pro-Series Broadcast Camera line.
Delivering Full HD video, the CV3505XB comes with an IR Remote Control for
zoom and menu functions as well as RS-485
interface; output options such as HDSDI,
3GSDI and HDMI are useful for a variety of
applications. The CV200-MB features a 13"
2.1-megapixel CMOS sensor and 3.6mm 3MP
M12-mount lens; additional features include
auto white balance, double shutter wide
dynamic range, and color and gamma
control.
For additional information, visit
www.lcdracks.com.
%DFNVWDJH(TXLSPHQW,QF/DQNHUVKLP%O1RUWK+ROO\ZRRG&$)D

) [
EDFNVWDJHG#DROFRPZZZEDFNVWDJHZHEFRP
1HZ<RUN6KRZ
R URRP&:,+:
WK6W1HZ<RUN1<0U&$67(5EDFNVWDJH#FZLKFRPZZZFZLKFRP
Telecine &
Color Grading
Jod is a true artist with
a great passion for his craft.
John W. Simmons, ASC
Contact Jod @ 310-713-8388

Jod@apt-4.com
87
Chrosziel Supports Sony FS7

Chrosziel has introduced the Light
Weight Support 401-FS7, which has been
purpose-built to contour to Sonys PXW-FS7
camera and provide the optimum balance
when the camera is shoulder-mounted.
The new base plate features a slim
design with a sturdy and ergonomic shoulder pad that slides into a comfortable location for optimal balance. The system also
offers two 15mm rods that are 205mm
long, with a threaded insert for extension
rods. The integrated Hirth rosettes provide
mounting points for accessories such as
Chrosziel Leather Handgrips. An integrated
V-mount reliably affixes the camera to most
quick-lock plates.
The LWS mounts to the camera base
at several points for secure positioning. It
can also be combined with the Chrosziel
19mm DigiCine Bridgeplate 401-F235 to
provide support for large zoom lenses.
Chrosziel products are manufactured in Germany and exclusively distributed in the U.S. by Schneider Optics. For
more information, visit www.schneiderop
tics.com.
CamRade Enables
Run&Gun Shooting
CamRade, an Alphatron Broadcast
Electronics brand, has introduced the
Run&Gun camera-bag collection. Designed
to carry a wide range of fully assembled
cameras, each Run&Gun bag features a
water-resistant 1,000-denier black Cordura
exterior with reinforced inlays and a soft,
padded interior for maximum protection.
The bags also come equipped with soft
handles and a suede shoulder strap, and
are backed with a 5-year warranty.
The collection currently comprises
three bags. The Run&Gun Medium bag has
an interior length of 21.3", suitable for
camcorders and handheld cameras such as
the Sony PXW-X70, Canon XF300/305,
Panasonic AG-HPX250/255, JVC GYHM170/200 or Blackmagic Cinema/Produc88
May 2015
tion cameras. The Run&Gun Large bag is

designed for cameras up to 23.6" in length,
and is well suited for the AJA Cion, Red Epic
and Blackmagic Ursa cameras. The
Run&Gun XL is ready to safely transport
cameras such as the Sony PMW-F5/F55,
Panasonic VariCam and Arri Amira.
The bags padded interior includes
removable dividers, which make it easy to
arrange the main compartment for custom
requirements. A cinch strap in the main

compartment keeps the camera secured
during transportation, and the bottom of
the bag is equipped with a protective
armored plate covered by a waterproof nonslip cover.
www.camrade.com.
PLC Debuts Veracity
Control Wheel
PLC Electronic Solutions and Camera
Positioning Systems two companies with
decades of film-industry-related robotics
engineering and on-set camera experience
have introduced the Veracity Control
Wheel System, a fully standalone, professional control solution for RC camera gimbal
systems such as the Freefly Movi and DJI
Ronin.
The Veracity Control Wheel System
quickly plugs into the standard trainer port
on most RC controllers, including Spektrum,
Futaba, Movi and Graupner, with no latency.
With intuitive gear ratio and direction
controls similar to most industry-standard
remote heads, the system can be powered
by any common on-set power source.

The custom CNC machined hand
wheels are mounted on precision shafts
using ultra-high-resolution encoders to
provide the smooth operation and perfect
balance that operators expect. The sealed,
rugged aluminum housing and flexible
mounting options allow the user to be up
and running in minutes.
www.plcelectronicsolutions.com.
16x9 Distributes Flowcine
Puppeteer
16x9 Inc., a distributor and producer
of high-end accessories for film and video
production, has announced that the Flowcine Puppeteer single-axis gimbal accessory
made for use with the EasyRig Cinema 3
or EasyRig Gimbal Rig is available for
general distribution.
Offering multiple mounting solutions, the Puppeteer was designed to work
hand in hand with popular gimbals such as
the DJI Ronin and FreeFly Movi M5 and
M10. The top handle grips are made for
25mm and 30mm tubes (with the included
adapter rings; 22mm is coming soon).
When used with the EasyRig, the Puppeteer
improves the flexibility and the free-flowing
movement of the gimbal. By combining the

EasyRig, the Flowcine Serene Y-axis stabilizer and the Flowcine Puppeteer, camera
operators have an affordable solution to
achieving complex moving shots without
the use of expensive motorized equipment.
The Puppeteer single-axis system can
be upgraded to a dual-axis system, which is
scheduled to become available this month.
The Puppeteers single axis controls the
pitch of the camera while the dual axis
controls both the pitch and roll.
www.16x9inc.com.
International Marketplace
90
May 2015
Wa
atch out
for exx-demo a n d
used equipm
ment!
www..movietech.de
Classifieds
CLASSIFIED AD RATES
All classifications are $4.50 per word. Words set in bold face or all capitals are $5.00 per word. First word of ad
and advertisers name can be set in capitals without extra charge. No agency commission or discounts on classified
advertising.PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER. VISA, Mastercard, AmEx and Discover card are accepted. Send ad to
Classified Advertising, American Cinematographer, P.O. Box 2230, Hollywood, CA 90078. Or FAX (323) 8764973. Deadline for payment and copy must be in the office by 15th of second month preceding publication. Subject
matter is limited to items and services pertaining to filmmaking and video production. Words used are subject to magazine style abbreviation. Minimum amount per ad: $45
EQUIPMENT FOR SALE
EMPLOYMENT
4X5 85 Glass Filters, Diffusion, Polas etc. A

Good Box Rental 818-763-8547
Sales Account Manager (Dealer Sales)

Canon U.S.A., Inc.
14,000+ USED EQUIPMENT ITEMS. PRO

VIDEO & FILM EQUIPMENT COMPANY. 50
YEARS EXPERIENCE. New: iLLUMiFLEX
LIGHTS & FluidFlex TRIPODS.
www.UsedEquipmentNewsletter.com AND
www.ProVideoFilm.com
EMAIL: ProVidFilm@aol.com
CALL BILL 972 869 9990, 888 869 9998.
This Field Sales position is responsible for sales of

Cinema EOS, Cinema Lenses, Professional Video,
Digital SLR, and EF Lenses to existing dealer base
and potential new business. This is a Southern California based position.
Worlds SUPERMARKET of USED MOTION

PICTURE EQUIPMENT! Buy, Sell, Trade.
CAMERAS, LENSES, SUPPORT, AKS & MORE!
Visual
Products,
Inc.
www.visualproducts.com Call 440.647.4999
Requires min. 3 years sales experience in the

consumer, professional Video field or similar field
(electronics related).
Detailed job information and to apply online:
https://jobs-cusa.icims.com/jobs/5156/job
View additional career opportunities:
https://jobs-cusa.icims.com/jobs/intro
Questions call: Nancy Rosen, 949-753-4089
www.theasc.com
May 2015
91
Advertisers Index
AC 87
Adorama 9, 41
AJA Video Systems, Inc. 19
Alan Gordon Enterprises 90
Arri 11
ASC Master Class 93
Aura Productions 87
Backstage Equipment, Inc.
87
Barger-Lite 8
Birns & Sawyer 53
Blackmagic Design, Inc. 15
Carl Zeiss SBE, LLC 21
Cavision Enterprises 90
Chapman/Leonard
Studio Equip. 29
Chrosziel 55
Cine Gear Expo 93
Cinelease 23
Cinematography
Electronics 55
Cinekinetic 90
Cooke Optics 13
CW Sonderoptic Gmbh 17
92
DPS 7
Duclos Lenses 8
Eastman Kodak C4
Filmotechnic USA 67
Glidecam Industries C3
Hertz Corporation 23
Hexolux/Visionsmith 53
Jod Soraci 87
Jonathan Kutner 91
K5600 27
Kingf Film USA Group 90
Kino Flo 57
Lee Filters 43
Lights! Action! Co. 90
Manfrotto Distribution 39
Mole-Richardson /Studio Depot
91
Movie Tech AG 90, 91
Nila, Inc. 8
No Subtitles Necessary 56
P+S Technik
Feinmechanik Gmbh 91
Paralinx 51
Pille Filmgeraeteverleih
Gmbh 90
Pro8mm 90
Red Digital Cinema C2-1

Schneider Optics 2
Siggraph 31
Super16, Inc. 90
Teradek, LLC 5
TNS&F Productions 91
UCLA Health MPTF (Motion
Picture and TV Fund) 25
Visionary Forces 91
Welch Integrated 65
Willys Widgets 90
www.theasc.com 42, 92,
95
Yes Watches 66
From top: ASC members Francis Kenny and Richard

Crudo flank Henner Hofmann, ASC, AMC while
visiting Centro de Capacitacin Cinematogrfica,
A.C.; Crudo addresses a group of students; Crudo
and Kenny conduct a seminar at Chapala Media
Park, with Dan Ikeda and ASC associate Mark
Bender of the Tiffen Co. providing Steadicam
instruction; Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC with AC
editor-in-chief and publisher Stephen Pizzello.
94
May 2015
ASC Extends Educational

Outreach to Mexico
American Society of Cinematographers President Richard Crudo and Society
member Francis Kenny recently led a series
of instructional seminars in Mexico as part
of a joint ASC/American Cinematographer
trip to Mexico City and Guadalajara.
Accompanying the pair were Dan Ikeda and
ASC associate Mark Bender of Tiffen, who
provided Steadicam instruction during
hands-on lighting-and-camera sessions.
Gabriel Beristain, ASC, BSC met up with the
group near Guadalajara to participate in a
press conference outlining the Societys
educational initiatives and its Master Class
program, and AC editor-in-chief and
publisher Stephen Pizzello was also in
Guadalajara to answer questions about the
magazines role as the ASCs flagship publication.
The excursion began in Mexico City,
where Crudo and Kenny conducted a
professional-development seminar and
lighting workshop sponsored by Canon
Mexicana, Umpeq TV, CTT EXP & Rentals,
Aianet and Litepanels. On the following
morning, the ASC delegation paid a visit to
Revolutions stages to see a demonstration
of the Bolt High-Speed Cinebot, a six-axis
motion-control arm designed in England by
Mark Roberts Motion Control. Later in the
afternoon, the group met with executives at
the Mexican mass-media company Televisa,
where they discussed the facilitys desire to
upgrade its systems to a 4K platform and
had a general talk about cameras and lighting techniques.
That evening, the ASCs emissaries
visited the Centro de Capacitacin Cinematogrfica, A.C. (also known as El
CCC), an elite film school supported by
Mexicos National Council for Culture and
Arts. CCC director Henner Hofmann, ASC,
AMC welcomed the Societys delegation,
introducing them to members of the Mexican Society of Cinematographers and a
group of students who were invited to ask
Kenny and Crudo questions about their
cinematography for the FX Network television series Justified.

The ASC group then visited Instituto
Tecnolgico de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), where Crudo and Kenny
shared their knowledge and professional
experience with 120 university students.
Next, after traveling to Guadalajara, the duo
led mini Master Classes at Chapala
Media Park, a studio facility located 45
minutes south of Guadalajara. The park is
managed and maintained by the Jalisco
Institute of Information Technology (IJALTI)
with support from both the federal and
state governments.
The visiting cinematographers,
working closely with Bender and Ikeda,
offered 15 students from Latin America and
the Caribbean three intensive days of
instruction in lighting, composition, camera
movement and other aspects of their craft.
Volunteers served as models on a threewalled set lit with equipment provided by
the facility and by Circulo Blanco S.A. de
C.V., Umpeq TV, CTT EXP & Rentals and
Litepanels. Informative Q&A sessions with
Crudo and Kenny covered a wide variety of
topics to supplement the tech lessons.
During the press conference at
Chapala Media Park, which featured a Q&A
session with more than a dozen Mexican
media outlets, Beristain joined the group to
help emphasize the ASCs ongoing commitment to educational outreach. After returning to the U.S., he noted that he offered his
enthusiastic support by serving as a liaison
with the Guadalajara International Film
Festival, which included the ASC instructional sessions as part of its educational
programming.
Its always an eye-opener for me
when Im traveling around the world as part
of an ASC delegation, Crudo reflects. In
Mexico, especially, we find that theres a
profound desire for direct contact with our
members. On this trip, the students were
very well schooled by the time we met
them, so any instruction we offered necessarily began at a somewhat refined level.
Photo of Clubhouse by Isidore Mankofsky, ASC; lighting by Donald M. Morgan, ASC.

Mexico photos by Alex Beatty and Saul Molina.
Clubhouse News
In Memoriam: Roy Isaia

ASC associate member Roy Isaia,
the founder of Matthews Studio Equipment,
lost his battle with leukemia on February 16.
Isaia started in the industry in the
1960s as a grip and head of the sewing
room at Paramount, working on iconic
movies like The Odd Couple, Rosemarys
Baby, Barefoot in the Park and True Grit. Fed
up with the equipment available at the time,
he quit his job at Paramount, found work as
a grip on commercials for Sandler Studios
and Filmfair, and began creating equipment
on the side. Isaias Dots and Fingers, used for
selective light blocking, were noticed by
people like Bill White Sr., and the tools
began to sell in Canada to what eventually
became the William F. White Company.
But it was their hunger to grow in knowledge that was so impressive. With the
wonderful success Mexican cinematographers have been having during the past few
awards seasons, its apparent they must be
doing something right.
Van Oostrum Tests Arri Amira
Kees van Oostrum, ASC recently
tested the Arri Amira and presented his
findings during an open-house event at
Arris Burbank facility. Accompanied by ASC
associate Stephan Ukas-Bradley, director
of strategic business development and
technical marketing at Arri, Inc., van Oostrum presented his test footage of the Amira
4K UHD camera during two back-to-back,
standing-room-only screening sessions. Van
Oostrum discussed his desire to put the
camera through its paces and see how it
behaves with highlights, the dark side of
faces, shooting with diffusion, lighting a set
with practicals, and shooting six to seven
stops overexposed. Van Oostrum screened
examples of shooting in 3.2K, HD and UHD
as well as with the use of a Black Satin
filter and a 3.2K up-res to UHD. After the
screenings, van Oostrum and Ukas-Bradley
answered questions from the audience.
By 1970, Isaia had given up his day

job and formed Matthews Studio Equipment, named after his son. He began outfitting Cinemobile Systems trucks, with
construction supervised by a young man
named Ed Phillips (now an ASC associate).
Phillips left Cinemobile to work for Isaia, and
the two were soon consulting for cinematographers like John A. Alonzo, ASC for
the production of Chinatown.
One of the reasons Matthews
became so well-known was Roys enthusiasm, says Phillips, who purchased the
company in 1976. He didnt wait for
customers to come to him; he went to the
far corners literally to introduce his
products.
Everybody Hates Chris and participated in

the ASC/PGA Camera Assessment Series in
2009. His recent television credits include 10
Things I Hate About You, Glory Daze,
Workaholics, Jane by Design and Super Fun
Night. He is currently shooting the one-hour
drama Hindsight.
Society Welcomes
Doering-Powell
Raised in Germany and the U.S.,
new active member Mark DoeringPowell grew up immersed in art, drawing
and painting. Doering-Powell interned with
American artist Beverly Nevers before
attending the Pratt Institute in New York
City. He began his career behind the camera
in New York, starting as a camera assistant.
Doering-Powell now resides in California, where he has filmed nine pilots, 12
feature films and more than 300 hours of
episodic television. He received two Primetime Emmy nominations for his work on
www.theasc.com
Camerimage Winners Show

Camerimage in partnership with
the ASC and the American Film Institute
Conservatorys cinematography discipline,
and with the support of Panavision and the
International Cinematographers Guild
recently held its fifth annual winners show
at the AFI campus in Los Angeles. The show
brings selected winning films from the
Camerimage Film Festival to Los Angeles
with special screenings of four features, four
documentaries, three student etudes, two
music videos and two additional special
screenings over the course of three days.
May 2015
95
Close-up
Jon Joffin, ASC
When you were a child, what film made the strongest impression on you?
My most memorable moment came when I sat in a dark theater and
watched Apocalypse Now. I was blown away by everything I saw in
the film the colors, the images, the music, the vibrancy and
audacity of the storytelling. This was my moment of revelation. I
knew I wanted to become a cinematographer.
Which cinematographers, past or present, do
you most admire?
There are so many that I could write a novel, but
some who really stand out are: Jordan Cronenweth [ASC]; Caleb Deschanel [ASC]; Bruno
Delbonnel [ASC, AFC]; Chris Doyle [HKSC]; Vittorio Storaro [ASC, AIC]; Sean Bobbitt [BSC]; Chris
Menges [ASC, BSC]; Robert Richardson [ASC];
and Emmanuel Lubezki [ASC, AMC].
What sparked your interest in photography?
My love of photography was passed down to me
through my father. I spent countless hours in the darkroom and
buried myself in his photography books and magazines. My idols
were Robert Frank, Eve Arnold, Arnold Newman, Ansel Adams,
Alfred Stieglitz and Manuel lvarez Bravo.
Where did you train and/or study?
York University in Toronto, but most of what I learn comes from
working on set, and I am still learning every day.
Who were your early teachers or mentors?
All the cinematographers on the pages of AC magazine, which I
studied religiously as a student, and still do.
What are some of your key artistic influences?
Paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. Photographs by Sarah Moon
and Julia Margaret Cameron. Early photographic processes:
autochromes, daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, salt prints.
How did you get your first break in the business?
I went out on a day call for The X-Files and was extremely fortunate
to end up shooting on the second unit.
What has been your most satisfying moment on a project?
I was shooting a childrens show that had several musical numbers,
including one that paid homage to Hot Lunch from Fame. The
dancers did a breathtaking routine that was an absolute celebration
of youth and artistic discovery. Their joy was infectious and it quickly
spread to everyone on set. The crew and I were able to capture and
convey their pure emotions in the finished product.
96
May 2015
Have you made any memorable blunders?

A memorable moment for me on The X-Files involved shooting an
alien spaceship that had never been seen on the show before. I
wanted to embrace the shows overriding theme that less is scarier,
so I shot the scene very dark and this was for a show that was
already the darkest on television. The next day, I was called into the
producers office to view the footage with the director. They were
trying to locate the alien ship in my footage
drawing the blinds, leaning close to the TV
screen, squinting their eyes, but all to no avail. I
realized I had mistaken blackness for darkness.
I was convinced Id be fired on the spot. But to my
amazement, neither of them was angry. I was
simply sent off to shoot the scene again.
What is the best professional advice youve
ever received?
Youre never done lighting, but at some point you
have to stop.
What recent books, films or artworks have inspired you?
I love how lyrical and gorgeous Aint Them Bodies Saints is, and I
have never experienced as great a cinematic experience as Gravity.
TV shows that inspire me are Mad Men, Rectify and True Detective.
Also, any book by Neil Gaiman or music by Bon Iver and Sigur Ros.
I view the website 500px almost daily. The photographs are truly
inspiring.
Do you have any favorite genres, or genres you would like to
try?
I like any genre that tells a great story, but I do have a particular fondness for period films.
If you werent a cinematographer, what might you be doing
instead?
I just cant imagine doing anything else.
Which ASC cinematographers recommended you for
membership?
Tobias Schliessler, Jonathan Freeman and Stephen Lighthill.
How has ASC membership impacted your life and career?
Membership in the ASC is a dream realized and a definite high point
of my career. Being in the company of so many incredible cinematographers has inspired me to excel at my craft. I want my work
to reflect the high standards of visual storytelling that the ASC and
its members represent.

2015 05

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M AY 2 0 1 5

An International Publication of the ASC

On Our Cover: An artificial intelligence named Ava (Alicia Vikander) dreams of a

More Than Human

The Academys Sci-Tech Awards honor pioneering technical

Celebrating Art and Science

A pictorial recap of this years ASC Awards events

An International Publication of the ASC

LOOK FOR MORE AT WWW.THEASC.COM

The Water Diviner

An International Publication of the ASC

Visit us online at www.theasc.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF and PUBLISHER

ART & DESIGN

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

ASC GENERAL MANAGER Brett Grauman

American Society of Cinematographers

Kees van Oostrum

Narrative perspective is a key element of filmmaking

Photo by Owen Roizman, ASC.

Photo by Douglas Kirkland.

Gleaming the Cube

Writing, directing and shooting the short film Puzzled proved

Moore, whom Kember describes as a good friend and a great

All images courtesy of the filmmakers.

Cast and crew

Given the productions period

healthy sense of perspective, to be

something on the day, you do yourself a

Top: The crew

editor, Myles Robey, was working on Skyfall

The productions brownish tones

Youth Without End

The Age of Adaline is a romantic drama about a 29-year-old

to New York when he was 13. He started his career as a production

then. We opted instead for [Bausch &

lenses at the ready. Lavender, in turn, has

footage was combined with archival film of

Top: Adalines Model A on a greenscreen stage.

raking the side of the car as it plows into the

hydraulic rotisserie that could roll the car

Close-ups of the car sinking in the

The Imax film Humpback Whales explores the communication, mating,

hits Into the Deep and Deep Sea 3D, served

ily on smoke. Every interior has a bit of a

tions for color, water clarity, contrast and

aerial photography. For airborne tracking

shot around T16 to T22 to optimize the

Underwater cinematographer Howard Hall frames humpbacks in Tonga.

bility; this footage was generally shot at 48

served as his underwater lens. I used an 85

other in an apparent mating dance. The

hotographed by Rob Hardy, BSC, writer/director Alex

but as the tests progress, Caleb begins to suspect other motives

Unit photography by Liam Daniel, courtesy of A24.

its digital companion. Our goal with the

Movietech Camera Rentals, which also

While discussing Ex Machinas

More Than Human

in a relatively stationary position, while

I told our second-unit cinematographer,

More Than Human

tree, or a small furry animal, says Hardy.