I love doing things visually that are completely unexpected," says DP Claudio Miranda, who is represented by Dattner Dispoto and Associates, Los Angeles. "I get excited when directors say, ‘Can we do something really strange?’ I’m always like, ‘By all means!’ "
Miranda’s flair for the unusual made him the perfect choice to lens Pocari’s otherworldly "Tennis" for director Joel Peissig out of Level 7 Productions, Hollywood, via Asatsu/ DK, Tokyo. (Peissig is now with Squeak Pictures, Los Angeles.)
Originally broadcast last year, the spot depicts an exceptionally realistic underwater tennis match. The spot was honored in the cinematography category at the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) Show. "I was shocked," he says of the AICP win. "It’s a great spot, but I haven’t been [a cinematographer] for that long, and to get an award like that right off the bat … I was surprised, but unbelievably happy." The spot also garnered a Bronze Clio for cinematography.
Miranda credits his close working relationship with Peissig for the ad’s success. "It was our first job together, and we just really synched," he says. "We were able to collaborate, to bounce ideas off of each other. I think that’s what helped us a lot."
Though the actual shoot was only two days, Miranda and Peissig did extensive preparation. "I took a water tank home to my house, and we tested lighting on different clothing, how different colors reacted to water," he relates. "And how, when it gets a little bit deeper, things get more de-saturated. We just wanted to be really careful about what lighting levels we chose."
Half the shoot was done at the bottom of a pool (with the help of underwater DP Pete Romano), with the other half on dry land. "All the close-ups of people are under water, and pretty much any shot that’s in the distance was above ground," Miranda relates. "For the above ground, we had these beam projectors, projecting through water tanks into sheets of Mylar on the ceiling."
Miranda says the visual effects, created by Digital Domain, Venice, Calif., "were hugely involved. There’s only one real tennis ball in the whole thing, and that’s the serve."
Greenscreens were used both above and below water; the surreal forest that surrounds the tennis court is also CGI. While Miranda didn’t object to the screens in this case—"obviously, you can’t build a forest underwater"—he typically doesn’t like them. "I find greenscreens totally un-inspirational," he notes. "I like sets. What’s wrong with sets? I think, the more things you have available to light and shoot, the more fun it is."
Feature roots
Although he’s only been working as a spot cinematographer for the past two and a half years, Miranda has been in the film business for well over a decade. "I worked up through the ranks," says the Chilean-born DP. "I had thought about going to Art Center [College of Design, Pasadena, California] but I couldn’t see myself sitting behind a desk. So I was a stage manager, an electrician. Then I became a gaffer on [feature films.] My first job as a gaffer was on the original Crow."
Miranda met director David Fincher, who helms spots out of bicoastal Anonymous Content, when he served as best boy on such Fincher-directed music videos as Madonna’s "Express Yourself" and Aerosmith’s "Janie’s Got a Gun." "I was always the guy who built things for him," relates Miranda, "whatever it was. I was over-ambitious back then."
Fincher was clearly impressed. Once he started directing feature films, he called on Miranda to serve as a gaffer on The Game and Fight Club. And, in 1999, Fincher gave him his first big break as a commercial DP. "He asked me to be a gaffer on The Panic Room, but I turned it down," Miranda recalls. "I told him I had started to shoot, and that I wanted to go in that direction. He said, ‘Well, do you want to shoot for Nike?’ "
Directed by Fincher via Wieden+ Kennedy, Portland, Ore, the six-spot Nike "Filmstrips" campaign featured famous runners, shot in silhouette, with a filmstrip-like border. (Fincher helmed the spots via the now defunct Propaganda Films.) "There were bluescreens and huge top-light rigs that were completely adjustable and all on motors—it was quite a thing," Miranda says. "We took it to Los Angeles, North Carolina and Rome in order to follow the athletes. In Los Angeles, we shot for four days, but the rigs took two days to build. They took four days to build in Rome. There were a lot of pre-light days. Also, I did a lot of blue-screen testing to see how much money I could save, because the darker I could make it, the less lights I needed."
For Miranda—who had also served as a gaffer on the Tony Scott-directed features, Crimson Tide, The Fan and Enemy of the State—lensing his first ad campaign was challenging, but not daunting. After all, he did have some shooting experience. "There was always something when the DP had to leave a movie and, instead of replacing him with another DP, the director would let me step up and continue on," he explains. "When Harris [Savides, cinematographer on The Game] had to leave the set for a little bit, David let me take over for a day and a half. It was basically keeping the work going. It was nothing of my own [design], but it was still experience."
After the "Filmstrips" campaign, Miranda went on to shoot spots for clients such as Mercedes-Benz, Subaru and Toyota, and music videos for such artists as Lenny Kravitz, LL Cool J and The Backstreet Boys.
Recently, Miranda DP’d "Songs," a spot for Mercedes-Benz out of Merkley Newman Harty| Partners, New York, and directed by Dave Meyers, who at the time helmed commercials out of F.M. Rocks, Santa Monica. (Meyers’ spot roost is now bicoastal/international @radical.media; he remains with F.M. Rocks for music videos.) He just completed a project that he says was his "most fun" to date. "It was a Boeing job, with [director] Andrew Becker [of @radical.media]," he reports. "We shot in Prague, and it was basically a bunch of vignettes—one of them was in a cathedral, one was landscape photography, one was in front of a barn, one was in a planetarium. There were no green-screens; it was all real places.
"We did minimal lighting—it was really simple," he continues. "But we really concentrated on compositions. That’s the thing I didn’t get to do gaffing. I knew where the shot was. I knew the limitations left and right, but I didn’t get to set it up. That’s what most interests me now."
Miranda hopes to continue his career as a DP for spots, and possibly, for feature films. "I think there can be great choreography between lighting and performances," he says. "Just think of Apocalypse Now, with Brando acting in that little, thin beam of light. He had to be conscious of that light, otherwise it would have been a pure, black frame."
