One DP values his first ever collaboration with director Rupert Sanders, while another values his ongoing work with director Jake Scott. A third has been heavily involved in HD shoots. And a fourth–who’s primarily a director–talks about his experience with the Red One camera. Add in some observations about the upcoming National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas and that’s the mix this time around for our Cinematography & Cameras Series.
Salvatore Totino Having wrapped photography on director Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon and at press time about to embark on Howard’s Angels And Demons, cinematographer Salvatore Totino, ASC, in-between those two feature gigs shot an offbeat, tongue-in-cheek Columbia Sportswear campaign directed by Jake Scott of bicoastal/international RSA Films for agency Borders Perrin Norrander in Portland, Ore.
The 10-spot campaign unfolds in episodic style, opening with a :30 in which Columbia chairperson Gert Boyle dumps off her son, company president Tim Boyle, in the Mojave Desert. Nine :15s then follow Tim as he wanders through the desert trying to find his way back to civilization. The campaign continues the premise of Gert subjecting Tim to extreme weather conditions to product test Columbia apparel, in this case its new line of Omni-Shade warm weather sun-protective sportswear.
While there’s a survival reality genre-like tinge to the series, Tim–decked out in Omni-Shade garb–hardly seems in any real danger despite encountering a vulture, furious sandstorms, a lizard or two, mirages and the oppressive heat and sun. In fact, the adventure plays out like a good-humored comic strip with Tim taking a casual pace through the desert.
Camera movement, relates director Scott, was guided completely by Tim’s kind of leisurely tempo. There was no music, just the sound of the desert as he wanders about.
Scott embraced this simple, minimalist approach. “The concept reminded me a bit of newspaper comic strips–a story in four pictures with our looking at a character’s takes and musings when encountering a situation,” observes the director.
Totino, who’s repped by The Skouras Agency, Santa Monica, says of Scott, “He’s not just a director, he’s a total artist who sees things in a different way. I first met Jake when he started directing in 1991 or ’92. He was working with [cinematographer] Harris Savides and I was Harris’ assistant. From the very beginning, Jake has been fresh, inventive and creative. I’ve been shooting for him on and off for about twelve years. It’s simply fantastic to be around him. He fuels inspiration. He has definitely inspired me creatively on every job we’ve done, from the very first I shot for him, which was for [technology company] Agilent.”
That spot project was shot in Australia and depicted an American spaceship from the 1950s landing in modern society. “Jake wanted to achieve all the effects in camera and found this great matte painter in Australia,” recalls Totino. “This was my first time ever photographing a matte painting. It was a wonderful creative experience.”
So too were collaborations with Scott on other varied projects, including an anti-smoking public service spot (which showed a youngster’s tongue being pierced) targeting the teen demographic, and music videos for such artists as Radiohead, U2 and Soundgarden. The latter had an intentionally washed out quality to it visually and was used by Scott as a point of reference somewhat akin to what he wanted for the Columbia Sportswear desert shoot.
Totino, though, didn’t duplicate the means used for Soundgarden’s “Burden In My Hand.” Instead, the DP shot even more contrasting negative stock, overexposed it slightly and pulled the film to wash out colors and flatten out the image. “That way we attained a similar feeling to what we did earlier with Soundgarden but without the grain and grittiness of that video. Again, Jake gives you the freedom to explore and experiment.”
And those creative collaborations extend beyond the shoot. “Jake has a place in the desert nearby where we shot the Columbia Sportswear campaign,” relates Totino. “We are both ‘mini-chefs’ so we planned cooking a couple of big elaborate dinners. What started out as our cooking for six to eight people turned out to be a meal for twenty-five people. We’d shoot all day, come back to Jake’s house and cook dinner. Cooking is a whole other creative realm. But it’s like everything you do–you draw on every aspect of life to feed the creativity that’s in you. You can be inspired by a meal you cooked, a book you read, a film you saw, a wine you drank, the expression on a person’s face.
As SHOOT went to press, Totino was about to take on a commercial shoot for RSA director Carl Erik Rinsch and then the aforementioned Angels and Demons, the sequel to director Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code, which Totino also lensed. Howard too is a valued collaborator as Totino shot the director’s suspenseful western The Missing as well as the boxing tour de force Cinderella Man. Totino made his feature cinematography debut on director Oliver Stone’s Any Given Sunday.
Just prior to The Da Vinci Code, Totino tested Panavision’s Genesis digital camera. “Overall the digital technology is extremely interesting,” he assesses. “Our future is heading in a new direction. We’re at a pivotal point in film history and I like to think of it as when sound was first introduced and people weren’t sure what to make of it and how it was going to work. Eventually it became part of the mainstream.
“I’m a little reluctant at the moment to shoot in HD,” notes Totino, “because the equipment is very bulky, you need an umbilical cord if you go with a Steadicam, and it’s just too heavy to work the way I like to work, which is to be able to run and gun sometimes.”
On a personal note, Totino would like to see Frost/Nixon, based on David Frost’s famed interview of Richard Nixon (and the play of the same name), hit the theaters around September. (A firm release date has not been set though the film is expected to debut sometime this year.) Totino’s September wish is based on his feeling that the film, which is very much about the abuse of power, might take on added meaning, resonating more with audiences just a month or two prior to the national presidential election.
Greig Fraser In the Hollywood vernacular, it’s good when a film has “legs,” meaning that it has sustained a healthy box office for an extended span of time. In the spot world, “Legs” is a Monster.com spot directed by Rupert Sanders of bicoastal/international MJZ and shot by DP Greig Fraser for BBDO New York. And in this case, it’s a commercial that also figures to have an extended life not only on air but for awards show circuit consideration as it charmingly tells a tale of a man who gets out of bed and gets ready for work. He walks through a quaint, picturesque village and then the camera reveals him to have massive legs that dwarf the rest of his body even though he himself is a big man who towers over all others. We see him pass villagers from all walks of life, some engaged in mundane tasks, others in more significant endeavors such as a young couple who just got married and are celebrating. Our large-legged protagonist briefly joins the joyous celebration before continuing on his way.
He then arrives at what looks like an isolated shed in the middle of a field. He enters the makeshift structure, which we discover houses a rickety elevator which he takes down to the depths of the earth. As the elevator descends rapidly, he holds his ears in discomfort due to the jarring drop in altitude. The elevator door opens, placing him in what looks like a mineshaft. He walks through the shaft catacombs and finally arrives at his destination–an elaborate, larger than life gyrosphere contraption that centers on another man who’s seated upon a bicycle and peddling away feverishly. He too has massive legs and is glad to see the relief shift coming to take over his duties.
For a moment he stops peddling so that his replacement can take over. When the peddling comes to a halt, so too does the power throughout the village. The abrupt nature of this transition jostles about a man taking a bath as water jumps out of the tub, knocks another gent off his bike as he was riding through a field, and causes the bride, groom and rest of the wedding party to topple just as a camera is taking a picture of them.
Our original large-legged chap then begins peddling and in the process returns the village to normalcy.
Clearly this spot called out to Fraser, the most compelling calling being the chance to work for the first time with director Sanders. “I had been an admirer of his [Sanders’] work for a long time,” says Fraser. “We seemed to hit it off right away, both readily understanding the direction that this spot was going. Whilst Rupert has a firm idea of what he would like to see, he is very open to ideas and different opinions. On this, though, it seemed that rarely was there a difference of opinion about anything. His casting was fantastic, so that in itself makes my job so much easier. Having a fantastic face to point a camera at opens up so many opportunities for brilliant moments. One idea, though, that Rupert had, which didn’t quite seem to work, was putting me on stilts, so I could be at eye height of the actor. A great idea in theory, which would have worked, except for the fact that I am so uncoordinated that I can barely open a soft drink can without cutting myself. So putting me three feet higher, with an expensive camera in my hand did not quite work. We managed to get those shots in other ways though.”
For Fraser, who’s represented via United Talent Agency (UTA), Beverly Hills, the biggest challenge in shooting “Legs” was the actual shooting of the legs. He credits the contributions of postproduction supervisor Cedric Nicholas Troyan who had, prior to the shoot, tested the technique that he was going to use to make the giant legs. “With any post-produced shoot, certain allowances like blue screen, and hand-held also needed to be bought into the mix. It was very important to all of us that the spot had a sense of freedom and movement–two words which do not fit well into the postproduction mix. Cedric was great at allowing us that freedom without compromising the end product. I’m sure a couple of the handheld shots may have cost him many extra hours in the post suite, but I thank him profusely for letting us do this.”
Fraser adds, “The gyrosphere was fantastic. John Beard, the production designer, had built this thing which any city in the world would have been proud to have as a public installation. Moving rings, and cogs and chains to power the whole thing. It was built so beautifully, and with the finest detail, that practically any angle on the thing looked amazing. The biggest challenge for this though, was finding a stage that was big enough to house it. It almost reached the ceiling of the studio, so lighting from above was difficult. Ideally I would have had at least 20 or 30 feet clearance at the top, so I could create a soft ambience. Partly because of this, we decided that lighting the gyro from the practicals in shot might look good. It also served to help make the footage in the center of the earth feel as organic as the footage from up above.
“We discussed using Kino tubes for this practical lighting, but they seemed to be too sci-fi for this spot. The ‘Legs’ world is slightly dirty, and not in the slightest futuristic. Instead we ended up using regular household globes, to illuminate the stage of the gyro, with some film lights to fill in some shadows.”
Fraser lensed “Legs” with the Arri 235 film camera, which he described as “my current favorite camera. It’s absolutely brilliant, as it’s the size of a medium video camera, light enough to use as a video viewfinder, and does everything that we needed it to. We could keep it loose, and easy to rig for tracking shots. These companies that are making smaller, lighter, simpler film cameras are totally getting the balance right. A camera doesn’t need to be huge and unwieldy to produce good pictures. I love the fact that with the 235, and its onboard battery system, that I can pick the camera up and walk around with the director to find the frame.”
As for his take on digital cinematography, Fraser relates, “I have shot with a few digital cameras. It seems at the moment that the work flow side of things is not fully understood by production companies and post houses. Either that or the camera’s themselves are so new that they are exorbitantly expensive to shoot with on a per day basis. Personally, I believe that we are all headed down a digital road, but as yet, there has not been a clear winner when it comes to quality, resolution, and price. For me, a digital camera needs to have at least the resolution of 35mm, the ease of use of 35mm, and the latitude of 35mm. So far, this has not happened. It will and I will bet my house on it, but so far, the quickest, easiest, most effective way to make images is on film.
“Panavision has been leading the way by introducing digital to a film market,” Fraser continues. “Their Genesis cameras are nothing short of fantastic. They are not film, but they are the closest thing a film shooter can get to working on a digital camera. Red appears to be doing amazing things, although their core market has been video shooters. (apart from the Steven Soderberghs and the Peter Jacksons) What I’ve seen lacking in Red is latitude. They have brilliant resolution, great design, and great marketing, but the resolution for film shooters is not quite right. For video guys, the Red is a gift from heaven–their chance to play with film style lenses and resolution….The Aaton digital back system though, is something I think is brilliant. Like most things that Aaton does, being able to replace a film mag, for a digital mag, is a fantastic idea.
Indeed Red and Aaton made an impression on Fraser last year when he attended the NAB convention for the first time. (At press time, it didn’t appear that his schedule would enable him to attend NAB next month). In ’07, Fraser says he was “especially eager to see two cameras being ‘released’ at the [NAB] show. Red was one, and their marketing surely didn’t disappoint anybody, and the second was the new Aaton cameras. They seem to have made some huge improvements on their 35mm camera, and they had a prototype at the show. Unfortunately I think they were largely overlooked due to less marketing on their behalf.”
At press time, Fraser was in London shooting a film for director Jane Campion (The Piano, In The Cut). Last year he shot second unit on the Baz Luhrmann feature Australia. Among Fraser’s other recent credits are spots for Nokia, X-box and Nike.
He has arrived at this mix of work from his roots in still photography, a discipline which served him well as a cinematographer. “Stills really paved the technical grounding that I needed to expose film properly and to understand the language of images. We are inundated with thousands of images everyday and to be able to decipher and edit images in our brain is something that everybody does constantly. Trying to create images that break through this constant barrage is something I am finding to be incredibly challenging and rewarding.”
Kevin Emmons A veteran cinematographer whose primary focus over the past 20 years has been commercials, Kevin Emmons estimates that he’s lensed 1,500-plus spots in his career spanning the full gamut from comedy to dialogue, regional to national, food, celebs, spokesperson and toys. While most of those years have seen him lens on film–which he continues to do with great regularity–Emmons, who is repped by Encino, Calif.-based TDN Artists/The Directors Network, has also branched out into digital cinematography in a big way. For example, among his recent exploits are HD commercial shoots on location for such clients as Disneyland, Procter & Gamble, Fisher Price, Clairol, Nickelodeon and Starz Encore
Emmons has shot with most of the digital cameras, including what he refers to as the HD workhorses, the Sony 900 series and Panasonic’s Varicam, as well as the Genesis and the Arri D20. He notes that the Genesis isn’t as readily available to the spot community in that Panavision has designated most of them to the feature and TV worlds. Emmons has yet to use the Red One but at press time he was in the running for a national campaign which, if he gets the gig, would entail him shooting with the Red.
In broad strokes, he sees regional clients embracing HD shooting while many bigger national accounts have been a bit hesitant to jump into the fray. For the latter, it’s hard to say exactly why, says Emmons. “It seems that large agencies with big accounts like being able to take film and then to go through the transfer process and skew the look to what they want. They go to digibeta and go through the workflow process of editing in that format. That’s a driving force behind bigger budget projects being more inclined to use film. I believe you get a larger dynamic range from film when you are going to do a transfer and can shape things in post.
“Having said all that, regional market advertising has a growing commitment [to HD shooting],” continues Emmons. “When I do promo spots for Starz Encore, Comcast, Discovery, Adelphia, they go HD for some prime reasons–a lot of them have HD channels and large in-house editorial facilities, and they know they have to address the fact that HD is inevitable, that the transition to high-definition television is February 2009. And there’s the budget factor in that there are savings to be realized by not incurring film-related costs like processing. With the HD workflow, you shoot electronically and go right into the edit/postproduction system.”
As for the upcoming NAB convention, Emmons would like to see one “major hiccup” area addressed. “Most cinematographers,” he observes, “are excited about full-frame sensor HD cameras. The reasons DPs want these cameras is that they mimic the depth of field of 35mm. The problem is that these full frame sensor cameras need huge amounts of hard drive space. They have solid state drives. The biggest challenge we have to face is the workflow, getting massive image files into the edit system. In the next six to twelve months, addressing this situation is really key.
“The point is that if agencies can feel good about having a comfortable handle on this workflow,” says Emmons, “you’ll see more willingness to move into HD cinematography. There’s also a need for education and training. You have DPs in the field who don’t know how to cycle through the HD camera menus to get the looks they want. We’re in a big transitional phase that’s most challenging for DPs in commercials. Feature filmmakers like Soderbergh and Fincher have already been experimenting with and are adept in HD.”
Red experience Stewart Hendler is first and foremost a director on the spot roster of Über Content, Hollywood. He was included in SHOOT’s inaugural New Directors Showcase in 2003. And earlier this month, his Zune “Music Is Life” spec spot made SHOOT’s The Best Work You Never See gallery. Hendler conceived, directed, shot and edited the piece. He shot it with the Red One, which he is leasing for a six-month period.
“I’ve followed Red from the very beginning and like many was skeptical of its claims from the outset,” says Hendler. “I scrutinized whatever footage I could get my hands on and thought it looked viable enough to compete in the high-end production world. Now we’ve gone from everybody having their reservations about the Red technology for a year to now people falling all over themselves to get a hold of the camera.”
Of his Red lensing experience on “Music Is Life,” Hendler assesses, “I was blown away by the performance and quality. I’m a die-hard 35mm film guy. I never thought I’d be uttering those words about Red. The optics are the same as 35mm in terms of lens mounts and sensor size. It has a depth of field that we’re used to in film. The resolution is stunning. It’s going to be interesting to see where this will go in the next couple of years.”
