Cinematographers offered their takes on technology, the digital process, collaboration, and the value of the film medium during various sessions at last month’s Cine Gear Expo on the Paramount Studios lot in Los Angeles. Among the event highlights was an International Cinematographers Guild (ICG, IATSE Local 600) panel discussion on “New Workflow Choices and the Director of Photography.” Panelists were DP Paul Cameron, ASC, (Total Recall, Dead Man Down); DP Mark Doering-Powell (ABC’s Super Fun Night, CW’s Everybody Hates Chris); DP Steven Poster, ASC, and ICG national president (Donnie Darko, Someone to Watch Over Me); DP Andrew Turman, (spots for Target, Lexus, et al); Michele deLorimier, digital imaging technician (DIT) and Phantom tech (Cover Girl’s Pink; Cream Reunion at the Royal Albert Hall), Bobby Maruvada, DIT (DI colorist Project X; After Earth) and focus puller E. Gunnar Mortensen (Amityville Horror: Locked In). DIT Joshua Gollish (Skyfall, Prisoners) moderated the session.
Cinematographer Poster and focus puller Mortensen collaborated on the latest Amityville movie. Poster noted that live color grading was being done in front of everybody on set, a far cry from when you waited for film dailies and everybody guarded the magic. Mortensen concurred that there’s an excitement to live grading and graded dailies. He too grew up in the business when film was turned over, you waited for dailies and had to trust in the alchemy of the process. Mortensen said that the tier one budgeted Amityville was bumped up to tier two, the increased budget in part sparked by producers being ecstatic over what they saw coming together before their eyes.
Poster added that a Color Decision List (CDL) system was deployed. “The colorist had gotten the footage before the CDL. He applied the CDL and it matched what we had done [during the shoot]. Poster noted that it’s remarkable that the color grading was “getting that close on the set to what he [the colorist] would have done properly.”
Cinematographer Turman, who works primarily in commercials, noted, however, that protecting the art of the imagery can be more involved for a DP on a spot shoot. “‘Maintaining control’ is the phrase but for me it’s ‘cajoling control’” when lensing a campaign. He related that once the project is shot, “It’s out of my hands.” The ad agency and post house have the hands-on control so Turman said it behooves him to make phone calls, following up with the agency, editorial and post artisans to see if he can help or if any problems have arisen. Even if he’s perceived as a pest for doing so, the DP said it’s “still worth making a couple of phone calls.”
Cinematographer Cameron noted that the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES) has made a positive impact, helping to eliminate uncertainty between on-set look management and downstream color correction. Cameron observed that ACES provides “a point of unity” for those involved as to how the imagery should look. ACES was devised under the auspices of the Motion Picture Academy’s Science and Technology Council to help preserve the full range of highlights, shadows and colors captured on set for use throughout the post and mastering processes.
Cinematographer Doering-Powell, whose work is primarily in television, noted that even with an experienced, accomplished DIT, the DP still has to work with the colorist. “Testing the whole pipeline is important” and the DP has to make sure that the pipeline is at optimum performing level.
DIT deLorimier said that the DIT’s mandate is to “protect the DP’s vision all the way through the very end. Everything else is secondary.” She added that the DIT is “beholden to production to deliver integrity of the vision.” Furthermore, she noted that some refer to DIT and media management as interchangeable terms when they are not at all one and the same.
At the same time, Doering-Powell assessed that in some respects it’s good that the DIT’s job description stays a bit fluid and ambiguous because technology is changing and the DIT can adapt and expand his or her role accordingly.
Poster recalled hearing speculation over the past few years that DITs wouldn’t exist down the road. This clearly hasn’t proven to be the case,” related Poster, “as “the need, use and efficacy of working with a DIT” has only increased. It’s a “more important” and “ubiquitous” position.
Maruvada noted that ARRI’s Amira camera brings back power to the cinematographer, enabling him or her to lock in a LUT and “bake in” the look of what’s captured. An Arri exec in the audience, though, issued a caveat that baking in the look can cut back options in post that might otherwise prove advantageous. He urged DPs to carefully deliberate what’s best for a particular project.
Poster observed that you need to be careful what you ask for. High dynamic range, for instance, might sound wonderful but in terms of story and creative intent there are times, he noted, that “to be able to see everything may not be the best way to see an image.”
DIT Maruvada shared a couple of remarks from famous people to sum up how to best adapt to technology. He noted that Apple founder Steve Jobs referred to technology as “a steamroller” and you can either be driving it or laying on the road in its path. By the same token, you can’t get so bogged down in technology that you forget your art. Maruvada quoted jazz great Charlie Parker as saying “forget about all that shit and just play.”
Cameron picked up on the latter quote, relating that all the new digital cameras are analogous to different “film stocks in my point of view.” With that mindset, he said he just picks up his camera like it was “a guitar and plays.”
Poster said the DP has to take the big view, developing a workflow that runs from the camera manufacturers to the post houses. He suggested bringing everyone into a room–a virtual room or physically together–to have a constructive dialogue about the workflow so that a trust is developed right down the line of the overall working group.
Furthermore as president of the ICG, Poster affirmed that the organization is committed to the training of its members. That 7,000-strong ICG membership works in film, TV and commercials as DPs, camera operators, visual effects supervisors, still photographers, camera assistants, film loaders, DITs and other camera crew members. Poster referenced a recent weekend session in Chicago where ICG members got the latest in digital training, with five vendors setting up educational and informational programs. “It’s important for us to have a membership who understands the technologies” and can take full advantage of them,” said Poster.
ASC session
An impassioned plea for film came from DP Guillermo Navarro, ASC, during an American Society of Cinematographers panel discussion. Navarro, an Oscar winner for Pan’s Labyrinth, urged attendees to log onto savefilm.org where they can sign a petition asking the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to protect and safeguard the medium of film, the knowledge and practice of filmmaking and the projection of film print under its 2008 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions or another convention should that become more appropriate and applicable. In doing so, UNESCO could mandate signatory nation states to uphold their duty of care to safeguard film at both a national and international level so that future generations will be able to experience the medium of film in the way we have.
Navarro said that artists are “entitled to work in the medium of their choice.” The debate of film vs. digital is inherently wrong, he affirmed. It shouldn’t be a proposition of one winning out over the other; rather both should be viable options for artists like cinematographers to consider based on the creative and artistic merits of a particular project.
The petition calls for preserving the future of the film print by supporting cinemas and museums that choose to continue projecting 35mm film. If film projection falls by the wayside, so too will the community of photochemical artists at film stock manufacturers and labs.
If film is an art, said Navarro, then “the original is a [film] negative.” He described film as being “the Rosetta Stone of our times,” an essential language that much be preserved.
Discussion moderator, cinematographer George Spiro Dibie, ASC–who’s an ASC Television Career Achievement Award winner–noted that film is in jeopardy, citing that more than 80 percent of movie theaters in the U.S. have gone digital.
Fellow ASC panelist Michael Goi, ASC (a three-time Emmy nominee for American Horror Story, Glee and My Name Is Earl) added that there are archival implications to consider as the longevity of digital files is in question compared to the proven reliability of film images. Digital files can become corrupt and not easily accessed. Goi recalled shooting a low-budget movie in HDV only to have the original files develop errors after just two years. Fortunately, Goi insisted that the movie be outputted to 35mm film which is “the only reason a movie I made four years ago exists now.”
Daniel Pearl, ASC, shot the original The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a 1974 release directed by Tobe Hooper, and the remake from director Marcus Nispel in 2003. Pearl said that the remake holds a special place in his creative heart in that it was “the last time I got to finish a film photochemically.”
However all the DPs at Cine Gear sessions–including the most ardent film supporters–have embraced and been active in digital cinematography. Panelist Nancy Schreiber, ASC, an Emmy nominee for The Celluloid Closet, observed that digital formats are coming closer to the film negative in terms of look and feel.
Bill Bennett, ASC, the first to gain ASC membership with a body of work consisting mostly of commercials, said that DPs need to embrace technology and their feedback is critical to manufacturers. He recalled, for example, an anamorphic lens day at the ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood, noting that exhibitors there said “they learned as much from us as we did from them.”
Buddy Squires, ASC
Another Cine Gear session featured cinematographer Buddy Squires, ASC, a 10-time Emmy Award nominee, the latest coming last year for Ethel, an intimate portrait of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy. Ethel was directed by her daughter, documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy (whose work includes the Emmy-winning Ghosts of Abu Ghraib). Moxie Firecracker Films–founded by Rory Kennedy and Liz Garbus–produced Ethel in association with HBO Documentary Films. (Director Rory Kennedy recently joined the roster of Nonfiction Unlimited for spots and branded content.)
Squires won the Nonfiction Program Cinematography Emmy back in 1998 for the National Geographic special America’s Endangered Species: Don’t Say Good-bye. The DP is also known for his longstanding collaboration with documentarian Ken Burns which spans such projects as The Central Park 5 and Emmy-nominated cinematography for Prohibition (for the episode “A Nation of Drunkards”) in 2012, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea (for “The Scripture of Nature” episode) in 2010, Jazz in 2001, and Baseball in 1995. All the way back to 1986, Squires as a producer shared an Oscar nomination with Burns for The Statue of Liberty.
Squires recently put the aforementioned ARRI Amira, a digital camera designed for documentary filmmakers, through its paces as part of a test. He screened that test for a Cine Gear audience. Questioned by DP Jon Fauer, Squires said he had a most positive experience with Amira, lensing a test
featuring his son’s skateboarding teacher Adam Crigler. Squires said that he’s been frustrated in the past with full frame sensors for documentary shooting but not this time with Amira. He described the viewfinder as very sharp with Arri being “thoughtful” regarding all the design elements. He assessed that Amira “handles highlights better than any digital camera I’ve ever seen.”
The test ran from a sunny day on a playground to city commute traffic at dusk and then a nighttime Brooklyn street setting. Squires did a mix of slo-mo and real-time work, hand held and tripod. He said that a fairly well versed professional DP could get acclimated to Amira in about an hour.
