American Cinematographer - August 2022

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August 2022 The International Publication of the American Society of Cinematographers

The Art of Light

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AUGUST 2022 VOL. 103 NO. 8

On Our Cover:
Jules (Hunter Schafer) provides a moment of
illumination with a handheld lamp in Euphoria.

Contents
(Photo by Eddy Chen, courtesy of HBO.)

Features
16 Euphoria: Lights, Camera,
High School
Marcell Rév, HCA mixes tools, techniques
and formats on the adventurous HBO series.

28 In the Shadows on The Terminal List


Armando Salas, ASC discusses his dark-ops strategies
for the Amazon military-thriller series.

36 Small Wonder: Marcel the Shell


With Shoes On

16
Cinematographers Bianca Cline and Eric Adkins team up
on a stop-motion charmer.

44 2022 Rising Stars of Cinematography:


Eclectic Perspectives
AC profiles nine more up-and-coming
directors of photography.

Departments
8 Letter From the President
10 Shot Craft: Jon Joffin, ASC on lighting a remote location
54 The Virtual World: Updates from NAB
60 Clubhouse News
66 New Products and Services
72 Wrap Shot: Jennifer 8

VISIT ASCMAG.COM

28
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Stephen Pizzello

WEB DIRECTOR and PUBLISHER


David E. Williams

EDITORIAL
MANAGING EDITOR Andrew Fish
SHOT CRAFT and TECHNICAL EDITOR Jay Holben
CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Rachael K. Bosley
VIRTUAL PRODUCTION EDITOR Noah Kadner
WRITER/RESEARCHER Tara Jenkins
ASSOCIATE WEB EDITOR Brian Kronner
CONTRIBUTORS
Benjamin B, John Calhoun, Mark Dillon, Michael Goldman, Jim Hemphill,
David Heuring, Debra Kaufman, Michael Kogge, Iain Marcks, Matt Mulcahey,
Jean Oppenheimer, Phil Rhodes, Patricia Thomson, Peter Tonguette

CREATIVE DIRECTION and DESIGN


Edwin Alpanian

ADVERTISING
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Angie Gollmann
323-936-3769 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: [email protected]
ADVERTISING SALES DIRECTOR Sanja Pearce
323-952-2114 Fax 323-952-2140 e-mail: [email protected]

SUBSCRIPTIONS, BOOKS and PRODUCTS


CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Saul Molina

ASC CEO Terry McCarthy


ASC SPONSORSHIP and EVENTS DIRECTOR Patricia Armacost
CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER Alex Lopez
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER Natalia Quiroz
MEMBERSHIP ADMINISTRATOR Salvador Maldonado
DIRECTOR OF FINANCE and ACCOUNTING Thanh Lai
ACCOUNTING June Mabbun

American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 103rd 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 2022 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.

4 / AUGUST 2022

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AM
THE WORLD’S LEADING
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL American Society of Cinematographers

ON MOTION IMAGING The ASC is not a labor union or a guild,


but an educational, cultural and

DELIVERS THE INSIDE STORY professional organization. Membership is


by invitation to those who are actively en-

OF MODERN CINEMATOGRAPHY.
gaged 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 2022/2023
Stephen Lighthill
President
Amelia Vincent
Vice President
John Simmons
Vice President
Shelly Johnson
Vice President
Steven Poster
Treasurer
Gregg Heschong
Secretary
Christopher Chomyn
Sergeant-at-Arms

MEMBERS
OF THE BOARD
Curtis Clark
Richard Crudo
Steven Fierberg
Michael Goi
Shelly Johnson
From new camera systems and lighting options to the creative Ed Lachman
use of virtual-production methods, American Cinematographer Patti Lee
examines the latest tools and techniques, while maintaining Charlie Lieberman
sharp focus on essential creative collaborations and the artistry Stephen Lighthill
Lowell Peterson
of visual storytelling. Lawrence Sher
John Simmons
• Print Edition – Learn from the best John Toll
and build your permanent reference collection Amelia Vincent
• Digital Edition – Access AC magazine content Robert Yeoman
anywhere you are while on the go ALTERNATES
• AC Archive – Dive deep into more than John Bailey
100 years of information and inspiration Eric Steelberg
Jim Denault
Patrick Cady
Dana Gonzales
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
MUSEUM CURATOR
store.ascmag.com/collections/subscriptions Steve Gainer

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Letter From the President

PHOTO COURTESY OF ABELCINE.


An ASC Master Class session was recently held in New York City. Participating Society members
Fred Murphy (back row, far left), Dejan Georgevich (back row, third from left), M. David Mullen
(back row, fourth from right), Stephen Lighthill (back row, far right) and Declan Quinn (front row,
far right) pose with the class at AbelCine in Brooklyn.

THERE IS OFTEN CONFUSION Joffin, ASC (Keep Breathing, Star Trek: Picard, Titans) discusses tools
IN THE WORLD AT LARGE about and techniques for lighting in a remote location on a budget, and in
the exact nature of the American The Virtual World, Noah Kadner looks at the latest virtual-production
Society of Cinematographers. innovations and equipment. We believe that the impulse to educate is
The ASC is a non-profit society fundamental to the human condition: We all share our knowledge with
honoring the accomplishments of those around us. An important part of the role of the cinematographer
PORTRAIT BY DOUGLAS KIRKLAND.

cinematographers, and as such, is discussing and often educating collaborators about potential choices
we publish this magazine, and in workflow, lenses, lighting, movement and composition.
we have an extensive educational Mentoring is an enormously important way of supporting the ca-
program. Please use the term “cin- reer efforts of those starting out. The ASC has an extensive mentoring
ematographer,” not “DP,” as “DP” program run by Society members Patti Lee, Todd Dos Reis and Arlene
is a holdover from the Hollywood Nelson. Central also to our educational mission is our annual feature on
studios contracts — and certainly the Rising Stars of Cinematography — which this month profiles nine
not “DoP,” a bizarre extension of up-and-coming artists selected with the participation of a blue-ribbon
“DP.” panel of ASC members. This latest group of young cinematographers
It is true that the word “photography” is closely aligned with what has accomplished great things, and we expect these Stars to mentor
a cinematographer does and is the root craft of cinematography. We others during their careers. Passing on the knowledge is what we do…
presented ASC members’ still photography in our last issue. In this issue
we discuss the feature Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, much of which
was actually photographed with cameras that are typically used for still
photography, in an arduous process done frame-by-frame (place lights,
move figures slightly, expose one frame, etc). But cinematographers are
principally concerned with moving images, as is clear from the Greek Stephen Lighthill
roots of the word: kinema (movement) and graphein (write).   President, ASC
Returning to the role of the ASC in education, this magazine is our
main educational effort. In this issue’s Shot Craft department, Jon

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Shot Craft By Jay Holben

Remote-Location Lighting — With Jon Joffin, ASC


Jon Joffin, ASC captured the Netflix limited series Keep Breathing in
the woods of Whistler, British Columbia, Canada.

ALL KEEP BREATHING PHOTOS BY PETER HAGGE, COURTESY OF NETFLIX.


Daylight exteriors, followed closely movement and have no control over story of a woman named Liv (Melis- — but the moment executive
by night exteriors, can be two of when clouds pass or don’t. sa Barrera) who fights to survive the producers Brendan Gall and Martin
the most challenging aspects of Night exteriors can be just as wilderness after a plane crash, Jof- Gero, executive producer/direc-
cinematography, especially when complicated: How much light do fin found himself on a remote cliff in tor Maggie Kiley and I saw it, we
equipment and crew are limited. you add? Where is it coming from? Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, knew we had to figure it out. It was
This might seem counterintuitive to How do you refine the look without with extremely limited access and perfect for the story. To reach the
a novice cinematographer, because making it feel lit? even more limited equipment. site, we had to drive an hour and a
day exteriors give you access to In this installment of Shot Craft, “I wanted to do this show not half north of Vancouver, then take
the brightest source in the universe: Society member Jon Joffin — who just because of the great script, but an SUV along a rutted road as far as
the sun. What’s missing, however, won his third ASC Award this year also because I’ve always been very possible and then walk through for-
is control and consistency, both of for his work in television — dis- controlling of light, whether in stu- est for 15 minutes. It was tough to
which — on modestly budgeted cusses these challenges. (He won dio or on location, and have often get trucks or any significant gear up
productions — are generally quite the ASC honor this year for Titans been blessed with all the tools in there. We certainly couldn’t bring in
difficult to achieve on exteriors. and previously for Motherland: the world,” he says. “I wanted to see generators for 18Ks. I had to resort
But even with all the resources Fort Salem and Beyond; he’s also if I could do a good-looking show to a lot of gripping and taking light
imaginable — construction cranes, received ASC nominations for Alice with only a few tools.” away, rather than adding it. It was
large diffusion frames to reduce and The Andromeda Strain.) For one particular sequence, critically important that this show
sunlight’s intensity and hardness, Joffin says, “We shot in a very re- felt real, that the audience would
large bounces or negative fill frames Making the Impossible Work mote area, at the top of a mountain, feel like they’re stuck in the forest
to help shape and control the For the upcoming Netflix limited se- which the location manager had with Liv.”
light — you cannot stop the sun’s ries Keep Breathing, which tells the told us was an impossible location In taking on this challenge, Joffin

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“Grip cloud” balloons have been masked with
black material to create inflatable solids.

was confronting what many independent and keep the blacks clean; it’s always easier to dirty
emerging cinematographers face — tackling a up blacks later than to clean them up. To that
remote location with minimal tools and finding end, I will light dark scenes with an ND .3, and
the best way to shape and refine the light. Be- set the look as dark as I want according to the
cause they couldn’t even get Gators to the site, image on the monitor — and then I’ll take out
the team had to carry everything in by hand. For the ND .3 to shoot, and have the DIT crush the
the most part, they went without stands, instead look to where it was when the ND was in place.
resorting to handheld grip tools. That way, I get a bit more light onto the sensor
One of the scenes photographed in this and preserve the shadows and blacks as much
remote spot was a dusk-into-night sequence. as possible. When light is really at a premium, I’ll
Joffin captured the wide shots in the few min- open up the shutter to 270 degrees and scrape
utes of dusk before full night, using the 2,500 the last bit of light that I can. When it’s really
ISO of the production’s Sony Venice to capture dark, I’ll use the full 2,500 and a 270-degree
as much of the dim natural light as possible. “On shutter.”
the close-up, we brought in a battery-powered Joffin employed fast full-frame Zeiss Supreme
LiteGear LiteMat Plus 8, which was held by an Prime Radiance lenses, which are T1.5 across
electrician fitted with a safety harness who was the board. He also carried a set of Canon K-35
standing on the edge of the mountain. We also primes, which are T1.3 (35mm, 50mm and
had a 12-by-12 Magic Cloth diffusion, which was 85mm) and T1.5 (18mm and 24mm). The K-35s
held by the grips. were originally marketed as standard Acade-
“I don’t really use the full 2,500 ISO,” Joffin my-covering primes, but they’re descendants of
continues. “I try to respect the raw image and full-frame still lenses, and they fully cover the

“It was tough to get trucks or any significant gear up [to the
remote location]. I had to resort to a lot of gripping and taking
light away, rather than adding it.”

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Shot Craft

Top and middle: Grip clouds at work — as solids for daytime


and as diffusion for a LiteGear LiteMat Plus 8 LED at night.
Bottom: Joffin accepted an ASC Award earlier this year for
his work on the series Titans.

Overhead Sun
When shooting during harsh midday hours, you might be able to cut
off direct sunlight via heavy diffusion or solids — such as with the
balloon technique that Joffin discusses in this piece (see this page,
below) — and use bounce or reflectors to redirect overhead sunlight
to become backlight. This is significantly easier to do in close-up
shots, so plan your closer work accordingly.
Sometimes, the challenge is that the foreground is perfectly lit,
but the background, which is receiving direct, hard, overhead light,
is far overexposed. If your background is out of focus, you can con-
sider using a grip net — single or double — at a distance behind your
talent. It will fall out of focus and help bring down the exposure of
the background. If the net is too close to the focal plane, you might
have issues with moiré, so a larger net farther away is your best bet.
Also, try to reposition the talent to find shaded background or a
darker background that doesn’t appear so hot. Additionally, using

BOTTOM PHOTO BY DANNY MOLOSHOK, COURTESY OF THE ASC.


a polarizer on the lens may help to reduce specular reflection off
background elements such as foliage, glass and metal — controlling
the overexposed look even more.
Finally, if the talent isn’t moving, ND graduated filters can work
wonders; just slip in an ND grad and orient the grad line to cover the
background while leaving your talent open.
Overall, mastering daylight exteriors is about careful planning
with your collaborators and utilizing grip tools to redirect (or elimi-
nate) sunlight to shape to your needs. While you can add in light to
help shape and refine, it takes very powerful fixtures to overpower
the sun, and those generally aren’t readily available to independent
and smaller productions. Grip tools are your friend and can help
tame the great fireball in the sky.
— J.H

Venice sensor. Using fast primes Although wind can wreak havoc
and high ISO allowed Joffin to work with balloons, they’re a great alter-
in extremely low-light conditions native to large construction cranes
with very little augmentation, and and “flyswatters” (large frames to
create a realistic look. control direct sunlight); balloons can
be easily moved around by ground
The Beauty of Balloons crew with simple guide-lines, and
For day exteriors, Joffin often works they can often be deployed in rug-
with “grip cloud” balloons, which ged environments that construction
can be masked with black material cranes cannot access.
to create an inflatable solid. He’ll “Balloons are great, especial-
fly the balloons over the shooting ly with black underside to cut off
area to block direct sun, and then the toplight,” Joffin says. “Many
incorporate additional negative fill cinematographers talk about
or bounce to shape light as needed. using diffusion and solids in direct

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Shot Craft

These frame captures from Keep Breathing offer examples


of Joffin’s work in low-light environments.

want the outside to look lit. I always

FRAME CAPTURES COURTESY OF NETFLIX.


fight to keep the key lights down.
There’s always that threshold where
it looks lit, and that’s what I’m work-
ing to avoid.”
Joffin also often experiments
with different color bounces on day
interiors. “It’s a bit easier with LEDs,
because I can use standard bounce
but color the light slightly to get a
different result.”

Strategize the Day


Joffin emphasizes that communica-
tion and collaboration with the AD
department is especially critical for
day exteriors. “It’s really import-
ant to strategize your day. For my
money, shooting backlight is the
best way to go for day exteriors;
otherwise, you’ll spend far too much
time taking light away and strug-
gling. Of course, this all depends on
much better to take light away in the story at hand, too. If you’re in a
daylight scenes than to add it. But prison camp, hard frontal sunlight
I will use a little bounce for eyes might be perfect! But whatever
here and there — usually bleached you’re trying to achieve, you’ve
or unbleached muslin. Unbleached got to make sure the production is
muslin has an off-white tone and on board with your plans. If you’re
therefore tends to warm the reflect- shooting in all backlight, what are
ed light. Sometimes I’ll fill a little you doing in the middle of the day
bit with 18Ks or SkyPanel S360s when the sun is overhead? What
through Magic Cloth diffusion. can you shoot then? (See sidebar,
“I usually try to bring in negative page 12.) Make sure you’re not
fill from the camera side, so the key wasting time, so that you can fight
light is more 3/4, catching the close to shoot in the time of day when
eye,” he adds. “Unless I’m shooting your big wide shots will be magical.”
in pure silhouette, I like some detail
on the shadow side. Jay Holben is an ASC associate
sunlight, but I also use them when Perpetual Backlight “Especially on this show, I never member and AC’s technical editor.
it’s overcast. I love overcast days, On day exteriors, Joffin also follows
but they can be tricky — the light a time-honored tradition: keeping
can feel really harsh, contrary to scenes backlit by the sun as often
what you may think, and it can be as possible. This creates a natural
very hard and flat on faces. We get shaping and modeling without too
a lot of overcast days in Vancouver, much hard light on an actor’s face. “When light is really at a premium, I’ll open up the
but if I take away some of that top “I will also often use 12-by-12
shutter to 270 degrees and scrape the last bit
source, it takes on a much nicer, solids for negative fill to help shape
natural feel.” the light,” he says. “I find it feels of light that I can.”

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Euphoria:
Lights,
Camera,
High School
Marcell Rév, HCA provides a
tutorial on his edgy approach
to the adventurous HBO series.

H
By Michael Kogge

igh school means many different things to many dif-


ferent people. Perhaps the only aspect that can be uni-
versally agreed upon is that it is a seminal period in a
young individual’s life, the so-called “coming of age”
into adulthood. Film and television have mined this
experience for decades, creating an entire genre that’s
often dubbed “teen drama.” Most recently, the HBO se-
ries Euphoria — starring Zendaya, as Rue, a Zoomer struggling with addi-
tion issues — takes this genre into new territory. The show endeavors to
go beyond the reality of ordinary high-school life and express what it feels
like to be a teenager today — in all of its epic, dramatic and brutal glory.
“We’re definitely not exploring the socioeconomic background of these
people,” says cinematographer Marcell Rév, HCA, who shot the series’ pilot
and multiple episodes of both seasons for showrunner Sam Levinson. “We
were joking on set, because neither Zendaya, Sam nor I went to a regular
American high school. But I don’t think the typical American high-school
experience is the point of the show. The point is the experience of growing
up — having these kinds of difficulties and how you overcome them and
try to become a person. I think that’s an experience we all share.”

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EUPHORIA: LIGHTS, CAMERA, HIGH SCHOOL

PHOTOS BY EDDY CHEN, COURTESY OF HBO.


Education and Influences
Raised in Hungary, Rév studied cinematography at the University of
Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest. “You apply to the cinematography
program, and you learn about lighting for five years,” Rév recalls. “You
spend two or three days a week on a stage — lighting, doing exercises or
shooting student films. It’s massive practice. And we were shooting our
little thesis films on film — 16mm and 35mm, both black-and-white and
color — which gave us a really good background in the format. Since it
was a public university and very poor, we didn’t have ideal resources. We
had only a tiny stage, not great equipment, and old film cameras. But we
got to shoot on film, which was amazing. And we had good teachers.”
Rév’s old-school education prepared him well for challenging assign-
ments like Euphoria, which would test his entire range of skills in both
film and video formats. He first got wind of the series at the 2018 Sun-
dance premiere of Assassination Nation, a movie he shot for its writer-di-
rector Levinson. At the festival, Levinson pitched Rév his next project:
a television show based on a 2012 Israeli miniseries called Euphoria. “I
Previous spread: Zendaya stars as troubled teen Rue Bennett.
remember Sam saying that he wanted to create a show that looks like
This page, top: Best friends Maddy (Alexa Demie) and Cassie
how teenagers of Generation Z imagine themselves, instead of how they
(Sydney Sweeney) have a locker confab in the high-school
hallway. Bottom: Rue attempts to mend fences with her look from the outside,” he says.
girlfriend Jules (Hunter Schafer). Rév didn’t watch the original series when collaborating with Levin-
son to conceive Euphoria’s signature visual style, so to his knowledge,
none of the visuals are influenced by the Israeli production. Rather, the
collaborators spoke about capturing the organic energy of Paul Thomas

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

Jules interrogates Elliot (Dominic Fike) about his relationship with Rue.

Anderson’s 1999 psychological drama Magnolia, shot by Robert Elswit,


ASC. “Magnolia ties together its storylines with camera movement so
that you feel like everything is connected,” Rév says. He also turned to the
still photography of Todd Hido, Joel Sternfeld and Greg Girard. “There
is a loneliness to the pictures, especially in the work of Todd Hido,” he
says. “They evoke the feeling of being alone in this world, and that’s very
much the kind of small-town or suburban America we were trying to
create — one that feels a little lonely and left alone.”
While the still images provided sparks of influence, Rév didn’t want
to mimic their lighting constructions. “It’s more like we were inspired by
the atmosphere in a photograph. You might take something, like a little
element from an image, and use that. It helps you to get on that wave
and tap into a certain kind of mood.”

Lenses, Light and Color


For the first season, Rév and Levinson settled on what they considered a
very “in-the-moment” photographic look that would employ Arri Rent-
al’s Prime DNA lenses on the Alexa 65. The larger-format digital-cinema

AUGUST 2022 / 19

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EUPHORIA: LIGHTS, CAMERA, HIGH SCHOOL

camera was relatively new at the time and mostly unused in television.
The lenses were also atypical for television, as they produced unique
image attributes. “I found this very fast T1.6 lens that had a 65mm focal
length, and we basically shot 95 to 98 percent of the show on that one
lens,” Rév says. “It’s equal to a 35mm lens on a Super 35mm camera —
so it’s a nice size for a close-up, but if you go further back, you can do a
nice wide shot at the same time. And the way the Alexa 65 sensor renders
the space, you don’t need that many lenses, so your lens kit becomes
smaller. This lens also had a halo effect, which took away the crispiness
of digital I’m always struggling with and created a dirtier image that we
really enjoyed.”
While shooting the pilot and three other episodes of Season 1, Rév
tried to keep the lighting simple, as did the cinematographers who shot
the show’s other episodes, Drew Daniels and Adam Newport-Berra. “We
were more into colors at the time,” the cinematographer says, “and we
used colored lights to keep everything on the yellow-blue color con-
trast — for both night and day scenes.” For day exteriors, he combined
Top: The cameras capture an emotional moment between
tungsten units for sunlight with ambient lights that had a daylight color.
Rue and her mother, Leslie (Nika King). Bottom: Paper
During night scenes, Rév leaned toward fluorescents or cooler HMIs for
lanterns have proven to be a useful tool on the show.
backlights, while yellow-reddish sodium streetlamps served as practi-
cal sources. “This creates a light color contrast inside the space,” he ex-
plains, “and we were trying to build on that color contrast throughout
the season.”
The first season’s lighting package included a mixture of HMIs,

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THE TERMINAL LIST

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, HIGH SCHOOL

tungsten units and LEDs. However, there’s one light Rév particularly fa-
vors: “I love a Mole-Richardson Molebeam for sunlight because it pro-
duces a shaft of light that’s like the way direct sun would come into a
room,” he says. “It’s great because it feels very real.”

Pivoting During the Pandemic


For the second season, Rév and Levinson wanted to take a different visu-
al approach, but production was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
During the break, Rév shot the feature Malcolm and Marie (AC April ’21),
as well as two special episodes of Euphoria that served as a bridge be-
tween the seasons, both technically and artistically. The biggest change
was the switch from shooting mostly on digital video to shooting pri-
marily on film. For these episodes, the cinematographer chose to pair
the 35mm Arricam LT with Kodak Vision3 500T film stocks, although he
also shot some 16mm on the Arri 416. The shift to film also necessitated
a change in the lens kit, with Arri Master Primes, Kowa Cine Prominars,
Cooke S4s and Zeiss Super Speeds called into service. “I was trying to
gather a set of lenses that had different [characteristics] for different sit-
uations,” Rev says. “We felt that because we had found a cohesive stylis-
Top: Cinematographer Marcell Rév, HCA captures a car scene
tic approach that was supported by the lighting and the film stock, we
involving drug dealers Fezco (Angus Cloud, at wheel) and
Ashtray (Javon Walton). Bottom: Rév on set.
could afford to vary our lenses and adapt to certain situations with our
toolset.”
The first of the special episodes was limited to one location: a 24-hour
diner where Rue and Ali (Colman Domingo) speak to each other across
a table. Rév used various LED sources and HMI backlights to achieve the
late-night look, manipulating them with lighting programmer Tim van
der Linden. Rév notes that Rob Witt “did an amazing job” operating the

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, HIGH SCHOOL

B camera in the diner, and credits him with “capturing some beautiful
moments.”
The episode gave Rév the creative freedom to concentrate on de-
tails. “On a normal Euphoria episode, we have like 100 to 120 scenes
— some of them are vignettes, delineated as separate strips on the call
sheet, and they’re mostly shot on separate locations, too. But the diner
episode was just the opposite. For the most part, we were on just two
close-ups, which then becomes an opportunity to dive deep and real-
ly explore a face, and manicure that one scene,” he says. “The way you
choose your focal length, the way you choose your eyeline, whether you
put your camera an inch to the left or the right — these small decisions
suddenly become so significant. At this point, it’s all about supporting a
performance. If you make those decisions right, you can really support
the performance. If you don’t, you can destroy one.”
He adds, “For the diner scene we were choosing the focal length of
our lenses to tap into the scene’s level of intimacy, by starting on a wide
lens closer to the actors and then slowly switching to tighter lenses from
more of a distance, and the other way around. It was a long diner, so we
had the space to play with this; for the most part, it was a gentle play
[with the lenses] so it wouldn’t get distracting, but our approach gives
The show occasionally incorporates surreal, showstopping
some extra focus to specific moments. Another important tool was the
sequences like these theatrical interludes from Season 2,
window, which we used as an extra layer for the scene; we could decide
Episode 7 (“The Theater and Its Double”).
when to jump inside the space, and we followed the same logic by ‘jump-
ing the line’ at certain moments in the conversation.”

A Change of Seasons — and Stocks


For Season 2, the collaborators deliberately veered away from the con-
temporary look of the first season, moving into the domain of the past.
“We wanted to create something that has a feeling of a memory of high

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

Tech Specs: Season 1 - 1.78:1 | Season 2 - 1.85:1


Cameras | Season 1: Arri Alexa 65 || Specials: Arricam LT, Arri 416 || Season 2: Arri LT, Arri 435, Arri 416
Lenses | Season 1: Arri Rental Prime DNA || Specials: Arri/Zeiss Master Prime, Arriflex/Zeiss Super Speed,
Kowa Cine Prominar, Cooke S4/i || Season 2: Cooke S4/i, Panchro; Arriflex/Zeiss Super Speed (“B Speed”)
Film Stocks: Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, Kodak Ektachrome 100D 5294

A diner became the key setting for the first of two special
“bridge” episodes shot between Seasons 1 and 2.

school — a kind of fractured memory,” Rév says. “It’s a feeling of nos-


talgia, but in the way your brain restores a memory, so it’s never totally
clear. It’s a foggy image of a memory.”
Rév returned to still photography for inspiration, researching the
Hungarian community photo archive Fortepan. “I was looking at a lot
of old photographs, specifically a lot of amateur photographs that aren’t
perfect: photographs that aren’t in focus, not well exposed, blown out, or
stuff that obscures the subject a little bit,” he says.
The cinematographer eventually decided that Kodak’s recently re-
vived Ektachrome 100D 5294 film stock could help achieve a similar
kind of gritty, amateur look. But he understood shooting on Ektachrome
would pose issues. “The Ektachrome became a big part of our aesthetic
in Season 2,” he says. “We shot around 50 percent of the season on it. I
was trying to get the rest of the footage, which we shot on Kodak 3 500T,
as close to that look as possible by pushing it and trying to create con-
trast with our lighting. We didn’t use any Kodak 250D; we just shot the
day exteriors on 500T and balanced it with filters or in the grade. I was
trying to match the grain and grittiness of the Ektachrome stock, and I

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EUPHORIA: LIGHTS, CAMERA, HIGH SCHOOL

The volatile relationship between


Nate (Jacob Elordi) and Maddy leads
to infidelities that cause an explosive
conflict between Maddy and Cassie.

love the corrected skin tones we got with the 500T.”


While Vision3 500T stock provides amazing latitude and very true
colors, Ektachrome 100D has significantly less latitude. Ektachrome is
also a reversal stock, yet Rév had it cross-processed as a negative, which
made the resulting image green. “It’s a hard stock to shoot on, I can tell
you that,” he says with a laugh. “First of all, it requires a lot of light. Sec-
ond, it’s very contrasty, so you have to create a softly lit or front-lit set.
The lighting doesn’t look good on the monitor, or to your eye — it goes
against your instincts. You just have to rely upon your light meter and
your stock and trust that when the footage comes back from the lab, it
will have the contrast and the colors you were going for.”
He adds: “Especially when cross-processing Ektachrome, you get
these weird colors that are hard to control. You definitely need a lot of
testing to figure it out.”
Rév shot the entire first episode of Season 2 on the tricky stock, in-
cluding a house party at the end of the episode. Ektachrome required
more than four times the light than Vision3 500 stock, so he deployed
Condors equipped with both 18K HMI and 20K tungsten units or Maxi- Despite the difficulties of shooting on a stock like Ektachrome, Rév
Brutes, as well as balloon lights. For close-ups, he relied on inexpensive relished the challenge. “When you’re shooting on film, you’re constant-
paper lanterns. “You have to front-light faces when shooting on Ekta- ly trying to imagine an image in your head, which forces you to doubt
chrome because it’s one of the only ways to make them look good,” he yourself and keep coming up with ideas. So, the process is not done until
says. “But the diffusion and the round surface of the paper lanterns cre- you grade it,” he says. “On digital, nowadays you can grade on set and
ate something nice in combination with Ektachrome. The resulting light create something final, so you’re making your decisions there. Film has
fills up the face in a way that has some slight contrast.” more mystery to it — and I enjoy that mystery.”

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PHOTOS BY JUSTIN LUBIN, COURTESY OF AMAZON PRIME VIDEO.
In the Shadows on
The Terminal List
Armando Salas, ASC captures a low-light narrative
for the Amazon Prime Video series.

A
By Mark Dillon

SC member Armando Salas’ use of carefully illuminated


dark visuals on The Terminal List goes far to express the
action series’ themes of paranoia, betrayal and high-lev-
el corruption. Key to the success of his techniques was
the imperative that light introduced into a dark location
must be motivated. “It has to be justified by the setting,
the dramatic intent and the circumstances within a
scene, so that it feels organic to the audience,” Salas says. “We wanted to be
able to see enough to understand what’s happening. We didn’t want the au-
dience to be a step behind — or for the darkness to go muddy, because then
you lose a sense of focus. It was about finding the justification for the light
source. We discussed how each sequence would look and feel as we chose
locations, and that informed the strategy for lighting.”

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The Amazon Prime Video series — which is based on a Jack Carr
novel — follows wounded, revenge-minded Navy SEAL Commander
James Reece (Chris Pratt), who is intent on uncovering the conspiracy he
believes is behind the decimation of his team. He operates in the shad-
ows and often confronts his adversaries at night. The visual style created
a challenge for the Cuban-born cinematographer and his collaborators
— including directors Antoine Fuqua, M.J. Bassett, Tucker Gates and Syl-
vain White — as well as for Ellen Kuras, ASC and Frederick E.O. Toye,
who both directed alongside cinematographer Evans Brown.
AC spoke with Salas, Fuqua (see sidebar, page 32) and Kuras (see side-
bar, page 34) about their work in achieving the production’s low-light
motif.

Lighting the Tunnel


The dark tone of the series is first established in a pivotal action scene in
the pilot episode, set in Syria and directed by Fuqua. After Reece briefs
his men on their mission, they land on a beach in the dark of night and
enter a sewer-tunnel system that’s supposed to lead to their target. The
operation ends in disaster — an ambush, Reece believes — and a trail
Opposite page: Former Navy SEAL officer James Reece
of casualties.
(Chris Pratt) in full combat gear. This page: A somber
The tunnel set for the seminal sequence was constructed in the
Reece visits an airplane hangar containing the bodies of
Blue Sky Tank at Paramount Studios, and allowed the actors to trudge his fallen squad members.
through shin-deep water.
Introducing light into what would otherwise be a pitch-black area, a
SEAL breacher uses a thermal Breachpen to cut through a metal grate
impeding their path. “The torch produces blindingly bright yellow-or-
ange light,” says Salas of this specialized tool provided by props and
special effects. “We spent a good amount of time on that beat. We gave
each of our heroes a moment with their night-vision goggles up and that
flickering light on their faces before they get swallowed by the darkness
of the sewer tunnels. We tested [the torch] ahead of time to ensure that
the color and quality of light gave us the ethereal effect we were looking
for.” The light from the Breachpen was augmented with a flicker effect
provided by Arri SkyPanels with the aid of lighting programmer Jeffrey
Horbachewski. “Then, as the light of the breaching torch fades, smoke
fills the tunnel,” Salas adds. “They flip on their goggles and essentially
disappear into darkness.”
Collaboration on the set design was key to devising lighting solutions.

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IN THE SHADOWS ON THE TERMINAL LIST

Salas and gaffer Cooper Donaldson approached art directors Robert Jo- much fog was in there to not give away the sources.”
seph and Mark Larkin (working under production designer Warren Alan The tunnels led to a 70'x50' area — dubbed “the crypt” — which fea-
Young) about building in portholes on either side of each brick archway tured low arched vaulted ceilings. In this section, the art department in-
that connected the tunnel sections. Over those portholes they rigged cluded 4'x4' ceiling grates — ostensibly leading up to the street — which
Kino Flo FreeStyle 31 LED panels to provide a non-defined light source. dripped water through a dressing of trapped sewage. The crew shined
“This way, we had control over how much light was scraping the tun- two Kino Flo Celeb 450s through each grate, pointing in various direc-
nel walls — how much ‘toppy’ back- and frontlight we would have in any tions, to supply room tone. “You want to at least show our heroes sil-
one section,” Salas says. “Then it was about carefully controlling how houetted in an environment,” Donaldson notes. “There is so much going

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PHOTOS ON THIS PAGE BY MATT CASTELLITTO AND COOPER DONALDSON.

Opposite page, top: During a covert mission in Syria, Reece’s SEAL team
explores a network of water-filled tunnels using flashlights affixed to
their rifles. Opposite page, bottom: As the SEALs move further into the
tunnel system, they engage the enemy in a firefight that illuminates
the space with muzzle flashes. This page, top: The tunnel set for a key
action sequence in the pilot episode was built in the Blue Sky Tank on
the Paramount studio lot. Bottom: A look at some of the lighting tools
deployed in the tunnel set.

on, and you wouldn’t want to see only a couple of flashlights through
the haze. We were trying to get a very dark overall base layer, which Ar-
mando felt the Kino Flo LEDs would give us if dimmed down to 10 per-
cent — or even 1 percent. The FreeStyles allowed us to dial in color very
accurately, even though we were using them at the bottom end of the Previous spread: Zendaya stars as troubled teen Rue Bennett
in Euphoria. This page, top: Best friends Maddy (Alexa Demie)
dimming capabilities.”
and Cassie (Sydney Sweeney) have a locker confab in the
high-school hallway. Bottom: Rue attempts to mend fences
Flashes and Flashlights with her girlfriend Jules (Hunter Schafer).
At the point when the SEALs realize the crypt is rigged to explode, flash-
lights attached to their rifles serve as a primary lighting source. “In this
part of the sequence,” Salas says, “we lit the actors with more shape —
versus just texture and mood — and they pull off their night-vision gog-
gles so we can once again see their faces.”

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IN THE SHADOWS ON THE TERMINAL LIST

The camera crew took color-temperature readings of the flashlights the submerged crypt,” the cinematographer continues. “We had a game
and then gelled them accordingly. “Those consumer products can run plan for how to change the lighting over; Cooper and his team executed
up to 10,000K and create more of an undesired eerie, sci-fi look,” Don- it very quickly, while keeping everyone safe. We created a wall of Arri
aldson says. “So, we would put some 1/2 Straw on them. Sometimes they 360 SkyPanels on one side for a base exposure, which key grip Bobby
would be too bright, so we would also have ND .3 or ND .6 filters ready Thomas teased off the ceilings. To help focus the eye, we bounced hard
to go.” light off the water. At 600 fps, the ripples of light were practically frozen,
Suddenly, the SEALs are engaged by enemy fire and the tunnels be- which added a hint of surrealism, almost cutting out the subject from
come alight with muzzle flashes. The crew used Titan tubes in pixel the background. The combination of frame rate and lighting created a
mode to create machine-gun and fire effects, running upwards of 16 fix- visual representation of our protagonist trying to make sense of his un-
tures at a time. The battery-powered units were particularly helpful in reliable memories.”
minimizing cabling in the water-filled set.
As the melee escalates and the eruptions of light become increas- Confrontation by Firelight
ingly chaotic, an explosion is detonated. Reece wakes up concussed and Salas points to another instance of his work with low-light cinematog-
disoriented, and in the middle of a firefight — engulfed in smoke and raphy — in Episode 3 (directed by Bassett), when Reece sneaks into the
surrounded by fire and debris. “We photographed his close-ups and vacation house of Saul Agnon (Sean Gunn), lackey to mogul Steve Horn
his POVs at 48 fps to slow down some of the scarring imagery that will (Jai Courtney), whose interests extend into the military sector. To avoid
haunt him later,” Salas says. “We also photographed a key moment that suspicion, Reece raises the volume on the classical music playing in the
led to the explosion in extreme slow motion, though that perspective is house to drown out his prisoner’s cries and turns off all the lights, with
only used later as Reece is trying to remember the events that led to the light only emitting from the fireplace.
death of his men. The initial sequence is quick and messy within the Says Salas, “The scene essentially takes place in front of the fireplace
chaos of a firefight. The memory of the event keeps changing and evolv- with the characters in silhouette — in half-light and quarter-light — but
ing, so we photographed the same moment multiple ways with different there’s always a twinkle in their eyes. There’s always the ability to read
characters using a Phantom 4K camera at 600 fps. their performances, even though it’s a very dark scene.”
“Lighting for that exposure required quite a bit of firepower within The cinematographer supplemented the practical firelight with

Director Antoine Fuqua: Balancing Realism and Necessity


There were two reasons why director Antoine Fuqua wanted to collab-
orate with cinematographer Armando Salas, ASC on the pilot for The
Terminal List. One was the recommendation of showrunner David DiG-
ilio, who had worked with Salas on the CBS historical drama Strange
Angel. The other was the cinematographer’s work on Ozark.
“Ozark is dark, and I was trying to find a cinematographer who
understood minimum lighting in dark places,” Fuqua says. “We didn’t
want the opening sequence of The Terminal List to have a tunnel that
was just all black. It was complicated, because Armando had to hide
the lights. You believe these [SEALs] are in a dark place with no light,
but there’s just enough that you can see them.”
The director adds that the tunnel scene was shot darker than ulti-
mately presented. “You want to take the audience to what the tunnel
would really feel like, but you want to try to distinguish which guy is
which and understand how they operate,” he says. “Colorist [and ASC Director Antoine Fuqua (right) confers on set with cinematographer
associate] Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 [used selective power Armando Salas, ASC.
windows and tracking mattes to help focus the eye.]”
Fuqua, who directed the pilot and stayed on as executive producer it was nearly black-and-white, like in our tunnel — although we
for all eight episodes, notes that he and Salas worked together to needed to see the texture of things. I made sure the visual books
finalize the show’s lookbook. “I pulled images and then manipulated went to everybody. Once I got Armando’s input, we got those to the
them,” the director says. “It could have been something from Black producers, the other cinematographer [Evans Brown] and all the
Hawk Down [2001, shot by Sławomir Idziak] or war pictures where directors involved to try to keep some consistency.”

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

FreeStyle 31 panels fitted with DoPChoice Snapbags and Snapgrids. The The lighting setup for a scene in which Reece is debriefed
crew also lined a soffit above the fireplace with Astera Titan and Helio about the catastrophic mission he led.
tubes pointing up to the ceiling to provide ambient fill. A flicker effect
that further amplified the firelight was created with Titan tubes and
LiteGear LiteMat Spectrum fixtures. Camera and Ratio Choices
“Many of these smaller LED products are really useful for locations like For the sewer-tunnel sequence, the filmmakers employed the
that, because they are good to tuck up in places,” says Donaldson. “Also, series’ main camera package of three Arri Alexa Minis — as well
we were trying to get all our lights on wireless receivers and batteries to as other units for the soldiers’ night-vision perspectives: On Pratt,
have freedom of movement for the camera, without seeing stingers and they mounted a GoPro Hero7 Black converted to full-spectrum by
DMX cables. We controlled using CRMX wireless technology.” Kolari Vision, while the other SEALs were outfitted with helmet- and
shoulder-mounted Mohoc IR military cameras. For night-vision
Set of Tools inserts and specific story beats, they also converted a Red Gemini
(set to 3,200 ISO) to full-spectrum — “visible light plus IR,” Salas
Salas says the Arri Alexa Mini, which recorded in XQ UHD, is very sen-
says.
sitive and performs well in low-light situations. “Stefan Sonnenfeld and
On the pilot, Kirk Gardner served as A-camera/Steadicam
I spent several hours creating and fine-tuning the show LUTs so that I
operator and Joshua Harrison served on B-camera. Harrison then
felt very confident about our digital negative. We ended up with a really transitioned to A-camera Steadicam operator for the rest of the
filmic LUT, not overly aggressive, and I got comfortable with what we season.
could see in the shadows. We lit for those nuances down in the toe of Regarding aspect ratio, Salas opted for the traditional 2.35:1
the curve.” widescreen. “Given that most streamers are now cropping to 2:1
The filmmakers shot with Leitz Leica Summilux-C and Summicron-C or 2.25:1, the standardization for episodic is a bit out the window,”
primes, which the cinematographer characterizes as “modern and clean he says. “We chose 2.35:1 — with custom frame lines and framing
without being harsh and ultra-sharp.” They also used a Fujinon Premier charts for that ratio — for widescreen, as 2.39:1 felt a bit too wide.”
75-400mm T3.8 zoom for surveillance-style shots and a detuned 28mm

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IN THE SHADOWS ON THE TERMINAL LIST

Tech Specs: 2.35:1


Cameras | Arri Alexa Mini, Red Gemini, Phantom Flex4K, Mohoc IR, GoPro Hero7 Black
Lenses | Leitz Leica Summilux-C and Summicron-C, Fujinon Premier zoom, Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime

Director Ellen Kuras, ASC: Light and Depth


The darkness established in the tunnel sequence in Episode 1 of The
Terminal List carries over into Episode 2 — even to locations that
are lit darker than they would likely be in real life, including a military
office, the house of Commander Reece (Chris Pratt), and the home of
his former SEAL buddy Ben (Taylor Kitsch).
Director and Society member Ellen Kuras was able to watch dailies
from the pilot as she prepped Episode 2 with director of photography
Evans Brown. “I told Evans I wanted to use light — or the absence of
it — as a metaphor,” she says. “We should see the darkness that lurks
in Reece’s mind in the lighting, and how he moves in and out of the
shadows will also tell us what’s going on in his head. The lighting goes
hand-in-hand with the meaning of the scenes.”
Following his disastrous mission in the Middle East, Reece senses
a high-powered conspiracy closing in on him in the second episode.
His concerns fall on deaf ears with his superiors, so he decides to take
matters into his own hands. Director and ASC member Ellen Kuras confers with Pratt
Kuras told Brown that she wanted the audience to feel like they while shooting a funeral scene.
were with Reece — in his head — which was an especially interesting
perspective, given the brain injury that might be clouding his judg- happening,” she says. “It’s difficult to do, because you need separa-
ment. Says Kuras, “This approach helped us decide how I would block tion, otherwise things fall into the blackness and you can’t see what
the actors, where we were going to put the camera, and how it was they are. To me, the most exciting kind of imagery is when there is
going to move — whether we would do a moving master vs. a shot on a sense of mystery and the unknown, yet certain things stand out
a close-focus lens directly behind the character’s head.” and there’s a sense of depth — even in the deep darkness.”
She praises Brown’s “fantastic eye,” and adds that “he was able to She would sometimes ask Brown to throw more light on a scene.
bring a real sense of drama, giving the episode more oblique framing “We needed that separation,” she says. “I wanted to make sure we
and challenging what we would see in the frame.” could see or feel what’s happening. And that’s me as a DP saying
She credits both Evans and Salas for maintaining the series’ dark that — and if a DP says it might be playing around too much in the
palette. “It’s operating in darkness, but you can see everything that’s dark, that’s pretty dark!”

A frame pull from the funeral sequence.

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime with a diopter for extreme close-ups of Reece The narrative’s overarching theme was one of the production’s key
when his mental state is suffering. draws for Salas. “The audience is rooting for the insurgent — the guy
The filmmakers usually shot dark interiors between T2 and T2.8, un- who’s unjustly lost everything and has the means to seek revenge,” he
less they wanted to isolate a moment or have more fall-off for a por- says. “What really drew me to this project is the motif of our main char-
trait-style image, in which case they would shoot wide open. Says Salas, acter possibly getting lost in the darkness.”
“My focus puller Neil Chartier is amazing in dealing with shallow focus
on complex moves that usually started or ended with the camera very
close to the actors.”

Muted Palette
Fuqua and Salas mapped out a muted color palette for the series, The cinematographer adds that “red became a color clue for the
which drew from military influence — primarily black, gray, khaki audience when our protagonist is having trouble distinguishing
green and brown. “Once the story reaches San Francisco, we intro- memories from reality, which [we] referred to as ‘conflation.’ As the
duced quite a bit more blue for that story line,” says Salas. Red was conflations continue throughout the season, we added more red
nearly completely eliminated, with a notable exception being a cape elements.”
that Pratt’s character’s daughter wears in a key recurring memory.

HMI LED
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Small Wonder:
Marcel the Shell
With Shoes On
Director of photography Bianca Cline and stop-motion-unit
director of photography Eric Adkins combine live action
with animation in charming miniature fantasy.
By Joe Fordham

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FRAME CAPTURES AND PHOTOS COURTESY OF A24. TOP PHOTO, THIS PAGE, BY EILEEN KOHLHEPP.

M
arcel feels pretty good about being a shell.
The 1"-tall stop-motion puppet — star of three
three-minute shorts written and directed by
Dean Fleischer-Camp, voiced in a croaky falset-
to by Jenny Slate — was ostensibly a snail shell
decked out with miniature shoes and one googly
eye. Marcel’s infectious optimism and endearing
philosophical worldview attracted nearly 50 million YouTube views and
spawned two New York Times bestselling books. Now, the peppy mollusk
is the star of A24’s animated feature Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.
To make the film, Fleischer-Camp and Slate joined screenwriter Nick
Paley and producer Elizabeth Holm to concoct a 90-minute story that
largely retains the setting of Marcel’s world inside a California Crafts-
man house. Leading the cinematography department were director of
photography Bianca Cline, who captured principal photography on lo-
cation in Los Angeles, and Eric Adkins, who supervised the stop-mo-
Opposite: Marcel the Shell dons a “backpack” before embarking on
tion work. Other key collaborators included animation director Kirsten
a journey to find his family. This page, top: One of the filmmakers
Lapore, postproduction supervisor Jalal Jemison and visual-effects su-
makes an adjustment to Marcel’s grandmother, Nana Connie.
pervisor Zdravko “Zee” Stoitchkov. Bottom: Director Dean Fleischer-Camp plays a filmmaker named
“The majority of films like this are often told through a child’s gaze, “Dean” who is documenting Marcel’s life.
and that can lead to a look that makes the character feel more magi-
cal than realistic,” says Cline, whose cinematography credits include the
documentaries Murder Among the Mormons and Belly of the Beast. “We
wanted Marcel to feel like a real being, so we needed to create a world
that felt very realistic — the most beautiful version of realistic. My main
reference came from Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life [AC Aug. ’11].”

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SMALL WONDER: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

TOP PHOTO BY DREX REED.


Los Angeles’ Hancock Park neighborhood was a base of operations
for preproduction and production. Using animatics of storyboarded
scenes with prerecorded dialogue, a small team of puppeteers staged
interactions of animated characters on set using static stand-in models.
The camera and animation teams then planned interactions to integrate
stop-motion animation in a subsequent unit. Adkins, whose credits in-
clude Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow [AC Oct. ’04] and The Box-
trolls, notes, “Our principal characters were not created in CG; they were
practical objects less than 1-inch tall whose stop-motion animation we
fused into on-location plates.
“Bianca established a lyrical documentary style in her cinematogra-
phy,” he continues. “We placed the characters in scenes through lighting
interactivity and surface reactions, with shadows and reflections. We
documented and analyzed camera setups, then re-created those with
Top: The camera and lighting setup for a shot of Marcel’s living space.
similar beauty, tracking and scaling camera moves in a controlled stu-
Bottom: Marcel takes viewers on a tour of his quarters.
dio setting. The lighting included many moods and sometimes called for
motion control, with variable camera and lighting cues. We had many
locked-off shots —  2D-stabilized plates with simple axis movements away’ a little. Once we found the image, we added imperfections, such as
shot as lock-offs, and then we motion-tracked camera motions back in unsteadying, or ‘bobbling’ the camera. For instance, if Marcel made Dean
— and we also had full 3D-tracked and scaled plates with multiple axes laugh while Dean was filming, we’d move the camera for a second or let
of motion control.” the focus go in and out. We worked out focus marks and shot a pass with
our [stationary] Marcel stand-in. After that, we’d shoot a clean plate, and
Crafting “Imperfection” we’d tell the focus puller to roll through the focus as if they were trying
Digital motion tracking allowed the filmmakers to embrace handheld to find focus.”
camera techniques, reinforcing the conceit that the film’s human protag- Working with Chiodo Bros. Productions, the animation unit replicat-
onist, a filmmaker named Dean (played by Fleischer-Camp), is capturing ed imperfections in stop-motion photography during a 12-week shoot
Marcel’s conversation for a documentary while renting the house where at Bix Pix in Burbank. “I was always looking for lighting cues to put the
the amiable shell resides with his grandmother, Nana Connie (voiced by character in that space,” says Adkins. “If there was a lightbulb on the
Isabella Rossellini). “We wanted to create the most beautiful version of a ceiling reflecting off a wooden surface, I would take note of how Marcel
documentary that we could,” Cline says. “But we always wanted to make interacted with that if he cast a shadow and a reflection. And sometimes
it feel off-the-cuff. Our mantra was to find a shot and then to ‘throw it we faked object shadows. If we had a wooden surface, the VFX artists

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MASTER CLASS
LEARN FROM THE BEST

The American Society of Cinematographers’ in-person Master Subjects and activities include:
Class program is designed for cinematographers with an • Multiple interactive lighting demonstrations
intermediate to advanced skill set. This five-day immersive • Presentation on virtual production and shooting with LED walls
seminar is taught in Los Angeles by some of the finest directors of • Color-grading workshop at a post facility
photography in the world. • Analysis of cinematography from notable films of the past
• Presentations about cameras, lenses and future technologies
Enrolling in the ASC Master Class will enable you to hone your
craft while making valuable professional connections that Upcoming sessions:
can jumpstart your career. Prominent Society members and September 12-16
associates serve as instructors, offering invaluable experience October 17-21
and insights not only on the creative and technical aspects of the November 7-11 (Shooting-on-Film Focus)
cinematographer’s profession, but on business-related topics
as well. Learn more and register at theasc.com/asc/education/master-class

p.36-43 Marcel
AC Master the Ad
Class Shell v4.indd1 39
v2.indd 7/2/22
7/1/22 6:40
5:26PM
PM
SMALL WONDER: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

TOP PHOTO BY BIANCA CLINE.


would pull the glare off that, and I made sure there was a reflection of
the shadow of a solid object that Marcel would interact with as he walked
across that surface.”

Lighting for Mood


The lighting scheme followed a narrative arc, starting with bright sunlit
scenes and progressing to melancholy tones in the second act before fi-
nally resolving in a sunset. The interactivity anchored animated charac-
ters in their own reality. “We wanted to put things in the frame that you
seldom see in a stop-motion world,” says Cline. “Flickering or moving
light felt more realistic, more like the real world.”
The live-action and animation teams both made use of DMX systems
to control lighting. Cline and gaffer Brice Bradley used DMX with an iPad
app as a dimmer board, shooting 24 fps with an Arri Alexa Mini. Adkins
A Mac keyboard is illuminated for a shot of Marcel and Nana Connie
and his team used DMX to keyframe lighting cues with motion control,
eating popcorn and watching a show on the “big screen.”
serving 14 stop-motion units employing Canon EOS R cameras with up-
graded HD live-view feeds.
Animators aligned puppets to plate photography in digital overlays live-action unit to take advantage of natural light. “I got to do lighting
using DZED Systems’ Dragonframe software. “We called this process scouts for the entirety of preproduction,” says Cline. “I’d come in early
‘frontlight/backlight’ because we didn’t use bluescreen,” Adkins says. and notice that one room looked amazing at 7:30 a.m., while another
“We created an alpha matte to pull keys on white or gray surfaces, in room looked great at 5 p.m. We planned our days around that and lit the
which we would capture a separate exposure in silhouette without the scenes to feel naturalistic. We didn’t add unnecessary backlights, but we
need for color suppression in the beauty exposure. We used DMX light- did want scenes to feel like the sun was coming through windows, so
ing controls built into Dragonframe to change lighting per multiple ex- we used a lot of Molepars outside the house to send hard shafts of light
posure for each frame of animation.” inside.”
Housing the majority of Marcel’s universe in one location allowed the Cline paired the Alexa Mini with Nikon prime lenses rehoused by

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

David Bibi Cox at Eastern Enterprises. Due to the close-focus work for
the small models, the cinematographers had very shallow depth of field
at 12" focus distances, even at T8. A pair of specially rigged GoPros capture a “car shot” during Marcel’s
adventure outside the house.
On the Move
In one of the film’s most dynamic sequences, Marcel seeks information
about missing members of his family by hitching a ride on the dash-
board of Dean’s car. “We wanted that sequence to feel slightly different,”
Cline says. “We figured Dean was filming Marcel in the house using an
Alexa so it would look high-quality, but we thought the driving sequence
could be motivated by the aesthetic of GoPros. We filmed all of the car
plates with the Marcel stand-in on the dash of the car. We drove the route
and let the lighting be whatever it wanted to be. It was very chaotic, with
light bouncing off buildings, trees and all sorts of colors.”
Inside the car, GoPros, visible in shot, were affixed to the windshield
via suction cups, while an Alexa captured forward views from the back
seat. The animation team reconstructed the dashboard with Marcel
standing on a map, getting carsick. “The GoPro was the most volatile
of cameras to analyze,” says Adkins. “We used contrasting flicker and
PHOTO BY ERIC ADKINS.

blown-out auto exposure, along with mounting our lights on a mo-


tion-control arm to mimic the action. We studied the plate photogra-
phy, matched the shadow motion and duplicated that lighting based on
the overlay per frame through Dragonframe. We then added light fluc-
tuations with preprogrammed spotlights going on and off using DMX
while we swept a motion-control arm across laser-cut tree branches for

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AUGUST 2022 / 41

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SMALL WONDER: MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON

Top: Cinematographer Bianca Cline and Fleischer-Camp angle in on a


shot of a strategically positioned magnifying glass. Bottom: Stop-motion
cinematographer Eric Adkins monitors the progress of a shot as stop-
motion gaffer Dwight Campbell adjusts a setup.

PHOTO BY ERIC ADKINS.


shadows, and we faked a harder shadow of cool sunlight to mimic the be super sad. She’s going away, but we also wanted it to be beautiful be-
car’s quarter-panel as light moved across the dash.” cause she’s a beautiful person. We knew a 60 Minutes crew would likely
black out the windows. We thought maybe there would be a little bit of
A Poetic Farewell light sneaking in where Nana was sitting, so we put Molepars outside
Marcel’s celebrity eventually brings a 60 Minutes news team to the the window and added a little bit of atmosphere.” Puppeteers walked
house. Sony F5 cameras were used to shoot material “meant to have Nana’s stand-in through the shot for focus, and then Cline filmed a clean
been filmed by the 60 Minutes crew. We were attempting to mimic the plate. The animation team later replicated the interactivity of Connie
look of their show,” Cline notes. walking off into the fog by shadowing shafts of light, and then visual
The sequence allowed the filmmakers to cast interiors in a twi- effects faded the character away.
light-like gloom for a touching scene in which Nana succumbs to her The film closes with Marcel visiting the basement laundry room, from
illness and, poetically, vanishes into a sunbeam. “Thematically, we knew which he observes a beautiful sunset. The filmmakers staged the room
this film is about loss,” Cline explains. “We also knew a lot of children with a west-facing wall and window, planning their lighting using the
would likely watch the film, so we didn’t want Nana Connie’s death to Sun Seeker tracking app, and then captured the scene in a slow, rising

PHOTO BY DREX REED.

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

Tech Specs: 1.66:1


Cameras | Arri Alexa Mini, Sony F5, GoPro, Canon EOS R
Lenses | Nikon Nikkor prime (rehoused); Panavision zoom,
Primo prime; Fujifilm/Fujinon XK Cabrio

push-in. “That was probably our most difficult shot,” says Cline. “We did A low-angle rig used to capture floor-level shots of Marcel
10 takes pushing across a concrete floor from one end of the house to rolling around the house inside a tennis ball.
the other. We had lights just outside the window creating soft [supple-
mental] light coming through. I had them paint the set white because I
wanted a little extra bounce. We knew that had to be the most magical
of all the scenes, so we timed it with the real sunset outside the window,
coming through the trees.
The animation team placed Marcel on the sill, matching the plate.
“We only animated a certain frame range of Marcel in that shot,” Adkins
says. “He wasn’t visible until the camera got closer, and the sill gave us a
natural occluding edge. The plate had sheer curtains moving in a gentle
breeze and natural tree shadows. We re-created that dapple effect with
motion-control branches with the appropriate diffusion and color tem-
perature taken from the live action, and then timed those with DMX-in-
PHOTO BY BIANCA CLINE.

cremented light fluctuations.”


Upon seeing the finished film for the first time, Cline found the il-
lusions she had helped to create so convincing that she “started crying
three minutes into the movie!” she recalls. “I couldn’t believe how well
it all worked together. Marcel felt like a real character, and that was our
main goal. We worked hard to make it feel effortless.”

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2022 Rising Stars of Cinematography
Eclectic Perspectives
AC shines its annual spotlight on nine talented artists.
Profiles by Tara Jenkins

S
ince 2017, American Cinematographer has released an an-
nual roster of up-and-coming cinematographers selected
by a panel of ASC members and the magazine’s staff. This
year’s nine Rising Stars have accrued an impressive list of
accomplishments over the course of their upward-trend-
ing careers. Veronica Bouza; Matthew Chuang, ACS; Jomo
Fray; Michael “Cambio” Fernandez; Catherine Gold-
schmidt; Isiah Donté Lee; Christine Ng; Julia Swain; and Erin G. Wesley come
from varied backgrounds and have eclectic artistic sensibilities, and all show
immense talent, promise and an impressive dedication to the art of cinema-
tography. Here are their stories.

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VERONICA BOUZA
Los Angeles native Veronica Bouza has been visually minded since
childhood, when her architect parents would take her to visit interesting
buildings to observe their structure and form. Bouza later studied cin-
ematography at DePaul University, after which she worked as an elec-
trician in IATSE 476 on such shows as Chicago P.D. and Chicago Fire. Her
trajectory was altered when she met ASC member Amy Vincent. “She in-
vited me to be a camera trainee on a job,” Bouza says, “which pushed me
to be a camera assistant.”
Weary of Chicago’s cold weather, Bouza moved back to L.A. to pursue
a career in the camera department. For about six years, she worked as an
assistant on shows such as Jane the Virgin, Major Crimes and Dream Corp
LLC, but says, “I hit a point where I didn’t really feel like I was creative,
or that I was a cinematographer. In 2018, I was invited by Zeiss to attend
the ASC Awards. Alan Caso, ASC was speaking, and we were at a table of
women cinematographers, but I just didn’t feel like one of them. So that
same night, I applied to AFI, and I haven’t looked back.” Bouza graduated
from AFI in 2020. “It’s been an interesting journey,” she says, “coming up
as a technician and kind of resetting my brain as a storyteller.”
The past year has allowed Bouza to experience her work in a way that
was not possible during the Covid-19 outbreak. “I finished AFI  in the
midst of the pandemic,” she says, “so a lot of my projects, my visual es-
says, were just stuck in that virtual-film-festival route, or post. This is the
first year when I’ve been able to see a lot of my projects onscreen, and
it means a lot to actually see people connect to the work.” Bouza’s 2020
short Leave Us Here won the prize for Best Cinematography at the Atlan-
ta Women’s Film Festival, and the film was selected by the Urbanworld
Film Festival and shown at MoCADA in New York.
Bouza has been busy since graduating. “This year, I had the opportu-
nity to shoot a pilot presentation for WarnerMedia OneFifty, as well as
the space-themed short Amina, which premiered at Tribeca 2022 as part
of Rising Voices: Season 2. I also just finished a documentary on Breonna
Taylor and George Floyd that looked at the two trials and how each city
dealt with them.” Bouza’s short film Pens and Pencils recently played at
the American Black Film Festival, where it was a finalist for the HBO
Short Film Award. 
Bouza cites ASC members Vincent, Kira Kelly, Kenneth Zunder and
Polly Morgan — all of whom she’s worked with as an assistant — as cin-
ematographers who have inspired her on her career path. “They’ve all
pushed me to shoot and go for my own dream. My biggest hope is that
when some crewmember reads this, it will inspire them. I hope that see-
ing this story — not a Cinderella story, but just one about putting in that
effort — will show someone that this path is possible.” 

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2022 RISING STARS OF CINEMATOGRAPHY: ECLECTIC PERSPECTIVES

MATTHEW CHUANG, ACS


Matthew Chuang, ACS was pushed toward filmmaking when he didn’t
get high enough grades in high school to pursue architecture — because
he was spending so much time watching movies. “My dad was like, ‘Oh,
why don’t you go to film school, then?’ At the time, I didn’t know I could
do that.”
Chuang subsequently studied film at the Academy of Photograph-
ic Arts in Sydney, Australia. After graduating, he began his career by
shooting music videos in Sydney, and after moving to Melbourne, Ch-
uang began to shoot commercials. “I had a music video that went to the
Camerimage cinematography festival in Poland. It was there that I real-
ized, ‘Maybe I should move to the U.S. so I can grow as a filmmaker.’ I’ve
been in L.A. for about five years, and I’ve started to do more feature-film
work.” 
Chuang’s first big break was his collaboration with director Justin
Chon on the drama Blue Bayou, on which he served as co-cinematog-
rapher with Ante Cheng; the film premiered at Cannes in 2021. Chuang
then shot the period witchcraft drama You Won’t Be Alone, directed by
Goran Stolevski, which premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festi-
val — and subsequently earned coverage in the online article “Sundance
Standouts 2022” at ascmag.com. “I would love to continue to build with
directors like Justin Chon and Goran Stolevski,” he says. “Both of them
are writing really compelling character dramas. My goal is to just keep
doing more films that are bold and sincere.”
Chuang is currently in preproduction for the Apple TV Plus Hawai-
ian historical drama Chief of War, directed by Chon and starring Jason
Momoa. He is also in post on the films Of an Age, directed by Stolevski,
and Assassin Club, directed by Camille Delamarre, as well as the FX doc-
umentary series Outlaw: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, directed by
Allen Hughes. 
“Work that has a personal aspect is something I’m really drawn to-
ward,” he says. “We’ll see how that goes — if someone sees something
I’ve done and gets in touch, and if I feel like I can help them and support
their film, we may be able to work together. If I feel like I have a point of
view that matches or complements theirs, I’m always open.”

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

MICHAEL “CAMBIO” FERNANDEZ


Nicknamed “Cambio” as a baby, Michael Fernandez took an unusual
route to becoming a cinematographer. While drawn to imagemaking
since childhood, Fernandez did not study the arts in school; he earned a
master’s degree in history from San Jose State University. After teaching
high school for several years, he changed his career trajectory. “I started
off in the imagemaking world by traveling and photographing Quilombo
Art, a creative collective of rappers and filmmakers, all across Mexico,
Latin America and Europe,” he says. “From there, I learned the cinema
styles of Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Europe and West Africa.
That got me where I am today.”
Fernandez continued to teach even while he was beginning to dabble
in filmmaking. Then, in 2018, the rapper Blitz the Ambassador asked
him to shoot the feature film The Burial of Kojo, which Ava DuVernay
picked up for her social-impact collective Array. The film is now stream-
ing on Netflix. “That took me from where I was at, teaching and traveling
around shooting short films with rappers, to actually being signed to an
agency,” he says. “Being a director of photography became my career. 
“My experiences and voice — being a working-class person and film-
ing rappers on their own grind — really informed the way I see and feel
things. My unique eye comes from being a person who loves history. You
would think my master’s in history is completely unrelated to cinema,
but it is deeply woven into my experiences and how I see the world.”
Fernandez has gone on to shoot a wide and diverse range of projects
while also staying true to his roots in music-based content. He recently
shot part of the Disney Plus project Black Is King, Beyoncé’s visual album
inspired by The Lion King. His short If I Go Will They Miss Me, directed by
Walter Thompson-Hernandez, was nominated for the Grand Jury Award
at SXSW and won the Short Film Jury Award at Sundance in 2022. “We
shot [If I Go] in Watts over two years, in the true indie spirit. It was ex-
tremely beautiful shooting that way, because we were entrenched in the
reality of the resources we had. That independent spirit can exist with-
out having a million people [on set] to shoot something.”

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2022 RISING STARS OF CINEMATOGRAPHY: ECLECTIC PERSPECTIVES

JOMO FRAY
From a young age, Jomo Fray was passionate about storytelling. He re-
calls, “When I was a kid, every week I wanted to be something different
— a scientist, an astronaut — but at age 7, I said I wanted to be a film-
maker. I remember being like, ‘Oh, this is great. I can be a filmmaker,
which hacks the system.’ I could be a scientist for three months, tell those
stories, and then be an astronaut for three months and tell those people’s
stories. I think now, looking back, it was an expression of my fascination
with compassion, empathy and feeling — having the ability to dedicate
myself to feeling what it’s like to be in the bodies, lives and experiences
of different people, and what that meant about me as a human being.”
Fray earned his undergraduate degree at Brown University, where
he thought he might want to pursue a career in academia. Later, he re-
turned to school to get a master’s degree in cinematography at New York
University, where he honed his artistic sensibilities. “When I think about
artistic inspiration, so much of it is born out of the life process,” he says.
“In terms of my art, I feel like I’m most inspired when I think of certain
things from my own life — like what my mother said to me when I fell
down and cut my knee. I feel I draw a lot of inspiration from the more
innocuous things.” 
Fray’s interest in empathy and connecting with the lives of others has
led him to work on projects that reflect similar values. His short film
Emergency, directed by Carey Williams, follows friends of color debating
whether to call the police in an emergency situation. The project won a
Special Jury Award at Sundance in 2018, as well as the Grand Jury Award
at SXSW. The same year, Fray was featured as one of the “25 New Faces
of Independent Film” by Filmmaker magazine. 
Since then, Fray has gone on to shoot the films Selah and the Spades,
which premiered at Sundance in 2019; Port Authority, which premiered
at Cannes in 2019; and No Future, which debuted at Tribeca in 2020. He
is currently in postproduction on Raven Jackson’s A24 feature All Dirt
Roads Taste of Salt, which he shot on 35mm film, and recently complet-
ed principal photography on Tayarisha Poe’s The Young Wife, for which
he coined the term “Acid Expressionism” to describe the photographic
style.
“I feel like The Young Wife was a completely different aesthetic, a dif-
ferent world, but it’s exciting to just do what I love to do for each project:
to make [my approach] completely and utterly bespoke for the movie —
and not just the image, but the process. As a cinematographer, I love to
build a process that helps my directors do their best work. When they’re
able to do that, we can transcend ourselves and go to places we didn’t
even know we were capable of reaching.”

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

CATHERINE GOLDSCHMIDT
Catherine Goldschmidt grew up in a household without a television
but was always enthralled by films. She worked at a video store in high
school and as a projectionist in college. “When I was in college, I found
out what a cinematographer was and what the job entailed,” she says.
“Then I worked on my first short student films, and I just fell in love with
the process.” After graduating from Wesleyan University with a degree
in Film Studies, Goldschmidt moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career
behind the camera.
She began working as a camera assistant, and then applied to AFI
after realizing that many of the cinematographers she had worked with
had continued their education there. “The advice I was given was, ‘Don’t
get stuck being a camera assistant, and if you want to shoot, shoot.’ The
program at AFI was great. When I graduated, my main focus became
shooting my first feature. Incredibly, I was able to do that within the first
year after I graduated. Just feeling like I finally was a DP, with my first
feature under my belt, was great. My friends from AFI gaffed and gripped
it for me. It was definitely a good confidence-building experience.”
The film Northeast, directed by Gregory Kohn, allowed Goldschmidt
to cut her teeth on a feature while shooting in 16mm. “I can find things
in everything I’ve shot where I can objectively say we did good work;
there’s always something you can take pride in. But I think I’m really
proud when people actually do watch and like something I’ve made.
One example would be the BBC One show Chloe, which is being released
worldwide on Amazon in June. My parents came to England when
it wasn’t released in America yet, and they binged the whole thing. It
makes me proud that my parents are proud!”
Recently, Goldschmidt has been working primarily in television,
shooting the series Doctor Who; the Emmy-nominated Quibi show
Dummy; the Sky/AMC series A Discovery of Witches; and the Game of
Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. Looking to the future, she says,
“I want to shoot another film, for sure. I’ve found myself in ‘Television
Land,’ which I’ve been so grateful for, because it really matters to me
that people watch what I shoot. I grew up never watching TV, but now I
feel like all I watch is TV! But I do miss telling a single story from start to
finish, and the way you get to craft a visual language [for a feature] that
follows a single arc. Sometimes, shooting television in the U.K., it can
feel like we’re making a chapter in a larger film, and that’s been great.”

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2022 RISING STARS OF CINEMATOGRAPHY: ECLECTIC PERSPECTIVES

ISIAH DONTÉ LEE


Born and raised in North Carolina, Isiah Donté Lee was unsure of what
kind of career he wanted to pursue, but he entered art school as a web
designer. “While walking on campus one day, I saw a group of students
with a bunch of cameras,” he says. “I think they were doing some type of
class assignment. I had this calling to just go over and see what they were
up to. I’m pretty sure I stayed there for two or three hours, just watching
them work with the cameras.” That night, Lee called his mother to tell
her he was changing majors. He later transferred to the North Carolina
School of the Arts, where he continued his film education, working so
much and so diligently that his professor and mentor, ASC member Tom
Ackerman, encouraged him to drop out and fully commit to working on
professional sets.
Lee honed his skills working on music videos and short films. As
a fellow at Film Independent’s Project Involve, Lee met the producers
Stephanie Allain and Mel Jones, who would shepherd his first feature,
Burning Sands, which premiered at Sundance in 2017 and earned a nom-
ination for the festival’s Grand Jury Prize. Lee has gone on to shoot a
variety of projects ranging from music videos to narrative features, com-
piling a list of credits that includes the HBO music documentary J. Cole:
4 Your Eyez Only; John Legend’s music video “Surefire”; the television
series Boomerang; the documentary Out of Omaha; and the drama Wind-
fall, which he shot during the Covid-19 pandemic. 
“It’s important for me to talk about how liberating an experience it
was shooting Windfall,” he says. “It was basically our ‘bubble film,’ and
we made it in the simplest way possible. We had a small group of cast
and crew in one location, and just an overall great vibe. It almost felt like
I was back in film school making a film with a small group of friends.
We used mostly available light with very minimal equipment, and I got
to work with an incredibly smart and collaborative director, Charlie
McDowell.”
Lee finds inspiration in the work of other artists in the film indus-
try, but also in his key relationships off the set. “When I’m looking for
inspiration, I really enjoy looking at other films,” he says. “I’m certainly
inspired by other art forms as well, but film is what I consume the most.
Beyond that, [my main influences] are probably my family and my life
when I’m not working. I’m almost exclusively spending time with my
family — that’s what drives me, those are the experiences that I bring
to my work, whether I do it consciously or subconsciously. I feel like the
time I spend with my family, just enjoying time with my son and mo-
ments like that, is really where I get most of my inspiration. There could
never be a world in my head where that wouldn’t be a part of my experi-
ence as a filmmaker, or as an artist in general.”

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

CHRISTINE NG
Born in Hong Kong, Christine Ng was raised in New York until the age
of 9 — yet it was only after her family moved back to Hong Kong that Ng
saw her first film set. “We were staying at my grandparents’ apartment
when we were living there for the year,” she recalls. “I literally walked
outside and there was a film shoot happening. They were filming nights,
and my parents were like, ‘Okay, you can stay up for as long as you want
to watch.’ That’s a special thing for a 9-year-old, being able to stay up till
whenever. The film also happened to have my favorite Chinese pop star
in it. It was a little bit of just this magical feeling, and that’s when I knew
I wanted to work in film.”
Ng studied film as an undergraduate at New York University, where
she did not immediately feel welcome behind the camera. “It was a re-
ally hard place to be as a queer, Asian, immigrant female wanting to do
something technical. So, ironically, while I was there, I was thinking, ‘Oh,
I don’t think I’m going to be a DP.’ I assisted a lot, I gaffed a lot, and I did
sound for people, because I felt that if I wanted to be a good filmmaker, I
should learn all the tools of being a filmmaker.” However, Ng landed an
internship at ASC member Lance Acord’s company, Park Pictures, which
turned into a full-time job and allowed her to learn more about produc-
tion while honing her passion for cinematography.
Ng eventually left Park Pictures to pursue cinematography full time.
She ended up assisting for Bradford Young, ASC on the film Vara: A
Blessing, shot in Sri Lanka. “Two weeks into the job, he said to me, ‘So,
what do you want to do?’ I told him I wanted to be a DP. He asked, ‘Well,
why aren’t you shooting?’ The Red Epic had just come out, and we had
a backup body on the truck. He said, ‘Go get the backup — you’re now
an operator.’ Right then and there, I just started operating for him.” Ng
continued operating, which included work on such TV productions as
When They See Us, She’s Gotta Have It and Colin in Black & White, while
also pursuing work as a cinematographer. 
As a director of photography, Ng has since shot the HBO special Be-
tween the World and Me, the documentary Everything Is Copy, and 12 epi-
sodes of the variety series ZIWE. Ng’s work can also be seen in Issa Rae’s
upcoming series Rap Sh!t and Rian Johnson’s first TV series, Pokerface.
“Being a DP, for me, is not just about being a visual storyteller,” she
says. “It’s also about being a team leader in a way that creates a safe
space. That’s something I definitely learned from Brad — the way I carry
myself, and the way I treat others with respect. I know that when other
people do it — and I actively try to do it — you just create this sense of
a bond with everyone. Everything that I’ve worked on is really special to
me, because I feel like every little thing is this vivid memory for me, and
it has a place in my heart that has gotten me to where I am now.”

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2022 RISING STARS OF CINEMATOGRAPHY: ECLECTIC PERSPECTIVES

JULIA SWAIN
After making movies on her own as a teenager, Julia Swain worked in TV
news as an undergraduate in order to gain experience with professional
cameras. “I was trying to do what I could to become a better storytell-
er and filmmaker, and then quickly realized that cinematography was
where it was at — I needed to be behind the camera,” she says. Swain
attended UCLA as a graduate student studying cinematography, and
during her time there, she became one of the first recipients of an ASC
Vision Scholarship. In 2014, she was honored with a Women in Film Fel-
lowship in Cinematography. Since graduating, Swain has shot numer-
ous short films, commercials and music videos, including projects for
Hozier, Quin XCII and Kelsea Ballerini.
Swain is grateful for the cinematography mentors who have helped
her throughout her career. “Johnny Simmons, ASC, on top of being ev-
eryone’s favorite human, taught me at UCLA, and he’s been a mentor
ever since,” she says. “I also feel really fortunate to have a lot of amazing
women to look up to at this point as well; it’s been really incredible to
discuss my path with [ASC members] Mandy Walker, Natasha Braier and
Quyen Tran. Bill McDonald, the head of the cinematography department
at UCLA, taught me how to expose film, and he was always so generous.”
Swain considers her fourth feature, Lucky, which premiered at SXSW
in 2020, to be her break. “The director, Natsha Kermani, and I had done
some projects together, but this was our first feature together. She’s be-
come one of my greatest collaborators and friends, and I’m thrilled to
keep telling stories with her.”
Swain has since been busy shooting multiple features slated to be
released this year. “I feel like I do a lot of genre work, but what I’m most
excited for people to see right now is a feature called The Mattachine
Family. It’s a modern-day drama, and even though it isn’t genre, it was a
project I could really resonate with and pour myself into. It was a story
I felt I had to tell.” Swain also recently wrapped the sequel Becky 2: The
Wrath of Becky. 
Looking to the future, Swain is eager to shoot a series. “I’ve just done
features,” she says, “so doing a crime-thriller series interests me. I love
everything that Alex Garland and Rob Hardy [ASC, BSC] do. I would love
to do something as surreal and haunting as one of their films.”

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

ERIN G. WESLEY
During her childhood, Erin G. Wesley dreamed about being a cardio-
vascular or cosmetic surgeon. But as a biology pre-med student at Fisk
University, she began questioning her career trajectory after an advis-
er urged her to think about pursuing medical photography because of
her artistic skill. After college, Wesley worked at RSA Films/Black Dog
while she shot low-budget music videos on the Canon 7D her parents
had given her as a graduation gift. “Once my work started to plateau as
a one-woman band, I decided it was time to elevate my skills,” she says.
“I applied to AFI’s cinematography program with only my photography
stills and some DIY, half-narrative music videos to show.” Wesley was
accepted into the AFI cinematography track, which “really gave me the
technical edge, developed my storytelling skills, facilitated the relation-
ships for me to build my initial crews, and allowed me to work alongside
immensely talented peers and learn from them as well.”
Wesley considers her break into cinematography to be A Rodeo Film,
an AFI short film about a Black bull rider in rural California facing a
difficult decision. The film won the Student Grand Prize at the 2019 DGA
Awards and a 2020 Golden Tadpole in the Student Etudes Competition
at Camerimage and is now streaming on HBO. Since completing A Rodeo
Film, Wesley has shot Golden: The Journey of USA’s Elite Gymnasts for Pea-
cock and the basketball documentary The Loyola Project, and she also
co-directed and shot the music video “UMI Says” by 6LACK for Apple
Music. “I’m particularly proud of my work when I get to tell stories about
identity and empathy,” she says. “Both A Rodeo Film and ‘UMI Says’ do
this for me. The work that makes me most proud is the kind where I can
incorporate vulnerability, immersiveness and community.” 
Wesley also served as a B-camera operator on the Netflix series Colin
in Black & White, which allowed her to collect the 30 working days she
needed to join Local 600. She’s quick to point out that executive produc-
er Ava DuVernay and Matthew J. Lloyd, ASC took her under their wings,
helping her make the leap to union membership. Wesley is also grateful
for the mentorship of Kira Kelly, ASC. “Kira has been extremely funda-
mental to my entire journey,” she says. “Early on, it was difficult for me to
envision a future for myself because there were no immediate examples
of people who look like me in the role of cinematographer, but I started
to follow Kira’s career. I ran into her for the first time at an ASC Open
House. We’ve stayed in touch, and once I joined the union, I started oper-
ating on shows and commercials with her, which enabled me to observe
her approach on set. That experience has been invaluable.” 
Wesley describes herself as an open-minded thinker, and she finds
creative influence in a variety of ways. “My life experiences shape my
unique perspective and inform who I am as an artist,” she says. “[I’m in-
spired by] travel, and by watching light in different parts of the world —
studying how it falls on a variety of complexions, undertones and skin
textures. I’m also inspired by people-watching, frequenting art galleries,
fashion and architecture.” 

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The Virtual World By Noah Kadner

NAB Spotlights Virtual-Production Advances

PHOTO BY NOAH KADNER.


The 2022 NAB show offered tremendous evolutionary period. rendering, an LED volume and The “Unreal Ride” at the 2022 NAB
many attendees their first up- AC asked attending experts to camera-tracking takes that show, presented by Vū Studios
close look at more than two years assess where these technologies complexity to another level, which and Mark Roberts Motion Control
(MRMC), offered a hands-on
of advancements in virtual-pro- stand today, and what they might makes the interoperability of
demonstration of the interactivity
duction tools and techniques. offer in the near future. hardware and communications
between the real world and an
Innovators and manufacturers protocols more important than LED wall displaying a virtual
— who had been quite busy since Interoperability Standards ever. environment.
the show last converged in per- A movie set has long comprised “Efforts are being made to
son in 2019 — guided creatives a dense combination of hardware improve interoperability, like the
and other industry professionals and software products. Incor- initiative driven by the SMPTE
through the impressive yields of a porating real-time visual-effects called Rapid Industry Solution,

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

Top: A volume was set up on the show floor, with LED panels by Planar
and camera tracking by OptiTrack. Bottom: A monitor displays an image
of cameras being tracked by OptiTrack’s CinePuck system.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF PLANAR.

or RIS, which we and many other can predictably calibrate an LED “There’s a growing blend between
industry leaders are part of,” wall to a camera sensor.” preproduction, production and postproduction.”
says ASC associate Stephan “The LED-panel industry has
Ukas-Bradley, vice president of taken notice of virtual production
strategic business development as a valid market opportunity,
and technical marketing at Arri. and design optimization efforts
“Arri is in a unique position of are ongoing,” says Daniel Warner,
making cameras, lenses, camera technical projects specialist at
stabilizer systems and lights, Brompton Technology Ltd., an
so we’re always thinking about LED-video-processing equipment
how our equipment can integrate manufacturer. At NAB, Bromp-
most efficiently in an advanced ton showed many of its latest
production environment. We innovations, including frame
don’t build LED panels, but we’re remapping, which allows multiple
looking at color-management respective cameras to “simultane-
approaches for photographing ously capture different content, or
them. You need to be able to use interleave a chroma-key frustum,
them creatively, but there should within a shared area on the LED
also be a base setting where you wall,” Warner says. The effect

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The Virtual World

An MRMC motion-control arm operates in a dome-shaped Vū LED


volume. This demonstration took place offsite, at Vū Studios Las Vegas.

is achieved with superimposed interconnected LED-volume


images on the walls, each set to a stages in such cities as Tampa
separate phase offset, with each Bay, Las Vegas and Nashville. Op-
camera’s exposure period timed erators in one stage can remotely
to only capture one of these control and operate equipment
respective images. “After 2022, in other cities to maximize local
I think we’ll start seeing more talent and shorten production
purpose-engineered hardware schedules.
showing up in LED stages,” he This year marked Moore’s first
adds. time exhibiting at NAB, where Vū
Studios occupied multiple booths
Remote Operation and and led a variety of technology
Collaboration demonstrations. “There’s a grow-
The pandemic made it critical to ing blend between preproduction,
work and collaborate remotely, production and postproduction,”
and for filmmakers, this meant he says. “I’m also excited about
finding ways to reduce numbers the camera-to-cloud capabilities
on set and remotely operate at companies like Frame.io and
cameras, lights, LED-volume Teradek. Real-time animation
equipment and other tools. The helps to compress the timeframe
preexisting need to remote- from concept to final visuals.”
ly share content and review VFX companies are particu-
previsualization also increased larly suited to remote operations
exponentially. because their work often involves
“Our entrance into this remote parallel efforts by many individual

PHOTO BY NOAH KADNER.


space was through Jon Favreau contributors around the world.
and productions like The Jungle “Most of our crew is still not back
Book [AC May ’16], The Lion King in the office,” says AJ Sciutto,
[AC Aug. ’19] and The Mandal- director of virtual production at
orian [AC Feb. ’20],” says Neil Magnopus. “We’ve long used re-
Abrew, brand manager at Opti- mote dailies and review solutions
Track, a motion-capture-camera such as Pix and Evercast. We
manufacturer that introduced also use Perforce version control “Don’t treat the LED wall as an
the compact camera-tracking for 3D environments and assets. oversized video monitor or a cinema
solution CinePuck at this year’s Unreal Engine supports multi-user
screen. Rather, think of it as a window
NAB. (OptiTrack’s sister company, access to the same project — so,
Planar, makes LED panels.) [we have] individual worksta- that you are filming through in real life.”
Abrew adds, “Jon likes to tions connected to an Unreal
throw on a virtual-reality headset, cloud-hosted repository, which to learn it and have it in the tool- upon themselves to create similar
step into the virtual world that we review over Google Meets or box,” says ASC associate David training programs, because they
a camera is about to enter, and Zoom.” Morin, industry relations for Epic recognize the opportunity.”
then make adjustments. So, he Games. “Epic is spending a lot of Adds Sciutto “I’m always look-
has tracking setups at various Talent Gap time focusing on education and ing for good stage talent. I’ve got
locations where he can affect the Not every trending topic in virtual helping partners train personnel. amazing engineers and artists,
set virtually. Many virtual-pro- production is equipment-related We started a fellowship program but there’s also the need for ‘seti-
duction studios now offer deep — skyrocketing demand has also at the beginning of the pandemic quette,’ where you have the drive
remote-interaction capabilities.” put a premium on quality talent. that was modeled on the old stu- and hustle suitable for working in
Vū Studios CEO Tim Moore “The Unreal Engine skillset is in dio apprenticeship system. Com- a live virtual-production environ-
has formed a network of high demand, so it’s a good time panies like PRG are also taking it ment. I’ve got a company of more

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p.54-59 Virtual World v3.indd 56 7/2/22 6:44 PM AC


Access American Cinematographer Archive
More than 100 years of
filmmaking knowledge
is available via our website,
allowing AC Archive
subscribers to dive deep
into every issue since
1920.

Trace the evolution of
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issues of cinematography’s
magazine of record at 
Shooting Citizen Kane, as written by Gregg ascmag.com/archive.
Toland, ASC himself. (AC Feb. 1941)

Robert Surtees, ASC shoots Ben-Hur


in Italy with 65mm Ultra Panavision.
(AC Oct. 1959)

Néstor Almendros, ASC’s Roger Deakins, ASC, BSC


first-person account of discusses his camerawork
filming Days of Heaven. for Blade Runner 2049.
(AC June 1979) (AC Dec. 2017)

Not an AC Archive subscriber yet? Darius Khondji, ASC, AFC describes his creative
Visit store.ascmag.com choices for the thriller Seven. (AC Oct. 1995)
AUGUST 2022 / 57

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AC Archive v3.indd
V3.indd 1 57 7/2/22
7/1/22 6:44
5:23PM
PM
The Virtual World

than 200 people, but my on-set says Ukas-Bradley. “You don’t


team is down to maybe five or six. have to know every technical
You find good people and try to detail because there are so many
hold onto them because they’re moving pieces, but engaging early
in high demand, and they can with your VFX and virtual-produc-
charge rates that were reserved tion supervisors is critical. Their
for department heads a couple of job is to make sure everything in
years ago.” a volume runs flawlessly so the
cinematographer can use their
Considerations for the creative expertise and work the
Cinematographer way they’re accustomed to, and
These trends must all be con- we at Arri are happy to be an
sidered by cinematographers additional resource for them.”
who are seeking to maximize
virtual-production tools and The Future
workflows. “An important aspect The goal of many manufac-
is calibration technique for the turers and experts is to make
extremely high dynamic range, bit virtual-production technologies

TOP PHOTO BY MONICA REINA. BOTTOM PHOTO COURTESY OF BROMPTON TECHNOLOGY.


depth, and wide-color-gamut po- accessible to a broader array of
tential of LED panels,” says War- creatives. This means cinema-
ner. “Also, don’t treat the LED wall tographers can look forward to
as an oversized video monitor or better-integrated components
a cinema screen; rather, think of it and simpler workflows.
as a window that you are filming “We’re seeing customers
through in real life. Tapping into like universities and corpora-
the full potential of LEDs means tions wanting to deploy virtual
not just creating an HDR image, production,” says Adam Schmidt,
but utilizing dynamic emissive chief revenue officer at OptiTrack.
light from that HDR image to sell “They’re turning classrooms and
the realism of a shot in-camera.” conference rooms into studios
Says Morin, “I was on an where they can communicate
NAB panel with Sam Nicholson with colleagues and students.
[ASC] from Stargate Studios, We’ll get to higher-resolution and
and he stressed the importance denser-pixel-pitch screens so
of testing [an LED stage]. There cameras can get closer to them in
are now enough LED stages that smaller spaces without moiré.”
cinematographers can design “There’s a surprising amount of
tests for a given project. Sam’s collaboration between everyone
work on Our Flag Means Death is in the virtual-production field
a great example of this because right now,” says Moore. “It’s all
they didn’t have much prep time, so new that it’s less about com-
Top: AC virtual-production editor Noah Kadner moderates an NAB panel
but they still tested so that all petition and more about how our
featuring (from left) AJ Sciutto; ASC members Robert Legato, David
the key creatives — including the workflows and technologies can
Stump and Sam Nicholson; and ASC associate David Morin. Bottom:
producers, directors and cinema- complement each other.” Brompton Technology demonstrates frame remapping, where multiple
tographers — could validate their images are superimposed on the LED wall, and the cameras — set to
assumptions before production.” separate phase offsets — can each capture a different background
“Virtual production harks back image while aimed at the same shared space.
to longtime cinematographic
processes like rear projection,”

58 / AUGUST 2022

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AMERICAN
CINEMATOGRAPHER
MANUAL
NEW EDITION!
The revised 11th edition of this essential technical
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p.54-59 Virtual World v3.indd 59 7/2/22 6:44 PM


Clubhouse News
Latest Bulletins From the Society

ASC Welcomes Norr Into Mind and Be Kind Rewind (both Memorial at Clubhouse Honors Among the ASC members in
Membership shot by Ellen Kuras, ASC) and the Departed attendance were Christopher
Brooklyn native Christopher documentaries Shine a Light (Rob- ASC members gathered at the Chomyn, Jack Cooperman, Rich-
Norr grew up in a home with an ert Richardson, ASC) and Public Clubhouse on June 4 to honor ard Crudo, Dean Cundey, Gregg
appreciation for the beauty of the Speaking (Kuras). Society members and associate Heschong, Gil Hubbs, Mark Irwin,
moving image. His father, Carl, Norr has shot several features, members who had passed away Denis Lenoir, Charlie Lieberman,
is an accomplished commercial including Sympathy for Deli- since 2020, during which time Stephen Lighthill, Karl-Walter Lin-
cinematographer, who — wanting to cious, Staten Island, What Doesn’t Covid-19 prevented such gath- denlaub, C. Kim Miles, Chuck Min-
instill a strong work ethic in his son Kill You, The Hottest State, One erings. “Stars of the ASC” paid sky, Peter Moss, Woody Omens,
— put him to work loading camera Last Thing… and Second Best. For tribute to late ASC members Mi- Bob Primes, Roberto Schaefer,
magazines at age 13. By the time his cinematography on the first chael Chapman, Jack C. Couffer, Nancy Schreiber, Steven Shaw,
Chris was 18, he was being paid to three seasons of the Fox superhero Allen Daviau, George Spiro John Simmons and David Stump.
shoot short films. drama Gotham, Norr earned three Dibie, Gerald Feil, John C. Hora, Associate members in attendance
Early in his career, Norr worked consecutive ASC Award nomina- Halyna Hutchins, Judy Irola, included Mark Bender, Frieder
as a camera assistant on such tions. His other television credits Gary B. Kibbe, Willy Kurant, Hochheim, Alan Ipakchi, George
features as Crimes and Misdemean- include the Epix crime drama God- Robert F. Liu, Isidore Mankofsky, Joblove, Ross LaManna, Suzanne
ors (shot by Sven Nykvist, ASC) father of Harlem, the Disney Plus Giuseppe Rotunno, Peter Sova, Lezotte, Chris Mankofsky, Nancy
and When Harry Met Sally (Barry historical drama The Right Stuff and William Taylor and Mario Tosi, as Murray, Otto Nemenz, Dana Ross,
Sonnenfeld). He then transitioned the HBO dark comedy Succession. well as late associate members Kish Sadhvani and Kim Snyder.
to shooting independent films, His recent features include Denny Clairmont, Richard DiBo-
while also working as a camera Godmothered and Bashira. na, Karl Kresser, Steven Manios
operator on movies that includ- Sr., Dan Muscarella, Joseph N.
ed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Tawil and Irwin M. Young.

60 / AUGUST 2022

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Previous page, right: ASC President Stephen Lighthill addressed attendees at the “Stars of the ASC” memorial gathering. This page,
top, from left: Society members John Simmons, Jack Cooperman and Gregg Heschong offered their remarks. Bottom, from left: ASC
members Karl-Walter Lindenlaub, Woody Omens, C. Kim Miles and Mark Irwin were among those who came to pay their respects.
EVENT PHOTOS ON THIS PAGE AND PREVIOUS BY ALEX LOPEZ, COURTESY OF THE ASC.

AUGUST 2022 / 61

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Clubhouse News

Top: The “Dialogue With ASC Cinematographers” panel discussion at the 2022 Cine Gear Expo
began with a toast to the late George Spiro Dibie, ASC, who coordinated and moderated this
event for many years. Bottom: Steven Poster, ASC (center) was honored with Cine Gear’s Legacy
Lifetime Achievement Award, which was presented to him by Lighthill and Juliane Grosso.

which featured questions from the and featuring the project’s director
audience and candid responses. of photography, Christopher
The panelists were Society mem- Probst, ASC, and ASC associate
bers Ava Berkofsky, Cady, Gregg members Jay Holben (who wrote,
Heschong, Shelly Johnson, Patti directed and produced the short)
Lee, Tommy Maddox-Upshaw, Paul and Joachim “JZ” Zell (producer
Maibaum and Lawrence Sher. and post supervisor).
The panel “Releasing the ASC During the VIP Industry Awards
MITC StEM2 Project” offered a look Reception, Kresser was honored

TOP PHOTO BY DAVID E. WILLIAMS. BOTTOM PHOTO COURTESY OF CINE GEAR.


at the new Standard Evaluation with a video tribute; Cine Gear’s
Material, which is available to the Legacy Lifetime Achievement Award
industry for free at theasc.com/ was presented to Steven Poster,
asc/stem2. An update to the ASC by ASC President Stephen
original DCI-ASC StEM (2004), Lighthill and Juliane Grosso, chief
which helped test then-emerging executive and director of Cine Gear;
digital-cinema solutions, StEM2 the Visionary Award in Cinema-
comprises the 17-minute short tography was given to Sher; the
ASC Lights Up Cine Gear 2022 Technologies and Creative Collab- film The Mission, crafted by ASC Emerging Star Award was given to
Numerous members of the ASC orations,” moderator and Society cinematographers, associates, Autumn Durald Arkapaw; and rep-
were on hand at the 2022 Cine Gear member Patrick Cady was joined by color scientists, technologists and resentatives from Sony Electronics
Expo — held June 9-12 at the Los ASC cinematographers and Interna- manufacturers to test current and accepted the Technical Lifetime
Angeles Convention Center — not tional Cinema Lighting Society gaf- anticipated exhibition systems such Achievement Award.
only as visitors but also as partici- fers and console programmers. The as laser projection, emissive-screen Also spotted on the show floor
pants in key events. discussion focused on collaboration theatrical displays and professional were ASC members Bill Bennett,
Many took note of the passing and the technologies that facilitate and consumer monitors. (See Shot Oliver Bokelberg and Richard
of Cine Gear President and ASC as- the workflow on set. Craft, AC May ’22.) A screening Crudo.
sociate member Karl Kresser, who George Mooradian, ASC mod- of The Mission was followed by
died suddenly on April 10. erated the “Dialogue With ASC Cin- a panel discussion moderated by
For the panel “Current Lighting ematographers” panel discussion, StEM2 producer Wendy Aylsworth

62 / AUGUST 2022

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Your Super 8 and 16mm
Film Lab for 50 years

CAMERAS.
FILM.
PROCESSING.
SCANNING.

818.848.5522 • pro8mm.com

Chomyn Instructs in Uganda


Working with the American Film Showcase and fellow motion-picture professionals, Christo-
pher Chomyn, ASC was recently in Kampala, Uganda, teaching the basics of cinematography.
He explains, “This is a person-to-person cultural-exchange program of the U.S. Department of
State [in partnership with USC’s School of Cinematic Arts], where we share our expertise with
people in underserved nations to empower them to share their stories through cinema.” Past
ASC participants in the program have included Shana Hagen, James Neihouse and Nancy
TOP PHOTO COURTESY OF CHRIS CHOMYN, ASC. BOTTOM PHOTO COURTESY OF DCS.

Schreiber. Classes have also been held in Vietnam, Nigeria, Timor-Leste, Sri Lanka, Ukraine
and Turkmenistan. (For more information, visit americanfilmshowcase.com.)

DCS Honors Hochheim


Kino Flo founder and ASC associate
member Frieder Hochheim was presented
with the inaugural “Dibie Award” by John
Schwartzman, ASC at the Digital Cinema
Society’s Cinema Lighting Expo on May 21.
The prize honors George Spiro Dibie, ASC,
who worked tirelessly to help educate the
industry about motion-picture lighting. DCS
founder James Mathers noted, “No one
exemplifies George’s spirit in freely sharing
his knowledge with the entertainment
lighting community [more than] Frieder.
The DCS Dibie Award was not bestowed on
him for his impressive technical achieve-
ments, but rather for the way he [shares]
the knowledge he [has] gained and [helps]
to educate the community in motion-picture
color science.”

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Clubhouse News

The Society’s annual “Summer Splash” at the ASC Clubhouse


began in the afternoon and ran well into the evening.

PHOTOS BY HECTOR SANDOVAL, COURTESY OF THE ASC.


ASC Welcomes Supporters at Clubhouse
The Society’s annual “Summer Splash,” an informal “thank you” to its many
sponsors and American Cinematographer advertisers, was held on June
15, making great use of the campus grounds. ASC members in atten-
dance included Mat Beck, Christopher Chomyn, Richard Crudo, Gregg
Heschong, Gil Hubbs, Mark Irwin, Charlie Lieberman, Stephen Lighthill,
Karl-Walter Lindenlaub, Robert McLachlan, George Mooradian, Peter
Moss, M. David Mullen, Steven Poster, Robert Primes, Nancy Schreiber,
Steven Shaw, Roy Wagner and James Whitaker. The event was spon-
sored by Cinelease.

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Top: The team from Cinelease — sponsor of the Summer Splash — at the
festive event. Middle, from left: Pamela Bloom, Robert Magness, Bryan
Larson, Vika Safrigina, and ASC associates Jay Holben and Susan Lewis.
Bottom, from left: Charlie Lieberman, ASC; honorary ASC member Patty
Armacost; and Victor Ha.

OPTICS
UNDERSTOOD
TOP PHOTO BY ALEX ARNOLD, COURTESY OF REBEL MEDIA. MIDDLE AND BOTTOM PHOTOS BY HECTOR SANDOVAL, COURTESY OF THE ASC.

The Cine Lens


Manual 
Co-authored by Jay Holben and Christopher Probst,
ASC, The Cine Lens Manual is a journey through the
world of cinema lenses, investigating every possible
aspect — from the formation of glass to today’s top
cinematographic optical tools.
   
• Details 300 lens families
• 836 pages cover 140 years of cinema-lens history
• 1,500 full-color illustrations including photo-
graphs, diagrams and graphics
• Covering optical design, optomechanical design,
evolution of motion-picture formats, the history and
genealogy of purpose-built cinema lenses, modifying
lenses, testing, and maintenance
  
“It’s an essential text for all filmmakers.”
— Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS

“The Cine Lens Manual is truly invaluable.”


— Russell Carpenter, ASC

“The Cine Lens Manual is my new bible... engrossing and immensely


graspable for all filmmakers.”
— Reed Morano, ASC

“I can’t put the book down. It’s brilliant what Holben and Probst have
created. This is a must for every cinematographer.”
— Markus Förderer, ASC, BVK

Available now at store.ascmag.com

AUGUST 2022 / 65

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New Products and Services
For more of our latest tech reports, visit
ascmag.com/articles/new-products.

Rosco Announces DMG


Dash Solutions
Rosco has released DMG Dash Barn Doors, a DoPChoice Snapbag
for the DMG Dash Quad Kit, and a firmware update for DMG Dash
CRMX fixtures. The DMG Dash Quad Kit Snapbag mounts onto the
lights when they are linked in the quad configuration. The four-leaf
barn doors attach to the front of a single DMG Dash via magnets;
for additional security, the accessory also features elastic straps.
Firmware 1.0.12 for DMG Dash CRMX fixtures provides a new
DMX smoothing mode, improved DMX Full 8b and 16b profiles,
and other features.
For more information, visit rosco.com.

Lightbridge Adds Diff 0 to CRLS


Lightbridge has released a new reflector for its Cine Reflect
Lighting System: the Diff 0 Mirror. The Diff 0 is formulated and
engineered to a mirror surface, capable of replacing a “real”
mirror. It is available as a standalone purchase and will fit into
existing C-Drive and C-Move Cine Reflector kits. It is also
included in new C-Drive+ and C-Move+ kits. Now there are five
Cine Reflectors in every size (100x100cm, 50x50cm, 25x25cm,
15x15cm, and 7x7cm): Diff 0 Mirror, Diff 1 Punch Black, Diff 2
Blue Sky, Diff 3 Ambient Violet and Diff 4 Super White.
For more information, visit thelightbridge.com.

Arri Unveils Alexa 35


Arri has unveiled the Alexa 35, a 4K Super 35 digital camera that
features the company’s first new sensor in 12 years, a new color
science, new accessories, and a new mechanical-support system.
Reveal Color Science is a suite of new image-processing steps
used by the camera and is also available through third-party
postproduction tools for ArriRaw processing. Another new feature,
Arri Textures, allows cinematographers to choose from a menu of
textures, much like selecting a film stock.
Look for more detailed coverage of the Alexa 35 in an upcoming
issue of AC.
For more information, visit arri.com.

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Litepanels Releases
Gemini 2x1 Hard
Litepanels has released the Gemini 2x1 Hard, a lightweight 500-
watt fixture that can deliver up to 23,000 lux at 10'. Gemini 2x1
Hard can deliver a 20-degree beam of accurate, hard, white light
and seamlessly switch to a soft, 100-degree wash; then, at the
touch of a button, it can unleash full RGBWW output and special
effects. Featuring dual or quad mounting options to bank fixtures
together, Gemini 2x1 Hard weighs 25.3 pounds and features no
separate ballast.
For more information, visit litepanels.com.

Rotolight Introduces R-90, R-120


Rotolight has announced the R-90/R-120 Universal Parabolic Softbox
Umbrellas. The 16-sided light shaper offers soft light output with
a crisp edge that lends dimension and detail to the subject while
producing natural-looking catchlights.
Both sizes come with removable 1-stop outer and half-stop inner
baffle diffusion panels, which can be used individually or combined
to create a 1.5-stop diffusion level. A 40-degree fabric honeycomb
grid is included, allowing users to fine-tune soft light in any shooting
scenario.
For more information, visit rotolight.com.

MSE Introduces Air Climber,


Cross Dovetail Plate, LB2
Matthews Studio Equipment has introduced the Air Climber, the
Cross Dovetail Plate and the LB2 Location Baby Bracket.
The Air Climber modular grip and lighting stand can raise lights
or camera rigs 25'. The unit features a large leveling platform with
four telescoping legs and four heavy-duty jacks that keep it level
and support a telescoping column.
The Cross Dovetail Plate offers filmmakers greater orientation
versatility when mounting a camera to a fluid or geared head.
The LB2 Location Baby Bracket can be used to attach and hide
from the camera lights and support gear in an environment with
exposed beams or columns.
For more information, visit msegrip.com.

AUGUST 2022 / 67

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NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Elation Professional Grows Proteus,


Fuze, KL Lines
Elation Professional has announced the Proteus Rayzor Blade,
Fuze Max and KL Profile FC.
The Proteus Rayzor Blade is a combination of linear-wash,
high-intensity strobe line and SparkLED effects inside a compact IP65
linear design.
The Fuze Max is a 21,000-lumen full-spectrum LED moving head
with RGBMA LED engine (92 CRI) that rivals 1,000-watt/1,200-watt
class discharge fixtures. It’s available in Spot and Profile framing
versions.
The KL Profile FC is a compact ellipsoidal framing fixture with 305-
watt RGBMA LED engine designed for a wide array of precision lighting
applications.
For more information, visit elationlighting.com.

Cineo Unveils Quantum Studio Zhiyun Releases Fiveray FR100C


Cineo Lighting has unveiled the Quantum Studio, the latest in the Zhiyun has released the Fiveray FR100C LED light stick. Capable of
Cineo Quantum series. With 500 watts of power, two zones of control, producing up to 21,195 lux at 1', the fixture supports a temperature
and an intuitive touchscreen interface, the Quantum Studio features a range of 2,700-6,300K and features an ergonomic control wheel and a
CCT range of 2,500-10,000K, custom effects, and no ballast. Weighing clearly visible status display. The standard 1/4" mounting screw hole in
less than 30 pounds and water resistant, the Quantum Studio is the base allows the FR100C to be mounted on a gimbal, tripod stand or
available for sale and rental through Universal Production Services. other equipment.
For more information, visit cineolighting.com. For more information, visit zhiyun-tech.com.

68 / AUGUST 2022

p.66-71 New Products v4.indd 68 7/2/22 6:50 PM Stora


STORARO REMEMBERS
BERTOLUCCI

Presented in Italian and English, the 300-page book Vittorio Storaro on Bernardo Bertolucci
Movies offers a candid look at one of modern cinema’s most celebrated cinematographer-
director working relationships.

In it, the ASC great recounts his personal experiences while making their nine feature films
together: Before the Revolution (1964, on which Storaro served as camera assistant for Aldo
Scavarda), The Spider’s Stratagem (1970), The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972),
1900 (1976), Luna (1979), The Last Emperor (1987), The Sheltering Sky (1990)
and Little Buddha (1993).

A limited number of copies signed by Storaro are available from the ASC Store.

Go to store.ascmag.com

p.66-71 New Products


Storaro Book - Ad.inddv4.indd
4 69 7/2/22
7/1/22 6:50
5:30 PM
NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Cooke Launches S8/i FF Series


Cooke Optics has launched the S8/i Full Frame series of T1.4 spherical The lenses’ image is characterized by smooth, spherical bokeh and
lenses for full-frame production. Seven focal lengths are now available minimal color fringing. The S8/i FF lenses include /i data focus and iris
— 25mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm and 135mm — and position, /i motion inertial data, and /i maps factory-calibrated shading
nine more will be released later this year. and distortion data.
Under the body, S8/i FF is an all-spherical design, which produces a For more information, visit cookeoptics.com.
near-telecentric output of the light rays, which is efficient for sensors.

Bright Tangerine Releases Kasbah


Bright Tangerine has released the Kasbah Shoulder Support System,
designed with Digital Light Synthesis, a process pioneered by
CarbonTM that uses digital light projection, oxygen-permeable optics
and programmable liquid resins to form a unique matrix structure with
an infinite number of density zones. The system wraps around the
operator, molding to the shoulder for a universal fit. The open structure
allows air to naturally flow through, evaporating sweat to keep the user
cool. The pad can be cleaned with water and is UV-resistant.
For more information, visit brighttangerine.com.

Hollyland Debuts Solidcom C1


Hollyland has released Solidcom C1, a full-duplex wireless intercom
headset system. The system adopts the advanced DECT 6.0
technology, and operates in the 1.9GHz band, providing a reliable
transmission range up to 1,000' (350m) radius (LOS). Each headset
is designed with a dual-antenna diversity scheme that reinforces
anti-interference capability, enabling secured and constant team
communication in complex environments. With no belt pack or
base station, the system offers a highly portable and hands-free
coordinating experience for media-production teams, or any team
looking for real-time non-blocking voice communication in socially
distanced working scenarios.
For more information, visit hollyland-tech.com.

70 / AUGUST 2022

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AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

TCS Moves to Brooklyn


Longtime New York City rental house Technological Cinevideo Sigma Unveils 16-28mm F2.8 DG DN
Services has moved its headquarters to the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Located in Building 77, Unit 901, 9th Fl., 141 Flushing Ave., the new
Contemporary
Sigma Corp. of America has announced the 16-28mm F2.8 DG DN
facility is more than 20,000 square feet, double the size of TCS’
Contemporary zoom lens. Available for Sony E-Mount and L-Mount
previous location. It includes an advanced testing suite and eight
systems, the full-frame mirrorless lens offers a wide angle of view;
camera checkout bays, along with three private rooms for productions
a bright, constant aperture; inner zoom and focusing mechanisms; a
requiring extra space.
high-speed stepping motor; and a convenient front-filter thread.
For more information, visit tcsfilm.com.
For more information, visit sigmaphoto.com.

Schneider-Kreuznach Releases Isco4


Schneider-Kreuznach has announced the Isco4 anamorphic/
spherical lens set. Isco4 combines three T2.4 Iscospherical A+ cine
primes (43mm, 58mm and 85mm) and an Iscorama 54 CU-1.5x
anamorphic front adapter, which features a close-focus distance
of 4' 7" and a 0.8 gear ring. Iscospherical A+ primes are Schneider-
Kreuznach’s version of the Mini-Primes by DuLens and have been
designed to match the Iscorama style.
For more information, visit schneiderkreuznach.com.

Ad Index
Absen China 19 K5600, Inc. 35
Amgreat North America / Nanguang Photo & Video
Aputure 7 Systems / Nanlite 41
Arri, Inc. 5, 9 Pro8mm 63
Carl Zeiss AG 13 Rip-Tie 63
Chapman/Leonard Studio ROE Visual Co., Ltd. C3
Equipment 15 Storaro Book 69
Chimera Lighting 11 The Studio - B&H 27
Cine Lens Book 65 Tiffen 3
Creative Solutions / AC Archive 57
Teradek C2-1 AC Manual 59
Dedolight California 43 AC Subscription 6
Eastman Kodak C4 ASC Master Class 39
Elation Lighting 25
Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH
21
Filmotechnic USA 23

AUGUST 2022 / 71

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Wrap Shot
Jennifer 8
Conrad L. Hall, ASC adds his personal touch
to a scene for the 1992 thriller Jennifer 8 by
bouncing light off a piece of handheld re-
flective material. In AC’s October 1992 article
about the movie, Hall offered some revealing
insights into his creative philosophies on light-
ing and filmmaking. “To me, all the technical
stuff is not as interesting as making the light
[conform to] the mood of the story and the
characters,” he said. “It’s at that subtext level
that I like to work.
“I like a hands-on approach to photogra-
phy,” he added. “I don’t like to sit in a chair
and wait for it to happen; I’m looking through
the camera and racing off and adjusting
something on my own. It would take too long
to tell somebody what I really want; it’s quick-
er to just jump up and do it myself.”

PHOTO BY MERRICK MORTON, COURTESY OF THE ASC ARCHIVE.

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Cover 3_IBC.indd 3 7/2/22 5:19 PM
#SHOOTFILM
Learn more at Kodak.com/go/motion

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Film? Film is cost-effective, because film drives efficiency, reduces shooting ratios
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Film’s unique beauty guarantees the cinematic look audiences connect with.
Motion pictures on film win awards. A lot of awards. And to preserve your
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That’s the full story.

Film matters.

© 2022 Kodak. Kodak, Ektachrome and the Kodak logo are trademarks.

Cover 4_OBC.indd 4 7/2/22 5:21 PM

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