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$5.95 Canada $6.95

The International Journal of Motion Imaging

32 Down the Rabbit HoleDariusz Wolski, ASC crafts whimsical images for Alice in Wonderland

48 Weapons of DeceptionBarry Ackroyd, BSC takes aim on Green Zone

60 The Final Frontier in 3 DimensionsJames Neihouse trains astronauts to shoot in Imax for Hubble 3-D

72 Sundance 2010: Expanded PalettesThis year’s artful indies employed a variety of formats

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FEATURES

— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM TO ENJOY THESE WEB EXCLUSIVES —DVD Playback: Boogie Nights • GoodFellas • Ran

Book Reviews: Federico Fellini: The Films • Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema

On Our Cover: Alice (Mia Wasikowska) returns to the magical world of her childhood adventure in Alice in Wonderland, shot by Dariusz Wolski, ASC. (Photo by Leah Gallo, courtesy of Disney Enterprises, Inc.)

8 Editor’s Note10 President’s Desk12 Letters14 Short Takes: The History of Aviation20 Production Slate: Lebanon • Brooklyn’s Finest88 Filmmakers’ Forum: Michael Goi, ASC and Jeff Okun, VES92 New Products & Services98 International Marketplace

100 Classified Ads100 Ad Index102 Clubhouse News104 ASC Close-Up: Rene Ohashi

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80 April 2010 American Cinematographer

notes, Wardrop would edit ultra-low-resolution copies of the day’s footage,shot off of a clamshell monitor on set bya Sony HVR-Z1U camcorder, whichFreedman used to record the audio. Thecrew would watch the edited footageeach night after dinner and discuss theirplans for the next day.

As the filmmakers watched theedited footage, Lavelle recalls, “Wefound our choices of shots were becom-ing more limited, because we weretrying to build a flow and create a senseof unity over the film.” Serendipitously,the homes the filmmakers shot inoffered a naturally unifying color palette.McCullough explains, “The women hadtheir walls painted in such a way thatyou would think someone had doneproduction design. Pastels were a motif,and what the women wore was oftenmatched to their environment.”

Throughout His & Hers, thecamera remains indoors; if an intervie-wee steps outside, the camera watchesthrough a window. “These ladies werewelcoming us into their homes, and itfelt like we should stay in their homesfor the whole film,” says Lavelle. “Thatvisual motif became very strong in thefilm.

“At the very end, we take thecamera outside and see a woman inside,”

he continues. As the nonagenarian sitsalone in a nursing home, Lavelle says,the audience is “left with a sense ofinevitability, which says enough, I think.We thought about putting in momentslike marriage, birth and death, but inthe end, those are just hinted at. Wedon’t show a wedding, but we do showa girl who’s just getting her weddingdress washed. After a screening of thefilm, a woman commented that wethink our lives are made up of reallymomentous events, but it’s actuallythese small moments that define ourlives. It was Ken’s vision to come upwith that type of stuff.”

The production’s negative wasprocessed at Film Lab North in Leeds.Later, the digital grade was done withcolorist Angela McLellan at ScreenScene in Dublin, and a 35mm festivalprint was made on Kodak VisionPremier 2393 at LipSync Post inLondon.

Thrilled with the success of theircollaborations to date, Lavelle andMcCullough are currently preparing totackle a narrative feature as director andcinematographer, respectively. “It’s goodfun to work together,” says Lavelle.“Long may it continue!”

— Jon D. Witmer

Southern District (Zona Sur)Cinematographer: Paul de LumenDirector: Juan Carlos Valdivia

One of the riskiest entries in theWorld Cinema Dramatic Competitionwas Southern District (Zona Sur), aBolivian film about a wealthy family insuburban La Paz and their indigenousAymaran servants. Politically loaded andstylistically unique, the film went out ona limb, and the risk paid off: direc-tor/writer Juan Carlos Valdivia won thefestival’s directing and screenwritingawards in the World Cinema category.Additionally, Bolivia submitted the filmfor Academy Awards consideration.

Bolivia is undergoing culturalrealignments as wealth slips from theupper class and indigenous people gainpower. This became clear with the elec-tion of President Evo Morales, the firstAymaran to hold the office. Valdivia puthis finger squarely in the wound duringa heated election year, addressing raceand class in a polarized culture, butchoosing a style that withholds judg-ment.

In the film, a matriarch lords overher three children in a beautifullyappointed home, where a loyal indige-nous butler and gardener take care of thechildren’s needs and whims. However,money is running out because of theparents’ divorce. When the butler learnsof his son’s death, he leaves to attend thefuneral against the matriarch’s wishes.This is followed by other turns offortune that disrupt established powerdynamics.

Valdivia describes the plot as“minimal,” noting that the storyline “issubverted for other elements, likeatmosphere. In fact, during the firsttwo-thirds of the movie, you could putthe scenes in different order and itwouldn’t matter.”

What’s most striking is the designValdivia worked out with the film’s cine-matographer, Paul de Lumen: Eachscene is a single shot lasting two to fiveminutes, and each shot utilizes a slowlyrotating camera that makes up to four

◗ Sundance 2010: Expanded Palettes

The camera remains indoors throughout His & Hers, often catching glimpses of interviewees through windows.

360-degree turns per scene. The movesare independent of the actors, who walkin and out of frame. Because the charac-ters are onscreen only 60 percent of thetime, viewers wind up observing thehouse, which becomes a character as thecamera reveals its luxurious décor andlayers of family history.

This radical approach was moti-vated by several ideas. One was Germanphilosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s theory ofhuman individualism, which utilizes themetaphor of spheres. “We createspheres, or bubbles of existence,” saysValdivia. “These bubbles can be likefoam, a conglomeration of individualspheres, but they are also individualbubbles.” The family embodies thissocial dynamic, while the circularcamerawork suggests the spheres theyeach construct and are trapped within.

The moves also express anAndean view of cyclical time. “JuanCarlos wanted the feel of a clock, and hewanted it to be unforgiving, like time,”says de Lumen. “Using a remote headfacilitated that feel.”

De Lumen shot Southern Districtwith a Red One (Build 16), “the first inSouth America,” according to Valdivia,who acquired it in June 2008. He and deLumen, who is based in Los Angeles,spent a year shooting commercials withthe camera before Southern Districtcame together. Valdivia wanted to shoothis feature with the Red mainly becausehe “wanted to prove you could make avery well-made movie with digitalcapture. It was a personal mission.”

For Southern District, theycaptured at 4K Redcode Raw, the maxi-mum resolution possible. Because somescenes ran nearly five minutes, theCompact Flash cards didn’t offer suffi-cient storage space, so de Lumenrecorded to the 320GB Red Drive.(The production carried two.) “We wereable to shoot all the coverage of onescene on that,” says de Lumen. “It wasabout a half-day’s worth of shooting.”

Camera movement was per-formed in two basic ways: rotating on itsaxis, or circling around a scene. Valdiviaused the architectural program

82 April 2010 American Cinematographer

SketchUp, which even enabled lenschoices, to plan shots. He had anarchitect render a 3-D model of thepractical location, then moved acamera eye through it. These decisionsbecame a springboard for what deLumen calls a “jam session” on set.Choreographing actors and cameraand finding the right speed for bothwere time-consuming challenges.They averaged 15 takes, sometimesgoing up to 30. In effect, says deLumen, “that was our coverage: thespeed of the camera, size of the lensand the blocking of actors. Those were

the ways we provided options for theeditor.”

De Lumen shot most of themovie on a 24mm Arri Ultra Prime,which was “wide enough to capture theroom without distorting the actorswhen they got close to it. It was theperfect lens for multiple coverage withinone shot.”

Key grip Rosendo Ticona createda couple of rigs to achieve the clock-likecamera motion Valdivia wanted.“Rosendo’s custom rigs enabled us totake an ABC Products Pelé Remote-Head XL35 off the 10-meter jib and

apply it to other supports,” says deLumen. “One rig was a special hi-hat, sowe could mount the remote head onto adolly or baby legs. This allowed us to notonly rotate 360 degrees on its axis, butalso slide on dolly track to accommo-date blocking and framing in tight situ-ations.” Dolly grip Walter Achu wasoften lying on the floor, inches out ofrange of the camera’s view.

“Another custom rig was a jib armattached to the ceiling,” continues thecinematographer. “We were able tomount the remote head onto it to get acircular floating feel that I could controlremotely. The dolly grip would gentlycoast the camera around, and I wouldcontrol the pan and tilt. It created areally unique feel that’s unlikeSteadicam, dolly or crane.” This wasutilized for the film’s sex scenes and thepenultimate “godmother” scene, inwhich the mother is offered cash for thehouse.

Gaffer Raul Hernandez workedclosely with Ticona to create specialrigging for the lights. “There’s not anabundance of normal rigging material[in Bolivia] like C-clamps, gobo-heads,C-stands or spreaders,” notes deLumen. “This was important becausewe were shooting in a practical locationwhere there was very little room to hidelights.”

De Lumen and Valdivia super-vised the 2K digital intermediate atFilmosonido in Santiago, Chile. (Thegoal was a 35mm print at 1.85:1.) In the

◗ Sundance 2010: Expanded Palettes

Clockwise from above:A frame from

Southern District;cinematographer Paul

de Lumen (secondfrom left) checks the

rig, a Pelé RemoteHead underslung on a

custom hi-hat, whichwas then mounted on

skateboard wheels;director Juan Carlos

Valdivia (second fromleft) and the cast

prepare for a shot atthe dinner table. The

dinner-table rigincludes a Kino Kamio

Ring-Light, whichhelped with faces as

the rig revolved.

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color-correction, de Lumen smoothedout uneven lamp temperatures, finessedvarying skin tones, and fine-tuned whitewalls, which predominate in the house.The festival print was struck on FujiEterna-CP 3513DI.

As significant as SouthernDistrict’s technical challenges were, theproject’s biggest challenge was devisinga whole new visual language and trust-ing that the audience would “get it,” saysde Lumen. “I’d been shooting commer-cials, where you need to get somethingacross in 30 seconds. You tell viewerswhat they want to feel. Southern Districtdoes the opposite.” He acknowledgesthat there were moments when hefeared the movie’s style might seempretentious, boring or even dizzying. Itwasn’t until several scenes were cuttogether that he and Valdivia werecompletely convinced of the rightness oftheir approach. “The more I watch thefilm, the more I respect Juan Carlos forhaving the guts to stick with it,” says deLumen.

— Patricia Thomson

Cane Toads: The Conquest 3-DCinematographers: Toby Oliver, ACS; Kathryn Milliss; and Paul NicholaDirector: Mark Lewis

1935 marks Year Zero for one ofAustralia’s biggest environmental disas-ters: 102 cane toads were introducedinto the country as the solution to theGreyback Cane Beetle, which was deci-mating the Queensland sugar-caneindustry. Despite their reputation asvoracious devourers of living and deadmatter, the toads had other ideas.Instead of eliminating the beetle, theyutilized their other voracious appetite— breeding — and today, an estimated1.5 billion toads have migrated acrossNorthern Australia, with no end in sightto their continental conquest.

Mark Lewis’ Cane Toads: TheConquest was the first 3-D feature toscreen at Sundance, and the firstAustralian feature to shoot in 3-D.

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Paz Fabrega, 2006 MA Filmmaking graduate.Paz's first feature Agua fría de mar won theTiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival2010. She was selected for the 2009 CannesCinefondation Residence programme.