British Cinematographer issue 51 - Imago

British Cinematographer 

Covering International Cinematography 

www.britishcinematographer.co.uk 

Issue 051 ––– May 2012 

British 

Cinematographer 051 

Covering International 

Cinematography 

DARIUSZ WOLSKI ASC GOES SEARCHING 

FOR PERFECTION ON RIDLEY SCOTT’S 

P R O M E T H E U S 

BRUNO DELBONNEL AFC ASC on TIM BURTON’S DARK SHADOWS ––– IN FOCUS: WARNER BROS. STUDIOS, LEAVESDEN ––– BSC, IMAGO, GBCT & PRODUCTION NEWS 

WHO’S SHOOTING WHAT? ––– CALEB DESCHANEL ASC on ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER ––– GREIG FRASER ACS on SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN 

SEAN BOBBITT BSC on HYSTERIA, A PLACE BEYOND THE PINES & BYZANTIUM ––– NIC MORRIS BSC: FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF SONY’S F65 CAMERA 

STEVEN POSTER ASC ––– REVIEW OF THE NAB 2012 SHOW IN LAS VEGAS ––– DARIUSZ WOLSKI ASC on RIDLEY SCOTT’S PROMETHEUS ––– JAMES MARTIN 

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Credits 

–––British Cinematographer 

Magazine: Issue 51 

Contents. 

05 

President’s Perspective. 

John de Borman BSC. 

07 

Production / 

Post & Techno News. 

All the latest worldwide 

cinematography news. 

15 

Cannes 2012. 

Check out the titles 

in contention for the 

Palme d’Or. 

18 

Close-ups. 

Sean Bobbitt BSC on 

Hysteria, A Place Beyond 

The Pines and Byzantium, 

Caleb Deschanel ASC on 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire 

Hunter, and Greig Fraser 

ACS on Snow White And 

The Huntsman. 

25 

Production Focus. 

An indepth look around 

the UK’s newest studio 

complex at Warner Bros. 

Studios, Leavesden. 

29 

IMAGO News. 

Nigel Walters BSC, president 

of IMAGO, rounds up the 

highly-effective work of 

IMAGO and its supporters. 

32 

Camera Creative. 

How Bruno Delbonnel AFC 

ASC delivered the look for 

Tim Buron’s gothic horror 

comedy Dark Shadows. 

Cover Image: 

A shot from Prometheus, directed by 

Sir Ridley Scott, with cinematography 

by Dariusz Wolski. Images courtesy 

of 20 Century Fox. 

34 

Live & Let DI. 

Whose been dialling-in 

the most recent DI grades 

and more... 

36 

On the Job. 

We delve into Prometheus 

Ridley Scott’s latest big 

screen adventure courtesy 

of Dariusz Wolski ASC. 

38 

Who’s Shooting What? 

Discover which DPs are 

shooting what and where. 

41 

Grains vs Pixels. 

Nic Morris BSC gets to grips 

with the Sony F65 in the 

Lake District. 

43 

Meet the New Wave. 

James Martin… can really 

twist when pulling focus! 

45 

F-Stop Hollywood. 

All the news from this year’s 

NAB Show in Las Vegas. 

47 

Letter from America. 

Steven Poster ASC warns 

that, as more and more 

people get involved in 

visual image creation, the 

more the camera team 

needs to unify. 

48 

GBCT News. 

The chairman’s statement 

& news from the Guild. 

51 

Classifieds/Subscription. 

Subscribe to todays 

leading publication 

covering international 

cinematography. 

“In the next year or two the whole 4K 

world is going to mature dramatically 

and it’s going to be mainstream.” 

Nic Morris BSC 

The Abyss 

There’s a race to the bottom going on. Any visitor to 

NAB in Las Vegas this year, with an interest in filmmaking 

kit, can’t have helped but notice the rush towards 4K. It 

was everywhere – in cameras, workflow tools, post gear. 

The images from the new generation of 4K cameras 

look incredible – in both senses of the word. They are 

amazingly colourful and with breath-taking detail, but 

these images appear so close to what we see with the 

human eye as to perhaps make them not look quite 

right for moviemaking purposes, just yet. 

Within the whole 4K whoopla, is the move towards 

higher frame rates. Many manufacturers have crossed 

the 48fps barrier, and are now heading towards 60 and 

72fps. Incredible again, but this time only in the sense 

that it’s amazing how technology has been optimised 

to handle the massive amounts of data that comes with 

shooting 4K above and beyond 24fps. 

However, at the same time as the industry reaches 

ever-new heights, there’s a sprint to the bottom of the 

market. Cameras, workflow tools and post gear are all 

getting cheaper, considerably cheaper. Have a look 

at our NAB report and our news pages. In terms of the 

content and talent equation, we all know that whilst 

you can equip yourself more cost-effectively than ever 

with equipment that will produce the highest quality 

pictures, it still takes people with talent to make those 

pictures compelling. 

The race to the bottom of the market, let’s 

call it commoditisation, is having dramatic effects. 

Manufactures are variously disrupting the market with 

newer, faster, better and cheaper products, or milking 

the last few drops of profits out of their former cash 

cows by slashing prices like crazy. At one level this 

commoditisation is great, as it gives greater access 

to more people. But on another level it’s incredibly 

disruptive, especially to people and companies working 

in a marketplace that is already being disturbed by 

other forces – such as the proliferation of all things digital. 

As costs come down, larger companies in the post 

production world are constantly having to shift and 

adapt their services, which can also mean laying off 

staff. Smaller, boutique companies are either struggling 

to compete, going under or getting gobbled up by the 

larger enterprises. The nett effect is that the freelance 

market is growing and, as one manufacturer put it, these 

free agents are having to cross-pollinate – to learn new 

skills to keep themselves viable in the workplace. Editors, 

graders, VFX artists are all having to learn associated 

skills, and learn about a host of newer, better, faster and 

cheaper kit that might crop up on their next job. 

As an example from the production world, there’s 

the tale of a DIT who turned up in his SUV to purchase 

an on-set workflow system for digital productions. Inside 

the vehicle was around £100,000 worth of kit comprising 

a high-end digital camera, a selection of lenses, 

computers and software. When asked about the sort of 

jobs he was working on, the DIT replied that he had yet 

to find his first job. He’d recently quit his job as a clapper 

loader, raided is bank account and decided to get into 

the DIT world, as that is where the market is heading. 

Reskilling. Simple as that. With such momentous changes 

occurring, you may find yourself looking into the abyss. 

If you have the wherewithal to adapt, not just financial, 

then you just might find yourself looking at the stars. 

Your Editor, Ron Prince 

03 


Issue 051 


Covering International 

Cinematography. 

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Editor. 

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Sales. 

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Design. 

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Senior Designer 

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The Publication Advisory 

Committee comprises of Board 

members from the BSC and 

GBCT as well as the Publishers. 


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Laws Publishing Ltd 

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The publishers wish to emphasise 

that the opinions expressed in 

British Cinematographer are not 

representative of Laws Publishing 

Ltd but the responsibility of the 

individual contributors. 

Contributors. 

Ron Prince ––– 

has many years 

experience working in 

the film, TV, CGI and 

visual effects industries. 

He is the editor of British 

Cinematographer 

magazine and runs the 

international marketing 

and communications 

company Prince PR, 

www.princepr.com. 

Bob Fisher ––– 

has authored 3,000 

magazine articles about 

cinematographers and 

filmmakers during the 

past 35 plus years. He has 

also moderated many 

panel discussions for both 

the American Society 

of Cinematographers 

and the International 

Cinematographers Guild. 

Carolyn Giardina ––– 

is a freelance journalist 

based in the US. She 

previously served as the 

technology reporter at 

Hollywood Reporter, the 

editor of Film & Video, and 

as senior editor of postproduction 

at SHOOT. Her 

work has also appeared 

in IBC Daily News, Digital 

Cinema, Post and Below 

The Line. 

Kevin Hilton ––– 

is a freelance journalist 

who writes about 

technology and 

personalities in film and 

broadcasting, and 

contributes film reviews 

and interviews to a variety 

of publications in the UK 

and abroad. 

Michael Burns ––– 

is a journalist and 

author covering the 

film, broadcast, design 

and interactive sectors. 

His work over the last 

16 years can be found 

in magazines such as 

Broadcast and Televisual, 

Macuser and MovieScope 

and online at www. 

firedbydesign.com 

John Keedwell ––– 

the GBCT News Editor, 

is a documentary and 

commercials cameraman 

who has worked on many 

productions around the 

world. He crosses over 

in both film and tape 

productions and has great 

knowledge of the new 

formats and their methods 

of production.





Presidents Perspective 

–––John de Borman BSC 

BSC President 

Nollywood 

or bust 

Nollywood... Tinapa Studios 

in Nigeria, which claims the 

second largest film industry after 

Bollywood. 

Hotel Russell... the venue for this 

year’s BSC Operators’ Night. 

Well I’ve arrived in Nigeria and am in prep for my next 

film Half Of The Yellow Sun. It’s a beautiful love story set 

in the 1960s during the Nigerian-Biafran war. My first 

impression after all the anxieties of everybody telling me 

how dangerous it might be, and how mad I was to be 

going to a war torn country, is how absolutely charming, 

welcoming and unthreatening the people are – at 

least in this area Calabar. It is amazing to see that they 

have built an enormous studio called Tinapa here, with 

editing rooms and a cinema, a 100ft stage that’s all airconditioned, 

which would make Pinewood Studios proud. 

Millions of pounds of investment, including a hotel, 

were made eight years ago, and yet we will be the first 

people to use it. They seem to have only used the studio 

for weddings so far. What a shame, I think to myself, but 

then as my prep progresses I realise where the problem 

lies. This is a country with absolutely no infrastructure 

whatsoever. No lights, blimped generators, nor cameras. 

Even trucks we have to get from Lagos and, of course, 

no experienced people. Having said that they are the 

second largest film industry after Bombay in the world – 

they make many more films than the US, or us, by far. They 

have the third largest grossing film revenue in the world 

after Hollywood. There is Bollywood and then Nollywood. 

Unfortunately all their films are shot on camcorders 

and now 5Ds, in daylight or with basic single bulb lighting 

at night. I have seen some of these films shot by the 

trainees I’ve taken on. I have to say they are impressive 

with the little they have, and show great compositional 

skills. The stories maybe slightly lacking sophistication, but 

that could change. 

05 

British Society 

of Cinematographers 

Board Members 

PRESIDENT: 

John de Borman BSC 

IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT: 

Sue Gibson BSC 

VICE PRESIDENTS: 

Sean Bobbitt BSC 

Joe Dunton MBE BSC 

Chris Seager BSC 

GOVERNORS: 

Oliver Curtis BSC 

John Daly BSC 

Gavin Finney BSC 

David Higgs BSC 

Phil Meheux BSC 

David Odd BSC 

Nic Morris BSC 

Dick Pope BSC 

Derek Suter BSC 

Robin Vidgeon BSC 

Nigel Walters BSC 

Haris Zambarloukos BSC 

CO-OPTED ASSOCIATE MEMBER REPRESENTATIVES: 

Andrei Austin 

Rodrigo Gutierrez 

SECRETARY: 

Frances Russell 

So my mission whilst I am here, I’ve decided, is to 

employ as many trainees to work on this film as the 

production company will let me, and to train them 

with my very experienced lighting and grip crew from 

South Africa, as best we can, and show them how we 

light and move the camera and how they could use 

their studio properly. This film we are doing is very, very 

low budget, so I feel we are challenged to achieve a 

lot with very little – much like they do. But, of course, 

we are bigger in intention and that could be their first 

lesson. Think ambitiously about how to achieve a big 

cinema look, and then work out how to achieve this 

with limited resources. 

The other thing I now realise while I’ve been out 

here is how ludicrous our tax breaks in England works. 

It seems to act completely against all incentive to use, 

and our British crews. It is more advantageous for a 

producer based in England to hire a complete foreign 

crew, add all the extra expense that entails – first class 

tickets, per diems, hotels, etc. – the more the better, 

as that allows him or her to claim more on the tax 

credit. How is that helping our crews? There are many 

examples of this happening all the time. Surely there is 

something wrong here? 

Conversely, I am shooting a film now that is produced 

by Andrea Calderwood (Last King Of Scotland, Constant 

Gardener), and we cannot get any tax credit because 

we are shooting in Nigeria, and we couldn’t claim any 

tax for having, for instance, an entire British crew, we 

can only claim for whatever we shoot in England. Surely 

this is ludicrous. We, like the Nigerians, need to promote 

and train our crews and need to give our producers 

the incentive to employ our very talented and highlyskilled 

crews. If we have a tax break this must be taken 

into consideration so that it helps our film industry and 

perpetuates the high standards that we are known for. 

The BSC, on the other hand, is definitely intent on 

promoting our industry to the full. This year we will be 

having our Operator’s annual evening at the prestigious 

and beautiful Hotel Russell, Russell Square, Bloomsbury, 

London WC1, on Friday 16th November. It is a much 

bigger venue so will be able to accommodate 

everybody who wants to come, and we won’t be 

strapped for a lack of space. All DPs, operators, friends 

and patrons please put it in your diary, and let’s all 

celebrate what we do and love to do. 

John de Borman BSC 

President, British Society of Cinematographers





News 

–––Production / Post 

& Technology round-up 

Forrest Wins Best 

Cinematography Award 

at Tribeca 

Young British cinematographer Trevor Forrest has won the 

Tribeca Film Festival Award for best cinematography for 

his work on the much-discussed Una Noche, the story of 

Cuban teenagers attempting to defect to America. The 

film has since become a case of life imitating art, with 

two of the lead actors actually defecting to the US. 

Una Noche premiered at the Berlin International 

Film Festival, and previously received the 2009 Spike Lee 

Production Award. The US premiere of Una Noche at 

the Tribeca Film Festival received an overwhelmingly 

positive response. Variety’s Justin Chang praised the 

film, giving special notice to the “vibrant evocation of 

Havana street life,” and saying Forrest’s work brought “a 

palpable sizzle to the sun-drenched Havana settings.” 

During the festival’s awards ceremony Una Noche 

director Lucy Mulloy took home the best new narrative 

director award. Two of the film’s stars, Dariel Arrechada 

and Javier Nunez Florian, shared the awards for the best 

actor in a narrative feature. The Cuban actors, both 

20, went missing en route to the Tribeca Festival, but 

surfaced on America TeVe, a Miami Spanish-language 

station, saying that they were seeking political asylum. 

With three wins, Una Noche earned the most awards 

of any film competing at the festival. Forrest shared 

the Tribeca Award with co-cinematographer Shlomo 

Godder. Forrest’s narrative credits include the IFC Films 

horror/comedy Grabbers, which premiered at this year’s 

Sundance Film Festival and will open theatrically later this 

year. His upcoming films are The Knot, a rom-com starring 

Mena Suvari, the moody horror feature Comedown, and 

Someone Else with writer/director Col Spector, described 

by Variety as “gorgeously composed in Panavision 

widescreen by DP Trevor Forrest.” 

Pinewood opens 

Richard Attenborough Stage 

Lord David Puttnam, and Pinewood chairman Lord 

Michael Grade, officially unveiled the 30,000sq/ft Richard 

Attenborough Stage at the end of April. The stage has 

been purpose-built to serve the needs of both film 

and television production, and is the second largest at 

Pinewood, increasing stage capacity at the studios by 7%. 

The Richard Attenborough Stage is already 

being used to house the Working Title Films/Universal 

production of Les Misérables, lensed by Danny Cohen 

BSC, directed by Tom Hooper, and starring Hugh 

Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway. The 

Pinewood Group has recently hosted a number light 

entertainment productions, including the Magicians, 

Don’t Stop Me Now and Got To Dance, and the new 

stage is suited for shows that require large spaces to 

build complex sets and host large audiences. 

Ivan Dunleavy commented: “This new stage helps 

demonstrate Pinewood’s ongoing commitment to 

improving its infrastructure, and offering both film and 

television clients the most up-to-date, flexible and secure 

facilities possible. It sends a signal that we are serious 

about growing and innovating to keep pace in an 

increasingly competitive, global market.” 

07 

Lordy lordy... Puttnam and Grade 

at the opening of the new Richard 

Attenborough Stage at Pinewood. 

Winner... DP Trevor Forrest won 

the best cinematography gong 

at Tribeca for Una Noche.




Issue 051 ––– May 2012 08 

Creative Skillset appoints new 

head of film and announces 

training initiatives 

Dan Simmons has been appointed as Creative Skillset’s 

head of film after a period of acting in the role. His 

immediate priority is to oversee delivery of the third 

and final year of the UK’s film skills strategy, A Bigger 

Future 2, after the BFI’s recent confirmation of transition 

funding for the strategy. A Bigger Future 2 is currently 

funded annually by £3.65 million from the National 

Lottery via the BFI, plus £700,000 from industry via the Skills 

Investment Fund (SIF), a voluntary levy on productions 

filmed in the UK. 

Chair of Creative Skillset’s Film Skills Council, producer 

Iain Smith, said: “Dan has done a great job over this past 

year. As the Film Policy Review highlighted, A Bigger 

Future 2 is the ‘gold standard’ of skills strategies, and a 

sustained investment in skills is a critical component in 

building a bright future for our industry, now more than 

ever as we experience such rapid change.” 

Since its 2004 launch, A Bigger Future has 

supported more than 19,000 professionals working 

in the industry, and over 500 new entrants in priority 

grades such as VFX, assistant accountants, and craft 

and tech grades. Creative Skillset has made the Lottery 

investment go even further by leveraging over £70m in 

match funding. 

A Bigger Future 2, which will run until April 2013, 

has identified five priority areas for investment: new 

technologies, creative talent, business skills, new 

trainees and health and safety. Creative Skillset 

will support a number of schemes over the coming 

months that look at the technical challenges facing 

cinematographers today – the switch to digital, 3D and 

the now-ubiquitous visual effects. 

“The UK film industry is one of the world leaders in 3D 

and visual effects. But we can’t be complacent if we’re 

going to hold on to this competitive advantage,” said 

Simmons. “That’s why one of the key priorities of A Bigger 

Future 2 is to support schemes like this that will continue 

to train our film professional in these new technologies.” 

Top cinematographers will discuss how digital 

has affected their craft and why some have chosen 

recently to shoot on film instead of digital at Digital 

Dilemma For Cinematographers, which takes place at 

the UK Film Centre in Cannes on 18 May. The session 

will allow cinematographers to debate creativity issues 

around shooting digitally, and as formats shift and 

change, whether or not their work will be archived to 

last the test of time. 

3D For Camera Professionals is a three-day course, 

presented by Fourcorners, that will look at the theory 

of 3D and issues faced by DITs, as well as providing the 

opportunity for participants to get practical, handson 

experience with industry-standard equipment. The 

course will run on 11-13 June, and again on 1-3 October, 

and is aimed at camera department professionals. 

A second scheme, The VFX Advantage, will be held 

at Ravensbourne University on 4-5 July, with leading 

experts revealing valuable creative and budgetary 

opportunities of using VFX. The conference will include 

case studies, discussions, demonstrations, talks and 

networking opportunities. 

Elstree hosts ‘Empire Day’ 

on Stage 7 

Star Wars returned to Elstree Studios recently for ‘Elstree 

Empire Day’. Gary Kurtz, producer of the first two Star Wars 

films, reunited members of the original cast and crew for 

a celebration of the saga’s history at the UK studio. 

Highlights of the day included a talk by Kurtz on 

‘A Day In The Life Of A Star Wars Producer’, displays of 

original film props, some never before seen in public, 

art department items such as artwork, models and 

blueprints, plus rare photographs showing the work that 

took place at the studios. 

The event was run to aid the continuing preservation 

and restoration of artefacts in The Kurtz/Joiner Archive. 

The Archive was set up by Gary Kurtz and Star Wars 

historian Jason Joiner to preserve the many items relating 

to Kurtz’s career that he had collected over the years, 

including a vast personal photographic library detailing 

all aspects of the Star Wars productions alongside props, 

documentation and other items. 

Guests attending the event included Norman 

Reynolds, art director on Star Wars and production 

designer on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of 

the Jedi, Ronnie Taylor BSC, camera operator on Star 

Wars, specialist painter Ron Punter, whose first job in the 

industry was painting Darth Vader’s helmet and armour, 

Dave Prowse, who played Darth Vader in the Star Wars 

Trilogy. Kenny Baker, who played R2D2 in all six Star Wars 

films, and Colin Skeaping, Mark Hamill’s stunt double 

who played multiple roles throughout the films, were 

also present. 

LEE’s new LED filter range 

Have you ever tried using a coloured lighting filter in 

front of a cool white LED fitting? It can end up looking so 

completely different that, if you did not know better, you 

would think it was a totally different colour. The problem 

is made even worse when mixing cool white LED and 

Tungsten sources together, as trying to get a colour match 

from the two different sources is virtually impossible. 

To help fix the problem LEE Filters has launched a 

new range of LED filters. These new filters, when used on 

cool white LED fittings (>6000K), have been specifically 

designed to give a visual colour match to existing LEE 

colours on Tungsten (3200K). Ten popular LEE colours 

are available as LEE LED Filters including deep amber, 

orange, deep orange, primary red, peacock blue, 

medium blue green, steel blue, mauve, primary green 

and apricot. 

09 

What’s shooting on Fujifilm? 

Features and TV dramas opting to shoot on the 

panoply of stocks from Fujifilm include… Captain 

Phillips, DP Barry Ackroyd BSC, dir. Paul Greengrass; 

Die Hard 5, DP Jonathan Sela, dir. John Moore; 

The Invisible Woman, DP Rob Hardy BSC, dir. Ralph 

Fiennes; Candle To Water, DP Rod Marley, dir. Nihat 

Seven; Happy End, DP Ulf Brantas, dir. Bjorn Runge; 

Tenderness, DP Jan Vancaillie, dir. Marion Hänsel; The 

Black Sea, DP Daniel Bouquet, dir. Jorien van Nes; 

The Strange Colour Of Your Tears, DP Manu Dacosse, 

dirs. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani; and Death Of A 

Pilgrim, DP Steffan Kullanger, dir. Kristoffer Nyholm. 

Commercials and Promos supplied with Fujifilm 

stocks via Island Studios and Panavision include… 

Stella Artois Cidre (Black Label Productions), DP Tim 

Maurice-Jones; Aldi (Itch Films), DP Peter Ellmore; 

Britain’s Got Talent, (ITV) DP Haris Zamberloukos BSC; 

Sky Movies (Rattling Stick), DP Ivan Bird; Polycell 

(Rogue Films), DP Tom Townend; Yorkie (Sonny 

London), DP Nanu Segal; Michael Kiwanuka (RSA/ 

Black Dog), DP Dan Trapp; and Esser (Rokkit), DP 

Magni Agustsson. The YMC16 Competition Winner, 

Flight of the Pompadour, DP Bjorn Bratberg, dir. Karan 

Kandhari, was also shot on Fuji. 

Lee’s new LED filters... images 

shows existing LEE 126 filter on 

Tungsten (l) and Cool white LED 

(r). The colour is totally different, 

and existing LEE 126 on Tungsten (l) 

and new LEE LED 126 Filter on Cool 

White LED (r). There is now a good 

visual colour match. 

Behind the scenes... a shot of 

Gary Kurtz on Star Wars. 

Vadim Yusov to receive lifetime 

award at Camerimage 2012 

The 2012 Plus Camerimage Festival will honour Russian 

director of photography Vadim Ivanovich Yusov with 

the annual lifetime achievement award. Yusov, who is 

known for such films as Andriei Rublev, Solaris and Ivan’s 

Childhood among many other titles, will attend the 20th 

edition of the festival, during which some of his films will 

screened. 

Yusov was born in the Leningrad province of the 

Soviet Union. He studied at the prestigious VGIK (All- 

Russian State University of Cinematography), and got 

a job as an assistant cinematographer at Mosfilm, the 

biggest Russian film studio, where he quickly became 

a director of photography. During his career he has 

worked with directors Andrey Tarkovskiy, Georgi 

Daneliya, Sergey Bondarchuk or Ivan Dykhovichnyy. 

Yusov’s work is distinguished by precision in image 

composition, the carefully planned choice of lighting 

and lenses and camera work, and his mastery of black 

and white photography. Among dozens of awards 

he has received include the All-Russian Film Festival 

Award for cinematography on Walking The Streets Of 

Moscow (1963), the Golden Osella at the Venice Film 

Festival in 1988 for cinematography on The Black Monk, 

and two Nika Awards from the Russian Film Academy 

for Passport (1991) and Moscow Parade (1992). Plus 

Camerimage will be held in Bydgoszcz from the 24th 

November to 1st December. 

4K London provides digital 

expertise for Rush 

Specialist digital cinematography agency, 4K London, 

has provided the DITs and on-set color management 

equipment to Ron Howard’s latest feature film, Rush, set 

in the glamorous world of 1970s Formula 1 racing, and 

based on the true story of the sporting rivalry between 

James Hunt and Niki Lauda. 

Academy Award-winning cinematographer 

Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC (Slumdog Millionaire, 

127 Hours) is shooting Rush using ARRI Alexa ARRIRAW. 

Senior DIT Dan Carling is handling the ARRIRAW 

data running Codex and Truelight On Set colour 

management, assisted by Marc Jason Maier and Mat 

Brooks. Carling previously worked with Dod Mantle on 

Trance, directed by Danny Boyle, and Dredd, directed 

by Pete Travis. 4K London represents trained DITs and 

other data camera specialists, as well as providing 

workflow supervision and on-set equipment for feature 

films, commercials, dramas and documentaries. 




Issue 051 ––– May 2012





Marvel’s The Avengers Employs 

Codex/ARRIRAW Workflow 

Director Joss Whedon and cinematographer Seamus 

McGarvey BSC ASC employed ARRI Alexa cameras 

in a Codex/ARRIRAW workflow to capture principal 

photography for Marvel’s The Avengers. The movie is the 

first digitally-captured production by McGarvey, whose 

previous credits include The Soloist, Atonement and The 

Hours. In order to become comfortable with the new 

technology, the cinematographer conducted detailed 

tests with the ARRI camera and the Codex workflow 

technology during pre-production. 

“Shooting ARRIRAW with the combination of ARRI 

Alexa cameras and Codex Onboard Recorders made 

the transition to digital easy,” he recalls. “Everything 

worked flawlessly and the images look amazing.” 

On set, production DIT Danny Hernandez managed 

four Codex Onboard recorders on his cart. He recorded 

CDL (Color Decision List) values to the Onboards along 

with the media from the cameras. McGarvey supervised 

colour applications on set and the looks he established 

were communicated to post EFILM in LA, which handled 

the dailies processing and final DI. 

Editorial was located near-set, equipped with a Codex 

Digital Lab. The editorial crew checked and fixed all the 

metadata, and made back-up copies of the ARRIRAW files 

to LTO-5 tape. The data-packs from the Codex recorders 

were then sent to EFILM for dailies processing. 

The new Panalight Nexos 

wharehouse. 

The setting from the Barrakka 

gardents terrace. 

Eight-gun salute over harbour. 

David Jarratt ready to welcome 

guests. 

Guests enjoy hospitality. 

Tonio Fenech minister of finance, 

economy and investment of 

Malta. 

David Grech MD panalight 

mediterranean. 

More guests enjoy hospitality. 

More guests arrive before 

presentation/party. 

New Panalight Nexos trucks and 

entrance to new wharehouse. 

Dr giuseppe basso MD cinecitta 

studios announces 75th anny of 

studio and welcome to malta 

event. 

Guests assemble before Lights On 

Malta party. 

Film commissioner of Malta Peter 

Busuttil addresses guests. 

Paul Hitchcock talks to Roberto 

Jarratt.Marvel... Codex proved 

a hit on The Avengers, lensed by 

Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC. 

Method... Kronos had to have a 

human type of look and had to 

be made out of lava in Wrath Of 

The Titans. 

Method creates monster 

and environments for 

Wrath Of The Titans 

Method Studios’ London and LA branches joined forces 

for the 3D visual effects for the second installment 

Warner Bros.’ franchise Wrath Of The Titans. The main 

sequence for Method Studios in LA involved creating 

the awakening of the monstrous Kronos, father of Zeus. 

This fully CG rock giant is brought to life with glowing 

lava and causes the cataclysmic destruction of the 

Underworld. During pre-production, Method Studios in 

London created concept images for the production’s 

art department, as well as the visual effects in the 

establishment of the Underworld sequence. 

The visual effects on the Kronos sequence included 

114 shots featuring a fully-CG Kronos in an entirely CG 

environment consisting of over 7,000 pieces. The action 

takes place in a huge collapsing chamber, with Perseus 

and Andromeda freeing Zeus as Kronos awakes. Digital 

doubles of leading actors were created and composited 

into scenes along with fire, smoke, explosions and flowing 

lava. For the Underworld establishment sequence, 

Method London’s challenge was to get across the 

massive scale of the CG environment, which included 

detailed matte paintings and the creation of a stone 

pillar tower which Zeus is later bound to. In this VFX heavy 

scene, Zeus, played by Liam Neeson, is drained of his 

powers as fiery lava bleeds from his arms and flows into 

the surrounding rocks to give Kronos strength. 

Method’s sister company, Company 3, completed 

the DI on the feature with colorist Adam Glasman in 

London. Feature visual effects worked on across Method 

locations include Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 

Cloud Atlas, Dark Shadows, Men in Black 3, J. Edgar and 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. 

11 

President Suh departs 

Panavision as technology 

advisors join the board 

Panavision has begun the search for a new CEO, after 

John Suh, its president and CEO, left the company. 

Following a transition period, Suh will join Deluxe 

Entertainment Services Group as the company’s chief 

administrative officer. In the interim, Bob Del Genio has 

stepped in as acting CEO. He has worked as an advisor 

to the company for three years and will continue to 

drive the company’s goals and objectives, including the 

development of next generation cameras. 

As part of the reshuffle, two experienced technology 

and business advisors, Joe Matza and Robert Solomon, 

have been appointed to the company’s board of 

directors. 

Matza has focused his career on the relationship 

between creativity and technology in creating 

successful businesses. In 1972, he and his partners 

teamed with Oscar-recipient Douglas Trumbull to create 

Magicam, a real-time system that provided camera 

movement while simultaneously photographing actors 

in a miniature set, was sold to Paramount Pictures in 

1974. In 1984, he co-founded Composite Image Systems 

(CIS) specialising in visual effects for feature films, 

television and advertising. Matza and his colleagues 

founded EFILM in 1992, one of the world’s foremost 

DI facilities. Panavision purchased EFILM in 2001 and 

Deluxe Laboratories subsequently purchased EFILM from 

Panavision in 2004. Matza served as EFILM’s President 

and CEO until June 2010. 

Solomon has over 20 years of media services industry 

experience, serving in multiple senior executive roles 

covering strategy, operations and finance in companies 

including Ascent Media and Encore Video. He has 

extensive expertise with entertainment and advertising 

companies as they address the shift to file-based 

content production, management and distribution. 

“I am very excited to have the opportunity to work 

with Panavision as they launch their next generation 

camera system. Panavision is uniquely positioned 

to deliver an integrated system designed from a 

filmmaker’s perspective,” said Solomon. 





Top European film services 

companies join forces in Malta 

Malta has established itself as a leading film industry 

location in the Mediterranean. Its strategic location, 

climate and over 50 years of experience of servicing 

film companies from the USA, UK, Europe and India, are 

attracting top cine-services companies to share in this 

market sector. 

In August last year, three major enterprises, Panalight 

Holdings, Cinecitta Studios and Nexos Lighting Malta, 

established a joint venture in Malta with the help 

and encouragement of the Malta Film Commission 

(MFC). David Grech, a Maltese with several years of 

international filmmaking experience, was appointed 

managing director of the new Panalight Nexos 

Mediterranean (PNM) enterprise. This is a one-stopshop 

rental services depot, making all the necessary 

equipment, including grip and cine-lighting, available to 

filmmakers. 

PNM recently invited other stakeholders, along with 

several European film producers and camera rental 

suppliers to a company launch event. These included 

ARRI, represented by Dr Martin Prillmann, LEE Filters 

and Panavision UK, represented by Hugh Whittaker. 

International cinema trade-publications journalists were 

also invited to cover the launch of the new joint venture. 

The first in a series of international media events, 

aimed at highlighting the importance of Malta as a 

leading film-making location, guests were taken to 

historical and natural locations, and invited to meet the 

Mediterranean Film Studios, the Malta Film Commission, 

location managers and other cinema industry 

participants at a cocktail party set at the Upper Barrakka 

Gardens overlooking the Grand Harbour in Valletta. 

Investors attending the event included Roberto 

Jarratt, chairman of Panalight Holdings, David Jarratt 

who is responsible for European marketing, Giuseppe 

Basso, general manager of Cinecitta Studios, and Silvio 

Scerri of Nexos Malta. 

“Nexos has been involved in every production that 

has taken place in Malta for the past 15 years,” said 

Scerri. “This new partnership, with international industry 

powerhouses of the calibre of Panalight and Cinecitta, 

will allow us to offer a complete service to the increased 

number of productions being shot in Malta, and will also 

attract more business to the island.” 

Peter Busuttil, commissioner at the Malta Film 

Commission, commented, “The setting-up of PNM 

continues to further cement Malta’s role as a top 

film-servicing destination and, more importantly, will 

also give us the opportunity to train young Maltese 

film technicians, allowing us to increase a number of 

specialisations to our already large pool of experienced 

film crews.”





Elstree posts a record 

read and profits 

Elstree Studios has announced an exceptional year of 

business with a mixture of top television shows, feature 

films and commercials. Sales at the north London studios 

were up by 17% and profits increased seven fold on the 

previous year. Most recently Elstree Studios has been the 

home of Dancing On Ice (ITV) and is now currently the 

home of The Voice (BBC). Recent feature films include 

King Of Soho with Steve Coogan, and Under The Skin with 

Scarlett Johansson. Two other feature films are currently 

in production at Elstree. It has also just been announced 

that Big Brother, now on Channel 5, has renewed its 

contract for another two years at Elstree Studios. 

Roger Morris, managing director of Elstree Studios, 

commented, “Elstree Studios is a very popular studio for 

both film and television. It’s close to central London and 

it’s in close proximity to some exceptional locations, from 

stately homes to hospitals and prisons. Most recently 

we became the home for Creative England’s location 

service and we are expanding the list of great, unique 

locations we have near the studios”. 

A good example is High Cannons, which is around 

15 minutes from Elstree Studios, recently used for Hyde 

Park On Hudson with Bill Murray. Elstree Studios will be 

attending the Cannes Film Festival this month to support 

the British Film initiatives. 

Countdown to the 2012 

Animago awards 

The countdown to the 16th Animago Awards is 

underway. Creatives from all over the world have until 

30 June 2012 to submit their work in the fields of 3D, 

visual effects and interactive media to the international 

competition online at HYPERLINK “http://www.animago. 

com/”www.animago.com. Participation is free and 

open to professionals and fresh young newcomers. 

The internationally-renowned competition has been 

organised for the past 16 years by Digital Production, a 

leading industry magazine covering the entire spectrum 

of media production and visualisation. The awards 

presentation will take place on Thursday 25 October 

2012 as part of the Animago Award & Conference at the 

fx.Center in Potsdam-Babelsberg. 

The categories of Animago Award 2012 include: 

character animation, post-production, short film, 

advertising production, interactive production, game 

design, stereo-3D production, visualisation, young 

production (with €3,000 Euros prize money from Digital 

Production), a Jury Prize and a best still reader’s prize 

from Digital Production. The best still will be judged on 

the qualities of photorealistic presentation, design, artistic 

standard and technical execution. 

13 





Isolated... is the first production for 

Alphagrip’s new Technodolly. 

Zoom zoom... Fuji introduced a 

range of new lenses at NAB. 

Singing... shows like The Voice 

have helped Elstree Studios turn 

in healthy profits. 

Illuminating... Larry Parker of Mole 

Richardson pictured with new light 

kit with Alan Lowne near the BSC 

Clubhouse. 

Up up and away... Pictorvision’s 

Eclipse fitted with an Alexa M. 

Triffids... Sir David Attenborough 

tackles the plant world in 3D 

using Onsight’s facilities. 

Pictorvision flies Alexa M 

for ARRI promo 

Pictorvision, supplier of stabilised camera systems to 

the broadcast, entertainment and commercial sectors, 

which won an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and 

Sciences Scientific and Engineering Award this year for 

its Eclipse system, was recently employed by ARRI to 

help create a promotional film for the Alexa M camera, 

shown at NAB 2012 in Las Vegas. 

In the first aerial use of the Alexa M, the promo 

demonstrates the compact size, light weight and 

modularity of ARRI’s new camera. Stephan Ukas-Bradley, 

Manager, Digital Production of ARRI Inc., called on 

cinematographer Bill Bennett ASC, and the two worked 

with Pictorvision’s Tom Hallman to create a variety of 

aerial shooting opportunities. “It was exciting to be the 

first company to take this camera up in the air,” says 

Hallman. “We pulled out all the stops and were able to 

integrate it into the Eclipse system quickly.” 

Bennett explains, “We put the Alexa M camera 

body inside the helicopter, allowing my camera assistant 

to easily change data cartridges on the Codex recorder 

and manipulate the various camera controls. The 

camera body was connected to the camera sensor 

block in the Eclipse mount with a very robust fibre optic 

cable.” 

Pilot Peter McKernan took the Eclipse on quite a 

ride, at first helping the Alexa M to capture footage 

of 18-year-old Sam Mason flying his parent’s restored 

Stearman biplane, then shooting scenic views of the 

Santa Monica Pier, the Hollywood sign and downtown 

Los Angeles at sunset. 

Fujifilm debuts new clutch of 

new lenses at NAB 2012 

Fujifilm Optical Devices Division announced several new 

lenses during the recent NAB show in Las Vegas. These 

include two compact HD lenses, new PL mount zooms, 

plus cost-effective ENG-style and long HD field lenses. 

The two new HDTV lenses are the HA19x7.4BERM/ 

BERD 2/3-inch Premier Series high-performance HD 

ENG/EFP production lens, and the XA19x7.4BESM-D8 

compact, HDTV studio and field box-style lens. 

First introduced at IBC 2011, the two lenses both with 

19x zoom ratios, are the first in such a compact size to 

feature three floating zoom groups and Aspherics, which 

combine to produce high-quality optical performance. 

They also feature the latest EBC coating, resulting 

in richer colours and improved blue response and 

transmittance. 

Weighing 3.3kg, the lightweight HA19x7.4BERM/ 

BERD 2/3-inch lens is suited to the rigours of high-end 

ENG/EFP HDTC production including entertainment, 

news, sports, and documentaries. The XA19x7.4BESM-D8 

is designed for live studio production, such as live 

news, sports, and entertainment. It offers automatic 

compensation of focus breathing, which synchronises 

the zoom movement to the focus movement, enabling 

the image size to remain constant when focusing. With 

features like RS-232 control and tally lights, it can also be 

used in conjunction with virtual reality studio sets and 

robotic camera systems. Both the XA19x7.4BESM-D8 and 

HA19x7.4BERM/BERD lenses have advanced diagnostics 

to keep them working reliably, as well as a short “MOD” 

or minimum object distance of 0.55mm, which allows 

shooting at closer distances. With a 2.2X extender as 

standard, both lenses give users zoom capabilities and 

reach comparable to that of FUJINON HA23X7.6 and the 

HA22x7.3 lenses. 

The newest member of the new Premier PL mount 

zoom family includes the PL 19-90 Cabrio (ZK4.7x19). 

It features an exclusive detachable servo drive unit, 

making it suitable for use as a standard PL lens or as an 

ENG-Style lens. The ZK4.7x19 also features flange focal 

distance adjustment, macro function, and is LDS (Lens 

Data System) and /i metadata compatible. With a 19- 

90mm focal range and weight of 2.7kg including servo 

motors, this lens has the longest focal range available in 

a light weight zoom. The PL 19-90 covers 31.5mm sensor 

size on a digital cinema style camera. This new zoom 

ensures the image captured will cover large sensors for 

optimal, full-frame resolution. 

The company also announced the XA20xs8.5BERM, 

a cost-effective 2/3-inch, ENG-Style lens with a 2x range 

extender, and showed two breakthrough compact 

lenses both with 19x zoom ratios. The lenses are the first 

in such a compact size to feature three floating zoom 

groups and Aspherics, resulting in high quality optical 

performance. Additionally, Fujifilm introduced the 

XA77x9.5 HDTV field lens, designed for use anywhere a 

long lens would be beneficial in capturing detail and 

close-up images from far distances such as in stadiums, 

at sporting events, arenas and larger houses of worship. 

The XA77x9.5 features the company’s patented OS 

TECH image-stabilisation sensors that detect the slightest 

movement caused by vibration. 

What’s shooting on Kodak? 

Feature films electing to shoot on the multitude of 

Kodak filmstocks include… Les Miserables, DP Danny 

Cohen BSC, dir. Tom Hooper; Closed, DP Adriano 

Goldman, dir. John Crowley; The Invisible Woman, DP 

Rob Hardy BSC, dir. Ralph Fiennes; Half Of A Yellow 

Sun, DP John de Borman BSC, dir. Biyi Bandele. On the 

TV front, Merlin continues to shoot on 35mm with DPs 

Dale McCready and Ashley Rowe BSC. 

Commercials and music video using 16mm 

and 35mm Kodak stock include… Visit England 

(Elysian Films), DP Remi Adefarasin OBE BSC; Virgin 

(Traktor), DP Tim Maurice Jones; Stella (Black Label 

Productions), DP Tim Maurice Jones; SNY (Smith & 

Jones), DP Stephen Keith Roach; The Swimmer (Warp 

Films) and BP Benito Montorio (Blink), DP Natasha 

Braier; Maccabees (2am Films), DP Oliver Downey; 

DFS (Ink Films), DP Graham Dunn; L’Oreal (RSA), DP 

Oliver Cocaul; Adidas (Somesuch & Co), DP Nicolas 

Loir; Dreams (Loki Productions), DP Ian Murray; 

McDonalds (Thomas Thomas), DP Keith Goddard 

BSC; Heineken (MJZ), DP Joost van Gelder; and VW 

(Pulse Films), DP Martin Ruhe. 

Mole Richardson and Take 2 

illuminate BSC Clubhouse 

Mole Richardson and Take 2 Films set up a host of new 

lighting equipment at the Clubhouse to show to BSC 

members and other crews shooting at Pinewood. Several 

BSC members including Tony Pierce-Roberts and Dick 

Pope attended the event, hosted by Larry Parker from 

Mole Richardson who flew in from the US. 

Alphagrip... 

Man Made Pictures of Pinewood Studios has been be 

using Alphagrip’s new Technodolly to shoot a trailer for 

its upcoming production Isolated, to be shot in London 

and at Shepperton Studios. It will be directed by Murray 

Gough and produced by Andy Birmingham, with Peter 

Field BSC the cinematographer. In this edge-of-theseat 

thriller, the hero becomes becomes a pawn in a 

stranger’s deadly game, and the wrong move will bring 

about fatal consequences. 

Onsight shoots and 

delivers ground-breaking 

Kingdom Of Plants 3D 

Produced by Atlantic Productions, DP Tim Cragg recently 

finished shooting the upcoming Kingdom of Plants 

3D series, presented by David Attenborough, directed 

by Martin Williams, with Anthony Geffen the executive 

producer. The ambitious project reveals the secret 

world of plants at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, 

over the course of a year. The programme showcases 

the amazing ability of plants to adapt and survive 

throughout the changing seasons, in different and 

sometimes harsh environments. 

Onsight’s camera rental facilities supplied a wide 

range of equipment, including 3Ality Technica rigs and 

both ARRI Alexa and RED Epic cameras. CTO, Richard 

Mills, oversaw the extensive camera formats – over 8 

were used on the project. Photography techniques 

such as macro, micro, infra-red and time-lapse were 

also heavily used to bring the world of plants to life in 3D. 

Onsight provided a dailies service, allowing the DP and 

director to view realtime results during the shoot, and a 

full post production service for this major three-part series. 

Kingdom of Plants 3D airs towards the end of May 2012 

on Sky 3D and will be simulcast in 2D on Sky Atlantic HD.





15 





Event 

–––Cannes Preview 

Cannes Film Festival 

gets even more ‘très chic’ 

Cannes is the most chic event in the filmmaker’s 

calendar, but this year the festival gets an added boost 

of glamour in the form of fashion designer extraordinaire 

Jean Paul Gaultier, who will be among a jury of film 

industry experts chosen to pick the winner of the 

prestigious Palme d’Or. 

A self-confessed film fanatic, Gaultier was invited 

to participate in the festival, which runs from 16 to 

27 May, by organisation’s supremo Thierry Fremaux, 

who commented, “We have a tradition of inviting 

people who we know are cinephiles, but who are not 

necessarily in cinema.” 

The head of this year’s jury is Italian director Nanni 

Moretti, who has selected a balance of four men and 

four women to choose the winner, forming a typical 

mixture of celebrities and world-renowned filmmakers. 

Representing Britain is actor Ewan McGregor and writerdirector 

Andrea Arnold (Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights). 

Also on the list are the German actress Diane Kruger 

(Inglorious Basterds), French actress Emmanuelle Devos 

(Coco Avant Chanel), and Palestinian actress and 

director Hiam Abbas. 

Though this year’s the film line-up has a strong US 

bias, the only American on the Palme d’Or jury is The 

Descendants director Alexander Payne. Haitian director 

Raoul Peck, whose 1993 film The Man By The Shore was 

selected for competition in Cannes (and was the first 

Haitian film to be screened in US cinemas), completes 

the list. The Belgian director Jean-Pierre Dardenne will 

preside over the Cinefondation and short films jury, 

and British actor Tim Roth will reign over the Un Certain 

Regard panel. 

Beautiful Cannes 

Stylish... the red carpet outfits need 

to be stylish this year, with Gaultier 

on the jury!





Palme d’Or films, filmmakers and cinematographers 

Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson, DP Robert D Yeoman (Festival opener) 

De Rouille Et d’Os - Jacques Audiard, DP Stéphane Fontaine 

Holy Motors - Leos Carax, DPs Yves Cape, Caroline Champetier 

Cosmopolis - David Cronenberg, DP Peter Suschitzky 

The Paperboy - Lee Daniels, DP Roberto Schaefer ASC 

Killing Them Softly - Andrew Dominik, DP Greig Fraser ACS 

Reality - Matteo Garrone, DP Marco Ontorato 

Amour (Love) - Michael Haneke, DP Darius Khondji AFC 

Lawless - John Hillcoat, DP Benoit Delhomme AFC 

Da-Reun Na-Ra-E-Suh (In Another Country) - Hong Sang Soo 

Do-Nui Mat (Taste Of Money) – Im Sang Soo 

Like Someone In Love - Abbas Kiarostami 

The Angels’ Share - Ken Loach, DP Ronnie Ryan BSC 

Im Nebel (In The Fog) - Sergei Loznitsa, DP Oleg Mutu 

Beyond The Hills - Cristian Mungiu, DP Oleg Mutu 

Baad El Mawkeaa (After The Battle) - Yousry Nasrallah 

Mud - Jeff Nichols 

Vous n’avez Encore Rien Vu - Alain Resnais, DP Eric Gautier AFC 

Post Tenebras Lux - Carlos Reygadas, DP Alexis Zabe 

On The Road - Walter Salles, DP Eric Gautier AFC 

Paradies:Liebe (Paradise:Love) - Ulrich Seidl, DPs Ed Lachman, Wolfgang Thaler 

Jagten (The Hunt) - Thomas Vinterberg, DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen 

Thérèse Desqueyroux - Claude Miller, DP Gérard de Battista (Closing Film) 

British interest this year includes Trashed, a documentary 

about the world’s waste, by director Candida Brady, 

one of seven new movies added to the line-up of the 

10-day festival. Of direct cinematographic interest are 

Beasts Of The Southern Wild, lensed by Ben Richardson, 

The Angels’ Share, which was lit by Robbie Ryan BSC, 

Cosmopolis, shot by Peter Suschitzky, and Broken, 

featuring in the Cannes Critic’s Week, which was framed 

by Rob Hardy BSC. 

17 









Close-Up 

–––Sean Bobbitt BSC 

Hysteria, Byzantium & 

The Place Beyond The Pines 

If variety is the spice of life then Sean Bobbitt BSC has 

been having a very spicy time over the past two and 

a half years. His most recent films include a period 

romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator, 

a gritty crime thriller with an experimental twist and a 

contemporary vampire story definitely not for fans of the 

Twilight franchise. 

The first of these, Hysteria, is due for release in the UK 

and USA during May. It tells the unlikely-but-true story of 

how Victorian doctor Joseph Mortimer Granville (played 

by Hugh Dancy) invented the vibrator as a medical 

device to treat ‘hysterical’ women. 

This sounds a bit Carry On... but Bobbitt says it is 

really a love story told with humour: “There is comedic 

potential but it is carefully handled.” Also starring Maggie 

Gyllenhaal, Felicity Jones and Jonathan Pryce, Hysteria 

was directed by Tanya Wexler, who Bobbitt describes 

as a collaborative and decisive filmmaker. One of her 

decisions was to shoot on film, with the cinematographer 

primarily operating an Arricam LT and working with 3-perf 

Fuji Vivid 500T and 250 stocks. 

“It was definitely a ‘film’ film,” Bobbitt comments. 

A sense of the era was evoked by the “judicial use of 

Victoriana” - with rooms cluttered by plants and furniture 

and shooting on the Vivid stock. “I also used a bit of 

contrast,” Bobbitt explains, “so everything was not too 

airy and bright. I didn’t want it to be overwhelmed by 

the Victoriana so the density of the dresses was picked 

out. This gave a sense of a repressed society less through 

the design but more in the costumes.” 

Hysteria was shot on locations in London with interiors 

on a sound stage in Luxembourg. Bobbitt says the look 

of the sets was “very rich, almost heightened” but as well 

as this and “beauty shots” he also aimed for “an idea of 

realism” through the lighting. 

Tanya Wexler is the niece of famed American 

director of photography Haskell Wexler, who continues 

to add to his long list of credits, which include In The 

Heat Of The Night (1967) and One Flew Over The 

Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), by still working today. Bobbitt 

says Tanya “picked me to do what I do” and did not 

have preconceived ideas about the cinematography 

because of her uncle, although his shadow was cast 

over the production at one point. 

“I was absolutely terrified when Tanya said she had 

invited Haskell over,” Bobbitt says. “But he hates flying and 

didn’t come. I would have collapsed in a fit of nerves if he 

had, so it was a great relief - although it was also a shame 

because he has always been one of my great heroes.” 

Another key tool on Hysteria was the Cooke Optics 

S4 lens range, which Bobbitt uses on most of his films. 

“I just know the S4s so well and I love the look,” he 

comments. “There is a perceived softness but they are 

also spot-on sharp and the way the focus drops off is not 

as hard a contrast. There’s also more to play with in DI.” 

19 

These lenses, along with the Arricam LT, also 

feature on The Place Beyond The Pines, which Bobbitt 

shot in the US for director Derek Cianfrance. As he 

says, this is the “complete opposite” of Hysteria. It is a 

contemporary, gritty story of a motorcycle stuntman 

(Ryan Gosling) who considers crime as a way to 

provide for his family, which brings him into conflict with 

a former cop who is now a politician. 

Cianfrance comes from a background of 

experimental cinema; Bobbitt describes him as a “very 

unusual filmmaker” and says the film has an “unusual 

structure in the way the story is told”. 

The unconventional approach extended to Bobbitt 

shooting 14,000 feet of film on a single handheld 

camera, using 400ff mags of 2-perf stock. “For Derek it is 

a generational family epic and so he wanted it to look 

like a film,” he says. “From my point of view I’m glad we 

did shoot on film because a mag of 2-perf lasts eight 

and half minutes. The LT can be reloaded very quickly 

and I don’t think digital wouldn’t have been a greater 

advantage. It certainly would have been to my physical 

disadvantage. Digital tape is 23 minutes long and at that 

length I would have been a ruin.” 

The Place Beyond the Pines is still in post-production, 

as is Byzantium, Neil Jordan’s first film to feature 

bloodsuckers since Interview With The Vampire in 1994. 

Jordan is the main creative force behind the Showtime/ 

Sky TV series The Borgias, which is made on the ARRI Alexa 

digital camera and he was keen to use it for Byzantium. 

“It was my first production that was not on film in 

many years,” says Bobbitt, “and although initially I was 

not convinced it worked very well. We shot RAW data 

on to a Codex recorder and everything was quite quick. 

It’s easy to get bogged down looking at the monitor, so 

I tried to keep things as film-like as possible, including not 

having a tent set up for me to sit in.” 

The production began with two weeks on location in 

Hastings, which Bobbitt calls a “remarkable town, with so 

many incongruous things”, before moving to Ireland for 

further shooting in Dublin, County Cork and at Ardmore 

Studios, County Wicklow. Bobbitt says Byzantium, which 

stars Saorise Ronan and Gemma Arterton, is violent and 

otherworldly but ultimately poses the question of whether 

an immortal creature like a vampire can find love. 

A lot of RAW data was created during the shoot 

so Bobbitt worked with digital image technician Sean 

Leonard, advised by staff at Windmill Post in Dublin and 

ARRI, to build a workflow that could deal with it. “We kept 

everything as streamlined as possible and Neil watching 

on a monitor with a simple look-up table,” he says. 

Bobbitt describes the lighting for the film as “very 

naturalistic” despite the elements of fantasy. “We had the 

costumes and the sets as well as the lighting and camera 

settings, so everything is there to go into DI for finishing. I 

can’t wait to get my hands on it and finesse it out.” 

Byzantium is being DI’ed at LipSync in London and as 

well as that Bobbitt is already gearing up for the next film 

by Steve McQueen, with whom he worked on Hunger 

(2008) and Shame (2011). Twelve Years A Slave, starring 

Chiwetel Ejiofor, tells the true story of a black free man 

who was kidnapped and sold into slavery and will ensure 

that the cinematographer’s “pretty much non-stop” 

working schedule won’t be easing up any time soon. 









21 





Close-Up 

–––Greig Fraser ACS 

Snow White And The Huntsman 

Australian Cinematographer Greig Fraser was in Jordan 

shooting Zero Dark Thirty with Kathryn Bigelow when 

British Cinematographer finally tracked him down. 

However, we wanted to transport him out the desert, and 

the grim nature of that film, back to the fantastic world of 

his previous project, the dark fairy tale Snow White And 

The Huntsman. 

Greig Fraser whose previous feature credits include 

Let Me In (2011) and Bright Star (2009) joined renowned 

commercials director Rupert Sanders, who was making 

his feature film debut with Universal’s Snow White 

And The Huntsman. Starring Kristen Stewart and Chris 

Hemsworth in the title roles and Charlize Theron as the 

evil queen, it’s a new take on the traditional story of 

jealousy, love and dark magic. 

“I was involved relatively early on, around nine 

months before we started shooting,” recalls Fraser. “So I 

was able to start working with Rupert then, drawing on 

references and coming up with the way that the film 

would feel and look. It’s a fairytale, so there’s a number 

of different ways you can shoot this type of story. We 

just wanted to make sure that we were being relatively 

unique in what we were doing - and that we were doing 

something that we would want to see.” 

The creative references included thousands of 

images “from a whole range of photographers”, from 

painters like Caravaggio to installation artists, to singers. 

“We drew inspiration from songs and the way 

things sound,” Fraser says. “As for films, we drew from 

some how we wanted to do interior lighting, and from 

other films we took how we wanted to do camera 

movements, while for others it was how to do battle 

scenes. We were quite wide and varied in what we did.” 

Fraser started his full-time pre-production about ten 

weeks before shooting began on Snow White And The 

Huntsman, at Pinewood Studios in August 2011. “I would 

spend that time going on location scouts, referencing, 

meeting with actors, doing tests, looking at tests, testing 

digital versus film, and looking at blow-ups of all that,” 

he explains. The production’s many enchanted forest 

scenes were filmed out in the parklands near the studio, 

with woodland locations being augmented by specially 

constructed exterior sets. 

“We had nature surrounding us, but our production 

designer John Watkins built some speciality forests within 

those forests,” explains Fraser. “That was a deliberate 

decision as the director and I wanted to work with a 

certain level of ‘lack of control’. When you build a forest 

in a studio you have to light it and so automatically it 

looks like a studio and it looks controlled.” 

Sanders and Fraser had a close working relationship. 

“We’d talk about shots and we’d do shot lists and 

storyboard occasionally together, but we also wanted 

to allow ourselves to find our way a little bit on the 

day,” reveals Fraser. “Working this way means more 

often than not you’re finding yourself faced with happy 

accidents. We were dealing with wonderful actors in 

Chris Hemsworth, Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron, 

who were all very open to ‘finding the scene’ when we 

were in it.” 

“We were lucky with the weather,” admits Fraser. “We 

started shooting in August and did all the bright sunny 

enchanted forest stuff early. We shot the dark forest midway 

through October and before it got too dark.” 

The cinematographer was, of course, able to call 

upon technical equipment and expertise to tame 

extremes of lighting and shade. “We had built a really 

big forest, so we still had issues with the sun getting in 

where we didn’t want it. We tried to schedule shooting 

in such a way that wide shots were filmed before the sun 

came up too high and also used coverage.” 

“My gaffer Perry Evans had a couple of 40’x40’ flyswatters 

(cloth grids hanging from construction cranes) 

which we flew over the set, and those 40x40 solids could 

block a lot of the direct sun. So when it was sunny we 

lost a lot of the direct sun and when it was overcast we 

could use those as negative fill. It meant we were really 

able to sculpt the light. But it was definitely a challenge. 

It was probably more difficult to shoot in the exterior 

than it would have been easier to use interiors, but the 

results for us were a lot more appropriate for what we 

were aiming for.” 

That quest for an appropriate look encompassed 

the choice of format - Fraser shot most of his sequences 

on 35mm anamorphic film, using Kodak 5201, 5207 and 

5230 stock. 65mm film was also used on the movie. 

“Each film has its own decisions you make when 

you choose a format and we tested a number,” Fraser 

explains. “We were very impressed with the Alexa and 

RED Epic. They were really great. But we found that 

35mm anamorphic film still had a depth and a resolving 

power that the digital formats didn’t have. It had a 

depth of colour that we responded to really well.” 

“The film and the set dressing was going to be very 

colourful and we didn’t feel the digital formats really did 

justice to the colour that we were going to use in the 

piece,” he continues. “We felt at that time that film was 

most appropriate for that story as well. We were dealing 

with a medieval story, we were dealing with a lot of 

firelight, just things that we decided film was better for 

than digital at the moment.” 

This is not to say that Fraser is against digital formats 

by any means. “In Jordan we’re shooting on the ARRI 

Alexa M and it is 100 percent the right decision for the 

film I’m doing right now. It’s still in testing mode and is 

a very nice piece of equipment. But on Snow White... 

anamorphic film just has a timeless, fantastic look to it. 

And as for the Kodak stock, I just love it.” 

On Sanders’ film, Fraser’s choice of camera was the 

Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL shooting at an aspect 

ratio of 2.35:1 with Panavision G-Series Lenses. This is a 

Panavision-built and -rented set of lenses, which the DP 

has used on two films in a row. “You learn the nuances 

of lenses when you use them more often,” he explains. 

“You learn where the best resolving power is, where the 

best focus is. The G-Series is a really nice sweet lens.” 

Fraser has a particular favourite in the set. “It’s a 

very fast anamorphic 50mm lens which has great focus 

fall off and it has a very interesting distortion of areas 

on the edge of frame. We used that a lot in the dark 

forest. In particular there’s a sequence where Snow 

White breathes magic mushrooms. She becomes a little 

bit spacey, so I used that lens a lot for that sequence. 

It has a hard-to-describe quality; it almost looks like a 

shift-and-tilt. There are a couple of scenes where the 

Queen is becoming a little bit psychotic so we also used 

it there too. It helps differentiate the actor out from the 

background, just helps bring them out and creates a 

very unearthly feel.” 

Fraser would often be at Sanders’ side in the video 

village, discussing and controlling the lighting and the 

shots. “We had fantastic operators, George Richmond 

on the A camera and Simon Baker on the B camera,” he 

explains. “George is also a steadicam operator, so we 

had access to that and used it a number of times. We 

also had a 44ft Moviebird on set and when on location 

we’d use a 50ft Technicrane.” 

Occasionally Fraser would get on a camera for more 

intimate shots with just the director and actors. “That was 

something that Rupert and I had planned from day one 

– that there would be a few key scenes in there that we 

were treating more intimately. So there was a successful 

balance of small crews and bigger crew.” 

“My major concerns on the production were that we 

were achieving on film what we set out to achieve and 

that we were maximising the subject material visually 

and narratively,” he concludes. “We had to be properly 

documenting the drama, that was my ultimate goal.”


22 




Section 

–––Person’s Name BSC 

Project Line1 

Line2 Project 





Close-Up 

–––Caleb Deschanel ASC 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter takes audiences 

on a journey to a time when the legendary American 

president was fighting for the survival of his nation. The 

enemies are vampires who are plotting to take over 

the country. The independent feature is based on a 

best-selling novel written by Seth Grahame-Smith who 

co-authored the script. 

Lincoln was born in 1809 in a one-room log cabin 

on a farm in Kentucky. His mother died under suspicious 

circumstances when he was ten years old. Lincoln 

overcame formidable obstacles on his path to being 

elected president in November 1860. The Civil War began 

five months later when ten southern states seceded from 

the union. On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued 

The Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves. 

The script authored by Grahame-Smith is true to 

history with the exception of the role that vampires play. 

Lincoln’s battle with vampires begins when one of them 

kills his mother. 

Caleb Deschanel ASC brought a broad base of 

eclectic experience to the project. He earned BSC 

and BAFTA award nominations for his first film, The Black 

Stallion, in 1979. Deschanel subsequently earned Oscar 

nominations for The Right Stuff (1983), The Natural (1984), 

Fly Away Home (1996), The Patriot (2000) and The Passion 

Of The Christ (2004). His peers lauded him with the ASC 

Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was Deschanel’s 

first collaboration with director Timur Bekmambetov, who 

began his career in Russia. His credits in his native land 

include several vampire films. Bekmambetov migrated 

to the United States in 2005. 

The aesthetic challenges were creating images 

which transport audiences to the places and times 

where and when the story unfolds, whilst making 

Lincoln an empathetic character. Deschanel sought 

visual references in libraries and book stores. He found 

approximately 25 books with pictures taken during the 

Civil War and of Lincoln at various times in his life. 

“Matthew Brady, Timothy O’Sullivan and other 

great photographers took amazing photographs,” he 

says. “It wasn’t like taking pictures today. They had to 

coat a piece of tin with caladium, which is kind of like 

a glue, and dip it in a silver nitrate solution in the dark. 

They put it in the camera and recorded a picture on 

it. Then, they took it out and developed it. They had 

to develop it pretty quickly before it set, because 

otherwise the image would be lost.” 

Deschanel says that composing the film in wide 

screen 2.4:1 aspect ratio was an obvious decision, 

because backgrounds on battlefields and other 

scenes are like characters in the story. Most of the 

story takes place in Illinois, where Lincoln was raised, 

and in Washington DC. 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was produced at 

practical locations in New Orleans and other places in 

Louisiana. Some sets were built in a former warehouse. 

An important scene takes place on a cliff overlooking 

a riverbed. The second unit shot background footage 

on location and facing an artificial cliff that was built 

behind the warehouse. 

“We found appropriate locations, and when 

necessary, (production designer) François (Audouy) 

altered them so that they felt right for the time and 

place,” Deschanel says. “Our motivation for lighting was 

dictated by the period. If it was night, it was candlelight. 

If it was day, it was daylight. François and I got along 

really great. He made some alterations to the size of 

windows and the placement of things to accommodate 

lighting. Paul Olinde (gaffer) and I worked on lighting 

that would create a feeling of firelight with the right 

flickering effect.” 

Close Ups were written by Bob Fisher, Kevin Hilton and Michael Burns. 

Benjamin Walker was cast in the role of Lincoln, 

whose face during his adult life is familiar to American 

and other Western audiences. The audience sees much 

of the story through his eyes. Deschanel cites his close 

collaboration with make-up designer Greg Cannom, 

who he credits with playing an important role in defining 

the transformation of Lincoln from boyhood to manhood, 

leading up to the day when he came on the set with a 

full beard. There were similar challenges making actors 

cast in the roles of vampires look and feel real. 

“I brought George Scali onboard as the second 

unit cinematographer,” Deschanel says. “He and his 

crew worked on battle sequences and things we 

didn’t have time to shoot. George was my assistant 

cameraman earlier in his career. He worked with 

the stunt people on some of the action sequences 

during the Civil War, and also some of the battles with 

the vampires. George did a terrific job of keeping 

everything in the style of what we were doing.” 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter was primarily 

produced in digital format with ARRI Alexa cameras. 

Deschanel generally covered scenes with two cameras, 

sometimes more, depending upon the action. He 

generally kept the cameras at a similar angle to keep 

lighting consistent, rather than at cross angles. 

“A lot of the film was shot with cameras on dollies 

and cranes,” he says. “When we got into battle and 

other action sequences, it was much more handheld.” 

Action and other scenes that take place in slowmotion 

were recorded on Kodak Vision 5219 500T and 

Kodak Vision 5213 200D 35mm color negative film 

with ARRI 435 cameras. Deluxe Lab, in Los Angeles, 

processed the negative and provided dailies on BluRay 

DVDs. Deschanel had a projector and a six foot-wide 

screen in his hotel room. “At the end of the week, my 

crew and I watched dailies together,” Deschanel says. 

After editing was completed, Deschanel timed 

the digital intermediate with colorist Dave Cole at 

LaserPacific in Los Angeles. 

“To me, a movie doesn’t exist until it’s edited,” 

Deschanel says. “The way it’s cut affects every scene. 

Until you see that, you can’t make final decisions about 

the look. Benjamin Walker is great in the role of Abe 

Lincoln. You feel like you are there when he delivers the 

Gettysburg Address. Martin Csokas plays one of the 

vampires. That aspect of the movie takes on a life of 

it’s own. It was kind of fascinating making a historical 

film with vampires. The challenge was finding the right 

balance of the two genres.” 

Twentieth Century Fox has the film scheduled for 

release in late June 2012. 

Images courtesy of Owen Roizman ASC. 

23





25 





Production Focus 

–––Warner Bros. Studios, 

Leavesden 

Film-friendly 

and ready to fly 

Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden 

gets ready for take off. 

When JK Rowling hunkered down 

in the cosy confines of Nicholson’s 

Café, Edinburgh, to pen the first 

stories about a young wizard, his 

schoolmates and their fantastic 

adventures, little could she have 

conceived of their massive success, 

nor their potential to positively 

impact on the British film industry. 

Report by Ron Prince. 

Brown field... the new WBSL 

has been built on a large plot 

that has a long history of aero 

manufacturing. 

The Harry Potter franchise, in movies alone, has taken 

$7.7 billion at the box office worldwide. The success 

has been such that the site at Leavesden, near Watford, 

where each of the eight movies was made, has 

encouraged Warner Bros. to invest in excess of £100m 

into a state-of-the-art studio complex. 

Known as Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden (WBSL), 

the new facility has increased studio capacity in the UK 

by a third, and is set to become a destination for major 

Hollywood productions, as well as a huge attraction for 

Potter-files. Its launch spells great news for the multitude 

of the talented filmmaking professionals based in the UK. 

But does it pose a threat to existing studio facilities? Will it 

ever house more than just Warner Bros. own productions? 

And will the service be all it’s cracked up to be? Ron 

Prince and Alan Lowne got an early tour of the new 

facility from the studio’s senior vice president, Dan Dark. 

At the time of our visit in February, it was bitterly 

cold, the ground covered in snow. The site was clad in 

scaffolding, and teaming with construction workers in 

hardhats getting the place ready for its official opening 

in June. Although pressed to give details of the greatand-good 

who might attend the opening ceremony, 

Dark preferred to keep the information a closely 

guarded secret. 

Arriving at WBSL was easy enough. Despite a 

detour to the edge of Watford, for emergency petrol 

and sucrose sustenance, the new studio complex is 

conveniently situated within a few minutes drive from 

Junction 19 on the M25, providing easy for access for 

London-based crews and service companies dotted 

around the M25 belt.





Film factory... the former Rolls 

Royce engine plant has 

been converted into a huge, 

covered multi-function area for 

productions. 

Visions... Roy Button and Dan 

Dark are two of the key figures at 

Warners who helped make WBSL 

a reality. 

Backlot... a view of the new 

studios taken from the expansive 

backlot. 

With the main entrance under construction, our 

entry was by a tarmac’d service road, with a pleasant 

greeting by the frozen, but friendly, security staff, to 

whom we offered a much-appreciated Licorice Allsort. 

Driving in, the size and scale of the site are both 

immediate and impressive. Covering around 200 acres, 

WBSL comprises nine brand-new soundstages, offering 

approximately half a million square ft of shooting 

space, including a 60x60x20ft water stage. Along with 

copious production offices, workshops, a productionrental 

facility, and substantial free parking, there’s also 

a 100-acre backlot. It’s a truly vast area, with a clear 

horizon and open skies, which cinematographers will 

appreciate. Amongst the JCBs and diggers parked 

there, it was possible to spy one of the purple tripledecker 

buses, used in Harry Potter And The Prisoner of 

Azkaban, languishing way-off in the distance. 

Two soundstages (amusingly J and K stages) have 

been opened to the public as the Warner Bros. Studio 

Tour London — The Making Of Harry Potter. This is a 

permanent showcase of the many impressive sets, props 

and secrets behind the movie franchise that shot at 

Leavesden for a decade. Over a warming cup of tea 

and more Allsorts, in a prefab that Dark and his team 

have occupied during the build, we were given the 

elevator pitch for the new studios. 

“This new facility is built and operated by filmmakers, 

for filmmakers,” said Dark. “Over the years, we adapted 

the site to suit the needs of Harry Potter, and learnt a lot 

from that experience. But before construction began 

on the new facility, we took a step back and looked at 

what productions require now and what they are likely 

to need in the future, and built to those expectations. 

Along with the experiences we’ve had, there is a wealth 

of experience at Burbank. Filmmaking is what Warner 

Bros. is all about, and there is a massive benefit in that.” 

He then appraised us of the history of the place, and 

some of the players within Warner’s who have brought 

the project to fruition. 

Its history began when the site was originally 

acquired by the Ministry of Defence in 1939 as a 

production base and aerodrome for thousands of 

aircraft, including the Mosquito Fighter and Halifax 

Bombers. When WWII ended, the site was bought by 

Rolls Royce and continued as a base for aircraft engine 

manufacture. The factory eventually closed in 1992. 

However, the gates opened again in 1994 when 

Leavesden began a new lease of life as a film studio, 

under Dark’s auspices as studio manager. He oversaw 

the conversion of the disused engine factory into a 

soundstage for Eon Productions’ Goldeneye. Eon leased 

the buildings from Rolls Royce before the site was bought 

by Millennium, a Malaysian consortium that had plans 

to create a working studio, theme park and studio 

tour. Although these plans never came to fruition, Dark 

accommodated several productions, notably Star Wars: 

Episode 1 — The Phantom Menace, Sleepy Hollow and 

Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. Millennium sold the site to 

UK-based property development company MEPC in 

1999. It was around this time that Warner’s negotiated a 

long-term lease, and Leavesden became the home of 

Harry Potter, until the final installment Harry Potter and the 

Deathly Hallows Part 2 completed filming in 2010. That’s 

when Warner Bros. decided to buy the site entirely and 

redevelop it from scratch, at a cost of around £100m. 

Roy Button OBE DL Hertfordshire, is the executive VP 

and managing director of Warner Bros. Prod Ltd, and 

has worked in the UK film industry for 43 years. He was a 

key driving force to Warner Bros.’ investment in WBSL to 

create Europe’s largest studio, solely owned and run by 

Warner Bros. It is the largest investment by a Hollywood 

studio for the last 50 years, in the UK. MGM set up MGM 

London Films at Elstree Studios in the early 1940s. Dark, 

along with Button, persuaded Warner Bros. to invest 

in the UK, pushing this through from initial conception, 

through planning permission, through to the final formal 

announcement in November 2010. 

In his capacity as head of physical production for 

Warner Bros. Productions Limited, Button is responsible for 

all Warner Bros. films based out of the UK, Europe, Africa 

and the Middle East. This includes the responsibility for 

the setting up of each film (crew, budget, production 

schedule, locations, product placement etc), including 

all film rebate methods in each country where available, 

and how to position each project to qualify for cultural 

tests and corporate structure. 

Whilst Leavesden was being redeveloped, Button 

oversaw six tentpole Warner pictures shooting in 

the UK at other studios and on location, including 

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (Shepperton/ 

Elstree), The Dark Knight Rises (Cardington), Dark 

Shadows (Pinewood), Jack The Giant Killer (Longcross / 

Elstree), Wrath Of The Titans (Shepperton) and Gravity 

(Shepperton). He is also responsible for bringing a further 

six major motion pictures to the country which will span 

through 2012 to 2013. 

Both Button and Josh Berger, president and 

managing director of Warner Bros. UK, have been close 

to the UK government throughout the formulation of 

the UK’s most recent tax credit, which offers production 

companies a cash rebate of up to 25% of qualifying UK 

spend. This was introduced under the UK Film Council 

(UKFC) and is now administered by the British Film 

Institute (BFI). Button and Berger were on the board of 

the UKFC. Berger is now on the board of the BFI, with 

Button an advisor. Button also sits on the board of the 

Film Industry Training Board, set up to enhance skills 

development in the UK film industry. 

27 





Button would not reveal details of what films might 

be booking at WBSL in 2012-13, but his office shelves 

were overflowing with scripts. 

Dark said: “We have been fielding offers for quite 

a while and have got a number of pencils,” he said. 

When questioned as to whether WBSL would be the 

private domain for Warner Bros. own productions, 

he commented, “Obviously, the new studios are a 

strategic decision as much as a financial one, but we’re 

open to all-comers involved in motion picture, TV and 

commercials production. We wouldn’t be doing this if 

the demand wasn’t there from the other majors as well. 

The studio operates as a commercial entity its own right. 

Whilst Warner Bros. will probably be our biggest client, 

they will be a client like everyone else, we’ll take great 

care of every production whilst they are here.” 

We learnt that Dark was appointed to the role of 

senior vice president of WBSL, in January 2011, a role 

that sees him overseeing the entire Warner Bros. facility 

at Leavesden. Moviemaking runs through Dark’s veins 

as his father, John Dark, was a well-known film producer 

(What’s New Pussycat, Casino Royale, Shirley Valentine), 

and from an early age he worked on the set of his father’s 

films during the school holidays. He started his career 

as production assistant on Peter Hyams’ film Outland, 

worked as an assistant director on numerous large film 

and TV productions, and then spent 10 years working 

in special effects. He was part of the team that won an 

Oscar for special effects on James Cameron’s Aliens. 

In 1992 he helped to develop a 30-acre site in Spain 

into a film studio, which stood him in good stead when 

he was approached by Eon Productions to redevelop 

the old aero engine plant at Leavesden into a studio 

complex for Goldeneye. Dark remained as studio 

manager throughout the Harry Potter productions, and 

has necessarily forged close relations with the local area. 

He is a member of the Local Enterprise Partnership, and 

associated with charities and development projects in 

the community. 

Donning protective headwear, and fluorescent 

bibs, we embarked on our tour, visiting each of the nine 

stages on the lot. Each stage has a separate dimmer 

room, to keep noise of the lighting equipment at bay, 

and has air-conditioned ventilation to keep sets at the 

right temperature during all seasons. 

“We have four of the largest soundproofed stages in 

Europe, because we know big shows need big spaces,” 

remarked Dark. The voluminous E, F, G stages and C 

stage (offering a 45ft ceiling height, another feature that 

cinematographers and set designers will appreciate) are 

sited adjacent to shell of the former Rolls Royce engine 

factory. This space is now configured as covered, multifunction 

area for costume, props, camera, grip and 

support services. Fully-furnished, en-suite dressing, hair 

and make-up rooms, and kitchen/commissary capable 

of feeding 1,200 per hour, are located within the central 

complex. The design is such that there’s easy, covered 

and secure access to the sets for production talent. 

Workshops and the mill sit just beyond the main 

complex, increasing the ability to provide services such as 

visual effects, prosthetics, animatronics and film editing. 

A large concrete apron of outdoor space expands the 

external filming and production areas. WBSL is offering a 

rental facility for lighting and a range of grip equipment, 

run by Jackie Rowden, who is well-known amongst 

cinematographers and their crews having previously 

worked at LEE Lighting and Panalux. There are several 

warehouse units that are expected to be occupied by 

other camera, lighting and grip service companies, but 

at the time of writing none could be officially confirmed. 

The studio’s road infrastructure allows plenty of room for 

vehicles, trucks and executive vehicles. 

A key feature in making WBSL a filmmaker-friendly 

studio, are the production offices, called “production 

hubs”. Security has been recognised as being of 

paramount importance, and these office areas feature 

a swipe-card entry system, with CCTV surveillance. The 

design is to such a level that a production can hire 

rooms as required, with various combinations of offices, 

executive offices, bullpens, meeting rooms and kitchens. 

“With the new development, we worked really hard 

on security,” said Dark. “We looked at it as a completely 

clean canvas and asked what we needed to make 

the production feel really comfortable – even with small 

things, like the fact the offices can be broken down 

into hubs that are all security controlled, so you can 

seal off your own areas and don’t have productions 

intermingling with one another.” 

One wonders that, whilst WBSL offers so much, does 

it not also pose a threat to exciting studio facilities in the 

UK? When asked the $64k question, Dark commented, 

“Leavesden has been an important part of the 

filmmaking infrastructure for over a decade. If the UK had 

lost Leavesden it would have lost a third of its capacity to 

house major feature films. WBSL will enhance the already 

excellent levels of facilities in the UK, and reinforces what 

a great place the UK is for a film production.” 

Of course, modern filmmaking is rapidly turning 

digital and is all about immediacy. The site currently 

features a 50-seat preview theatre for screening film 

and digital dailies, plus high-speed, high-bandwidth 

connections to the outside world, and a Cisco 

TelePresence meeting room to host trans-Atlantic 

teleconference sessions. 

All-in-all WBSL is a studio to be reckoned with. The 

studio bosses say they’ve thought of everything, and 

it looks very much like they have. But the proof of the 

pudding is in the eating!





Size matters... the brand new C, 

E, F & G stages are cavernous, 

sound-prooofed and have 45ft 

head clearance. 

Treasure chest... the Harry Potter 

tour is a permanent display of 

the craft skills that went into 

the making of the world’s most 

successful movie franchise. 

Legacy... the Harry Potter legacy 

should have a long lasting 

impact for UK jobs as WBSL gets 

airborne. 

Warner Bros. Studio Tour London 

For over a decade, the Harry Potter films have 

enchanted people the world over. Although the movies 

have come and gone, through Leavesden and 

cinemas, the legacy is very much alive. 

Sited within J & K stages at WBSL, is a special 

Harry Potter Tour containing the sets, props, creatures, 

costumes and other artefacts from the films. Visitors 

can step inside the actual Great Hall of Hogwarts, 

walk along the cobbled Diagon Alley, see Hagrid’s Hut 

and Dumbledore’s study, and be photographed in a 

greenscreen experience. Visitors can even walk around 

the original 24:1 scale model of Hogwarts that was used for 

filming. Original crews returned to Leavesden to restore the 

sets, whilst talent from in front of and behind the camera 

contributed to this behind-the-scenes experience. 

“Along with being a massive draw to Potter fans, 

the tour is a superb showcase for the extraordinary British 

artistry, craftsmanship, technology and talent that went 

into making the most successful film series of all time,” 

said Dark. 

29 





IMAGO 

–––Nigel Walters BSC 

President of IMAGO 

SILVER 

BULLET 

AFC president Caroline 

Champetier and CST president 

Pierre-William Glenn have led the 

charge to remove silver screens in 

French cinemas. 

Nigel Walters BSC, pictured at the 

Celebration Of Film, has flagged 

up the petition to UNESCO for 

film’s world heritage status. 

When logical argument, 

scientific evidence and all 

else fails, the French alone 

have the solution on behalf 

of cinematographers and 

the quality of the projected 

screen image. 

They turn to the president of the Centre National de 

la Cinematographie (in France this means movie 

business). No more half-hearted, wishy washy words from 

exhibitors for Monsieur Eric Garandeau and the CNC, 

with the speed of a guillotine it has been decreed that 

the dreaded silver screens have to disappear from all 

French movie theatres in the next five years. The CNC 

makes the rules and as it has strong financial power to 

regulate the movie industry. 

For this historic decision to abolish this enemy of a 

quality viewing experience, is owed the gratitude for 

behind-the-scenes lobbying in France by such respected 

societies as the AFC under their dynamic president 

Caroline Champetier and the CST, the Commission 

Superieure Technique, whose president is Pierre-William 

Glen AFC. Furthermore, this “victory”, which IMAGO has 

been striving to assist by publicising the compromised 

image quality caused by inferior screen surface, has 

been achieved without cabbages or port blockades, 

simply by the application of Gallic common sense. 

Unfortunately as the European Parliament is 

more concerned with the quality of its currency than 

that of the “silver” screen, only the French in Europe 

are guaranteed future quality projection standards. 

IMAGO will continue to press for justice against the 

contamination of the image, as aptly illustrated by the 

pioneering work of the Norwegian society, shown initially 

at the last European Digital Cinema Conference in 

Oslo. The quality of screen projection is being vigorously 

guarded also by the Polish society. 

The fight in France was in partnership with the 

Directors and Authors Guilds (SRF, ARP, and SACD). 

Together they organised a vigilante committee 

to examine the quality of projection in cinemas. 

Photographs were taken in movie theatres from different 

angles to illustrate the seriousness of the problem. The 

French have a swift, sharp solution to rotten apples 

showing on their horizons. 

Members of the BSC Club suffering the effect of 

inferior 2 or 4k projection on the silver screen at their 

prestige regular London venue, will have to “carry-on 

complaining” for the foreseeable future. The Martello 

Towers built to keep out French ideas are unfortunately 

still in existence. 

Vive La France! 

Nigel Walters BSC 

President, IMAGO





Petition to UNESCO film’s 

World Heritage status 

In Rome two years ago IMAGO supported an initiative 

from Guillermo Navarro AMC ASC, the distinguished 

Mexican cinematographer, which proposed that film 

be awarded UNESCO World Heritage status. Guillermo’s 

idea was revived in London earlier this year in an 

address in support of film by the president of IMAGO. On 

22 February 2012, an event was held in the Turbine Hall 

of London’s Tate Modern called ‘A Celebration Of Film’. 

Presented and hosted by organisations and companies 

from the British Film industry, it brought together over 800 

professionals to celebrate and call for the protection of 

the medium of film – photochemical film - in the digital 

age. It inspired the British artist Tacita Dean, also being 

celebrated at the event, to renew the cudgels of the 

cause of heritage status by involving many friends and 

acquaintances, including Larry Kardish, senior curator of 

film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Stuart 

Comer, curator of film at the Tate. 

Navarro has commented: “Film is the Rosetta Stone 

of our times. Since film was invented a little more than 

100 years ago, it has become a universal medium for 

telling stories that has entertained and enlightened 

people in every corner of the world. I believe that it is both 

important and appropriate for cinematographers, and 

other filmmakers, from around the world to unite by asking 

UNESCO to recognise the important role that film has 

played in our culture, by declaring it a World Heritage.” 

Over the past century, film has changed humankind. 

From the earliest fragments of captured movement, it 

has allowed us to see ourselves, document ourselves 

and invent ourselves using just the mechanics of light, 

lenses and chemistry. Film and photography are 

our cultural and historical memory. They hold in their 

emulsion the imprint of time: how we have lived, worked 

and created in communities across the world, for as a 

means of depiction, film belonged to everyone. It was 

our universal language, and despite a century divided 

by conflict, everyone could still gather together to share 

the imagery and emotion created by film. 

Now, with the invention of the digital process, the 

medium of film as an irreplaceable artistic language is 

gravely threatened and will, unless action is taken, simply 

disappear. We cannot allow this to happen. Film is too 

wondrous and unique an invention to be forfeited for 

the sake of short-term economic gain. Just as one would 

not think of simply photocopying a medieval manuscript 

before dispensing with the original, or hanging a 

postcard in a museum in lieu of a prized oil painting, film 

has its own particular inherent beauty and is not simply 

replaceable as a medium by digital technology. Its 

obsolescence will result in irretrievable losses that we may 

no longer be able to see and experience, and in what 

we will no longer be able to make, because we will have 

forfeited the technology and knowledge to do so. 

Many in the cinema industry and in the art, 

museum and archive communities are reaching 

the consensus that such cultural irresponsibility and 

short-sightedness cannot be allowed to take place in 

what is seen as a critical moment in film’s survival. We 

are therefore coming together as a body to petition 

UNESCO to protect the medium of film as a World 

Heritage so that future generations will be able to 

experience film as we have done. 

Signees: Tacita Dean, artist: Laurence Kardish, senior 

curator of film at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; 

Stuart Comer, curator of film, Tate London; Nicholas 

Cullinan, curator of Modern Art, Tate; Guillermo Navarro 

AMC ASC, cinematographer; Judith Petty, head of 

marketing ARRI; Nigel Walters BSC, president of IMAGO, 

European Federation of Cinematographers; Rani Singh, 

Getty Research Institute, LA; Paolo Cherchi Usai, director 

of National Film & Sound Archive Australia/curator motion 

picture dept, George Eastman House, Rochester; Peter 

Tokofsky, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. 

31 





Sans frontières 

Over the past four years of my service as IMAGO 

president, contained in the mail occasionally comes 

a phrase or sentence which is poetic and memorable 

in its imagery. To the words “Barriers of the Mind” I am 

indebted to that great Hungarian cinematographer and 

director, Lajos Koltai HSC. 

IMAGO helps to break down many barriers of 

the minds for many of us; those of prejudice, bigotry, 

discrimination, intolerance and injustice to name a few. 

It does this by encouraging international understanding 

through the brotherhood of a group of individuals 

bonded by a love of imagery and cinema. We meet 

and talk and enjoy one another’s company, and come 

away with a greater understanding of mutual problems. 

Our Masterclasses are designed to broaden the minds of 

our young cinematographers. 

In the privileged role of president it is my duty to 

reflect the wishes of our societies. Such an opportunity 

has arisen with the welcome formation by twelve 

cinematographers of the state of Bosnia and 

Herzegovinian of a new society dedicated to improving 

standards of their craft in their country. 

The Balkans is an area steeped in the history of film. 

Every year, in September, IMAGO supports the oldest 

festival dedicated to the craft of cinematography – 

that of the Manaki Brothers in the small town of Bitula, 

Macedonia, a cradle of civilization. The fledging Bosnian 

society, the ASBH has not asked for assistance. When 

such a request arrives support has been pledged 

from the neighbouring societies, including Serbia and 

Croatia. IMAGO finds itself in the unique opportunity of 

being able to assist the process of bringing our societies 

together. Our fellow creative artists have the right to be 

regarded everywhere as true colleagues and equals. 

The only barriers left to break down in some parts of the 

world are those of the mind. Fortunately, these are slowly 

crumbling as time heals and tolerance and respect 

returns to humanity. 

IMAGO congratulates our colleagues in the 

ASBH for their determination and fortitude, especially 

their president, Mustafa Mustafic. Their colleagues in 

Serbia have been actively encouraging this welcome 

addition to our fellowship. IMAGO is proposing 

that the societies active in that region meet at the 

Manaki Festival in Macedonia in September to hold a 

Conference of friendship and solidarity to discuss ways 

of mutual cooperation. 

The Manaki Festival, under its director Labina 

Mitevski, has welcomed this initiative and pledged 

support for representatives of the societies of all the 

countries of the region at a September mini-conference. 

The Manaki Festival runs from September 15th to 21st in 

Bitula, Macedonia. 

If this happens one can also hope that the members 

of the society representing Macedonia, the former 

republic within Yugoslavia, will exchange news on fertile 

soil with delegates from the re-vitalized Greek society. 

If this conference could take place, IMAGO would 

more than justify its existence. Balkan cinematographers 

could resume their proud historical role in the history of 

European cinema. 

Universal... shots from Tacita 

Dean’s installation at Tate 

Modern take during the recent 

Celebration Of Film event. 

Summit special... Michael Goi 

ASC brought cinematographers 

worldwide together at the ASC 

Clubhouse in LA. Photo by 

Douglas Kirkland. 

In praise of… Michael Goi ASC 

In these heady days, when the world is truly too much 

with us, and there is hardly time for a well-earned “thank 

you”, IMAGO would like to express its appreciation of 

Michael Goi, the retiring president of the ASC. A year ago, 

thanks to his initiative and guidance, the ASC hosted the 

first International Cinematography Summit Conference 

in Los Angeles. 

This was an important landmark in progressing 

International understanding between cinematographers 

of his American society and the rest of the world. 

Together with his vice-president Richard Crudo ASC, the 

ASC has moved forwards to embrace a world anxious 

for a closer understanding between cinematographers 

everywhere. IMAGO is grateful and wishes Michael well 

as he returns to the real world of shooting movies.





Camera Creative 

–––Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC 

Dark Shadows 

Vampires... Delbonnel’s main 

concern during the shoot on Dark 

Shadows was how to shape the 

light on set using ambient lights 

and minimal direct beams. 

It was a Sunday afternoon, not so 

long ago, and Ron Prince caught up 

with Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC over 

Skype, to discover more about his 

cinematography work on Tim Burton’s 

‘gonzo’ fantasy Dark Shadows. At the 

time, Delbonnel was in New York, and 

had just completed a fortnight of 

nights on Inside Llewyn Davis, the next 

feature from Joel and Ethan Coen. 

33 

Dark Shadows, a Zanuck Company/Warner Bros. 

production, is based on the gothic soap opera of the 

same name, transmitted on the ABC television network 

between 1966 and 1971. The original TV series is regarded 

as a camp classic, distinguished by melodramatic 

performances, atmospheric interiors, memorable 

storylines, dramatic plot twists, an adventurous musical 

score, and an epic cosmos of characters and heroic 

adventures. It became hugely popular when 200-year 

old vampire, Barnabas Collins, appeared a year into its 

run. Dark Shadows also featured werewolves, zombies, 

man-made monsters, witches, warlocks time travel and a 

parallel universe. 

Tim Burton’s new $100m film is based on a screenplay 

by Seth Grahame-Smith, and stars Johnny Depp as 

Barnabas Collins, with Michelle Pfeiffer as his reclusive, 

matriarchal cousin Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, and Eva 

Green as Angelique Bouchard, a vengeful witch who 

plots a vendetta against Barnabas and his family. 

The responsibility of bringing the story to life on the 

big screen, and delivering a fresh but distinctive look 

that typifies each movie on the Burton canon, fell to 

Delbonnel, whose big screen credits include Jean-Pierre 

Jeunet’s Amelie (2001) and A Very Long Engagement 

(2004), plus Across The Universe (2007), Harry Potter And 

The Half-Blood Prince (2009) and Faust (2011). Amongst 

his many gongs, Delbonnel has been Oscar nominated 

three times – for Amelie, A Very Long Engagement 

and Harry Potter – with notable wins including the ASC 

Award for outstanding achievement for A Very Long 

Engagement, and the Silver Frog at Camerimage 

for Across The Universe. Dark Shadows is his first 

collaboration with Burton. 

How did you get involved with the production of 

Dark Shadows? 

It’s great story. I was in Uruguay shooting a commercial 

and had two calls within the space of a couple of 

hours. One was from Richard Zanuck, offering me Dark 

Shadows, the other from Roman Polanski, who asked if 

I available to replace Pawel Edelman on Carnage, as 

Pawel had to attend to some urgent family matters. Two 

very interesting directors, and two completely different 

sorts of movies, both on the same day. It was quite 

a shock. It quickly transpired that Pawel was able to 

continue on Carnage, and so I went for Dark Shadows. I 

had met Tim only once before, at the world premiere of 

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince in London. He told 

me then that he really liked what I’d done, and I assume 

that was the reason for the call. 

What appealed to you about Dark Shadows? 

The chance to work with Tim Burton. Who could possibly 

turn down the chance to work on one of his movies 

– he’s a genius. I had never heard of Dark Shadows 

before, although I learned it was a famous gothic soap 

opera, broadcast on weekdays in the US, and they 

made over 1,200 episodes. But it never made its way 

across the ocean to Europe. Johnny Depp and Tim 

Burton were kids when it was on TV, and they’d run home 

from school to watch the show. I believe Johnny wanted 

to be Barnabas Collins. 





What research did you do, and which creative 

references did you look at? 

I tried to watch some original episodes of Dark Shadows, 

but it did my head in. Whilst I got a sense of the engaging, 

creepy mood Tim wanted, they were shot in B&W, and 

are not interesting at all visually-speaking, especially in 

terms of the lighting. So I decided not to proceed any 

further. I read the script and found the same kind of 

poetry that are in all of Tim Burton’s movies. They are all 

character-driven too. When I started thinking about it, 

especially horror aspect, I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s 

Vertigo (1958, DP Robert Burks) again. Kim Novak is like 

a ghost character in that film. I thought it would be 

interesting to get this kind of Hollywood feeling, overlit 

faces, on top of a kind of strange B-movie strange color 

palette, and go towards the old Technicolor 2-strip look, 

which gave balanced, muted colours on flesh tones, but 

very strong reds. I looked too at movies from the early 

1970s, by cinematographers like Vilmos Zsigmond, to see 

how they created flares and the look that some of the 

crappy lenses produced back then. I also had an eye 

on the self-portraits of Francis Bacon, the distorted faces 

against flat orange, black and red backgrounds. Even 

though the sets on Dark Shadows were far from being flat, 

it was a starting point to show to Tim. 

What was Tim Burton’s reaction when you first discussed 

the look of Dark Shadows? 

He kind of liked it, but he has his own world of imagination. 

He’s not very specific, it’s more about a creating a mood, 

and he wanted creepiness from the first frame to the very 

last frame – a crisp, colourful but twisted look, to make 

the audience feel unsure and unsafe about the place, 

somewhere “in-between”, but totally artificial. We didn’t 

refer to any of his other films, they are done and in the 

past. This was something new and different, and that 

made it even more interesting for me. 

How much time did you have for prep/pre-production, 

and what were the working hours? 

The overall prep time was six months. I originally had 

two months of pre-production, but this turned into three 

months as Rick Heinrichs, the production designer, 

needed more time to deliver the production. So 

principal photography was pushed back. We started 

in May 2011 and wrapped on 4th October. The shoot, 

including second unit, was 18 weeks. We worked 

regular hours, five days a week. As 95% of the movie 

was shot on stages, I would go in most Saturdays to see 

how the sets we evolving. 

S h a d o w 

P l a y 

Tell us your reasoning behind your choice of equipment? 

During my first meeting with Tim we discussed film vs 

digital, and it took is about two minutes to choose 

film. We quickly arrived at shooting Super 1.85:1 too. 

After that, I was responsible for the entire selection of 

equipment. We used ARRI cameras, Cooke S4 lenses, 

Chapman dollies and a 50ft SuperTechnoCrane, all 

supplied via Panavision. I went with just one stock, Kodak 

Vision 3 5219 500ASA. It’s a fantastic grainless medium, 

with good latitude. I’m not sure why people choose 

different film stocks these days, as you can stop down 

enough in bright conditions or open up when it’s darker. 

Panalux supplied the lighting gear. 

Tell us about your crew? 

I love working with English crews, and my crew on Dark 

Shadows were fantastic. I never had a concern during 

the entire shoot. My gaffer was Chuck Finch, who I first 

worked with on Across The Universe in Liverpool, and 

then again with on Harry Potter. The key grip was Steve 

Ellingworth, who I also worked with on Potter. The camera 

operator, Des Wheelen, who has worked on several of 

Tim Burton’s movies, is the best I’ve ever worked with. 

Julian Bucknall, the 1st AC, and Steadicam/B-cam 

operator Peter Cavaciuti did a great job too. 

Tell us about you approach to the lighting? 

On most of the other films I’ve lit, I’ve been able to shape 

the light in any way I liked. But on Dark Shadows, my 

main concern throughout the production was that, as 

Barnabas Collins is a vampire, he cannot walk in direct 

sunlight. Tim didn’t want to set the movie entirely at 

night, and had sequences written into the script where 

Barnabas walks around the house during daylight hours, 

but through the shadows and shade of course. So I had 

to create fill and ambient lighting set-ups that would 

pick up details of the set, like the dark wooden paneling 

on the three massive interiors sets we had, but with very 

few direct beams. I knew I could push the stock, and 

that would also help get around the need to have a 

massive amount of lighting. It was pretty intense and 

quite complicated, as ambient lighting is kind of dull, 

and shaping the light to make the set look alive and not 

like a soap opera, can be a bit tricky. So I worked with all 

sorts of combinations soft, indirect and bounce lighting. 

We used Dinos and 20K fresnels, which we diffused a lot 

with large cloths, and lots of spacelights. We did have 

some fun with sharp 20K beams, which the actors could 

see and knew to walk around them. 

Was the camera generally on a dolly, 

handheld or on a Steadicam? 

We moved the camera either on the dolly or on the 

crane. We used crane for practicality, rather than for the 

movement. The main set in the hallway of the manor 

house was huge, and on travelling shots it just meant we 

could go faster. 

Did you shoot at practical locations, on sets, or both? 

The vast majority of the movie was shot on sets at 

Pinewood, where we built the interiors of the manor 

house. We also used the water tank at Pinewood for 

the harbour scene. It’s one of the biggest and most 

impressive sets I’ve ever seen, about 400 yards wide. We 

had fishing boats on the water and a couple of streets, 

complete with canneries, to look like Maine. I used a 

massive amount of lighting for those scenes – several 

Wendy lights, six soft boxes with 12 space lights in each, 

and eight cranes to suspend them all – and I’m sure 

they hate me because of the large electricity bill. For 

the exteriors of the manor house, Rick Heinrichs built the 

ground floor at Bourne Woods, near Farnham. We also 

used some of the nearby woods for the forest scenes – 

it’s the same place that John Mathieson shot on Robin 

Hood. We used Beckenham Place Park, in Kent, for a 

couple of scenes in a mental institution. The main forest 

scenes and the MacDonald construction site were shot 

in Crowthorne, Wokingham. 

What part does risk-taking play in your work, if any? 

Always. The risk is that I never try to do the same thing 

twice. Amelie, Potter, Faust, Dark Shadows, the new 

Coen Bothers’ film – they are all different from one 

another. I could rely on something, a technique, I know, 

but that’s not my way of thinking. How can I make the 

next movie different? That’s the risk! 

How did you work with Tim Burton on set? 

Generally, at the start of the day, Tim would talk to the 

actors on set about what he was expecting. Then we 

would clear the set completely, and Tim, myself and Des 

Wheelan would block the first three or four shots scene. 

We sort of storyboarded on the spot, on the day. Tim 

would then go back to his trailer and we’d call him when 

we were ready to go. During filming Tim would be either 

with me, or the actors. We would review takes on monitors 

in the video village, which in this case was a black tent, 

with just Tim, me and Katterli Frauenfelder the first AD. 

The final results look visually arresting, but there’s only so 

much you can achieve on set. How did you arrive at this 

distinctive look? 

I worked very closely with the DI Peter Doyle, the DI 

grader in pre-production, during production on the 

dailies. He’s a genius too, and my left arm. He graded 

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince and Faust for 

me, and is also now grading the Coen’s Inside Llewyn 

Davis. We discussed references, talked a lot about 

the artistic aspects rather than the technical, and 

locked the look on Dark Shadows at an early stage. 

In pre-production on Dark Shadows, Peter created 

LUT software that could take what I had shot on set, 

and move the pictures a long way towards emulating 

the Technicolor 2-strip process. With this, it’s as though 

you are emphasising certain colours in a desaturated 

work. You get pure and strong red, green and blue 

colours, but everything else is muted and desturated, 

particularly the skin tones. For example, you see Eve 

Green (Angelique) in a shiny, shock-red dress, but her 

skin is very pale, and there’s still detail of things like the 

brown wooden panelling in the background. 

The overall look is attractive and fits the set and the 

story, I hope. I think the most interesting thing with Peter, 

is that we don’t do any windows anymore. We used the 

DI as we would use a lab process. We changed some 

of the curves of the neg, we changed some midtone 

colours without touching the others. But what you see 

on screen is the light I did on set. Typically, I would grade 

the HD dailies with Peter at Technicolor at Pinewood, 

between six and seven every morning, and then go 

to the set. Tim would then watch the dailies alone with 

Chris Lebenzon, the editor. He likes to keep the editing a 

very private process. After the shoot, Peter has worked 

closely with Tim on the grade, and I have held a number 

of remote, projected grading sessions with Peter – with 

me in New York, and him at Technicolor in Soho. Peter is 

coming to Technicolor New York, and we’ll complete the 

final grade for Tim. 

Were there any happy accidents, unexpected things 

that worked out well? 

Yes. There’s a scene early in the movie when Barnabas 

steps out of his coffin after 200 years, and walks through 

the forest at night to the manor house. Although I had 

Wendy lights, they didn’t really penetrate the foliage. 

When I checked my light meter it didn’t move, and 

thought “My God, I’m fucked!”. As we were shooting 

in June, I worked with the remains of the daylight, and 

crossed my fingers. But the results look beautiful. You 

can barely see anything, there are no highlights, just the 

shapes of the trees and the actor moving through the 

trees. It’s really spooky and eerie, and exactly the result I 

wanted. It was definitely a happy accident.





Live & Let DI 

–––Who’s dialling-in 

the DI grades 

Plan-DI 

Company 3 London 

Who said 2012 was going to be a slow year? Now that 

Wrath Of The Titans has hit cinemas, and already passed 

the $200 worldwide box office mark, the Soho facility has 

moved its attention to dailies work for Les Miserables, 

through 142, before the film returns to CO3 for a full DI 

later in the summer. In addition, the company continues 

its long-standing relationship with James Bond 007, the 

film-world’s longest-running film franchise, currently 

shooting its 23rd thrilling adventure. 

The latest Tim Burton feature, Frankenweenie, is also 

currently at CO3 in London with Rob Pizzey working on 

this prestigious title. Adam Glasman recently completed 

Hyde Park On Hudson, lensed by Lol Crawley BSC. 

Set in New York State at the end of the 1930s, it tells 

of the love affair between US president FDR and a 

distant cousin. It stars the ever-fabulous Bill Murray and 

Laura Linley, plus the UK’s very own Olivia Coleman. 

Glasman is now working on the preview grades of 

Anna Karenina for Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC and 

director Joe Wright. Other recent features passing 

through CO3 London include the British Independent 

feature uwantme2killhim? lensed by Tim Wooster and 

coloured by Rob Pizzey. CO3’s suites have also been 

visited by Sir Ridley Scott as the company created ‘live’ 

grading sessions between London and Los Angeles for 

Prometheus. Using this system directors and DPs can 

be in London, New York or LA watching live sessions 

performed in CO3 suites in other global locations. 

Technicolor 

Technicolor continues to inject talent into its UK operations 

with the appointment of Greg Barrett and Mitch Mitchell 

to key roles in Soho and Pinewood. Barrett has been 

appointed director for film and post production services 

at Technicolor Creative Services UK. He has extensive 

experience in managing film, post production and digital 

operations, having worked with Midnight Transfer, Deluxe, 

Framestore, Reliance Mediaworks and most recently 

at Sohonet. As head of film at Midnight Transfer and 

Deluxe, Barrett was responsible for business development 

across all feature film post production services including 

dailies, DI and DCP and video deliverables. As the chief 

strategy officer at Sohonet, he developed Sohonet’s 

product portfolio, and coordinated activities across sales, 

engineering and production. 

Meanwhile, Mitchell is the new head of imaging 

and archive services. Reporting to Barrett, Mitchell 

will lead and manage the restoration, scanning and 

film-out departments across Technicolor’s Pinewood 

and Soho facilities. Mitchell’s career in visual effects, 

scanning and recording saw him working with the BBC, 

MPC and most recently for nine years at Cinesite, where 

he was involved in several high-profile productions, 

including Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes and The DaVinci 

Code. Mitchell has also lectured on special effects and 

imaging technologies. He was made a fellow of the 

Royal Photographic Society in 1997 and appointed 

professor of advanced imaging at Bournemouth 

University in 1998. 

Molinare... created a “neon noir” 

look for Welcome To The Punch. 

Toby Tomkins... worked with DP 

Gary Shaw with multi-format 

source materials on Ben Drew’s 

debut feature Ill Manors. 

Lipsync Post... worked on the 

Munich air-disaster United. 

Company 3 London... pulled out 

the stops for Frankenweenie. 

Molinare 

Molinare grader Asa Shoul used Baselight to help 

enhance the look on action/crime thriller Welcome To 

The Punch, lensed by Ed Wild, using ARRI Alexa, scheduled 

for a September release. The show was directed by Eran 

Creevy, with Ben Pugh, Rory Aitken and Brian Kavanaugh- 

Jones producing, Ridley Scott the executive producer, and 

James McAvoy, Mark Strong and Andrea Riseborough 

in the lead roles. As Icelandic criminal Jacob Sternwood 

(Strong) comes out of hiding to save his son when a heist 

goes wrong, London detective Max Lewinsky (McAvoy) 

jumps at the chance to finally take down the man who 

has always evaded him. 

But during their cat-and-mouse game the two 

become unlikely allies. “With a film predominantly shot at 

night, or in low levels of daylight, it has been fascinating 

to see how much shadow detail we could pull from the 

Alexa,” says Shoul. “We’ve been really impressed by its 

lack of noise. The ProRes has held up very well on the big 

screen and translated beautifully to film to create the 

‘neon noir’ look the director wanted.” 

Lipsync 

Lipsync has won the contract to provide post-production 

services for Falcón a £6million, 4x60min crime drama 

produced by Mammoth Screen for Sky Atlantic. 

The series, due for transmission later in 2012, is based 

on the best-selling novels by Robert Wilson, and follows 

Javier Falcón, a chief inspector in the Seville police 

whose personal and professional life is as dark as some 

of the crimes he investigates. The first two episodes are 

being directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point, Endgame). 

The producer is Julia Stannard, who worked with LipSync 

on BBC2’s poignant Munich air-crash drama United. 

35 

Toby Tomkins 

Toby Tomkins of TJT Film is one of the growing band 

of small DI practitioners. After finishing the grade on 

January, a British independent thriller by FaceFilms, shot 

on the RED MX by DP Gary Shaw, Tomkins come on 

board as colourist on Ill Manors, the debut feature of Ben 

Drew’s (from Plan-B), which was lensed by Shaw too. 

Tomkins was also the online editor on Ill Manors, 

which he says made for a daunting first meeting with the 

post team after they began listing the range formats this 

film was shot on, including RED, ARRI Alexa, Super 16mm, 

8mm, CCTV footage, DSLR timelapse and some HDCAM 

shot material, not to mention around 100 VFX shots. 

“Normally with RED footage, as we used on January 

with great success, I would decode the RED files using the 

RedLogFilm gamma curve, giving us a log film-scan-like 

image to work with,” says Tomkins. “But with the range 

of source formats and colour spaces on Ill Manors we 

decided to conform everything non-RED to 2K, 16:9, 

Rec709 before starting. The VFX team (from Envy) began 

VFX work at 1920x1080, so these were carefully upscaled 

along with all non-RED media, mostly using DaVinci’s builtin 

‘optical quality’ scaling. All the RED media was graded 

natively with a full-res premium debayer, scaled to 2K.” 

Tomkins graded the film at Tate Post in a DaVinci 

Resolve V8 grading suite he has set up there with a 2010 

Dual CPU MacPro with a Cubix PCIe Expander housing 3 

NVidia GTX 480 graphics cards and a RedRocket card, 

monitoring via a Decklink HD Extreme 3D to a Sony OLED 

broadcast reference monitor. For storage he used a 

24TB 8-drive SAS RAID array from RentARaid.co.uk. For 

grading control he used a Tangent Wave control panel 

and a Wacom Intuos tablet. 

“This was Ben Drew’s (AKA Plan-B) first feature, and 

during the first stages of the grade we experimented a 

lot and set various looks to experiment with later. After 

Gary got involved we began to form a look together 

that was dramatically interesting and fairly high contrast, 

but which kept a natural feel to complement Gary’s 

handheld camerawork and the story. Some of the more 

dramatic scenes were given special attention and have 

a much stronger look inspired by films like City Of God 

and Sexy Beast,” says Tomkins. 

There were some matching issues with the different 

source formats and some of the VFX shots, but these 

were smoothed out over several passes using DaVinci’s 

custom curves. 

“There was one particularly difficult scene, which was 

shot in daylight with ND but without an IR filter, and the 

blacks had different tints dependent on the IR radiation. 

The real difficulty was in the added exposure this gave 

the blacks. To compensate we made the scene fairly 

high contrast and keyed the tint where strongest. 

Unfortunately, due to the high amount of movement in 

the scene and character interaction, we had to do a 

shot wide selection and so some pink/purple clothing 

lost some saturation but the result was a better balanced 

image that suited the scene,” he explains. 

There were several screenings throughout the 

grading process and so the film was output several times 

and reconformed several times. There were also editorial 

changes made half way into the grade. DaVinci’s 

reconform tools and XML support helped to streamline 

the process, letting Tomkins and Shaw focus on the 

grade more then the reconforms. 

In total the online, grade and conform took 40 days. 

For final preview Tomkins set up the DaVinci suite at Soho 

Screening Rooms (Mr Youngs) in Screen 1, a 44 seat 2K 

DCI Barco Projector Cinema, and spent a day putting 

the final touches on. 

“It was a real treat to grade in a cinema with DCI 

projection on a large screen and it really helped us fine 

tune the film for theatrical release,” he says. 

The DCP was handled by Arts Alliance Media who 

did the 3D LUT conversion from the 2K Rec709 master. 

Technicolor is handling the film-out, also from the 2k 709 

master. The film releases on June 4th 2012. 





FotoKem 

FotoKem has appointed Joseph Slomka as its VP and 

principal colour scientist for digital post-production and 

creative picture services. 

Slomka will spearhead the execution of color 

science, management and best practices for FotoKem’s 

extensive picture production chain, from location 

services to distribution masters. Before joining the 

FotoKem team, Slomka served for six years as colour 

scientist at Sony Pictures Imageworks, managing 

the colour pipeline for over 30 major studio pictures 

in addition to multiple facility projects. His extensive 

industry experience also includes working closely with 

the Science and Technology Council of the Academy 

of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in the development 

of the Image Interchange Framework (IIF) and the 

Academy Color Encoding Specifications (ACES). 

Company 3 LA 

Stefan Sonnenfeld graded Universal Pictures’ Battleship, 

lensed by Tobias Schliessler with Peter Berg directing, 

and Paramount Pictures’ G.I. Joe: Retaliation, lensed by 

Stephen Windon ACS with Jon M. Chu at the helm. For 

Prometheus, director Ridley Scott has returned to the 

world of outer-space horror that was the setting of his first 

breakout feature Alien. 

The film, starring Charlize Theron and Michael 

Fassbender, and shot in 3D by Dariusz Wolski ASC, is set in 

the shadowy darkness of deep space where something 

scary could jump out at any moment. Company 3 

LA Colorist Stephen Nakamura made use of DaVinci 

Resolve’s aperture correction feature to add a little bit 

of sharpening to small, isolated portions of the frame, a 

technique he also used with Scott for Robin Hood. 

“I could apply the effect to a face or an object 

in the frame,” the colorist says, “and as soon as the 

film cuts to that shot, your eye is drawn to that exact 

spot. It’s almost like subliminally limiting the depth-offield 

in the shot and it can be very effective. But whilst 

the effect looks perfect through 3D glasses, it doesn’t 

work the same for the 2D version. Those glasses soften 

everything including the effect. For the 2D version, I 

have to decrease the effect for every shot we used it 

in, because without the glasses that level of sharpening 

looks excessive and artificial.” 

EFILM LA 

EFILM LA’s Steve Scott worked with DP Bill Pope and 

director Barry Sonnenfeld to grade Columbia Pictures’ 

Men In Black III, and with DP Seamus McGarvey BSC 

ASC on Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures’ The Avengers 

directed by Joss Whedon. Colourist Yvan Lucas graded 

Universal Pictures’ Snow White And The Huntsman, lensed 

by Greig Fraser ACS and directed by Rupert Sanders, 

plus the DreamWorks picture People Like Us, shot by 

Salvatore Totino and directed by Alex Kurtzman. 

Meanwhile Natasha Leonnet, dialled in the DI grade 

on the Kirk Jones-helmed What To Expect When You’re 

Expecting for Lionsgate, shot by Xavier Pérez Grobet. 

Soundfirm 

Soundfirm, the renowned Australian feature soundmixing 

and editing facility has invested in a Mistika 2K 

finishing system with advanced DI colour grading and 

stereo 3D options. Soundfirm is located at Fox Studios in 

Sydney, and has premises in Melbourne and Beijing. 

Digitaline 

Digitaline, a cutting-edge visual effects post house, 

based in the centre of Paris, has stepped up its colour 

grading capabilities, by purchasing a Mistika HD and DI 

post production system. 

Film Factory 

The Paris-based post house, helped to finish Relativity 

Media’s recently released Mirror Mirror, Tarsem Singh’s 

stylized retelling of the Snow White tale, lensed by 

Brendan Galvin. Lionel Kopp, founder of Film Factory and 

one of the world’s leading colourists, used Digital Vision’s 

Nucoda Film Master, which marries a powerful on-set 

solution to the final colour pass. The Film Master system, 

which included a SAN and Nucoda Fuse assist station, 

was installed on set in Montreal. From the set, Kopp 

did a grading pass of the Sony F35 dailies, which were 

then sent to the editing room with the colour settings. In 

some cases, a further grading took place prior to dailies 

screening in the DI suite with the director and crew. 

Designing this system meant that the dailies – from the 

set through screening and ultimately delivery – were kept 

in a closely matched, carefully monitored environment. 

Kopp graded every take from the first day of dailies 

through to the completion of the DI. Colourist Marc 

Boucrot also worked on the project for Film Factory. 

There were nearly 1,300 visual effects shots in the 

movie, and Kopp states, “The Nucoda enabled us to 

have one central hub, where dailies colour settings, 

visual effects and eventually the DI was managed. There 

were VFX vendors from all over the world, but the VFX 

Supervisor, Tom Wood, was in house with us in Montreal 

during the shoot, and in the post production building 

at Wildfire Studios in Los Angeles where editing, sound 

editing and mixing, and DI rooms were all together. As 

VFX shots came in, we were able to look at them in the 

DI rooms and see how they were working. The ability to 

have all of these activities going on in one location, our 

facility, was crucial given the timeframe and the visual 

style of the movie. Helping Tarsem execute his vision 

for Mirror Mirror was our first priority. Every project we 

undertake is an artistic and technical process, and we 

plan and execute how to do that in the best way, from 

day one to the final delivery.”





On the Job 

–––Dariusz Wolski ASC 

Prometheus 3D 

Illuminating... Wolski worked with 

gaffer Perry Evans to bring futuristic 

LED light to the imagery. 

Headshot of Dariusz Wolski 

by, and courtesy of, Douglas 

Kirkland. 

Wolski was born and raised in Warsaw, Poland. He 

migrated to New York City in 1979 after graduating from 

the national film school at Lodz. Wolski began his career 

working on BBC documentaries. He explored new 

horizons while shooting commercials and more than 100 

music videos, including many for Tony and Ridley Scott’s 

company, after moving to Los Angeles in 1986. Wolski 

collaborated with Tony Scott on The Crow in 1994 and 

Crimson Tide in 1995. He has earned approximately 20 

movie credits, including Alice In Wonderland, Rum Diary 

and the four popular Pirates Of The Caribbean films. 

Scott has earned BAFTA Best Film and Best Director 

awards for Thelma And Louise, a Best Director BAFTA 

award for Gladiator, a Best Film BAFTA Award for 

American Gangster and Academy-Award nominations 

for Thelma And Louise, Gladiator and Black Hawk Down. 

A short list of his other memorable credits includes Alien, 

Blade Runner, Robin Hood, Someone To Watch Over 

Me, Hannibal, Body Of Lies and American Gangster. Sir 

Ridley Scott was knighted in 2003 in recognition of his 

contributions to advancing the art of filmmaking. 

“Ridley visited the set in Los Angeles whilst I was 

shooting Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in 

3D stereo format in 2009,” Wolski recalls. “Later, he visited 

the set while we were shooting in London and began a 

conversation about producing Prometheus in 3D.” 

Although the RED Epic camera was still in the 

prototype stage at this time, Wolski says that he and 

Scott were interested, because it is half the size of 

other digital cameras and has a 5K chip. After Wolski 

completed production of Pirates, they shot a 3D test with 

a prototype Epic camera and agreed it was the right 

tool for producing Prometheus. 

“I think Ridley is a genius,” Wolski says. “His body of 

work is incredible. He has pioneered the contemporary 

science fiction genre. He created kind of grungy, 

textural looks for Alien and Blade Runner that were 

complete departures from other science fiction movies. 

I knew from watching his films over the years that he is 

always driven to take it to the next level.” 

The script for Prometheus is an original story coauthored 

by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof. A short 

list of the ensemble cast includes Charlize Theron, Guy 

Pearce, Noami Rapance and Michael Fassbender. 

“Ridley envisioned a very sterile, clean look with a 

little bit of texture,” Wolski says. But how much is a little bit? 

Every filmmaker has a different answer to that question. 

Most of Prometheus was produced on stages at 

Pinewood Studios with additional scenes shot on the 

backlot. Wolski credits production designer Arthur Max 

and set decorator Sonia Klaus with playing significant 

roles in providing believable environments for both the 

spaceship and the alien planet. Background plates 

and exterior scenes on the planet were produced at 

a national park in Iceland. Aerial shots of mountains in 

Jordan were taken from a helicopter. They also shot one 

scene in the mountains in Scotland. 

“I knew that Ridley likes to be able to move fast with 

cameras,” Wolski says. “After we decided to go with RED 

Epic cameras, we told the people who we were dealing 

with them how to make the stereo rig simpler, smaller 

and more flexible.” 

37 





Most of the story takes place on the spaceship and 

underground on the planet. “They are very big spaces, 

which I lit as minimally as possible,” Wolski says. “The 

characters are wearing helmets with lamps on them, so 

there was light on their faces. They also carried flashlights 

everywhere. (Gaffer) Perry Evans designed futuristiclooking 

light fixtures on spaceship sets, using LED lights that 

were controlled with dimmers. It’s very naturalistic looking 

and it gave us the freedom to put cameras anywhere.” 

Wolski’s crew included Steadicam operator Daniele 

Massaccesi, who came from Italy, camera operators 

Graham Hall and Gary Spratling, first assistants John 

Fergurson, Robert Palmer, Miles Proudfoot, second 

assistants David Churchyard, Elliot Dupuy, Iain Mackay 

and Paul Wheeldon. Perry Evans was the gaffer, Gary 

Hyams was the key grip, Adrian Barry was the grip and 

Adam Dale was the aerial cinematographer. 

“My crew were terrific,” he says. “The camera 

operators and assistants were put into very complex 

situations, where they had to adapt quickly. They all did 

great jobs.” 

A number of people on his crew had collaborated 

with Wolski on Pirates Of The Carribean: On Stranger 

Tides, including stereographer James Goldman. Wolski 

explains that the stereographer is the person who 

watched his back while he was lining up shots. 

“There are two principles,” he says. “You have to 

be careful about the interocular distance between the 

eyes and the point of convergence. On Pirates Of The 

Carribean: On Stranger Tides, we weren’t converging 

on the set. We were shooting parallel takes and doing 

convergence during postproduction, when we decided 

how deep backgrounds should be.” 

O U T E R S P A C E 

Prometheus takes the audience 

on a 3D journey to a planet in 

outer space with a group of 

explorers who are on a quest to 

find the secret to the origins of life 

on Earth. The spaceship is named 

after Prometheus who, in Greek 

mythology, stole fire from Zeus and 

gave it to mortals. Dariusz Wolski 

ASC and Ridley Scott brought 

deep pools of experience and 

talent for the global art of visual 

storytelling to this ambitious 

endeavour, writes Bob Fisher. 

Wolski explains that each stereo rig held two RED 

Epic cameras at 90 degree angles with a mirror used 

to emulate the way people see 3D with their eyes. 

The interocular distance was controlled by motors 

and the alignment was monitored with a control box 

where Wolski and his crew could see if the images were 

properly aligned. Images were composed in widescreen 

in 2.4:1 ratio. 

Wolski says that the Epic camera has a comfortable 

800 exposure index. However, they were losing almost 

a stop, because they were shooting in 3D stereo with a 

mirror rig. He always had cameras on four rigs ready to 

roll at all times. Wolski explains that it would have taken 

too long to change and realign two shorter and longer 

prime lenses with the mirror. The cameras on two rigs had 

Angenieux 16-40mm short zoom lenses on them. The 

cameras on the other two rigs had longer Angenieux 

27-76 mm zoom lenses on them. 

Wolski says that he dealt with the actors and 

everyone else the same way the same way he would 

on a 2D movie. “We had to be careful of eye lines and 

two cameras are obviously heavier than one, but that 

didn’t stop us from putting them on a Steadicam,” he 

says. “The best tool was the Technocrane, because we 

could put it everywhere. When the cameras were set, 

the stereographer and rig technicians made sure all the 

zoom lenses were properly aligned.” 

Because they were shooting with multiple cameras, 

the production had an extensive video village. There 

was a director’s tent with two big 3D monitors inside, and 

also two high-end 2D monitors that Wolski could switch 

between the left and right eye cameras. 

“I was monitoring individual eyes and also looking at 

2D images on big monitors,” he explains. “It was a very 

complex video village that required special wiring with 

great video playback. We rehearsed with it on Pirates 

and improved it tremendously on Prometheus. 

“The tent was always near the set. Ridley spoke with 

the actors when they came on the set. He set everything 

up and then went back into the tent. I was constantly 

moving between the village and the set.” When the 

production shot in Iceland the video village was housed 

in a truck due to the wind and cold weather. 

“We created data files which were a little bit more 

compressed for dailies and watched them on a big 

television screen,” Wolski says. “In the beginning, we 

watched a lot of dailies on the big screen to make sure 

that the look was what we envisioned. I timed dailies on 

the set by downloading files and touching up shadows 

and colour temperatures. You can play with it. 

“Most of the look, including convergence of images 

from two cameras, was created while we were timing 

dailies for the 3D release,” Wolski says. “We played a bit 

with shadows and colours in DI. A lot of nuances were 

added when we timed the 2D version.” 

The digital intermediate was timed in collaboration 

with colorist Stefan Nakamura at Company 3 in Santa 

Monica. There is also going to be a 2D release in IMAX 

format. 

Wolski offers the following advice for 

cinematographers who are shooting their first 3D 

movie: “Trust your instincts the way you would if you 

were shooting in 2D format. There are people who are 

extremely knowledgeable about 3D, but they have 

very little experience dealing with a cast and crew and 

the unexpected things that can happen when you are 

shooting a film. My best advice is try to shoot it like a 

normal film. One of the big differences is that you have 

to light and compose images for three-dimensional 

viewing. You don’t want it to look flat.” 

Twentieth Century-Fox is releasing Prometheus in 

both 3-D and 2-D IMAX formats.





Who’s Shooting What? 

–––Which cinematographers 

are working on what... 

Snap shots 

In competition... Danish DP 

Charlotte Bruus Christensen on the 

set of The Hunt, in competition in 

Cannes, with Thomas Vinterburg. 

Out and about... DP Wyatt 

Troll working on the upcoming 

freshman film Goats. 

Shouldering the responsibility... 

Will Pugh is shooting Paranormal 

Witness. 

Under scrutiny... Fabian Wagner 

on the set of Accused 2. 

Bobbing along... Mick Coulter 

BSC on location in Venice. 

Along came... Polly Morgan on 

the set of Emanuel And The Truth 

About Fishes. 

Much Jadoo about curry... 

Roger Pratt BSC pictured with 

Amit Gupta and leading actress 

Amara Karan on family comedy 

Jadoo. 

Bubblicious... underwater 

specialist Mike Valentine BSC 

at work on Dark Shadows and 

Sport Relief. 

Hard core... Richard Mott on Ron 

Scalpello’s Offender pictured 

shooting actor Joe Cole. 

Keeping on an even keel... 

Torquil Fleming-Boyd has been 

following Kanye West around 

with a steadicam. 

For a smash get mash.... that’s DP 

Ed Mash taking stock on shoo for 

a commercial. Image courtesy 

of Pier Hausemer. 

You’re having a larf... Ed Moore 

on the set of Bucky. 

Keeping on track... Luke Palmer 

with focus puller James Burgess 

the focus puller on set of The Fold. 

Bridge over the river... Paul Lang 

has been in Thailand on WWII 

Heroes. 

Steady does it... Gareth Hughes 

has been doing the rounds on 

Casualty. 

Getting his eye in... Nick Dance 

has started on Touchpaper’s 

Switch. 

39 

Roger Pratt BSC recently lensed Jadoo, Amit Gupta’s 

family comedy about two brothers (Harish Patel and 

Kulvinder Ghir), both wonderful chefs, who fall out 

catastrophically and the family recipe book gets ripped 

in half. One brother gets the starters and the other gets 

the main courses. They set up rival restaurants across 

the road and spend the next twenty years trying to 

out-do each other. The daughter (Amara Karan) of 

one of the brothers arrives home on a mission to reunite 

them so that they can both cook at her wedding. The 

film was shot on location in Leicester, from where Roger 

and Amit hail. Amit’s mother still owns a restaurant on 

Belgrave Road, which was used as one of the locations. 

And obviously, the production harnessed Cooke lenses, 

which are made in Leicester. Prior to Jadoo, Roger shot 

a commercial for JBL speakers with Paul McCartney. 

Underwater specialist cinematographer Mike Valentine 

BSC recently shot sequences for 007 Skyfall in 

Pinewood’s U stage. In recent weeks he has also shot 

an underwater ghost on Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, 

a 360-degree shot for a Louis Vuitton commercial 

both above and below water, and the Strictly Come 

Dancing sequence for Sport Relief. 

Berlin Associates Owen McPolin lensed Coup a four-part 

political thriller through Company Pictures for Channel 

4, directed by Ed Fraiman and produced by Johann 

Knobel, shot in Manchester and London. Alasdair Walker 

worked on first block of Waterloo Road, the new series 

now based in Scotland for Shed Productions. Producer is 

Lizzie Gray with Paul Murray directing. 

McKinney Macartney Management’s Stuart 

Biddlecombe is shooting Live At The Electric for Craig 

Young. Balazs Bolygo is prepping Homefront for director 

Terry McDonough. Ben Butler, Mick Coulter BSC, Denis 

Crossan BSC, Polly Morgan, Alessandra Scherillo, Katie 

Swain, Clive Tickner and Darran Tiernan have all been 

working on commercials. Seamus Deasy is shooting 

13 Steps Down for Marek Losey through Parallel Films, 

Dublin. Gavin Finney BSC is filming Harry Selfridge with 

Jon Jones directing. Phil Méheux has started filming The 

Smurfs 2 in Montreal for Raja Gosnell and Columbia 





Pictures. John Pardue is lighting The Bletchley Circle with 

Andy de Emmony directing. Mike Spragg is on location 

in Cape Town filming Strikeback III for Bill Eagles. David 

Tattersall BSC is prepping L.A. Noir, a TV pilot with Frank 

Darabont at the helm. Fabian Wagner is on location in 

Australia filming Mrs Biggs with Paul Whittington directing. 

Felix Wiedemann is shooting The List for director Klaus 

Hüttmann. Michael Wood was filming 2nd Unit on Ron 

Howard’s film Rush. 

Casarotto’s James Aspinall is nearing the end of his 

shoot on Gate TV’s The Other Wife directed by Giles 

Foster. Sean Bobbitt BSC has just finished grading The 

Place Beyond The Pines directed by Derek Cianfrance 

and starring Ryan Gosling, and will soon grade Neil 

Jordan’s Byzantium about a mother and daughter 

vampire duo who form a deadly pact. He’s also 

prepping for 12 Years A Slave. Julian Court is shooting 

David Goyer’s Da Vinci’s Demons for BBC Worldwide 

America until November. PJ Dillon is nearing the end of 

his shoot on block two of the exciting new series Ripper 

Street for Tiger Aspect. Meanwhile Mike Eley BSC is 

about to grade Parades End, a co-production between 

Mammoth Screen and HBO about the life of Christopher 

Tietjens during the First World War, directed by Susanna 

White. Matt Gray is confirmed on James Strong’s new 

drama for ITV, Broadchurch, a thriller about a child who 

is murdered in a small village in Dorset. Rob Hardy BSC 

is shooting Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman the story 

of the hidden love affair between Charles Dickens and 

the actress Ellen Ternan whose story was written out of 

history. Steve Lawes is working on the co-production 

between Illuminations and the RSC of Julius Caesar 

directed by Greg Doran. Tim Palmer has recently begun 

shooting A Mother’s Son, an ITV series directed by Ed 

Bazalgette. Urszula Pontikos is shooting the short for Ruby 

Films entitled That Woman directed by Mark Rosenblatt. 

Prior to this, Ula shot a Bollywood Short with director Aniel 

Karia for Rokkit productions. Over in LA, Antonio Riestra 

is shooting The Look Of Love, which is being directed 

by Arie Posin and stars Robin Williams, Annette Benning 

and Ed Harris. The story follows a widow who falls in love 

with a man who bears a striking resemblance to her 

late husband. Wojciech Szepel is well into his shoot of 

Fresh 1 Production’s Spies Of Warsaw, directed by Coky 

Giedroyc. 

Independent’s Ulf Brantas is shooting George Gently 

with director Nick Renton. Eigil Bryld is on the new drama 

House Of Cards with David Fincher. John Ignatius is 

prepping on the new series of Spy for Hat Trick. David 

Odd BSC has completed work on Love / Hate with 

director David Caffrey through Octagon Films. Ben 

Smithard BSC has finished grading Neal Streets Henry IV, 

directed by Rupert Ryle Hodges, starring Jeremy Irons 

and Simon Russell Beale. Mark Waters is shooting a new 

CBBC project Aliens vs Wizards. Chas Bain has been 

battling horrendous weather conditions to shoot his first 

full length feature as main unit DP in Fiji, with the working 

title of Status Quo project. Ben Davis BSC is shooting 

Working Title’s I Give It A Year for director Dan Mazar, 

starring Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall and Anna Faris. Anthony 

Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC has finished Ron Howard’s 

Formula 1 racing drama, Rush. Edu Grau has completed 

shooting A Single Shot for director David M. Rosenthal 

in Vancouver. Bjorn Bratberg, Benoit Delhomme, Dan 

Landin, John Mathieson BSC have all been shooting 

commercials around the world. And, London based 

DP Darran Bragg has just joined the roster. He’s recently 

worked with Adam Powell at RSA and James Henry at 

Love Productions. 

United Agents’ John de Borman BSC is in Nigeria filming 

Half Of A Yellow Sun, with director Biyi Bandele and 

starring Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Barry 

Ackroyd BSC is shooting Paul Greengrass’s new film 

Maersk Alabama (aka Captain Phillips) in Malta with 

Tom Hanks in the lead. Tony Slater-Ling is attached to 

The Politician’s Husband, directed by Simon Cellan- 

Jones. Brendan Galvin is in New Orleans shooting 

The Tomb, directed by Mikael Hafstrom and starring 

Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Baris 

Ozbicer is shooting a feature Yozgat Blues, directed 

by Mahmut Fazil Coskun, in central Anatolia. Peter 

Suschitzky BSC is in the USA on M. Night Shyamalan’s film 

After Earth – shooting in Philadelphia, Utah, California 

and Costa Rica. Robert Alazraki AFC is shooting Hotel 

Normandy, directed by Charles Nemes. Paul Sarossy 

BSC is shooting the TV series Copper in Toronto. Danny 

Cohen BSC is on Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables for Working 

Title. Dale McCready has completed the first block 

of the final series of Merlin, and is currently shooting 

Plebs in Bulgaria for ITV. David Higgs BSC is shooting 

pick-ups for The Pursuit, starring Paddy Considine. 

Alan Almond BSC is grading Antony & Cleopatra for 

Red Productions, starring Derek Jacobi. Ian Moss is 

shooting Baby Cow’s Hunderby, which airs later this 

year on Sky Atlantic. Kieran McGuigan BSC is shooting 

the second series of DCI Banks for Left Bank. Charlotte 

Bruus Christensen’s Danish film The Hunt (Dir, Thomas 

Vinterberg) is in competition at Cannes this year. Niels 

Reedtz Johansen is doing second unit photography for 

Barry Ackroyd BSC on Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips. 

Zac Nicholson is operating for Danny Cohen BSC on 

Les Miserables. David Raedeker is lensing Mammoth/ 

HBO’s single drama Falcon for Gabriel Range in Spain. 

Ben Wheeler is prepping Vertigo’s Streetdance 3D: The 

Juniors for director Ben Gregor. Florian Hoffmeister shot 

the new BBC Shakespeare promo with Ben Newman 

as is prepping Therese Raquin in Belgrade. Florian 

is nominated for Best Cinematography on Great 

Expectations at the TV Craft Awards. Tat Radcliffe is 

nominated for Best Cinematography on Top Boy at the 

TV Craft Awards. Benjamin Kracun, Alex Barber, Philipp 

Blaubach, Dan Bronks, Simon Chaudoir, Stephen Keith- 

Roach, Alwin Kuchler BSC, Rain Li, Tim Maurice-Jones, 

Alex Melman, Simon Richards, Joost Van Gelder, Haris 

Zambarloukos BSC have all been busy on commercials. 

Wizzo Features’ Erik Wilson is prepping Richard Ayoade’s 

second feature (and follow up to Submarine) The 

Double. It stars Jessie Eisenberg (The Social Network) and 

is produced by Robin Fox and Andy Stebbing through 

Alcove Entertainment. Natasha Braier has wrapped 

on the short film The Swimmer, a commission for the 

2012 Olympics directed by Lynne Ramsay, produced 

by Diarmuid Scrimshaw through Warp Films. Richard 

Mott has wrapped on Ron Scalpello’s feature Offender, 

written and produced by Paul Van Carter and produced 

by Nick Taussig and Kate Glover through Gunslinger/ 

Revolver Entertainment. Stuart Bentley wrapped on the 

feature Wasteland. Shot on location in Leeds, directed 

by Rowan Athale, produced by Gareth Pritchard, it 

stars Timothy Spall in a supporting role. Luke Palmer is 

lensing The Fold directed by John Jencks, produced by 

Jay Taylor and starring Catherine McCormack. Peter 

Hannan BSC is prepping The 4th Reich directed by Shaun 

R Smith and produced by Scott Mann. David Luther has 

wrapped on The Hour 2 directed by Sandra Goldbacher 

and Catherine Moreshead, produced by Ruth Kenley- 

Letts through Kudos. Jamie Cairney is shooting the new 

series of The Thick Of It starring Peter Capaldi, directed 

by Armando Ianucci, produced by Adam Tandy for 

the BBC. Sam Care BSC shot two episodes of 30-minute 

drama Coming Up for Channel 4 through Touchpaper 

Television and is now testing for a feature film that shoots 

this summer. Damian Bromley prepping on the new series 

of Misfits for Clerkenwell Films, produced by Matt Strevens 

with directors Nirpal Bhogal and Jonathan Van Tulleken. 

Finally, Wizzo Features has also just signed Maja Zamodja, 

an NFTS graduate from 2011, whose graduation short, 

Playing Ghost, has been selected by over 20 festivals 

worldwide. At the NFTS she also shot the short film 

Strays, which has been selected at festivals worldwide, 

including the prestigious Polish Cinematography Festival: 

Plus Camerimage. Last year she worked as a camera 

assistant on Tim Burton’ s Frankenweenie in the stopframe 

animation department. 

Dinedor Management’s Hubert Taczanowski is shooting 

Michael Winterbottom’s The King Of Soho. Andrew 

Johnson is lensing the low-budget feature Common 

People in south London, and Peter Field has been in 

Turkey to operate on 007 Skyfall. Andrew Johnson has 

returned for another block of Holby City, whilst Mike Fox 

BSC is lighting Great Guitarists for The Mob, additional 

material for David Attenborough at the BBC, as well 

as Blakeway Productions’ Shakespeare documentary. 

Ruairi O’Brien ISC has shot The Fall in Belfast, and 

Martin Fuhrer BSC is in Dublin on Loving Miss Hatto. Tom 

Townend, Steve Annis, Marc Gomez del Moral, Mattias 

Nyberg, Tony Brown, Ben Filby, Stephen Murphy, Eric 

Maddison FSF, Matthew Cooke and Trevor Coop are 

all busy shooting commercials, music promos and 

corporate films for everyone from Pepsi to Polycel. 

Sara Putt Associate’s Pete Edwards has been on an 

additional unit for Mount Pleasant series two on location 

in Manchester, with director Dewi Humphries. He also lit 

location inserts for Vic & Bob’s Pett Prods on their new 

show Lucky, Sexy Winners!, and has just been confirmed 

as DP with Objective Prods on the forthcoming pilot 

for C4 called Toast. Paul Lang shot in Thailand on 

Impossible Pictures’ WW2 heroes, and is now shooting 

for Pioneer Pictures in US. Dave Marsh is confirmed on 

the second series of The Cafe for Sky1. Ed Moore was 

DP on a short film called Bucky, directed and written by 

Red Dwarf star Danny John Jules, also starring Frances 

Barber and Colin Salmon, and shot using Alexa. Dirk 

Nel is prepping Mayday, a new 5 x 1hr drama series for 

Kudos films, shooting in Dorking, Surrey. Chris Openshaw 

was on location with his assistant Dave Prevost in Qatar 

lighting. Will Pugh is confirmed on Paranormal Witness, 

shooting on location in Canada. He is also involved in 

a feature doc on The Tour De France. Graham Smith 

is shooting on location in Seville on the 2nd Unit of 

Falcon for Mammoth Screen. Alan Stewart is shooting 

additional photography on the Keith Lemon, The Movie 

for Generator Entertainment. Following his commercial 

directorial debut last month, Si Wagen is in San Diego for 

Arrow Media shooting an episode of World’s Busiest... 

Oliver Cheesman has completed the second series of 

Burnistoun for The Comedy Unit. Nick Dance has started 

on Switch for Touchpaper TV. Peter Greenhalgh shot The 

Secret Of Crickley Hall for the BBC, and is confirmed for a 

block on the epic, 10-hour documentary series The Bible 

for Lightworkers Media. Jan Jonaeus is prepping one-off 

drama Complicit for C$ with director Niall McCormack. 

Torquil Fleming-Boyd lit the Kanye West documentary 

60 Days To Paris (working title) for Lut! Med!a, shooting 

steadicam in Paris and at the Paris Fashion Show. Gareth 

Hughes did steadicam dailies on Casualty for BBC and 

Wolfblood for CBBC. James Leigh is doing dailies on a 

number of corporates. Vince McGahon is operating on 

Tom Hoopers’ Les Miserables. Julian Morson is operating 

on Hummingbird for director Steven Knight and DP Chris 

Menges. Al Rae operated on Ron Howard’s F1 film Rush, 

the story of the complex relationship between racing 

titans James Hunt and Nikki Lauder. Fabrizio Sciarra 

completed on the Kanye West documentary for Lut! 

Media. Phil Sindall is operating for a block on Silent 

Witness. Des Whelan is on the fifth installment of Die Hard, 

A Good Day to Die Hard, which is shooting on location in 

Budapest. Rick Woollard and Simon Hawken have been 

busy working on commercials. Danny Bishop just signed 

at the agency as a camera/steadicam operator.





41 





Grains vs Pixels 

–––Nic Morris BSC 

Generations shot on Sony F65 

Dolly... Nic Morris BSC getting to 

grips with the F65. 

With a working title of Generations, Morris with the 

support of Philippe Ros AFC, shot a short film intended to 

show off the capabilities of the F65, which was screened 

at NAB 2012 using a 4K projector. The story is based 

around a car being passed down through a family, 

encompassing scenes in the 1920s, the 1960/70s and 

the present day. According to Morris, who has extensive 

experience in both high-end digital acquisition, 35mm 

and 65mm, the film came together really quickly: “We 

assembled a good team and Peter Farrer the director 

came up with a really nice, simple story that worked 

without language.” 

Morris (Being Human, Spooks and features including 

Firelight for Buena Vista) and Farrer were keen to give 

each of the periods a look of their own. “It allowed us 

to start the film with the old Academy square of 1.37:1, 

and with a semi black and white, duotone type feel,” 

explains Morris. “Then we went to a period in the ‘60s 

with the 2.4:1 wide screen and that strong Technicolor 

look. The rest of the film is present day with 16:9 and 

more muted, cooler tones. I think it was useful in a film 

such as this to show that the camera was malleable and 

could achieve different looks. As cinematographers we 

want to take the camera’s RAW material and tell the 

stories we want to tell. So it’s not just a technical exercise 

in recording what’s in front of us.” 

Setting the look for the film was aided by having a 

Baselight grading suite on set. “At the end of the day 

we could ingest the footage off the 1TB cards from 

the F65’s SR-R4 recorder, and release the cards back 

to the camera,” says Morris. “It also gave us the luxury 

of starting to look at the pictures while we were still 

shooting. That’s very useful because your colour memory 

is only a few hours old at the most. You can then take it 

into the suite.” 

Our roving reporter 

Michael Burns recently had 

the pleasure of watching 

Nic Morris BSC at work 

on a promotional film for 

Sony, shooting around 

Coniston Water in the Lake 

District, putting the new 

4K-capable Sony F65 digital 

cinematography camera 

through its paces. 

But it’s unusual to have such a full solution on set. 

“We do have rough grading setups on set which allow 

the DP to put a look-up table into the rushes,” says Morris. 

“I think it’s going to become mainstream with these kinds 

of cameras which just produce RAW footage. The RAW 

footage is the basic score if you like, while the look-up 

table is the conductors interpretation of the piece.” 

Morris is no stranger to digital, being one of the 

early adopters of HD for commercials. He says he has 

‘no emotional baggage with film’, but equally has a 

keen eye for the technical differences between the 

formats, especially film’s ability to capture shadow 

detail in low light: “Talking about cinema more than 

television, when you have a low-key scene, a really 

dark scene, with film you can really produce prints that 

are very rich and very detailed. You can get fantastic 

texture and quality - it’s not just a big blob of dark grey. 

And I think that’s always been the hardest thing for 

digital to do - it tends to go a bit muddy.” 

“The F65 is slightly different from other cameras in 

terms of how the exposure is judged,” Morris continues. 

“On the first test day, I did some shooting in some real 

low light levels, with some fantastic shadow detail. I 

got really excited about it. For the first time [on digital], 

something reminded me of a film camera with Primo 

lenses, which for me is a benchmark for really beautiful 

texture and quality in the shadows. The camera does 

have a really wide dynamic range, it’s just how you work 

that and how that gets used further down the line that’s 

perhaps the interesting part.” 

Another key requirement of course is resolving 

power. “Up in the Lake District, there were lots of 

drystone walls and the trees didn’t have their leaves on 

yet, so there were a lot of filigree branches going off 

into the sky,” he recalls. “[Shooting on the F65] was an 

absolute delight – the resolution was like using a 10x8 

plate camera. The texture in those stone walls and the 

texture in the branches absolutely came alive. That’s 

something I’ve not seen in another digital camera and 

it’s normally something you’re more likely to see shooting 

on 65mm. It’s not just the raw shapes of the landscape 

that work, but also the texture of the bracken and in the 

drystone walls.” 

“We were also running new Cooke 5/i and new 

[Summilux-C] Leica lenses,” he says. “These are very 

high resolving lenses. And it’s only now that you have 

a camera of this quality that you’ll be able to see what 

these lenses can do.”





43 

Morris wasn’t the only expert on set – Philippe Ros 

AFC and Sherlock DP Steve Lawes also shot material 

using the F65 in the Lake District. “Steve came up for 

a day and did some really nice time-lapse shots with 

mist moving off the hills - it really showed off the quality 

of the light,” says Morris. “Philippe, although he’s an 

extremely respected DP in his own right, very graciously 

volunteered to take a second unit for some landscape 

shots and some of the close up work, but he was also 

there for his own experimentation with the camera.” 

Morris and Ros conferred on how best to use 

the camera, as well as discussing the possible postproduction 

routes and choices to be made in terms 

of colour space, which Morris describes as still an area 

open to experimentation. 

He’s also of the opinion the 4K workflow is still finding 

its way in general. “That’s an awful lot of data that needs 

wrangling,” he says. “You’re also moving in and out 

of a colour space that’s a tried and tested HD route, 

pathways that have been there for a while now. You’re 

going into a rather interesting new area. But the F65 is 

absolutely suited for high-end 4K production, that’s what 

the beast is designed for. I think in the next year or two 

the whole 4K world is going to mature dramatically and 

it’s going to be mainstream, absolutely.” 

Also with Morris was 1st AC Robert Dibble. “He’s 

so solid and meticulous and he ran that camera just 

as he’d run a film camera,” says Morris. “I can see 

[the F65] being a bit alien - only at first - to somebody 

from a video background, but crews coming from a 

film background are very at home with it very quickly. 

The way the eyepieces, the matte box and focus rigs 

work are exactly the same. It would fit right into a film 

workflow. I don’t see any problems that a TV Drama 

crew would have either, as they’re used to shooting on 

film anyway.” 

There are two shots Morris particularly loves in the 

final film. “There is a shot in the mist with a drystone wall 

running down the left hand side, when you see that 

projected it’s just delightful. There’s a real sense of being 

there. The other shot is a close up of a boy’s face. That’s 

a key thing about this camera - the skin tones are really 

really beautiful. His face is just alabaster, it’s very special. 

When people in the know see that they’ll know what 

fantastic flesh tones the camera is capable of.” 

Morris has two commercials coming up and a film 

later in the year. “It’s with a producer I’ve made films 

with before and we’ve been waiting a long time to get 

the next one off the ground,” he says. “So it’s something 

I’m really looking forward to - and I think it’s got F65 

written all over it.” 

Detail... Morris was impressed by 

F65’s level of detail on drystone 

walls and rural vistas. 

Lining up... Nic Morris BSC get 

the F65 camera ready for a dolly 

move. 





Meet the New Wave 

–––James Martin 

Cinematographer 

Filmography (so far): 

Payback Season, The Secret Life Of Butterflies (short), 

Dance With The Devil: The Cozy Powell Story 

When did you discover you wanted to be a 

cinematographer? 

When I went to film school, I was unsure whether I 

wanted to be a director, writer, cameraman or editor. 

At the time I thought it was possible to do all of them, 

and well. Paul Wheeler BSC made a massive impact on 

me. I forged an excellent tutor/pupil relationship with 

him that has grown into a brilliant friendship and he 

continues to be an inspiration to this day. 

Where did you train? 

The Met Film School, as part of their first ever BA course. 

What are you favourite films, and why? 

Oddly, I don’t think I’ve ever recommended a film to 

someone on the basis of the cinematography, but my 

choices are… 

RoboCop (1987, DP Jost Vacano, and Sol Negrin 

uncredited) – for its unflinching violence and scathing 

social commentary, in what could have easily been a 

“silly comic-book movie”. 

Independence Day (1996, DP Karl Walter Lindenlaub) 

– had a big impact on me as a young man in that, 

clichéd as it is, it showed me the importance of polish 

and scale in involving an audience. 

John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982, DP Dean Cundey) 

– a brilliantly simple concept, executed perfectly and 

with gory SFX that actually serve the story. The sense of 

tension in the film permeates from the screen. 

What’s the best advice you were ever given? 

I learned very early on the importance of keeping 

one’s opinion private, unless it was asked for. Too often 

I’ve seen people wade in with suggestions about 

how their bosses should do their job, only to see how 

unpopular it makes them – regardless of whether they 

were right. 

Who are your industry heroes? 

Paul Wheeler – he has been a total inspiration for me 

in the type of person I hope I can one day become, and 

is a source of great help to so many others. 

Dean Semler ACS ASC ¬ – I’m particularly fond of 

Dean’s work (Mad Max 2 is a stunning debut). I was 

overjoyed when I got the chance to speak with him last 

year and found out that not only is his work stunning, he 

is also the most down-to-earth guy you could imagine. 

Robert Richardson ASC – I strongly admire his ballsy 

lighting style. 

What’s you proudest moment? 

Either the first time I saw some film I’d loaded and 

exposed come back A-OK, or the first time I bought a 

ticket to something I’d shot! 

Tell us about your best/worst moments on set? 

Best moment – pulling off a remote head move using 

wheels, which I so rarely touch, and as the camera 

settled having the sun cut through some leaves to 

produce a beautiful flare. I can’t imagine how many 

people wait days for a shot like that, but it was waiting 

for us. Worst moment – going on to a music video shoot 

and realising the longest BNC we had was 1m long! 

Your biggest challenge on your latest project? 

Lighting the slow-motion sequence for Payback Season 

was particularly intense, as we had something along the 

lines of 30KW of tungsten light burning about fifteen feet 

away, and my crew and I were right in it for most of the 

day! I felt drunk afterwards, it was totally bizarre – I must 

have been high on light! 

Tell us your most hilarious faux pas? 

I got a job doing pick-ups on a 16mm feature and 

was really keen to use some new 85 filters I had been 

given. I’d gone through the kit list and wiped all of the 

other filters from the list, but my heart stopped when the 

director turned up with ten cans of daylight stock. Never 

have I been so thankful for inclement weather. 

Away from work, what are your greatest passions? 

I am a petrol-head and motorsports enthusiast. When 

the weather is good, I like to enjoy classic motorbikes 

and country roads. I am bit of a geek too and enjoy 

firing through video games. 

What one piece of kit could you not live without? 

My Leatherman. There is hardly a shoot I haven’t used it 

on and the countless household tasks it has done mean 

it was a worthy investment. 

Tell us your hidden talent/party trick? 

On a feature I AC’d we did a focus pull on a macro 

lens with about five rotations from start-to-end. To get a 

perfectly smooth pull, I coiled myself up like a spring and 

did a bizarre dance to untwist and twist my arms again. I 

looked like a cat chasing it’s own tail, but it worked. 

In the entire history of filmmaking, which film would 

you love to have shot? 

Grand Prix (1966, DP Lionel Lindon) by John 

Frankenheimer. It’s a film they could never make now, 

but they were inventing the art of shooting cars as they 

went along. It’s also an era of racing that fascinates me. 

Frankenheimer’s Ronin (1998, DP Robert Fraisse) also 

proved the quality of the sequences was no fluke! 

What are your current top albums? 

Don’t laugh – the soundtrack of Ashes To Ashes, Def 

Leppard’s Mirror Ball and Duran Duran’s greatest hits. 

What is your greatest extravagance? 

I like to carry a bag of “magic and happy”, which is 

usually full of childish things like sherbet dabs and so on... 

when a shot’s trying to beat me down it’s a fantastic pick 

me up. I don’t drink or smoke, so that’s my on-set vice. 

Give us three adjectives that best describe you and 

your approach to cinematography? 

Flexible. Story-driven. Efficient 

If you weren’t a DP, what job would you be doing now? 

I came extremely close to studying law at Cambridge, 

so possibly in a courtroom or an office somewhere!





45 





F-Stop Hollywood 

–––The inside track on 

what’s going on in Tinsel Town 

NAB 2012: 

4K and the 

Workflow 

4K, along with the 

sticky subject of a 

related workflow, was 

getting a sizable 

amount attention from 

production through to 

exhibition, during the 

2012 NAB Show, 14- 

19 April in Las Vegas. 

The event attracted 

an estimated 92,000 

attendees, according 

to NAB figures. 

Canon... took 4K by the scruff of 

the neck with its new low-priced 

4K C500 camera. 

Cameron... forecasted 

explosive growth in 3D stereo 

broadcasting. 

Eldorado... Curtis Clark ASC’s 

short film shot with the F65 was 

screened at NAB. 

Cinedeck... announced the new 

Cinedeck MX as a contender to 

replace the tapedeck. 

Meanwhile, one manufacturer, postproduction 

technology developer Blackmagic Design, came 

to Vegas to reveal the development of a digital 

cinematography camera that will be shipping as early 

as July for just $3000 (roughly £1,843 GBP). 

The compact Blackmagic Cinematography 

Camera, unexpected by many, turned heads not only 

for its price but for its features, including 13 stops of 

dynamic range, a 2.5K sensor, a built-in SSD recorder, 

open file format support (including CinemaDNG RAW, 

ProRes and DNxHD), and a built-in LCD with metadata 

entry. Blackmagic even threw in a copy of its new 

version 9 DaVinci Resolve colour grading software 

and Blackmagic UltraScope software for waveform 

monitoring. Blackmagic said the camera could 

accommodate Canon EF and Zeiss ZF mount lenses. 

4K Camera Technology 

To no surprise, Sony’s F65 4K camera continued to 

generate attention from those looking for high-end 

cameras. New F65 clips that were screened at the Sony 

stand (with its 4K digital cinema projector) included 

Eldorado, an eight-minute short from Curtis Clark, ASC. 

The cinematographer, who chairs the ASC Technology 

Committee, previously wrote and directed The Arrival, 

the first short lensed with the F65, which debuted at NAB 

in 2011. 

In related news Sony’s Professional Solutions of 

America has launched a Digital Motion Picture Center 

at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles. Activities will 

include hands-on F65 training, and Clark will oversee 

educational efforts. “This Center will help everyone get 

comfortable with the digital camera system and the 

workflow that supports it,” he said. 

Production is already underway on several F65 

projects, including M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth, a 

sci-fi film for Columbia starring Will Smith. Peter Suschitzky 

BSC ASC is lensing the movie. Claudio Miranda ASC is 

also working with the F65, to shoot Universal’s Oblivion, the 

Joseph Kosinski-helmed action film starring Tom Cruise. 

Last November when Canon launched its Cinema 

EOS line, the company related that 4K was on the 

development roadmap, and more details were made 

available as NAB got underway. Canon is bringing to 

the market a 4K-capable Cinema EOS C500, which 

accepts EF-mount lenses, and Cinema EOS C500 PL for 

PL-mount lenses. Both will be available later this year for 

an estimated $30,000 each. 

Canon reported that the cameras would be 

capable of recording 4K resolution with 10-bit 

uncompressed “RAW” output with no de-bayering, 

as well as quad full-HD, 2K, and full HD formats. These 

models have a Super 35mm-equivalent approximately 

8.85-megapixel CMOS sensor. 

The company also extended the 4K dialogue at 

NAB with the EOS-1D digital SLR camera with 4K support. 

According to Canon, the $15,000 camera will record up 

to 8-bit 4:2:2 Motion JPEG 4K video to the camera’s CF 

card at 24 fps. 

During a panel discussion about producing 

resolutions of 4K and higher, an executive from NHK 

restated the Japanese broadcaster’s plans to begin 

experimental Ultra High Definition broadcasts, using its 8K 

Super High-Vision system, in 2020. 

NHK and BBC are preparing to test this system during 

the London Olympics, using Super High-Vision to shoot 

the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as various 

competitive events. 

Workflow 

During its NAB press conference, AJA placed emphasis on 

4K and in particular its collaboration with Canon to launch 

the Ki Pro Quad, a solid-state portable video recorder. 

Priced at $3,995, the device was getting a lot of attention 

with its ability to capture files in 4K, Quad HD, 2K and HD. 

“Ki Pro Quad offers some amazing new ways of 

working; by creating post-friendly files to removable 

SSDs, moving the original camera RAW files to a Mac, 

and allowing 4K monitoring all at the same time,” said 

Nick Rashby, president of AJA. 

Colorfront previewed On-Set Dailies Summer 2012 

release, the next version of its on-set dailies system, 

which extends its realtime 4K dailies capabilities, 

including a realtime 4K ACES (Academy Colour 

Encoding Specification) workflow and support for 

Canon’s C500 camera. 

The new release supports the HP Z820 16-core 

workstation and the latest Kepler CUDA processing. 

According to Colorfront, combination delivers in excess 

of 100FPS parallel rendering for multiple deliverables, 

faster than real-time JPEG2000 MXF DCP and IMF 

deliverables, realtime Arriraw 4K de-bayer and 4K F65 

Raw, as well as Avid DNxHD 444 support and Sony SRFile 

playback/encoding. Colorfront On-Set Dailies has been 

used on production’s including The Avengers, Skyfall 

and World War Z. 

FilmLight showed Baselight Transfer, a real-time, 4K 

dailies processing system aimed at supporting digital 

cinema cameras including the Sony F65, ARRI Alexa and 

Red Epic. It was recently used with the F65 for a 4K ACES 

workflow for M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth. 

Also at NAB, FilmLight unveiled FLIP, a real time 

image processing tool that would allow a user to design 

looks in pre-production and apply and refine them 

on the set. The system uses FilmLight’s Baselight GPU 

renderer with Truelight Colour Management. 

Aimed at workflow advancements, Cinedeck 

gave NAB goers a look at its Cinedeck MX, a multichannel 

recorder designed to replace tapedecks. The 

rack-mountable, solid-state recording, monitoring and 

playback system supports variety of codecs, multiple 

realtime codec delivery options, and offers realtime up/ 

down/cross conversion capabilities.





Codec support includes Avid DNxHD and DNx444, 

Avid Meridien JFIF; Apple ProRes 4444; and CineForm 

and uncompressed 444 (10-bit) or 422 (8- or 10-bit). It is 

slated for availability in July, starting at $43,390. 

Codex featured its Onboard S Recorder, developed 

for use with compact HD cameras like the Sony PMW-F3 

and the Canon EOS C300. Data is recorded onto 

Codex’s new capture drives from the HD-SDI output of 

the camera. Codex recorders were used recently with 

ARRI Alexa cameras by Seamus McGarvey, BSC, ASC on 

The Avengers and Caleb Deschanel, ASC on Abraham 

Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Cinematographers currently 

using Codex recorders with the Alexa include Roger 

Deakins BSC ASC (Skyfall), Bojan Bozelli ASC (The Lone 

Ranger), Thomas Newton Siegel ASC (The Seventh Son) 

and Chris Menges BSC ASC (Hummingbird). 

1 Beyond showed the 1 Beyond Wrangler with 

Assimilate Scratch Lab, a portable dailies system that 

offers features including real-time playback and review 

of media up to 5K resolution. The system is currently 

available in two hardware configurations, starting at 

$8,995. Assimilate also gave a technology preview of 

a new 3D composting function within its Scratch DI 

grading system. The company plans to release this new 

feature before IBC 2012, and pricing is expected to be 

highly competitive. 

Bluefish444 is now offering Fluid 4K Review, a 

Windows player developed specifically to preview 4K 

RGB/YUV files output from Bluefish444 Epoch | Supernova 

video cards on 4K capable LCD’s and projectors. The 

company said it was developed for cinematographers, 

visual effects artists and other professional who want to 

preview digital dailies in native 4K resolution. 

The upcoming version of Digital Vision’s Nucoda 

Film Master—shown at NAB—will include support for 

RED Epic HDRx and the Sony F65 4K camera (SRMASTER 

format), as well as the ACES (Academy Colour Encoding 

Specification) workflow. 

3D at NAB 

James Cameron and Vince Pace, co-founders and cochairmen 

of Cameron | Pace Group, brought 3D to the 

Black Magic... surprised almost 

everyone with its new, ultra-low 

cost 2K camera. 

NAB dialogue during a SuperSession. 

“The future of 3D is broadcast and we are going to 

see explosive grown over the next few years,” Cameron 

told the crowd. 

Pace introduced more than 10 new products during 

the presentation. New technologies aimed at features 

and episodic series work include two new integrated 

Shadow rigs, one for Red’s Epic and one for ARRI’s new 

model Alexa M; and a Mini X-Frame, a modular X-Frame 

package. For broadcasting and sports, new technologies 

include the Camnet Profile Manager, a centralised ‘5D’ 

sports production management system; and the Shadow 

D handheld rig, which weighs roughly 20 pounds. 

Also in the 3D arena, 3Ality Technica (as it was 

rebranded when 3Ality Digital acquired Element Techica 

just before IBC 2011) introduced its Helix 3D rig, which 

can be used for handheld or studio use for features and 

broadcasting, according to senior vp Stephen Pizzo. 

3Ality also presented a Sony PMW-F3 accessories kit. 

P+S Technik showed a new PS-Micro Rig, a compact 

and lightweight 3D mirror rig designed for use with micro 

cameras such as the SI-2K. P+S reported that it could be 

used remote controlled or manually. 

Additional NAB News 

The subject of High Frame Rates is getting louder. For 

postproduction, SGO featured version 6.5 of its DI system 

Mistika, which supports 2D and Stereo 3D at 48 fps and 

60 fps. The company worked closely with Park Road Post 

Production in Wellington to develop the high frame rate 

postproduction system that is currently in use on Peter 

Jackson’s The Hobbit, which is being shot at 48 fps using 

Red Epics and 3Ality rigs. 

With an eye toward The Hobbit and additional HFR 

productions, projector makers such as Christie were 

demonstrating HFR projection at their NAB stands. 

Assimilate has also broken new ground with highframe 

rates, with Scratch and Scratch Lab supporting 

Sony F65 at 48fps, and RED Epic 3D stereo at 48fps. 

Just prior to the start of NAB, Cooke reported that 

it has “significantly expanded” its workforce of skilled 

assembly technicians since 2011 in response to the 

47 

increasing demand for PL glass. “As digital cameras with 

PL mounts, such as the Alexa, RED and Sony F65, have 

grown in popularity, so we have seen demand increase 

exponentially for our lenses,” said Les Zellan, chairman 

and owner, Cooke Optics. “In order to keep pace with 

demand we have expanded our workforce and created 

several apprenticeships which, in times of recession, is a 

remarkable and gratifying thing to be able to do.” 

Thales Angenieux was on hand in Las Vegas with two 

new Optimo Zoom Lenses. The Optimo19.5-94mm and 

Optimo 28-340mm lenses enable image coverage up to 

31.4mm and are developed for S35 film and large format 

sensor cameras. 

Matthews Studio Equipment introduced Skycrapers, a 

new line of lighting stands. 

Skyscrapers weigh 110-160 lbs., load at 53” to 58” 

and raise up to 137” to 180”. Maximum load tops out at 

286 lbs. “This is quite different from other stands, including 

our veteran stands,” said Robert Kulesh, vp, sales and 

marketing. “And, because each stand is constructed 

from square tubing, the chance for rotational torqueing is 

eliminated.” 

Cine Gear returning 

to Los Angeles 

A sampling of the production technologies found at NAB 

can be examined at Cine Gear Expo, which returns to The 

Studios at Paramount in Los Angeles from 1-3 June. 

During the event, E.F. (Bob) Nettmann, president of 

Nettmann Systems International, will be presented with 

Cine Gear’s Technical Lifetime Achievement Award. 

Nettmann has received various industry honours. Most 

recently, in February Nettmann, along with Michael 

Sayovitz, Brad Fritzel and Fred Mille, received Scientific 

and Engineering Awards, which are Academy Plaques, 

during the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and 

Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards. They were 

recognised for the Stab-C Classic, Super-G and Stab-C 

Compact stabilising heads. 

The Cine Gear programme will include a masterclass 

on lighting. Scheduled presenters include Jacek Laskus, 

ASC and Ueli Steiger, ASC. 





Letter from America 

–––Steven Poster ASC 

H Y P E R – 

R E A L I T Y 

There’s something remarkable going on in the way our 

culture now creates and consumes entertainment and 

media. Through a constant overlay of technologies, we 

have not only changed our physical surroundings, but 

also the way we react to even the most mundane of 

everyday events. 

A recent, striking example was driving with a car full 

of colleagues and friends, on our way to a restaurant in 

another city. We all knew the address of the restaurant, 

but not the exact location. As I looked up from the map 

on my Smartphone display, I laughed to see everyone 

else in the car with their heads bowed in silence, carefully 

tracking our progress on their iPhones. (Thankfully, the 

driver was using the GPS on the car’s navigation 

screen.) The restaurant could have been across 

the street but, of course, we never would have 

arrived until Google Maps told us that was so. 

Another revelation came to me while 

watching this years Oscar telecast (no, I don’t 

go every year). After seeing ‘follow us @’ flashed 

on our screens a number of times I realized that 

those of us who only had the telly on were missing 

half of the entertainment value because we 

weren’t connected to the technological overlays that 

were being offered simultaneously, not to mention the 

advertising targeted to those who were experiencing the 

entire ball of wax. 

Those kinds of technological overlay are now 

commonplace, and have created a total cultural 

shift in how our American Camera Union, Local 600, 

International Cinematographers Guild trains its members 

to succeed and thrive in the motion picture, television 

and commercial industries. The most obvious result of this 

overlay is how many people are involved in the creation 

of the visual image – on set or on location - and how we, 

as a Guild, must service a shoot in ways we have never 

had to before. 

A clear example are the many video monitors now 

prevalent on set, all of which must be carefully calibrated 

to render a close, if not near-perfect, approximation of 

what the captured image is going to look like. Whatever 

the director, production designer, producer, actors, ADs, 

and others see on those monitors indelibly colors the 

creative process in ways both large and small. Imagine a 

post-production team being saddled with imagery that 

bears no true resemblance to the director’s vision because 

production’s HD monitors were not tweaked by capable 

Union craftspeople, or worse, not calibrated at all. 

I had an embarrassing situation at a Hollywood Post 

Alliance monitor symposium last year, where the best 

and brightest of our technology world were gathered to 

Steven Poster ASC says the 

bigger and more complex a 

system gets the more potential 

there is for things to go wrong. 

discuss the future of image display. I was asked to set up 

a little scene and light it so that we could display a live 

image on all of the monitors in the room. I carefully lit and 

color corrected the image using a popular on-set color 

management system. I walked away satisfied that we had 

done a good job providing a feed for the other monitors 

in the room. The next morning I came back to the venue 

only to see all of the monitors in the room looking horribly 

wrong. I admit I went a bit loony trying to figure it out with 

dozens of technicians and sales people hanging over my 

shoulder offering suggestions. It was a simple solution; the 

monitor I was given to color correct with the night before 

was never calibrated so that in the morning when the 

monitors around the room were connected they all looked 

(I was tempted to say something rude) terrible. Even with 

all of the experts standing there we still couldn’t get it right 

the first time. Imagine if it was your job at stake. 

This consistency of image support must flow all the 

way through the pipeline for a project to be successful 

and accurately reflect creative intent – from the moment 

of capture and display all the way down through post 

production, previews, and the day things are finalized 

for whatever exhibition path may lay ahead. And 

technology, terminology, and humanology (don’t try 

playing that last one on Words With Friends) have all been 

drastically altered to accomplish a new kind of seamless 

workflow. 

In this world of digital bits (and bytes) our highly 

trained technicians play a variety of key roles 

that go to the very heart of facilitating this new 

paradigm. In rough chronological order they are: 

capture, treat, display, record and preserve the 

image. These are the different domains of the 

camera crew in the era of new digital workflows. 

And this technological overlay I’m talking 

about has made a century-old process (light 

meters, film dailies, lab color timing) that was 

once transparent to everyone but the camera 

team, visible and accessible to virtually anyone involved 

in making a movie. 

It is a loud wake-up call for the entire industry to unify, 

and work closely in concert – producers adequately filling 

and hiring all of the vital on-set crafts, cinematographers 

communicating early and often with VFX supervisors and 

digital colorists, are just a few examples. And while no one 

can predict exactly where this new dawn is taking us, one 

thing is certain: the bigger and more complex a system 

gets the more potential there is for things to go wrong. 

That’s why we need to not only watch each other’s 

backs as the ground shifts beneath us, but our front and 

sides as well. 

Steven Poster ASC 

President, International Cinematographers Guild, Local 600





GBCT 

–––The chairman’s statement 

& news from The Guild 

Flying 

high 

I recently had the pleasure of doing a diploma 

assessment on a very good focus puller who was 

working on a dramatised documentary about World 

War 2 Spitfire pilots and their exploits during the siege of 

Malta. The production budget meant that they had one 

very accurate life size model of the aircraft and were 

using CGI to create a full squadron on the airfield. Few 

productions now can afford many of the real things, 

let alone fly them. This brought back memories of the 

glorious summer of 1988, when I spent three months with 

eight fully-airworthy Spitfires, three Messerschmitts, one 

Junkers Ju52, and several other old and new aircraft 

camera platforms, filming for the aerial unit of Piece Of 

Cake (the LWT six-part drama series about the lives of 

Spitfire pilots). It added poignancy that my candidate’s 

partner had been my clapper/loader on that series, all 

those years ago. 

Back then, in the eighties, we had to gloss over the 

fact that Spitfires had not taken part in the early days 

of the war as there were no airworthy Hurricanes left 

in the world (there are some now). Charlton House, 

near Cirencester, stood in for a French chateau, partly 

because its architecture suited, but also because the 

main garden was a grass landing strip large enough to 

take the full squadron. A low stone bridge near Winston, 

Co. Durham, over the River Tees made a stunning 

location for the series’ most ambitious stunt scenes. This 

comprised of three scenes, one where the pilot chickens 

out, one who crashes and the other who succeeds in 

flying under the bridge. For those who have seen it and 

are in doubt, Ray Hanna really did fly a Spitfire under 

that bridge. I was on the 300mm, looking head on as he 

flew towards us and cleared our heads by about 10 feet. 

It is hard to believe as the bridge is barely wide enough 

to fit the aircraft, but he managed it with his propeller 

blades skimming the water. Only the crash was faked! 

49 

Guild of British 

Camera Technicians 

Board Members. 

Tim Potter (1AC/Focus Puller) 

(Chairman) 

Sarah Hayward (Script Supervisor) 

David Worley (Camera Operator) 

(Vice-Chairs) 

Jamie Harcourt (Camera Operator) 

Jem Morton (Key Grip) 

John Keedwell (Lighting Camera) 

Keith Mead (Key Grip) 

Louise Ben-Nathan (2AC/Clapper Loader) 

Trevor Coop (Camera Operator) 

Darren Miller (Camera Operator) 

Julian Morson (Camera Operator) 

Hilda Sealy (1AC/Focus Puller) 

(Board Members) 

Rod Marley (1AC/Focus Puller) 

(Honorary Treasurer) 

The aerial unit lived a peripatetic life between 

several airfields in the south of England that still looked 

as they did in the 1940s. We even opened up an original 

war-time air strip above Beachy Head that had not 

been used since the war, but had long returned to its 

peacetime role as a wheat field. This flying circus usually 

flew in formation around a B25 twin-engine bomber 

converted to use as a camera platform. A Clearwater 

Periscope poked through the forward compartment 

floor for the forward looking shots, and two ARRI IIIs 

with 10-1 Cookes looked out of the rear opening and 

side windows. A Harvard and an Agusta 109 were also 

used as camera platforms. Unusually for a TV drama 

of this period, it was not shot on 16mm. but on 35mm 

3-perf. This was a rare format for the time. Our cameras 

were the only 3-perf cameras available and had just 

finished working on Dallas. The principle unit had a 

Panaflex Gold and a Panaflex X, while the aerial unit 

had three ARRI IIIs (two 3-perf and one 4-perf). To give 

us flexibility for the cameras fixed into the Harvard 

two-seater, and sometimes on the helicopter mounts, 

we used an unusual compact zoom, the 18-100 T5.6 

Cooke. It’s beautiful lens, and if anyone knows what 

happened to it please get in touch. Peter Jessop, the 

principle unit director of photography, was shooting on 

tungsten stock without 85 filters to increase the amount 

of information recorded in the blue layer of the emulsion. 

Sometimes we had to use various strengths of 81 filters to 

compensate for the colour temperatures of the light we 

were experiencing at height, often up to 9000K. 

Few productions since have been able to afford 

the luxury of so many airworthy rare aircraft for such 

an extended shoot. The footage we produced, so 

excellently shot by Simon Werry and Geoff Mulligan, is 

now a resource for other productions to obtain shots of 

close and formation scenes, which are now increasingly 

difficult to get the old fashioned way. I often catch my 

breath when I see one of our shots come up in other 

shows. Many were used in Foyle’s War. 

My most abiding memory is of standing in the back of 

the B25 looking out through the open window. Although I 

felt like I was standing upright, we were doing a tight turn 

and my body was horizontal. In front of me, in formation 

with us, was a Spitfire and a Messerschmitt in a vertical line 

with the historic centre of Cirencester as the backdrop. 

This is just the tip of an iceberg of great memories of a 

privileged opportunity to work with lovely old planes. 

Tim Potter, Chair, GBCT 





GFM Munich GF-8 Xten 

We are about to take delivery of a GFM Munich GF-8 

Xten modular rigid Camera Crane which builds out in 

sections to a max reach of 50 feet taking a 50kg head 

and camera package! 

Along with the Jimmy Jibs, this will also go on our 

Monster, fully-motorised, 4x4 base, enabling the camera 

cranes to be repositioned at will, across almost all terrain. 

Now you can have 50 setups in one day instead of just 

the three. For details: www.simonpriestman.tv 

Simon Priestman, GBCT 

Lighting Cameraman and Jimmy Jib Owner / Operator 

Considering cameras 

On reading the news from the NAB show in LAS Vegas 

this year, it really struck me that we are potentially at 

a pivotal point in our development of cinema, and 

camera technology in particular. With NAB being 

predominantly a broadcast show, and not cinema 

focused, there were many launches of electronic 

cameras that are capable of resolutions in 4K, albeit with 

somewhat of a “4K ready” caveat and in many cases. 

There were many new developments from Sony, 

including the 4K resolution FS700, and Canon launched 

the C500, a camera capable of 4K resolution on a 

S35mm CMOS chip. Added to the mix was the rather 

startling design of the new Blackmagic Cinema Camera 

with a 2.5K sensor. A very bold name for such a small 

and inexpensive camera. 

Also, never a company to rest on its already 

excellent groundbreaking record, the RED camera again 

raised the (already high) bar and trumped everyone 

with the 6K upgrade option to the Epic and Scarlet-X 

cameras with the Red Dragon sensor. The RED Epic sensor 

upgrade is $6,000 and will enable a full 5K resolution up to 

120fps. The Scarlet price is yet to be announced. 

What is particularly interesting with all these new 

developments is the high specifications of all the 

cameras, and the use of a Super 35mm-sized sensor 

and PL lens mount on many of the cameras. The 

exception is the Blackmagic Cinema that uses a more 

traditional smaller 15.81mm x 8.88mm sensor, a size that 

falls somewhere between S16mm film and Micro 4/3rds, 

and this is perhaps a strange decision in a market that 

is trending back to make larger S35mm sensors. What is 

phenomenal about the Sony camera is the fact that it 

has the ability to shoot 120fps and 240fps in full HD. 

However, many of the cameras may have been 

developed to capture the “gold rush” or “feeding 

frenzy” there is for new cameras with higher resolutions 

and higher dynamic ranges. Most of the cameras 

mentioned have an “unfinished” situation, and many 

will need to have “upgrades” in the near future to 

enable them to record the full output of their 4K sensor. 

For example, the Sony FS700 4K output is described by 

Sony as, “a future firmware upgrade that will enable 

the NEX-FS700E to output 4K RAW bit-stream data over 

3G HD-SDI when used with an optional external 4K 

recorder.” Basically, if you want to record at 4K right now 

with the Sony, you will have to wait a while. The Canon 

Cameras... are potentially 

at pivotal point with higherresolutions 

now available for 

much less cost. 

C500 is not available until perhaps the end of 2012, and 

the Blackmagic is currently on pre-order (here in the UK, 

at the time of writing). 

The Blackmagic camera is perhaps suited to a 

different part of the market and, with a sub $3,000 

(£1,925 UK) price tag, when it is eventually made 

available this is most certainly the case. The Canon and 

Sony are at different price points, and the Canon will 

be around $30,000 (approx £18,400) on launch and the 

Sony will be around $8,000 (approx £4,900). 

RED were the instigators of the competition for 

low-cost, yet highest quality cameras a few years ago, 

with the famous RED One camera. This smacked many 

established camera manufacturers squarely in the 

face when many said they couldn’t achieve what they 

wanted to at the price point. After RED achieved it, then 

there has since been a rapid (perhaps exponential) 

increase in quality, high-resolution cameras for so low a 

price that would be unheard of a few years ago. 

Whilst there is a “new wave” of high-resolution 

and relatively inexpensive cameras hitting the markets 

in the near future, this will bring the possibility of a 

high-quality image making to many people. However, 

the skills in making the cameras perform to “tell the 

story” with the “look” and all areas of the operation is 

overlooked. It is like buying a set of new woodworking 

tools from a DIY store and then immediately expecting 

to be an expert carpenter, for example. One needs 

to know how to get the very best from the tools and 

make them work for us, not fight them. 

It will be interesting to see if someone comes along 

and makes a feature film that is due to the readily 

available equipment and other tools. It happened with 

Monster a few years back of course, although making 

the film like that would not suit everyone, especially the 

financers! Making the film is one factor of course, then 

there is the distribution that often makes people fall, as 

their distribution is not in place. 

John Keedwell GBCT 

Training essential 

I, like you, see many fine films that entertain, thrill and 

take us to places we cannot imagine. That is the magic 

of this business. It is all an illusion, of course, as we are 

simply looking at light projected onto a screen, along 

with sound, costume, make-up and special effects (and 

many others) created by a team of passionate creative 

people. A script is a story that can be told in many ways, 

and each individual has a part to play in the end result. 

Take the film Avatar as an example, visually this was a 

feast of places that were magical and beyond wild 

imagination. Or Alien, a film that will shock and petrify 

most people. Other films make us laugh, cry and a 

mixture of all those emotions, yet we are simply watching 

light on a screen. 

The technical side of making these films can 

mostly be learned by someone who is able to grasp 

techniques, and who is willing to go the extra mile. It 

takes years to work up through the camera department, 

and now there are qualifications that need to be in 

place before a grip can swing a camera crane. Rightly 

so. We work in a film (or movie) “business”, and safety 

should be high on the priorities. Yes, go for the shot that 

has the “Wow factor” (such as the Tom Cruise stunt on 

the Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol at the Burj Khalifa 

in Dubai) yet make it safe. 

As the technology rapidly advances into 3D, CGI 

and other areas, many areas advance and new 

technology is born that enhances our work days, and 

makes what we are producing more exciting, in all 

areas. Without the core knowledge and understanding 

of the principles, and knowing how to push those areas 

to the limit and then beyond is exciting. It does take 

an extremely talented and organised team to make it 

happen however. That is where training at an early stage 

is vital if we are able to push the boundaries in the future.





Working hours 

It was clear from the recent GBCT poll that quality and 

training are the lifeblood to our industry, and GBCT 

members are passionate about the core values and 

professionalism that we all hold dear. The standards of entry 

are still being held high, with every new potential person 

joining being scrutinised in great detail by the board. 

However, it is safe to say that our skills as highly 

trained crew members are potentially being lost due 

to production staff lack of training themselves. Some 

crews are being booked not because they are the 

best available, but because they cost less per day than 

someone else, or they can perhaps throw in equipment 

at no cost. It is hard for some experienced crews to 

compete with this, and what needs to happen is a 

recognition of the skills and talent that a properly trained 

team will produce. It will ultimately cost LESS to hire a 

well-trained crew, as they can overcome pitfalls and 

challenges that inexperience will have to constantly 

work out on the set. 

One of the factors that is quite alarming is the 

lack of knowledge of the law concerning the 11-hour 

turnaround. Due to the nature of filmmaking and the 

diverse locations we travel to, this can mean a great 

degree of travel before and after a working day. It can 

often mean driving for more than a few hours a day in 

addition to the actual “work” day. The rules set out by 

law in the UK and Europe are clear 

The Working Time Regulations 1998 

10. (1) An adult worker is entitled to a rest period of not 

less than eleven consecutive hours in each 24-hour 

period during which he works for his employer. 

This doesn’t mean a wrap at 8pm and then back at 8am 

the next day if on location miles from anywhere! Travel 

time needs to be taken into consideration, and if shooting 

somewhere, say 100 miles away from base, it is best to 

schedule that in or, better still, have the possibility of a 

hotel ready for them to stay in to save a long drive whilst 

tired. 100 miles is, say, an hour and half by motorway, 

more if starting in the countryside. So perhaps three hours 

of driving each day leaves not a lot of time to rest. 

There have already been many cases of film crews 

falling asleep at the wheel and killing themselves and 

others, so let’s help the production staff be made 

conscious of this legal ruling. 

51 

Time... long working hours on 

set can be a massive problem 

elsewhere. 

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