AmericanCinematographer201201

◗ Lord of War
Top: Marcius bows to his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) as he is honored by Rome for his bravery
in battle. Bottom: Marcius eventually finds himself at odds with Rome’s fickle politicians.
Driscoll, and B-camera 1st AC Drasko
Pejanovic pulling focus directly from
the lens.“I guess it’s a thing from my
documentary days,” says Ackroyd. “I’d
rather have the focus puller on a gear
wheel than using a remote focus,
because that way he can feel your movements
and watch the action, and if you
need to make a change yourself, you’re
able to use your left hand to grab the
focus wheel.”
Cameras were positioned to
cover action simultaneously and intercut
in different directions, revealing new
information with each shot. “No part of
any location was out of bounds,” says
Ackroyd. “You think you’re seeing in
more directions than you really are. It’s
an illusion that works well; by creating a
360-degree world, you make the audience
feel totally involved.”
The production had a featurescale
grip-and-electric package, but the
work in Pancevo rarely called for any
major setups. “I wouldn’t light a day
exterior, particularly a battle scene,” says
Ackroyd. Instead, he worked with 1st
AD Zoran Andric to time the shoot so
he could keep the actors backlit by the
sun. As the battle calms and elsewhere,
he used mirrors and 6'x6' Griffolyn
bounces to redirect daylight into a
scene. “I try not to use big lights [on day
exteriors] because you’re losing the
battle if you’re trying to fight nature,” he
says.
As Marcius advances on Aufidius
and the Volscians, distant 6K HMI Pars
and 18Ks diffused with silk, Grid
Cloth, 250 or 251 combined with
strategic T-stop pulls helped keep the
exposure even while the camera moved
through the war-torn apartment blocks.
Tiffen NDs and Schneider True Polas
were used to keep the [12:1] Optimos
open to T2.8 whenever possible,
“although when you’re at the end of a
24-290mm, you need a little more
depth-of-field than that, maybe a T5.6
or T8,” Ackroyd adds.
The face-off between Marcius
and Aufidius was shot in a damaged
wing of the Hotel Yugoslavia. “These
two figures emerge like ghosts from the
mist,” says Fiennes, who describes this
scene as one of the more theatrical
moments in the film. “The film has two
sides — it bursts into movement in the
battle zones, and then there are the
more formal confrontations.”
Ackroyd made sure to keep the
cameras from getting between the two
soldiers as they grappled for domination.
“The camerawork is all from what
I call ‘outside the circle,’” he says. “You’re
an observer, always over someone’s
shoulder. Rarely is there a clean single of
anyone.”
Because the cameras were seeing
in all directions, key lights were difficult
66 January 2012 American Cinematographer