86 April 2014 American Cinematographer

then, he says, “If we had five scenes inthe room, we’d shoot out in one direc-tion and keep changing the actors’wardrobe and background players.”

The canteen, a second-floor loca-tion, was lit entirely with natural lightthrough the windows. In locations thatrequired supplemental light throughwindows, including Ila’s apartment, thecrew positioned 4Ks on tall standsinstead of Condors or scissor lifts, whichare costly to rent in India. “The standsgo incredibly high — much higher thanwould be allowed in the West!” saysSimmonds.

On most domestic interiors, heused fluorescent fixtures. “In reality, aroom in someone’s home might be litwith a single fluorescent tube, but I usedmore than that on any one angle,” hesays.

By contrast, Saajan’s homefeatures tungsten practicals. Batra notesthat for Indians, this is meaningful:Only Catholics use tungsten, whereasupwardly mobile Hindus, like Ila, usefluorescents. Simmonds strove to teaseout such cultural nuances. “There is a lotof subtle subtext in Ritesh’s script, and Iencouraged him to make some of thatmore obvious to a Western audience,”he says.

Apart from giving feedback onsome screen shots that were emailed tohim, Simmonds was not involved in thefinal grade, which took place atLaboratoire Arane Gulliver in Paris.“Being present at the color correction onan independent film means that youhappen to live in the city where it’sbeing timed, and this was an interna-tional project, with a lot of elementshappening in different places,” he notes.

By the time The Lunchbox wasreleased in the United States, in lateFebruary, it was already a big hit in Indiaand abroad. Simmonds became aware ofthis when he arrived at an Indian restau-rant in Atlanta, Ga., to shoot a scene forhis next feature. “I mentioned I’d shotThe Lunchbox, and I was an instantcelebrity!”

— Patricia Thomson

A Girl Walks Home Alone at NightDirector: Ana Lily AmirpourCinematographer: Lyle Vincent

Imagine hearing this elevatorpitch: “It’s an Iranian vampire Western,shot in black-and-white, with a bombsoundtrack.” That was writer/directorAna Lily Amirpour’s one-liner for AGirl Walks Home Alone at Night, andcinematographer Lyle Vincent recalls,“When I heard that, of course I wantedto sign up!”

He is glad he did. Collaboratingwith Amirpour on her debut featureallowed him to create a unique world,one that channels a little David Lynch,some film noir and the wide, emptyspaces of a Spaghetti Western. Whenconjuring the Iranian ghost town BadCity, home to a host of sordid souls andone vampire, Vincent found himselfreveling in the distortions of vintageXtal Express anamorphic lenses, whichhe paired with an Arri Alexa Studio.

Vincent and Amirpour are birdsof a feather, both coming from art back-grounds. Vincent, who won the 2006ASC John A. Alonzo Heritage Awardfor student cinematography, dabbled inpainting and fine-art photographybefore heading to New York University,where he earned an M.F.A. in film. Hisfeature credits include another 2014Sundance Film Festival entry, Cooties.

Born in England to Iranianimmigrants, Amirpour was raised in theUnited States. She attended art schoolin San Francisco and eventually foundher way into UCLA’s screenwritingprogram. By the time she made A GirlWalks Home, she had written 10 featurescripts and created a graphic novelbased on her vampire film.

Amirpour’s film is a mash-up:The actors are Iranian, the dialogue isFarsi, and Bad City is a desolate Texasoil town with Farsi street signs. (Themovie was shot in Southern California.)The archetypical characters include aPersian James Dean; his father, theGambler; a tattooed Pimp; a Prostitute,and, of course, the Vampire. Thisbloodsucker is a young pixie in fullchador, but underneath she wears astriped sailor shirt, and she rides askateboard and grooves to British rock.Of her inspirations, Amirpour writes,“It’s like Sergio Leone and DavidLynch had an Iranian rock ’n’ roll baby,and then Nosferatu came and babysat.”Specific inspirations included OnceUpon a Time in the West, Rumble Fish,Blade Runner and all of Lynch’s films.

The idea was to mold thesedisparate parts into something timeless.“Black-and-white gave us a lot,” notesthe director. So, too, does the glidingcamerawork, which was accomplishedchiefly with a Steadicam. “We owe a lot

! 5 Park City Standouts

A young vampire on the streets in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.

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88 April 2014 American Cinematographer

to our Steadicam operator, ScottDropkin,” says Vincent. “He came in fora week and gave us everything weneeded.”

Equally important to the look andfeel are the hard, noir-style lighting andthe 2.40:1 anamorphic image. Of thelatter, Vincent observes, “Lily and I loveall the weird flaws of the lenses — theflares, the streaking, the breathing, thedistortions.” The cinematographer orig-inally hoped to use Panavision C Series

anamorphics, but they were not avail-able when it came time to shoot. (Sometest shots that he captured with themmade it into the film, however.)

So, he dug out some of his oldZeiss Xtal Express lenses. “They werenot in good shape,” he says, but theyproved ideal for the part. Sphericallenses adapted with a Shiga anamorphicelement, they had a fast aperture and avintage coating that gave a very expres-sive look. “They were pretty close to the

Panavision Cs, but even funkier,” saysVincent.

His well-worn lenses were re-built by Panavision optical engineerDan Sasaki and Guy McVicker, thecamera service manager at PanavisionHollywood. Panavision then supple-mented Vincent’s lenses with someCooke and Zeiss Xtal Express anamor-phics and added an Angenieux Optimo25-250mm HR zoom and a 100mmmacro lens. Fortunately, color matchingwasn’t an issue because the final imagewould be monochrome. “The lenses areall over the place, and the contrast isreally low, so they don’t look great incolor, but in black-and-white they reallyshine,” says Vincent. “They gave usmore latitude, and the blacks came up alittle. Lily and I loved them.”

Vincent’s go-to lenses were aCooke Xtal Express 25mm T.3 and aZeiss Xtal Express 35mm T1.3. “The25mm is a beautiful lens, and we used itfor POV shots and when the father issick and tripping out,” he says. “Weusually stopped that down.” The 35mm“was a really funky lens. The edges arevery distorted, and that’s particularlynoticeable in shots where the highlightsare really stretched, like right before the

! 5 Park City Standouts

Top:Cinematographer

Lyle Vincent(right) and

director Ana LilyAmirpour assessa shot. Bottom:

Preparing thescene are

(clockwise fromforeground left)

1st AC JoeyAlvarado,

Vincent,Amirpour, actress

Sheila Vand andbest boy electric

Jake Magee.

Persian James Dean and the vampiremeet on the street. On the Alexa with afull 4:3 frame, those distortions becomeeven more apparent. It was perfect forthe painterly, expressionistic tone wewanted.

“My lighting was basically all hard,single-source light,” he continues. “Weonly used tungsten lights that were avail-able in the 1940s because we wanted thenoir look of that era; we had one 5K,some 2Ks and smaller units.” On thehaunted streets, he tended to use avail-able light from the streetlights and thenposition a 5K for backlight. In general, hesays, his approach “was about keepingdeep, rich shadows. We always wanted ablack reference and a white reference tomake true black-and-white photography.I don’t like when black-and-white is allgray tones. I like to see the full range oftones.”

The images were recorded inProRes 4:4:4:4 to SxS cards. “We wereshooting available light in a little town atnight, and I pushed it to the max: 3,200ISO and a 270-degree shutter,” Vincentrecalls. “In color, you’d see more of thenoise and grain, but in black-and-whiteit just blended in. There is some stopped-down, deep-field focus on some exteriorsbecause we wanted more of thatSpaghetti Western feel. So on day exteri-ors we’d get down to a T8 or T5.6. Butwe were always at T2 or T2.8 at night.”

Vincent used Arri’s Look Creatorto devise a black-and-white viewingLUT, which he applied on set to a SonyOLED monitor. “It was a very deepcontrast,” he says. In post, “we trans-formed the color images into mono-chrome using the color channels in theDaVinci Resolve, and then fine-tunedfrom there.” The color correction wasdone at Los Angeles facility Runwaywith colorist Zak Meadows.

While excited about the film’senthusiastic reception at Sundance,Amirpour was especially thrilled by heruncle’s reaction back in Iran. “He lovedit,” she says. “He said, ‘The kids are defi-nitely going to get this on the blackmarket.’”

— Patricia Thomson

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