lefutur-bymadelynmost-5563

7/30/2019 LeFutur-byMadelynMost-5563

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Le FuturRandom

thoughts on

Returning home to France last winter, I wondered how cinematographers

here would respond to the {digital versus lm} debate. Ater lengthyinterviews and discussions, each person decided to compose their owncontribution in their own words. Here are their most immediate, honest,and sincere thoughts on the subject.

written and compiledby Madelyn Most

Im one o these dinosaurs, as Chivo called me, who stilluse lm. Im really ortunate as well because nobody toldme yet, you have to use a digital camera no matter whatyou think.

For my three last eature lms , all three directors (ouractually), Alexander Sokurov, Tim Burton and the CoenBrothers, asked me my eeling about shooting in digital.It shows that we are not the only ones to be obsessedby the changing o time. Directors have their own reasonsto go or not go or digital.

Not having to reload lm and keep the momentum going

with the actors is sometimes or them, good enough reasonto think that digital is a great system. Interestingly enough,ater talking with these directors, or artistic reasons, wedecided to shoot those three movies, Faust, DarkShadows and Inside Llewyn Davis, on lm. For all three,

the look and the texture o lm was what they wereaiming or, however all these movies were digitally graded.

Ive never been a purist. Im not a pure cinematographerin the sense o < what you see on set is what youll get onthe print >. Ever since Amelie I use digital grading to getan image I couldnt get with a chemical process, thereore,everything I am doing on set is based on the nal result.

On Harry Potter 5- the Half Blood Prince my contrast ratiowas only about 4 stops because I was looking or a greypalette with almost no highlights. A higher contrast wouldhave made this impossible without bending everything

later on.But wasnt that what we were doing with the ENR process orbleach bypass? We had to be careul and pay close attentionto what the chemicals were actually doing on the negative,and do what was necessary on set to avoid problems.

Bruno Delbonnel

SINCE I NEVER SHOT WITH A DIGITAL CAMERA, MY POINT OF VIEW IS PROBABLYIRRELEVANT SINCE I DIDNT HAVE TO FACE COLLABORATION WITH A DIGITALTECHNICIAN OR WHOEVER WOULD BE ON SET TELLING ME WHAT TO DO OR NOT DO.


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e u urRandomthoughts on

Up until now, people have been using digital cameras onlyor economical reasons: it is cheaper, (even though I thinkthats a lie). I you want good quality, the post productionis expensive, its lighter... but all those things have nothingto do with an artistic point o view. An economical reasonis considered a good enough reason. The problem isthat people have been asking digital to look like lm.Thats stupid. Its as i you were asking an aquarelle,a watercolour, to look like an oil painting. Its not onlyimpossible, its ridiculous. We ound ourselves in situationswhere they wanted to create a bleach bypass look witha digital camera. My answer to this kind o request was

always: I you want a bleach bypass look, do it or realon lm. Use lm negative because it, (the bleach bypassprocess) was created or lm. You dont bleach bypasspixels, do you?

Regarding the control we have on our images, I think ithas always been a problem. I remember a producer tellingme he was paying an actress a lot o money, thereorehe wanted to see her. Translating that sentence into DPslanguage, it means < Dont go too dark...> I try to workaround these kinds o requests and not try to convincethem that they are wrong. Instead, I try to nd another lookthan the one I was aiming or and creatively, its even more

interesting, because inside those problems you can ndsolutions you never expected to nd. Also, I try toavoid battles I know I will lose anyway.

Because Im bending the image so much, I work withpeople I trust and who understand what Im looking or.Since I started, Ive only worked with two graders: YvanLucas and Peter Doyle, and both o them, aside o beinggreat technicians and artists, are absolutely on my side.They are involved in all discussions I have with the directorabout the look. While shooting, they grade the dailies andon a regular basis, we show the director these evolvinggrades so usually, when I nish principal photography, thelook o the lm is very close to the nal look. Working thisway helps to control the visual eects as well. Everybody isaiming towards the same goal: the grade Ive determinedand that has been approved by the director.

With regards to digital cameras, when I shot Harry Potter,I tested all the digital cameras on the market at that timeand none o them were as good as lm, but that was 6years ago. Now since the Alexa , which Ive tested, its adierent game.

It means or movies, there are digital cameras and digitalcameras. You dont compare an 8 by 10 negative with a 24X 36 negative, so why should we compare an Alexa with aCanon 5D?

You dont use an 8X10 camera to take pictures on therontlines o a war, you use a Leica. This raises the questionabout the nal result: What is it we want to get?? WhenI say Im not a purist, that means my one and only goal isthe nal result, the image I want to get. I love contemporaryart because those artists use whatever they think is useulto get what they are ater. Robert Rauschenberg gluednewspaper clips, stockings, metal bits, band aids andPlexiglas on his oil paintings and Ive made his approach myown. I I think its right to use a pinhole camera I will do so.I I think that the poor quality o a Canon 5D is interesting,I will use it.

So ar I havent ound the right project to use thisequipment on, just as I havent yet ound the right projectto use the Alexa. Maybe one day I will use a cardboard boxcamera, but it will have to t the story and the look Imaiming or. My eeling is that we are right in the middleo big changes. Im not a purist because Im not nostalgicabout lm.

Whenever people ask digital to look like lm, I will say,< Use lm >. I think we have to nd the language odigital images. It has a dierent quality than lm and wehave to discover how to use it properly.

I I were to compare, as beore, Aquarelle (watercolour)versus oil painting, they are two dierent languages.You dont even paint the same thing. It is quite rare to seea portrait painted with watercolours or aquarelle becauseit is a dierent approach and a dierent eeling.

What is the eeling o digital images? I dont know yet andi I dont know what it is, I cannot know how to use it or howto distort it (because or me, distortion is more interestingthan reality). It remind me o the early days o photographywhen painters were using stills as a reerence. Everyone saidthey were not painters and painting was dead.

I dont know what the uture will be. What do I knowanyway??? These sentences are just things going throughmy mind now. Maybe they are not even relevant. Veryshortly I will probably move to digital cameras and it will be ne - as long as nobody tells me how tolight a scene. Eventually, the real question and the real earis: WHAT BECOMES OF THOSE DIGITAL FILES IN 20 YEARSFROM NOW???????


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IF THERE WAS EVER A REAL DEBATEABOUT DIGITAL VERSUS FILM (WHENSHOOTING FEATURE FILMS), I MUSTHAVE MISSED IT

But what I have heard is the type o discourse thatpresents Digital Cameras as one necessary step inthe way o progress, as i progress was always alinear movement only conditioned by an increase intechnological sophistication. Thereore, technologicalsophistication is deemed a sign o progress: necessary,unstoppable, and anything preceding it must beabandoned and relegated to the history books.Reusing to accept the march o progress has alwaysbeen rowned upon, and its always hard to put up anyorm o resistance, especially when new technologiesoer opportunities or individuals to rearm theirexpertise and increase their power in the work place.

I the development o digital cameras has been good or

one thing, it has been to revive a dying market, (mostlyor still cameras), and fooding the shops with a vastarray o new and appealing products.

This is what our mercantile society is good at, constantlyreinventing and developing new products, productsrapidly out o date, with an ever-diminishing lie spanthat are programmed or quick obsolescence.

Have the best interests o lmmakers been taken intoaccount? Are digital cameras giving the lmmakerbetter results? I doubt it, not having seen any realbenet in this new technology when applied to eature

lms. Contrary to all the marketing and publicityorced down our throats, shooting eatures digitally isneither easier nor aster. It is less reliable, and in theend, the picture quality is ar rom being convincing.The nancial savings are also elusive, and when lmnegative is gone or good, along with the competitionits presence still oers, the price o this new technologywill most probably rise astronomically- without limits.Thereore, I nd it impossible to have a legitimatedebate on the merits o one technology versus theother, without refecting on the economic orces atwork and their infuence on those actually participating

in that debate.

Philippe Rousselot

Guillaume Schiffman

MY EARLY EXPERIENCES IN DIGITAL WERE NOT HAPPY ONES, I FELT THE ENTIREPROCESS WAS TOO HEAVY AND TOO COMPLEX- YOU NEEDED SOMEONE TOINTERPRET THE LOOK UP TABLES OR ELSE YOU COULDNT SEE ANYTHING, SO ICONTINUED SHOOTING MOVIES IN 35MM. BUT NOW I LIKE BOTH.

This is only the rst generation o these new digitalcameras and they are improving and upgrading all thetime, but I think that or artistic purposes, having both

lm and digital to work with is really important andnecessary. We have to accept that the uture came alittle too quickly, but I think we might be going tooast in a direction with a tool that we havent yetlearned how to master or control.

When I photograph a movie, I also operate thecamera, so its important or me to have a physicalsupport or relationship with the camera. That is why

I dont really like the RED, it is not shaped like acamera. I nd the image quality o the new REDalmost too precise, too sharp, the rendition is too high.


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I have always made what I elt were the most appropriatedecisions and choices on set when we are shooting

because those are the bets (the risks) I make and whatI envision in my imagination, I dream o a certain look,a certain outcome. And these choices are printed in thenegative and I nd them again, aterwards in the nalgrading stage when they take on their true meaningonce the lms been edited.

Its has to do with an objective image on celluloid versus avirtual image that does not exist in reality. O course when

shooting digitally, youve adjusted and calibrated yourmonitors, checked the curves, the white levels, black levels,established your LUTS...but you are recording an image thatis boring and fat. In this nal stage, you wont be able tond any trace o your original intentions or the look youwere aiming or when you were shooting.

Eric Gautier

IF I AM STILL UNABLE TO SEE THE POINT OF WORKING IN DIGITAL, IF I CONTINUE TOSHOOT ON FILM, ITS BECAUSE THE DIGITAL IMAGE IS LESS RICH IN THE REALM OFTHE IMAGINATION THAN WHAT IS IMPRINTED ON CELLULOID.

This can also be said about the Alexa but Im just morecomortable working with the Alexa. It is designed likea camera, and when I mix material rom the Alexa with35mm lm, it works really well. When you shoot in verylow light and you set the LUTs at 1200 ASA, there isstill noise and other artiacts so I think maybe 10% othe time the Alexa can be useul but 90% o the time,lm negative does exactly the same thing. And better!!

I rmly believe that it is the director and thecinematographer who should choose whether tophotograph the movie on lm or on digital. It shouldNOT be the producers who decide, which is very otenthe case, and always or the wrong reasons. Producersinsist that its cheaper on digital but, i it is moreinteresting or the project to be photographed on lm,there are plenty o ways to make adjustments andeconomize in other areas. The dierence is relativelysmall anyway. I anyone really analyzed budgetbreakdowns and costs, they would notice that it cantake twice as long in the DI suite to do the gradingwith the colorist in order to get results that are almostequal to that o 35mm.

One thing I absolutely dont want is the director to be

looking at the exact image that hell see aterwards.I want the director to have condence in the qualityo my work. You cant rely on the look o the monitorsbecause oten they are not very well adjusted orcalibrated and each one looks dierent which causesa lot o unnecessary conusion on the set.

The most important thing or me as Director oPhotography is (having the) Time and (having the)Choice o the tool, o the medium, but oten those arethings that are imposed on us that we cant control.

These days, I do the adjustments to the image on setwith my eye. I no longer need Look Up Tables becauseI know what I can achieve with the Alexa and wherethe limitations are. I work a little with my light meter,a little with the wave length monitor to watch thegamma, but I work exactly the same way as I alwayshave. I work with the colorist/grader or the rstversion and then later on with the director on thenal look o the movie.

I am neither nostalgic about lm, nor am I anti- digital;I think the two are equally valid and deserve to co-exist. My primary concern is the visual imagery thattells the story and I achieve that with my personal tasteand my talent- i I have any. The rest I leave to others.

The younger generation is inatuated with digital, buttheyre more interested in eects driven movies and orthat, digital works really well. But when your lightingis more subtle or nuanced, something naturalistic,or bolder when you are taking risks, and the eectsarent the only thing to watch, then 35mm is STILL themost wonderul tool.



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The inormation has not ollowed along, been carriedthrough to this stage, and even more important, eachperson along the way is able to change the parameters,(the colorimetry- color values, contrast, density) at thevarious stages o the process- the transer, the editing... So o course, even though they tell me they have allthe inormation necessary to do whatever I want in postproduction, I am well aware that its not here, at this stage(where they are suggesting being cautious and reasonable)where you will be very creative.

What I love about lm (celluloid) is the experimentaldimension, a property uniquely belonging to Cinema: theuncontrollable, the accidental, the risks, and the surprisesthose things that cannot be anticipated or oreseen... andthat are irreversible.

With enough experience, there wont be mistakes or errors.The very worst that can happen is there might be someclumsiness or imprecision, but that is what makes the trulygreat lms charming. Digital pushes or (and imposes)technical perection. The entire image must be controlled,and each shot must link perectly together and all that isprooundly boring.

In my work, what is most interesting to me more thananything else is to invent a unique visual universe or eachlm. In particular, it is to bend, to distort, to do exactly whatyou are not supposed to do to the lm negative (thatsbeen calibrated to be used normally by the greatest possiblenumber o customers according to the manuacturersprescribed recommendations) by being adventurous andplaying (a bit daringly) with the exposure, the development,the colours . [For example, saturating a color while shootingand then compensating or it in the grading, distortingthe nal look o this colour, etc.] I work with the contrast,sometimes a bit excessively. I like to explore the extremeso underexposure and overexposure. With modern Fuji or

Kodak lm stocks - that are extraordinarily good, we donttalk about them enough! - You get magnicent resultswith rich detail in precision and colour when the negativeis highly overexposed. And you can work with the darkshadow areas; play with parts o the set or the actors whoare in the shade with a varied tonal range in the black areasthat can be either very deep or a little milky. With digital,one has to be careul in order to contain and control thevery brightly lit areas and strong highlights to prevent yourpicture burning out and creating the eect o a whitehole. I dont share this obsession about seeing all the detailin the black areas, it should be just so that the shadow

areas register, so that they read. One thing or sure, murkyblacks are pretty ugly in digital.

O course, (any) one can make beautiul images with thesenew cameras but its easy to make pretty images withwhatever tool you are using today. What is dicult, is tomake choices, to establish and maintain a certain style thatmost suits an original lm without delivering the usualclichd shots. Im not saying it is not possible with digital,but I think its extremely dicult to ree onesel rom thetechnical requirements, restraints, and conormity thatdigital imposes.

I nd the look o digital images cold and glossy. Im notimpressed by the number o pixels. (Ive never liked very crisp,sharply dened images, I have always liked grain) Nor amI impressed by the sensitivity o the camera. In 1959, RaoulCoutard lmed Breathless without any lighting at all...

I like the texture o lm, its sensuality, the beautiul skintone, and the subtlety o the colours. Again, Im not sayingthat I will never nd digital interesting; it all depends onthe project. I we could make an analogy comparing thelook o a lm image to a digital image by using paintingas an example, it would be between the sensuality o theImpressionists oil paintings and the bold, graphic, saturatedcolours o acrylic paint used in Pop Art. I you reversed thetwo techniques, the result would be o no interest at all...

Lets say that digital will never be better than lm, it canbe interesting when used in another way or a dierentkind o look. I have seen very interesting results (Fincher,Cronenberg, Audiard, von Trier...) but nothing as stunningor earth shatteringly beautiul as the imagery o Fanny andAlexander or The Godfather. There is no poetry in digital.

Having said that, or many years now I have been usingdigital grading, I wouldnt want to work anymore without it.

To me, 80% o the image is made in the shooting, andthe 20% in the grading is essential because you can take

the eects so much urther with innitely more richness Indigital than in traditional (photochemical) grading. I havealways believed in mixing technologies. Whatever happens,I would just like to have the choice o which tool I am to useor my uture projects.


6/12

MICHAEL HANEKES AMOUR WASONE OF THE VERY FIRST MOVIES EVER TOBE SHOT ON ARRI RAW AND MY FIRSTEXPERIENCE WORKING WITH THE ALEXA.

It was more like a recording o a year in an elderly couples

lie so I thought it would be interesting to shoot it digitally,but it proved to be a somewhat dicult experienceprocessing the raw les on our system. Now I keep thinkinghow really beautiul it would have been on lm, but....Can I really blame it on the Digital?

I was not completely satised with the images I wasshooting on digital because they were not as controlledor as beautiul as they could have been on lm. I elt thequality had been compromised. In the pre-production stage,we compared tests o the best digital cameras against35mm lm ootage and we all pretty much agreed theylooked the same. Being able to shoot in very low light

levels and making it look organic, along with the size andversatility o certain digital cameras made shooting in digitaladvantageous and very seductive, but ater looking at everyaspect o the nalized lm,

Why do my eyes tell me it is not the same quality that wesaw at the beginning? Something has been lost somewherein the process.

At the moment, I preer the Arri Alexa because it has thepurest signal and or a lmmaker who is used to shootinglms, it eels the most amiliar, the most comortable to workwith because it is designed like a camera. We look at theimage and we play with it, we manipulate it, transer it, gradeit, and it looks really nice, but somehow the rendition o theoverall image is dierent. It is a mutation o the original imageand it has lost this lm quality. The Sony F65 and the REDEpic can also make other kinds o beautiul images: some arelmmaker riendly and some are more appropriate or makingdocumentaries or are better suited or commercials and theashion industry. It is all a matter o taste.

O course, these cameras are continually being upgraded,but at least or the next ew years, we know that shootingeature lms digitally on a large ormat or theatrical release

in cinemas automatically means you are working with a teamo Digital technicians who have varying degrees o expertise.

Darius Khondji

DIGITAL IS AN EXTREMELY ATTRACTIVEMEDIUM ESPECIALLY IN LOW LIGHTCONDITIONS.

Without doubt, certain cameras and processes canproduce excellent results. Nevertheless, the multitudeo interventions which digital requires, rom shootingthrough to post-production can, unortunately,

adulterates the end result.

To this day, the challenge remains how to create adigital image in collaboration with a director, withouthaving the implacable trace o these chromosomes.

While the eects can be impressive, what oten getslost along the way is the intangible, subjective senseo poetry, and the original intentions- an elusive butcrucial alchemy that one strives so hard to achieve andpreserve, and which is an intrinsic part o ction, purehuman ction.

Its as i there is no longer room or this mysteriousquality. What is vital or the uture is to search or themystery o this medium that seems bent upon totaldemystication its the beginning o an exciting quest.

Agns Godard



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This dependency on this new layer o technical people doesinfuence, or can impede, how reely we are able to shootand how innovative we can be with our photography whenusing this new tool. On my latest digital shoots, what reallystruck me was how much quicker it was shooting on lm.

You were alone and ocused on your crat, whereasnow you have to share so much o your work with manymore people on the set. This means a serious adjustment to adapt to this new procedure, this mutation o thelmmaking process, but I hope this will change or thebetter very soon.

Regarding the DI process, again, Im not totally satisedwith the images in the DI because they can easily take ona plastic-ey look. Ive noticed this on other peoples movies,and because I always work with the best colorists, I knowthe problem is not there.

Recently I was shooting a lm in NYC and I ound thebest way o working or me was to NOT let other peopleinterere and manipulate our images. In many ways I havereverted back to how I used to photograph movies at thebeginning o my career; I know exactly which directionI want to go in, and I do not want to have endless optionsor straying anywhere else. I expose the lm with a denite

idea in my mind, and I never think about how it can be xedin the DI. I the director and I want to go dark, why give itmore exposure? The same applies to Digital, andthis is where trouble lies.

I the Director and I want to deliberately overexpose the lmand go or that look, why treat it like a normal negative orgive it a normal le? I believe we must be able to capture thelm or the Raw signal the way we want it to look later on.

Its time to dispel the myth that digital post productionallows cinematographers to work more quickly on setbecause everything can be xed aterwards in the DI -It is not the correct way to think, plus it is simply not true.I also dont subscribe to the belie that digital has surpassedlm. Film is still unique and sometimes better or theCinema art orm and or certain storytelling. It has a specicchemistry that gives it a mystery and its magic. Film, with its

denition, resolution, grain or lack o grain is more sensual.It has a three dimensional quality. It has depth, shape andtexture. There is something about the rendering o peoplesaces that is sculptural and bigger than lie.

The more urgent question or me is: Why am I not satisedwith my end results with digital images printed andprojected on a screen in the same way that I was with lm?I this is the way the world is going- i lm is to be totallyphased out and replaced by digital, then I suppose we haveno choice but to ollow. As cinematographers, I believe wemust at least dictate our own terms and not let technicalrestraints and requirements o the digital process dictate tous the direction we must go in, the way we must work, orhow we must alter our lighting and our cinematography.

Thierry Arbogast

EVEN THOUGH IVE BEEN ANXIOUSLY AWAITING A VERY LONG TIME FOR DIGITALTO FINALLY ARRIVE, I WOULD ONLY SHOOT ON A HIGH QUALITY CAMERA THATHAD A VERY LARGE SENSOR AND A DYNAMIC RANGE EQUAL TO SUPER 35MM.

The rst lm I photographed digitally was Asterixat the Olympics in 2007. For me, it was always sostressul not being able to see what I was doing in mywork, and then having to wait or the labs to tell meeverything turned out all right. This is why I was very

PRO- digital right rom the start.

This was the third Asterix movie and the producerwanted us to prove that digital was a better choicethan lm, (which he preerred), so we tested 35mmalongside the genesis and the D20. We all looked at the

tests projected on a screen and no one could see anyreal dierence between the digital and lm material.The digital wasnt superior to lm but it was very highquality and almost equal to lm. For dierent reasons,we chose the genesis; the colours were better and

overall, it had a more beautiul visual rendition than theother cameras, even though in those days the camerascould not handle the extreme levels o high light andlow light the way lm does.


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It is very important or me is to have a large HD monitoron set so that I can see (not really, the nal image-because it still has to go through the grading, the DI,etc. but) something that is pretty close to the nal looko the lm. The image quality on the Alexa is beautiuland with the LUTs incorporated inside the camera, youalready can get a very good idea o what the imagewill look like, with good contrast, and well balancedcolours. Right there on the set you have this lovelyimage and you can see what you are doing. I can seethe direction I am going in with my lighting, and howit will look in the scene, which was never the case

beore. So, to me, its great!

Im a big an o digital because it has completely takenaway those concerns. I was always very relaxed andcomortable about the work itsel on the foor, but therewas always this lingering worry about how it was goingto turn out in the labs- Is the exposure right? did I getmy levels correct? was there a mistake with the lters?Sometimes Id spend twenty minutes on the phone withthe guy at the lab explaining in detail to me what theprevious days rushes looked like. All thats over now,and I go home happy, not having to worry about anasty phone call saying there was a technical problem

with the lab.

When you shoot on digital and it all gets transerredto 35mm, rankly, I dey anyone to say they can reallytell i it originated on digital or on lm, and now thenew Sony 65 has an even higher quality denition andresolution than 35mm lm. Its unbelievable how digitalperorms in very low light; you can open the shutter to360 degrees which means you gain a stop.

One night I was shooting in a kind o marshy back watersnear Le Havre and there was a ull moon.I opened the shutter to 360 degrees and raised the

camera sensitivity to 1200 ASA and it was incredible.The moonlight refecting on the water registered, it madethe water glisten and it is all there on the image. Im notsaying that it lit up the scene; Im simply saying that thecamera was so sensitive that it captured the moonlighton the water. Now, imagine i you wanted to createthat eect on lm. You would need a cherry picker, lotso heavy duty lights and a team o electricians so thatchanges the game entirely. That night, I spent my timecutting the levels o the street lamps that were too brightand putting out ugly shadows.

And i you want to lm a night sequence in very lowlight conditions on the streets o Paris with a digitalcamera, you dont need to put huge lights on everystreet corner anymore in order to light up the area.This is an enormous advantage, to be able to work withthe available light and to capture existing ambient light-i there is any, (which is not always the case).

Financially speaking, there is no question that digital ismore economical than lm. Its not a myth. I you workwith a director who shoots a lot o takes and you godirectly to digital grading, its obvious that shootingdigital is cheaper. Three backups at night, a goodcomputer and a ew hard disks and it have nished.One technician has replaced the lab during the shoot.

You cant really compare our budgets with those oAmerican lms because there they dont really countthe cost o lm stock in their budgets, but here inEurope, budgets are very tight.

In my soul, I am very technically oriented, (the morecomplicated things on the set, Ill leave to my assistantto gure out) but I love all these new technicaldevelopments and evolutions that allow me to be moreproductive and perorm better. I can achieve muchbetter results, it enhances the quality o my work, andI am very happy about that. I am also happy that thereare so many dierent digital cameras on the markettoday that are really excellent.

The reality is that today, with a digital camera, anyoneand everyone can record, capture, and make decentimages. But photographing a movie requires creativityand imagination and experience, which still remains thedomain o the Director o Photography. That is a hugeresponsibility that can only be achieved by someonewho knows what they are doing. So the job remains

the same- our proession is intact.



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8-9

Since the lm was coproduced by a Japanese company,I was given a Sony camera calibrated to NHK settings,with no detail enhancement. In that way I entered thedigital world, knowing that this artice gives the illusion o

crispness, but destroys textures and the beauty o actorsskin tones. Ater that, I used the same NHK-type settingsor Un Couple Parfait by Nobuhiro Suwa and lEst deMoi by Bojena Horakova, both shot in 2/3 and ever sincethat time, whenever I meet a European cinematographerwho has turned their image enhancement o, I think maybeI had something to do with that decision.

I liked using the camera in low light and low contrastsituations, and even ound that once transerred to lm, thevery substance o the digital material was quite a plus. Ivenever been a an o extremely crisp images and I am notinteresting in searching or ultra-sharp lenses. Choosing amedium or a lm is balanced between the necessity o getting

the desired texture you are ater and having a suitable way oshooting, in other words, a camera thats not too bulky withlightweight lenses and an appropriate workfow. I loved thework Harris Savides did or Zodiac using a Thomson Viperand introducing abnormal depth o eld, so when I wasworking on Holy Motors, I considered using the Viper, butthe cameras low sensitivity made this impractical. I live in themodern world, and am not particularly hooked or either 35 or16 mm but it would be a Disaster i lm were to disappear.

I have been supervising the 4K mastering o Claude LanzmannsShoah, photographed on 16 mm in the early eighties.The digital scans done by Imagina Retrovate in Bologna haverevealed details and colours that no optical print could ever have,

so the concealed wealth o its images is extraordinary.

So ar, my experience working with cameras with Super-35-sized digital sensors is limited to two lms: Leos Caraxs HolyMotors and Margarethe von Trottas Hannah Arendt. Ishot them back to back with the same camera, the Red Epic.

What was technically required to photograph Caraxs scripttouched both extremes and was totally contradictory: youneeded very bright light and expansive camera movement insome scenes and very low light and restricted mobility insidethe limousine in others. Holy Motors could have beenshot in Super 8, 16 and 35 mm, but switching back andorth between ormats would have interrupted the lms

narrative so Carax preerred to use only one type o camera.We quickly abandoned the idea o using the Alexa becauseProRes, with its low denition backgrounds and pale skintones is not acceptable on a large screen and adding aCodex raw recorder would have made things physically toounwieldy inside the limousine.

The RED Epic arrived in France at Panavision just in time; thislittle black box was very much like the Panasonic DVX 100that I used on Merde, one o the Tokyo segments whichCarax loved.

The Duboi lab people suggested I work in linear 16-bit 4K,instead o log and 5K and this was excellent advice becausethe combination produced better blacks without thatsurgical crispness I hate. I nearly always use Zeiss T2s: theyphotograph with more than enough denition. It is my jobto create the (very matter o the) image on location throughphotography, and that is why I make a point o requiringthe laboratory to respect the values and chromatic balancesI have created during the actual lming.

Except or two high-contrast scenes, Holy Motors is quite asomber low-contrast lm, so the Epics relatively low dynamicrange was not really a problem, nor was this particular

shortcoming an issue during the shooting on HannahArendt in the controlled lighting conditions o a studio.

The challenge or digital sensors is whether they are capableo handling both high-contrast exteriors and natural daylightand also the subtle textures o the human skin. Even i theEpic was acceptable in terms o chromatic rendering, theHDR option meant to boost the dynamic to 14 stops wasnot really convincing. As o now, the only camera that trulycorresponds to my vision o dynamic range is the AatonDelta. I nd the colour delity remarkable. I note that thenew little BMD-CC, like the Delta, records images using theDNG proessional photo standard, which will certainly makethings easier in post-production.

I am currently shooting Claude Lanzmanns Le Dernier desInjustes on Kodaks 5213 and 5219 lm stock. As someonewhose beginnings in cinema were at the time whenEastmancolors 5247 was the best thing around and weall agreed it was antastic I would never have imaginedthat Kodak would come up with such dynamic range andchromatic perection as it has achieved with the 5213 stock.

So lets give the digital manuacturers a ew years todevelop some equally wonderul surprises or us.

For things to remain the same, everything must change(rom Viscontis The Leopard). The medium is changing

in every way, but that change is only technological. With allthese new tools at our disposal, whatever they may be, ourundamental role as Directors o Photography remains thesame: to accompany the script, the director and the actorson the journey, and to guide the spectators gaze in orderor them to experience the depths o their own emotions.

Caroline Champetier

THE FIRST TIME I WORKED ON A 2/3 CAMERA WAS FOR DAVID TEBOULS 5 AVENUEMARCEAU, A THREE-MONTH PROJECT FOLLOWING THE MAKING OF YVES SAINTLAURENTS LAST WOMENS COLLECTION.


10/12

AFTER FINISHING THREE DEMO FILMSSHOT ON THE SONY F65 AND LEICASUMMILUX-C LENSES, I CAN SAYTHAT AS A CINEMATOGRAPHER IAM PLEASED BECAUSE THE RESULTSWE GOT GRADING (IN POST) WEREASTONISHING.

The dynamic range is very, very large, both the coloristand I were really impressed because it oered thegreatest possibilities we had ever seen. Issues: there isno separate control or the outputs to apply LUTs.As a camera operator, Id have to say the camera isa little bulky, the balance needs to be improved, Theelectronic viewnder is the cameras weak point (butwe know Sony is working on that) so when I must alsooperate the camera, Im more comortable with theAlexa Studio or soon the Delta Penelope rom Aaton

because o the optical viewnder. I know, becauseo the sensitivity o these cameras, I will use a smallmonitor when shooting in low light.

The director and I wanted to avoid a video look, butwhat we ound at the end was something dierent,it was neither a lm look nor a digital look. I think thedigital uture will oer us new textures, even i wehave to accept things we are not used to or dont like,including the artiacts.

We are now acing dierent textures and sometimesthings happen that do not originate rom the sensors

(o the Alexa, F65, Epic and soon Aaton Penelope), butrom the workfows. What I discovered in these threedemo lms (shot on F65) was the huge dierence intextures depending on the exposure, the calibration,the choice o Luts, and the type o grading used.

On these lms we redesigned the workfow and allmathematic processes including De-Bayer with anartistic approach. We chose certain paths based onwhat we elt most appropriate or the look o theimage and the process was dierent or each o thethree lms. At the very beginning, I decided to workwith a colorist and the DIT to ensure we were perectlycalibrated with the lab. The idea was simply to create adigital stock, an LUT, or each lm and that is what I likeabout the digital workfow.

What is most important to me is the calibration othe workfow, even i the movie has been shot on lmnegative. My experience with raw cameras showedme that some manuacturers dont know or evenanticipate the important issues created by these newBayer patterns, these new codec, these systems o

compression, the colour spaces ...

There are not only two dierent worlds- the world ocameras (that contain a part o the lab), and the world othe lab, but two dierent types o people. The people whoknow and understand the cameras thoroughly are notthe same as the people working in post who know howto handle the workfow correctly. Except or the high endlaboratories who invest money in R & D, there is simplyno time or people to learn about all the new cameras,codecs, lenses... especially as new products are beingintroduced into the marketplace every ew weeks. Its veryrare to nd a technician who knows all the specications

o a camera and who also knows about all its dierentworkfows- that would be a truly impossible task!

The European Community conducted an investigativesurvey which revealed that more than 50% o all lmsshot on lm or digital arrive at the post productionstage suering rom very serious issues. One cannotimagine any other industry or commercial enterprisebeing allowed to deliver such imperect products (thatrequire such extensive problem solving at the naldelivery stage!).

The arrival o the ACES* architecture will improve

these issues and assist {lmmakers, cinematographers,producers} to easily match dierent sources, helpingto preserve the quality o the camera image throughall the workfow stages with the widest colour spacepossible. (*ACES: Academy Color Encoding specicationis a radiometrically linear light encoding which providesmethodology rom any source (Film, Digital, etc.)

I I were to be nostalgic about lm, it would be orwhat we have lost. When photographing a movie (oncelluloid), it was always a great pleasure discoveringthe dailies the ollowing day, projected on the screenin a theater with the dierent departments o the crewwatching together what they had done. They wouldsee, and learn rom their mistakes, or watchthe wonderul things they had accomplished.

Philippe Ros



11/12

10-11

IM NOT NOSTALGIC ABOUT FILM.DPS SAY THEY ARE LOSING CONTROLOF THEIR WORK, BUT I THINK THE DIIS THE MAIN PROBLEM. IT HAS TO BEDONE SO QUICKLY AND OFTEN THECINEMATOGRAPHER DOESNT HAVEENOUGH TIME FOR REFLECTION.

I would say that my work as a DP is 50% in the lighting and50% in the storytelling, but in HD especially, the relationshipo the DP and the Director is an extremely close collaboration.

Im happy to share lighting decisions with the directoras he or she shares their work with me, asking my opinionabout the perormances, how the scene works or i weshould do it in another way, etc. In the past, it was dicultto explain how the lighting would look on lm, youd saydont worry, it wont be this bright...Ill print it down so itlooks darker.... but with HD, you have to verbalize whatyou are doing. you have to explain your lighting choices righton set because i you have a good DIT and good calibratedmonitors, the Director is seeing (almost) a nal image.

Last year I shot Lawless with John Hillcoat on HD, we

wanted to do something dierent rom what we did onThe Proposition, but people said we were crazy to shoota period movie on HD.

They are nostalgic about certain looks and textures, so

I realize it might take a while beore audiences acceptsomething dierent. But when you look at the originalprints o Walker Evans photographs, they are very crispwith hardly any grain.

I was a bit pressured into using HD on Lawless becauseJohn had some very specic lighting choices that could havebeen dicult or me to achieve on lm. He wanted verylow light levels and to go very dark while having very sotcontrast. I was more relaxed with HD as we could see whatwe were doing and could work together on the right levelso darkness.

We shot Lawless with the Alexa in Arri Raw and this wasmy rst digital experience ater photographing 29 movieson lm. It was a totally New World. We were experimentingevery day. I stopped using a light meter and put mysel inthe hands o a DIT who was creating a new LUT or nearlyevery scene... (as i we had hundreds o dierent lm stocksall with dierent contrast).

Hillcoat wanted an absolute minimum o light so I wasspending more time with the DIT than I was creating myown lighting on set. We had no lab behind us because theline producer decided labs were obsolete or HD...so we

were doing the dailies ourselves in the editing room.Like everyone else at the time, the DIT was new toArriraw, and I was worried about exposing the images andprocessing the les in the right way. Whoever says this isthe end o worries and sleepless nights can think again.

All o this has vanished now. There is no more meetingpoint so there is no learning ground or the lessexperienced members o the crew. This was especiallyimportant or camera operators, ocus pullers, grips, andgaers (but also or production designers, art directors,costumes, hair, make-up, and script supervisors). Thesedays, only the director and the DP watch dailies, mostlyon DVDs in their hotel room. The crew doesnt see any otheir work anymore, so it isnt surprising that they are notreally involved or invested in the lm like they once were.

As cinematographers, I believe it is our responsibilityto master and control these new cameras and theseworkfows, to impose our true artistic style on thesenew technologies and to ultimately reclaim our workrom start to nish. Im very happy working with thesenew tools and Im very enthusiastic about the resultsI get with Alexa, Epic, F65 cameras and the rightworkfows. The key point or me is the nding the bestway to work with the entire team starting rom pre-production right through to post.

Benoit Delhomme


12/12

We denitely had scary moments when we came back toL.A. and tried to see our images in a DI suite because theLUTs we had built on set were not based on lm curveresponse. The engineers at Technicolor had to changeall their settings or us and ortunately it saved my lie!

During post, John was so worried about the highlightslooking HD, he asked the colorist to get rid o them in thenal DI, and we spent hours dimming things down.On lm, I always liked windows and lamp shades burningout; I dont eel that highlights betray HDs weaknessanymore. On the movies I photographed, my blacks werealways too black because I never used much ll light, butwith HD I can work in the same way and still get plenty odetail in the shadow areas.

I am now shooting The Most Wanted Man with AntonCorbijn, again in HD with the Alexa Arriraw, but nowI have gone back to my roots, relying on my many years oexperience working on lm. I use my light meter andI create only one LUT, as i I were shooting the entire movieon one lm stock.

Last night the DIT came up to me and said, there is toomuch light coming rom the let and part o me thought and another part o me thought

These days with HD, people on the crew eel entitled toexpress their opinions about what they see on the monitor.They try to persuade you to x things. They want youto make it perect - perectly normal and under thesecircumstances, it becomes dicult to develop a personalstyle. you must be very strong and ocused to resist all othat extraneous noise.

My problem with HD is that all cinematographers worklooks almost too good. There are no more accidents,

surprises, or mistakes anymore because everything getsxed, rst on the set and later on in the DI. The colorists tryto make every shot look antastic, and they turn out lookingall THE SAME. Films are becoming masterpieces o control.

In the 60s and 70s, movies looked so great, so interesting,because cinematographers let accidents happen, whereasnow, many DPs want to be Renaissance painters. I hope wecan nd a way to loosen up on this total control and breakaway rom the technical constraints put upon us and getthose accidents back in our work.

I am now very comortable working with the Alexa, butI really love having a large choice o cameras that come withdierent standards and can oer dierent possibilities andtextures. I am very excited about the new RED monochromecamera or shooting exclusively in black and white.

I nd this all very exciting!


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