American Cinematographer 2013 11

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

36 Facing the Void

Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC launches groundbreaking strategies on Gravity

50 Taking on Water

Frank DeMarco and Peter Zuccarini imperil lone sailor on All Is Lost

64 Seized at Sea

Barry Ackroyd, BSC films harrowing hostage drama Captain Phillips

78 Hard-Rock Apocalypse

Gyula Pados, HSC coordinates headbangers’ ball for Metallica Through the Never

92 Television Triumphs

AC applauds this year’s Emmy-nominated cinematographers

DEPARTMENTS

FEATURES

— VISIT WWW.THEASC.COM —

On Our Cover: An accident during a space mission strands NASA scientist Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) in Gravity, shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC.

(Frame grab courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.)

12 Editor’s Note

14 President’s Desk

16 Short Takes:

London Grammar’s “Strong”

22 Production Slate:

The Fifth Estate

96 Filmmaker’s Forum:

John Bailey, ASC

100 New Products & Services

106 International Marketplace

107 Classified Ads

108 Ad Index

110 Clubhouse News

112 ASC Close-Up:

Seamus McGarvey

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3 V O L . 9 4 N O . 1 1

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The International Journal of Motion Imaging

In an exclusive podcast, David Eggby, ACS discusses the strategies he employed on the sci-fi thriller Riddick_{, a sequel to} Pitch Black_{(2000), which Eggby also shot. This time around, escaped convict Riddick (Vin Diesel) must survive a race of}

alien predators after being left for dead on a sun-blasted planet.

The eponymous, spacefaring antihero (Vin Diesel, left) steels himself for a fight inRiddick _{, shot}

by David Eggby, ACS (right).

N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 3 V O L . 9 4 N O . 1 1

Bryan Land: “The Light on Her Face by Joseph Walker, ASC. What a history. A bril-liant guy.”

Brannigan Carter: “TheMaster Shotsseries, while geared toward newer filmmakers, is an excellent ‘tips and tricks’ type of book that gives budding cinematographers a little insight into how to get big Hollywood-style shots on an independent budget — and not only get the shot, but make it work for the style of the film.”

Alex R. Hall: “Film Lightingby Kris

Malkiewicz. The interviews with some of the industry’s best cinematographers and gaffers are an invaluable resource. It’s the book I always go to for lighting advice.”

Edward Ybarbo: “Blain Brown’s Cinematog-raphy: Theory and Practicekeeps me sharp.”

Matthew A. MacDonald: “Writing with Light, Volume One:The Light by Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC.”

Juan Sebastian Vasquez: “Without a doubt,Set Lighting Technician’s Handbook

by Harry C. Box.”

Ruairi O’Brien: “Masters of Light by Schae-fer and Salvato. I would kill for an updated version with some newer cameramen, but the interviews are long enough and thought-ful enough to [still] be of real value.”

Tobias Dodt: “Image Control by Gerald Hirschfeld, ASC, and Reflectionsby Benjamin Bergery. Both are absolutely brilliant!”

Mic Pistol: “The Five C’s of Cinematography

by Joseph V. Mascelli. An oldie but goodie.”

Juan Namnun: “La luz en el cine (Le lumiere au cinema)by Fabrice Revault D’Allon. Him-self a master storyteller, he puts the reader on a journey of discovery from Billy Bitzer to the New Wave inheritors.”

Ignacio Aguilar: “Masters of Light is a great classic. I still like to watch the pictures men-tioned in the book and then reread what the cinematographers said about [that] particular film. Also, Principal Photography by Vincent LoBrutto.”

Jules A. Bowie: “Shoot!by Luigi Pirandello offers a deep and philosophical treatment of cinematography that other practical books can’t touch. It is an art, after all.”

Filip Stankovic: “Painting with Light by John Alton, ASC. A great book which teach-es you the fundamentals [of] cinematography and allows you to take a step back and learn how the groundwork was set for cinematog-raphers today by masters like Alton.”

Paulo Martins: “The American Cinematog-rapher Manual.”

Chris Carr: “Painting with Light by John Alton, ASC, and Magic Hour by Jack Cardiff, BSC.”

Von Lucke Philipp: “Walter Murch’sIn the Blink of an Eye. It taught me so many things about using photography to tell a story, and also why one makes films.”

Ian Campbell: “ A Man with a Cameraby Néstor Almendros, ASC.”

John Brune: “Every Frame a Rembrandt by Andrew Laszlo, ASC.”

David Gregan: “Reflections: 21 Cinematog-raphers at Work is hands-down the finest book on cinematography I have read. In-depth interviews with great American and European directors of photography, and it has lighting diagrams!”

SEE AND HEAR MORE CINEMATOGRAPHY COVERAGE AT WWW.THEASC.COM

THIS MONTH’S ONLINE QUESTION: What are the best books you’ve read on the topic of cinematog raphy?

To read more replies, visit our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/AmericanCinematographer

E g g b y p h o t o b y J a n T h i j s . P h o t o a n d f r a m e g r a b c o u r t e s y o f U n i v e r s a l P i c t u r e s .

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N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 3 V o l . 9 4 , N o . 1 1

T h e I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f M o t i o n I m a g i n g

Visit us online at

www.theasc.com

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PUBLISHER _{Martha Winterhalter}

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EDITORIAL

EXECUTIVE EDITOR _{Stephen Pizzello} SENIOR EDITOR _{Rachael K. Bosley} ASSOCIATE EDITOR _{Jon D. Witmer} TECHNICAL EDITOR _{Christopher Probst}

PHOTO EDITOR _{Julie Sickel}

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Benjamin B, Douglas Bankston, Robert S. Birchard, John Calhoun, Michael Goldman, Simon Gray,

David Heuring, Jay Holben, Noah Kadner, Jean Oppenheimer, Iain Stasukevich,

Patricia Thomson

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ART DEPARTMENT

CREATIVE DIRECTOR _{Marion Kramer}

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323-936-3769 FAX 323-936-9188 e-mail: [email protected]

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CIRCULATION, BOOKS & PRODUCTS

CIRCULATION DIRECTOR _{Saul Molina} CIRCULATION MANAGER _{Alex Lopez} SHIPPING MANAGER _{Miguel Madrigal}

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ASC GENERAL MANAGER _{Brett Grauman} ASC EVENTS COORDINATOR _{Patricia Armacost} ASC PRESIDENT’S ASSISTANT _{Delphine Figueras}

ASC ACCOUNTING MANAGER _{Mila Basely} ASC ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE _{Nelson Sandoval}

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American Cinematographer (ISSN 0002-7928), established 1920 and in its 93rd year of publication, is published monthly in Hollywood by ASC Holding Corp., 1782 N. Orange Dr., Hollywood, CA 90028, U.S.A., (800) 448-0145, (323) 969-4333, Fax (323) 876-4973, direct line for subscription inquiries (323) 969-4344.

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E X P E R I E N C E T H E C A N O N E O S C 3 0 0 C I N E M A C A M E R A

CONTACT US: 1.855.CINE.EOS � CINEMAEOS.USA.CANON.COM/C300

Cinematographer Rick Kaplan used the EOS C300 to shoot Die in New Orleans_{on location. You can watch the full music video} and see how he shot it on our website. Made for easy mobility, the EOS C300 delivers outstanding cinema quality with multiple recording formats, a 50 Mbps 4:2:2 codec and full compatibility with either EF or PL-mount lenses. Designed to meet the demands of any production, the EOS C300 is ideal for everything from short movies to TV commercials. With it, the world truly is your stage.

© 2013 Canon U.S.A., Inc. All rights reserved. Canon and EOS are registered trademarks of Canon Inc. in the United States and may also be registered trademarks or trademarks in other countries. DIE IN NEW ORLEANS �_{A music video}

Artist: Richard Julian

Director/Cinematographer: Rick Kaplan

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OFFICERS - 2012/2013

Richard Crudo

President

Owen Roizman

Vice President

Kees van Oostrum

Vice President Lowell Peterson Vice President Victor J. Kemper Treasurer Frederic Goodich Secretary Isidore Mankofsky Sergeant At Arms MEMBERS OF THE BOARD Curtis Clark Richard Crudo Dean Cundey George Spiro Dibie

Richard Edlund Fred Elmes Victor J. Kemper Francis Kenny Matthew Leonetti Stephen Lighthill Michael O’Shea Lowell Peterson Owen Roizman Rodney Taylor Haskell Wexler ALTERNATES Isidore Mankofsky Kenneth Zunder Steven Fierberg Karl Walter Lindenlaub

Sol Negrin

MUSEUM CURATOR

Steve Gainer

American Society of Cinematographers The ASC is not a labor union or a guild, but

an educational, cultural and pro fessional or ganization. Membership is by invitation

to those who are actively en gaged as directors of photography and have demonstrated outstanding ability. ASC membership has become one of the highest

honors that can be bestowed upon a pro fessional cinematogra pher — a mark

of prestige and excellence.

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As motion-imaging technology moves forward, the cine-matographer’s role is changing in both clear and subtle ways, and our coverage of Alfonso Cuarón’s sci-fi drama Gravity details how the shoot’s high-tech requirements impacted the work of Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC. In an overview of this groundbreaking production (“Facing the Void,” page 36), European correspondent Benjamin B notes, “Gravity provides a new paradigm for the expanding role of the cinematogra-pher on films with significant virtual components. In addition to conceiving virtual camera moves with Cuarón, [Lubezki] created virtual lighting with digital technicians, lit and shot live action that matched the CG footage, fine-tuned the final rendered image, supervised the picture’s conversion from 2-D to 3-D, and finalized the look of 2-D, 3-D and Imax versions.” Lubezki reflects, “In the process, I had to learn to use some new tools that are part of what cinematography is becoming. I found it very exciting.” Our coverage of the show’s unique workflow includes a detailed sidebar that underscores the significance of these evolving responsibilities, and the cinematographer’s importance in seeing them through to completion.

Shooting on water is notoriously tricky, but two of this month’s movies managed the feat exceptionally well. On J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost , cinematographer Frank DeMarco and underwater cinematographer Peter Zuccarini created memorable images above and below the surface, enhancing the nearly dialogue-free story of a lone sailor (Robert Redford) struggling to survive on the open ocean. “It was very interesting to work on a script that was only 32 pages long,” DeMarco tells AC scribe Jay Holben (“Taking on Water,” page 50). “The trick for me was to figure out what emotion or story point we should find in each scene.”

Barry Ackroyd, BSC and director Paul Greengrass faced a related set of complexities on Captain Phillips, which dramatizes the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates. As Patricia Thomson points out in her article (“Seized at Sea,” page

64), only 10 of the shoot’s 60 production days took place on dry land, requiring the filmmak-ers to spend most of their time working on the high seas or in a Malta water tank. “You can imagine how difficult this was for Barry and his crew,” Greengrass says. “There’s motion through every single plane: up and down, side to side and everything in between. You’re at the mercy of the weather and trying to create stability where there is none.”

“Bigger” and “louder” were the primary mandates on Metallica Through the Never , an eye-popping, ear-blasting concert movie that represented a new big-screen challenge for direc-tor Nimród Antal and cinematographer Gyula Pados, HSC. “The concert film cranked up to 11,” is how New York correspondent Iain Stasukevich describes this ambitious 3-D production (“Heavy-Metal Apocalypse,” page 78), which combines intensely kinetic performance footage of Metallica — shot on one of the largest and most versatile stages ever constructed — with phantasmagorical narrative passages. Antal, Pados and several key collaborators break down their approach to the lighting and staging of the onscreen mayhem.

Rounding out our features is a tribute to this year’s Emmy-nominated cinematographers (“Television Triumphs,” page 92), who further enhanced the pleasures of home viewing with their stylish work.

Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor

Editor’s Note

P h o t o b y O w e n R o i z m a n , A S C . 12

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By the time you read this, we will be well around the home stretch and sprinting for the finish line of the year 2013. The requisite cliché applies: I’m sure it has flown by as quickly for you as it has for me. But where there once rested a sense that time moved with the speed of a kitchen renovation, there now exists for many of us something of a dull ache, constantly reminding us that everything about our lives has sped up to a ridiculous degree. I used to think this was just another cost of getting older, but to prove how out of control things are, even the young people I know are aware of it. When I was a kid, I recall my father making what seemed like a spacy reference: “Once you hit the Fourth of July, the next stop is Christmas.” Back then, I thought he was crazy. Now I see him as a visionary.

Some of the contributors to this accelerated condition — and could there be anything more mundane? — are the shelf displays at my local supermarket. It’s an undistin-guished link in a nationwide chain, but management anticipates the next selling season as early as possible. Easter decorations abound in February ... summer gear appears in March ... Thanksgiving displays blindside shoppers in September. While standing at the checkout this past July, I noticed the Halloween DVD display set up next to the gossip rags. And, wouldn’t you know it, I came upon a gem.

I’ll make a statement that some of you will instantly dismiss, but that I will defend to the finish:Night of the Living Dead(1968), directed and photographed by George Romero, is far and away the scariest, most unsettling film ever made. (Those are the original reasons why we went to the movies in the first place, aren’t they?) And, without question, it is also the worst-looking film of all time.

This might seem a bit out of line coming from a cinematographer, as I count myself among those who are unfailingly defer-ential to other cinematographers. But only a fellow practitioner will recognize that sentiment for the wonderful compliment it implies.

For the past decade or so, it seems everything in our industry has been hijacked by a mentality concerned only with new technology and its effect on what we do. Most cameras, workflows and post processes have been shaped, without our consent, to create a flawless product, one infinitely reproducible in a form as absent of human handprints as human beings can imagine. Night of the Living Deadexists at the opposite end of that spectrum. It’s raw in a way that only 16mm black-and-white film of its era could be, filled with crude camerawork and harsh lighting that’s often mismatched and inconsistent. Then there are the compositions that reach for something arty but only come across as weird and self-conscious. Continuity mistakes abound, and the rules of screen direction are dutifully ignored. In a word, it’s amateurish (in what I hope was an intentional way).

That is precisely why it remains so compelling 45 years after its release. I first saw it at a midnight screening in the 1970s; at the time, I thought of it as just another notch on the lens barrel — cheap, gory and on to the next. Watching it again recently, I thought it was a masterpiece. Everything that was technically wrong was exactly what made it so chilling and disturbing. None of us can imagine anyone but Gordon Willis, ASC creating the look of The Godfather . The same must be said for Romero and Night of the Living Dead.His achievement in serving the story photographically is on par with virtually any movie you can name.

And isn’t that really the crux of what we try to do? Too often, we’re fooled into equating surface perfection with inner value. We would do well to keep the lesson of Night of the Living Dead in mind, especially as awards season will be upon us shortly.

How shortly? It’s early September as I write this, and magazines are already touting their Oscar issues. Hang on tight. It’ll be summer again before we know it.

Richard P. Crudo ASC President

President’s Desk

14 November 2013 _{American Cinematographer}

P h o t o b y D o u g l a s K i r k l a n d .

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Fatherly Fireworks

By Peter Tonguette

A handheld camera, shakily positioned low to the ground, captures a rickety white car driving toward a seemingly abandoned industrial area. Late-afternoon sun flares the lens and backlights the dust turned up by the car’s tires. In successive shots, a 30-something man with a three-day beard and a ratty T-shirt gets out and peers into the backseat, where his young daughter is fast asleep. He throws open the trunk, pulls out several bags and empties the contents on a blanket laid out hastily on the arid ground. The action is swift and the images seem to ask as many questions as they answer.

The music of British band London Grammar provides some clues to the curious viewer, but ultimately it is the work of cine-matographer Autumn Durald and director Sam Brown that tells the tale in the music video for the song “Strong.” The man has come to this vacant area — surrounded by tall barbed-wire fences and rows of squatty buildings — to don an armor-like “fireworks suit” that looks like something out of RoboCop, and light up the night sky with a dance of pyrotechnics for his daughter.

“This is a music video,” Durald comments, “but it’s also like a short film. You want to know what their life is before they get there, and what happens after.” This speculative feeling is supported by the inquisitive, handheld camerawork. “Sam wanted the camera to have that energy,” the cinematographer notes.

From the start, Durald — who studied art history at Loyola Marymount University before receiving her MFA in cinematography from the American Film Institute in 2009 — found herself on the same page as Brown. The director had prepared very specific story-boards, and he wanted to fill the video with small details, such as the moment when the daughter clutches her father’s shirt as he carries her beneath a viaduct to the site where the fireworks show will take place. “The boards were brilliant,” Durald enthuses. “Sam has an amazing sense of visual style, and those shots tell the story so well.” The filmmakers decided to shoot with two cameras, a Red Epic and a Vision Research Phantom Flex. The Epic was the main camera throughout the three-day production, which was primarily shot on and around Los Angeles’ Fourth Street Bridge, and for the climactic fireworks display, it was operated between 96-120 fps while the Phantom Flex captured images from 560-1,000 fps.

Based in part on her admiration for Brown’s previous work, Durald suggested they shoot “Strong” with anamorphic lenses. “Sam did a BMW spot that I’m just in love with, and it was shot anamorphic,” the cinematographer explains. “He was obviously familiar with the format, and when I mentioned it to him, he was already thinking the same thing.”

Durald turned to Panavision Hollywood for the production’s optics, which included de-tuned C Series and Ultra Speed Golden Panatar lenses. Both types of lenses, Durald notes, “are lower con-trast and have more falloff from top to bottom and side to side.

Short Takes

Cinematographer Autumn Durald captured this climactic fireworks display for London Grammar’s music video for “Strong.”

I

P h o t o s b y D r e w D a w s o n . P h o t o s a n d f r a m e g r a b s c o u r t e s y o f t h e f i l m m a k e r s . ➣

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“I love Panavision anamorphic glass,” she continues. “There’s an emotional quality to the lenses, and they can really help when shooting day exteriors; the lenses smooth out harsh sunlight and give it a kind of creamy quality.” Because of the inherent characteristics of the lenses, no additional filtration was required, although

Durald notes, “I used a horizontal, soft-edged grad just to take down the sky for two wide shots.”

The video incorporates three distinct times of day, each of which required a different approach: late afternoon, when the father and daughter arrive and prepare for the evening’s festivities; dusk, when

non-narrative shots of London Grammar’s lead singer, Hannah Reid, were shot along the bridge; and night, when the man suits up in the L.A. River basin and fireworks fly off his body. For smaller setups within the first time period, the crew took pains to maintain the late-afternoon feel over the course of an all-day shoot. Accordingly, Durald says, they “diffused the harsh sunlight with a 12-by Half Soft Frost over-head and backlit the scene with two M40 HMIs through ¼ Straw.”

For the close-ups of Reid — who seems to be clandestinely trailing the video’s protagonists — Brown and Durald were initially hoping for a bright, intense sunset, but an overcast day turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as the cinematog-rapher explains: “We ended up with a beautiful, soft pink and purple sunset, which looked amazing on the lead singer.” Shot in shallow focus, Reid’s light blond hair is complemented by out-of-focus splotches of pastel colors that frame her from the background.

The video reaches its climax when darkness falls and the man, having put on his armored suit, reveals himself as a living, breathing fireworks display. (For the fire-works sequences, lead actor Nash Edgerton was replaced onscreen by Wally Glenn, a.k.a. Pyro Boy, the inventor of the fire-works suit.) “It was so unique to be shoot-ing down there [in the basin] with approval to have someone wearing a fireworks suit,” says Durald.

The cinematographer adds that she

Top: A young girl (Savannah Young) sleeps in the back seat of her father’s car in this frame grab from the video. Middle: The father (Nash Edgerton) carries his daughter to a vacant area, firework supplies in

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sought to underscore the event by adding “a unique touch to the fireworks sequence.” Inspired in part by the recipe that Panavision optical engineer Dan Sasaki implemented for Greig Fraser, ACS on

Killing Them Softly ( AC Oct. ’12), Durald asked Rik DeLisle and Guy McVicker at Panavision Hollywood to provide a modified HS50 lens. The cinematographer explains, “Using part of Dan’s recipe, Guy gave the lens an intentional anamorphic twist, misaligning the elements and giving it higher-order spherical aberrations, which affect the out-of-focus bokeh and cause the highlights to bleed.” In the resultant images from the music video, the fireworks emanating from Glenn pop in stunning fashion, with each burst creating its own

unique flare.

Durald operated the Epic during the shoot, and she captured spontaneous moments in Glenn’s performance, which he performed a total of seven times over two nights. “There’s about a 30 to 45 minute reset in between [Glenn’s performances], because he has to remove everything, hydrate and take a break,” she says. The Phantom Flex, operated by Jeff Bierman, was fitted with a modified Cooke 10:1 rear-anamorphic zoom lens to get close-up detail from a safe distance, where the camera was kept on a dolly. “Sam really wanted those little bursts and beautiful little moments within the big explosion,” says Durald.

Particular attention had to be paid to

exposure during Glenn’s performance. “We didn’t want to expose the hottest point of the blast at key and then allow the smaller, surrounding explosions to get lost in dark-ness,” the cinematographer explains. “I chose to balance the two exposures, letting the hottest points overexpose by around 5 stops, and allowing the surrounding pops to be exposed closer to key to maintain detail and color. The smaller blasts were so poetic, and Sam wanted to make sure we were getting all of that texture.”

Color correction was done at The Mill in London with colorist Seamus O’Kane, who worked with transcoded 2K files on a Pandora Revolution using YoYo Data I/O, for final HD delivery in Rec 709. Live grading was also available on location in a DIT tent, where a feed from the camera was viewable on a 17" OLED monitor. “I worked with my DITs, Mike and Tom Kowalczyk, over the headset so I could dial in the look without leaving the set,” Durald says. “At the end of the day, we tweaked the LUT we established on set for our dailies, which we output through [Black-magic Design’s DaVinci] Resolve.”

Durald proudly notes that “Strong” represented the first time Glenn’s perfor-mance had been captured professionally, rather than with an iPhone or similar device. “We were doing it with expensive cameras and lenses, so Wally was obviously really happy.” And so was Durald. The modified HS50 lens was hand delivered in the nick of time, just before it was needed on location, and since “Strong,” the cinematographer says, “it’s gone out on three other jobs, and it’s out right now. People are really inter-ested in using it.” She tips her hat to DeLisle and McVicker for their enthusiasm in help-ing to lend the video’s finale such a strikhelp-ing look, commenting, “Rik and Guy are great to work with, especially on a project like this, where I’ve got a unique vision of what I want to create. It’s always an inspiring project when you can tailor the optics to make your ideas come to life.” ●

Top: Under the Fourth Street Bridge, crewmembers prepare for the scene in which the daughter lights the fuse to her father’s fireworks suit. Bottom: Durald readies a Red Epic for the fireworks scene.

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Internet Whistleblowers

By Mark Dillon

The Fifth Estatechronicles the rise of WikiLeaks, the website that has leaked millions of anonymously sourced documents and gained notoriety as one of the world’s most polarizing organizations. The feature dramatizes the first meeting in Berlin between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), who becomes the site’s spokesman. They and their colleagues proceed to post revelations about banks, churches and, most notably, U.S. government war logs from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Written by Josh Singer from Domscheit-Berg’s Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Danger-ous WebsiteandWikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy

byThe Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, the movie opened the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

The project reunited director of photography Tobias Schliessler, ASC, and director Bill Condon, who had previously collab-orated on the Academy Award-winning musicalDreamgirls( AC Dec. ’06) and the 2010 pilot for the HBO drama The Big C.Schliessler knew that their latest feature called for a different approach. “On

Dreamgirlswe spent a lot of time storyboarding; it was a much more controlled and stylized movie,” he says. “The Fifth Estateis a

depar-ture because it’s a true story that’s still happening right now. It had to feel realistic.”

The 53-year-old Schliessler was born in Baden-Baden, Germany, and schooled at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University. His cinematography career began in Canada on documentaries and low-budget features. Condon says he wanted Schliessler to shoot

The Fifth Estatebecause of the cinematographer’s experience with unconventional features such asFriday Night Lights, which shunned the traditional approaches of coverage: masters, two-shots and close-ups. “We blockedThe Fifth Estatenaturally to create the sense of ‘you-are-there’ reality in this look at events that are just a few years old, with well-known characters,” says Condon. “Tobias lit for all possibilities, and [then we let] up to three operators roam through a scene — sometimes through each other’s shots — to tell the movie in a kinetic way.”

Another whistleblower film provided inspiration: The Insider,

directed by Michael Mann and shot by Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC (

AC , June '00). “We said, ‘That’s it — that’s our bible,’” says Schliessler, who adds, “Not necessarily lightingwise, but [in terms of] the feel of it. The movie has a stylized sense even though it always feels real.”

Also useful were YouTube clips of the film’s subjects, includ-ing footage of Assange on TV, at conferences and even dancinclud-ing beneath strobe lights at Reykjavík’s Glaumbar nightclub. The

film-Production Slate

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across the face of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) as he taps out a private message inThe Fifth Estate_.

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makers went to great lengths to re-create this footage, even shooting at the same club. “We tried to duplicate everything as closely as possible, right down to the camera angles, so viewers could later search those things out [on the Internet] if they were interested,” Condon says. “That is the fun, interactive nature of the movie.”

Preproduction began with a couple weeks of work before and after Christmas 2012. The crew then embarked on a 50-day shoot, from mid-January 2013 to the end of March, spanning 70 locations — mostly in Belgium, but also in Berlin, Iceland and Nairobi.

Schliessler says he and Belgian gaffer Wim Temmerman could visit certain loca-tions only once before shooting. “I shared my thoughts with Wim in rough terms,” the cinematographer recalls. “Then, on the day of the shoot, I would wonder, ‘Is everything here that I asked for five weeks ago?’ But everything was always there! We had a hard-working Belgian crew that made my life easy.”

One of the most involved locations was Berlin’s century-old Kunsthaus Tacheles, an abandoned building that had served as an arts center for several decades. In the movie, the structure stands in for the Berlin branch of the Chaos Computer Club. Assange goes there with Domscheit-Berg, who holds a membership along with other computer experts, visual artists and elec-tronic musicians. Schliessler and Temmer-man referenced YouTube videos and pictures that displayed the colorful, moving lights and strobes that illuminated the build-ing in its rave-era heyday. “It was completely shut down,” Schliessler recalls. “There weren’t any practicals or light sockets that worked, so we had to start from scratch. The art department [headed by Denis Schnegg] supplied us with hundreds of practicals, and we hid Chinese lanterns or small LED panels wherever possible. To create the interactive lighting, we used flick-ering Par cans, [Martin] Atomic strobes and MAC 2000 moving heads, and RGB LED washes.”

Temmerman also had a custom portable lantern made with tungsten and daylight LEDs; this unit served as a fill light on tracking shots in the hallways and stair-cases. More than 300 fixtures were used to

Top: Assange and his WikiLeaks recruit, Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl), discuss the site’s potential in the Berlin branch of the Computer Chaos Club, a set built in Berlin’s Kunsthaus Tacheles. Middle: Crewmembers capture the characters as they exchange messages on their laptops. Bottom: Domscheit-Berg departs the vibrantly lit building.

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revive the location so that every floor of the building would look occupied in exterior wide shots.

Scenes involving Assange and Domscheit-Berg are considerably more colorful than those involving fictitious U.S. government officials Sarah Shaw (Laura Linney) and James Boswell (Stanley Tucci), who trace WikiLeaks’ actions, or sequences set in Switzerland’s Julius Baer bank, the target of a WikiLeaks release. Condon notes, “We were excited by the contrast between the monochromatic, glass-and-steel environments of the powerful institu-tions WikiLeaks was taking on and the

world in which [our protagonists] live, which is filled with vibrant, saturated colors. Tobias played with [that contrast] throughout his lighting, [making] very bold use of primary colors.”

The Fifth Estate transpires largely at computer stations, on computer screens and in cyberspace, and to convey these environments in a compelling way, the filmmakers sometimes had to step beyond realism. For a sequence in which Assange illustrates to Domscheit-Berg how wikileaks.org’s submission platform works — accepting a document while keeping the source hidden — Condon and production

designer Mark Tildesley devised an imagi-nary office on a beach beneath open skies. “The notion was Julian’s idealized vision of what journalism could be,” says Condon. “It’sThe Front Pageand All the President’s Men —these great big working areas.”

To imbue the desired surrealism, the team also looked at2001: A Space Odyssey — specifically David Bowman’s death chamber, which is furnished in a realistic, Baroque style but with an oddly futuristic, glowing paneled floor. For the WikiLeaks floor, Tildesley suggested sand to tie into a flashback of Assange on the beach, where he spent much of his childhood. Condon comments, “It felt important to distinguish ourselves from documentaries about Assange. This is a more immersive, subjec-tive, dramatic portrayal, so the stylization of the submission platform early on sends a signal that this is an interpretation of events, and not a docudrama.”

The scene begins with Assange and Domscheit-Berg talking at their laptops in the Computer Club. As the action segues to the fantasy office, the words they type are video-projected onto their faces and in space, and the viewer is taken on a trip through cyberspace. Schliessler explains,

Top left: Assange and Domscheit-Berg confer in a parking lot. Bottom and top right: The

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“We shot through a 50/50 mirror that reflected the text from the computer screen and gave the feeling of being inside the computer looking back through the screen. Additionally, we also projected the same content on our actors’ faces and their surroundings using two video projectors simultaneously, one focused on their faces and one for the background set. In the scene, the text is eventually supplanted by CGI [provided by Prologue] that shows how the submitted information is hidden by layers of fake data, keeping the identity of sources safe.”

The sequence then lands back in the

beach office, which was shot on a Brussels soundstage. Cumberbatch and the steel desks, lit by overhead practical fluorescents, were shot in front of a greenscreen, and the sky was added by New York’s Phosphene, which also provided set extensions. The scene was additionally lit with more than 200 of Temmerman’s custom-made flat fluorescent “Easyliter” fixtures, which were rigged in 36 12'x12' soft boxes with Light Grid Cloth, creating the feeling of a soft night sky. The sequence is revisited through-out the film with an increasingly darker sky that mirrors the film’s dramatic arc.

Temmerman’s Easyliters were used in

nearly every scene. “We used them on stands as our key light or bounced them into foam core as fill light,” Schliessler explains. “We hung them off booms for backlight or toplight in small locations where it was not possible to rig off the ceil-ings. Wim made them in various sizes — from singles to eight banks, from 6 inches to 4 feet. The best part was the stepless dimming system. I could control the remote dimmer from my DIT tent off the lighting console or even off an iPad.”

The picture was shot in the 2.40:1 aspect ratio, and the main-unit camera package included two Arri Alexa Studios as the show’s A and B cameras, and an Arri Alexa Plus as the C camera. DIT Sean Leonard explains that for the Studio cameras, the crew shot in ArriRaw to Codex S Plus Recorders with 512GB data packs, while for the Alexa Plus they used the M Recorder. They also recorded ProRes 4:4:4:4 to SxS cards for backup.

Although Schliessler had shot only one other digital feature — the forthcom-ing war drama Lone Survivor _{— he had} worked with the Alexa on commercials. “It just felt like the right camera for this movie in terms of contrast and what it does in the highlights,” he says. “I look at digital

Top left: Domscheit-Berg pursues a lead provided by anonymous whistleblowers. Bottom left: Crewmembers capture Brühl on the move. Top right: Cinematographer Tobias

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cameras like another film stock. They can look like film. It’s a combination of camera movement and how you light. I’m quite comfortable with the look of the Alexa.”

Schliessler estimates that 80 percent of the film was shot handheld, with some use of Steadicam and a couple of shots accomplished with Technocranes. Jacques Jouffret operated the production’s A camera and Steadicam, with Didier Frateur as his first assistant. The B-camera operator was Des Whelan and his first assistant was Franz Xaver-Kringer. Dino Parks served as second-unit director of photography.

The filmmakers were reframing

constantly within shots and found a work-horse lens in the lightweight Fujinon Premier 19-90mm Cabrio. For longer-lens requirements, they used the Fujinon Premier 75-400mm zoom, which they would place on a sandbag. The kit also included Ange-nieux Optimo 15-40mm T2.6, 45-120mm T2.8 and 24-290mm T2.8 zooms. Addition-ally, Schliessler carried a set of Arri Master Primes (ranging from 16mm to 150mm) for low-light shooting. Given the preponder-ance of practicals, the crew usually shot in the T2.8-T4 range, and around T5.6 in exte-riors to maintain shallower depth of focus. Schneider Classic Soft filters provided

camera diffusion.

The film’s fast-moving, free-floating camera suggests both the speed of the digi-tal world and the paranoia the WikiLeaks operators feel with their many enemies just a step behind. Schliessler tips his hat here to Jouffret: “He is able to find the moments in swish pans and handheld movements that tell the story. He just knows how to hit dialogue. Bill and Jacques would discuss where these moments are and where he would land at certain times. Meanwhile, I was usually lighting for 270 degrees, so we could move around and find moments you would normally not be able to shoot because you’d be limited by lighting.”

For onset look and color manage-ment, Leonard used Pomfort’s LiveGrade. “It provides a very efficient way to monitor and grade live,” he says. “Tobias would create a look, which I would then send as 3-D LUTs with rushes, along with any alterations that were made.” Budapest’s Colorfront handled dailies for the European shoot, while New York’s Company 3 worked on the Kenyan dailies.

The movie was edited by Virginia Katz on an Avid system at Post Factory NY. The digital files were assembled and conformed in Autodesk Smoke at Company 3 in New York. Schliessler’s frequent collaborator, ASC associate and colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld of Company 3, did the final grade on a DaVinci Resolve system, with Schliessler present throughout the process.

In his long list of credits — which also includes Hancock ( AC July ’08), Battle- ship andThe Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 ( AC

July ’09) — Schliessler holds a special regard forThe Fifth Estate. “It’s a thought-provok-ing subject,” he says. “I was very happy to do a movie that has a realistic feel. I also was very excited to work with Bill again. Giving this movie its scope while keeping the energy up was a great challenge.”

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G

ravity begins with a memorable 13-minute continuous take: a breathtaking view of Earth from space that slowly reveals a sunlit space station with three people in spacesuits floating peacefully around it. Suddenly, a mass of fast-moving debris from an exploded satellite pummels the station, killing one person and leaving the other two, astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and medical engineer Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock), marooned in space. The rest of the movie follows their struggle to survive with a dwindling supply of oxygen as they try to make their way to the nearest space station.

The 3-D feature is enhanced by long takes and fluid camerawork that immerse the viewer in the beautiful but dangerous environment of space with a groundbreaking level of realism and detail. It is the fruit of a five-year collaboration involving director Alfonso Cuarón; cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, ASC, AMC; visual-effects supervisor Tim Webber, and their talented teams. Longtime friends Cuarón and Lubezki have worked together on six features to date, including Y Tu Mamá También and Children of Men ( AC Dec. ’06). Webber supervised visual effects on the latter.

The technical and aesthetic accomplishments of Gravity become all the more impressive when Lubezki reveals that the only real elements in the space exteriors are the actors’ faces behind the glass of their helmets. Everything else in the exterior scenes — the spacesuits, the space station, the Earth — is CGI. Similarly, for a scene in which a suit-less Stone appears to float through a spaceship in zero gravity, Bullock was suspended from wires onstage, and her surroundings were created digitally. (Most of the footage in the space capsules was shot with the actors in a practical set.)

In many ways, Gravity provides a new paradigm for the

Facing the

Void

Facing the

Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC and

his collaborators detail their work on

Gravity

, a technically ambitious

drama set in outer space.

By Benjamin B

•|•

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www.theasc.com November 2013 37

expanding role of the cinematographer on films with significant virtual compo-nents. By all accounts, Lubezki was deeply involved in every stage of crafting the real and computer-generated images. In addition to conceiving virtual camera moves with Cuarón, he created virtual lighting with digital technicians, lit and shot live action that matched the CG footage, fine-tuned the final rendered image, supervised the picture’s conversion from 2-D to 3-D, and final-ized the look of the 2-D, 3-D and Imax versions. “I was doing my work as a cinematographer on Gravity ,” says Lubezki. “In the process, I had to learn to use some new tools that are part of what cinematography is becoming. I

found it very exciting.”

Lubezki says Cuarón initially told him that zero gravity would afford them great freedom in terms of camera moves and lighting. He recalls, “Alfonso said, ‘You’re going to love this movie because you can do anything you want.’ But that turned out to be untrue once we decided we wanted the film to be as realistic as possible.” The cinematographer notes that in addition to naturalism, the film-makers’ goals included respecting the physics of space, and involving the viewer with long takes and “the elasticity

of the shot.” He explains, “We wanted to keep a lot of our shots elastic — for example, to have a shot start very wide,

P h o t o s b y M u r r a y C l o s e , N i c k W a l l , M u r d o M a c l e o d a n d J u l i o H a r d y . P h o t o s a n d f r a m e g r a b s c o u r t e s y o f W a r n e r B r o s . P i c t u r e s a n d F r a m e s t o r e .

Opposite page: NASA scientist Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) gazes longingly at Earth during her ordeal in space. This page, top and middle: Stone and a veteran astronaut, Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), make repairs to the International Space Station. Bottom: Director Alfonso Cuarón (left) confers with

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then become very close, and then go back to a very wide shot.”

“We wanted to surrender to the environment of space, but we couldn’t go there, so the only way of doing it was through all of these technologies,” notes Cuarón. “In a fantasy world, we would have shot the whole film in space. If we had, not much would have changed in terms of the visuals.”

Webber, who led the visual-effects team at Framestore in London, convinced Cuarón that his desire for long takes with a zero-gravity camera required that they go virtual. “We needed the freedom of a virtual camera,” says Webber, “so we created a virtual world and then worked out how to get human performances into that world.”

The space setting offered three main sources for the lighting design: the distant sun’s hard light, the soft bounce from Earth and, occasionally, the bounce from the moon. “The settings are either outer space or the interior of a capsule,” says Lubezki. “In space, it’s mostly [the characters] against black with a piece of the Earth, a piece of the

sun and sometimes the moon. That’s not enough [visual] variety to keep you excited for 100 minutes, so Alfonso and I decided to make the lighting constantly change.

“It was very exciting to deal only with the quality of light — how harsh or

soft it would be, the amount of bounce and its color,” Lubezki continues. “Those few elements made it possible

◗

Facing the Void

After fast-moving debris damages the space station, Stone and Kowalski find themselves in a life-threatening crisis.

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for us to create many different environ-ments. We were also lucky that these spacecraft move so fast; they go through many days and nights in 24 hours.” Indeed, there are rich and dramatic vari-ations in lighting throughout the film, motivated by the rotation of the camera and the characters, as well as the 90-minute sunset cycles in orbit. One stun-ning sunset scene ends with Stone twirling into the darkness of a field of stars, barely illuminated by the lights in her helmet.

The filmmakers began their prep by charting a precise global trajectory for the characters over the story’s time-frame, so that Webber and his team could start creating the corresponding Earth imagery. Cuarón chose to begin the story with the astronauts above his native Mexico. From there, the precise orbit provided Lubezki with specific lighting and coloring cues. The cine-matographer recalls, “I would say, ‘In this scene, Stone is going to be above the African desert when the sun comes out, so the Earth is going to be warm, and the bounce on her face is going to be warm light.’ We were able to use our map to keep changing the lighting.”

Next, the filmmakers defined the camera and character positions throughout the story so that animators at Framestore could create a simple previs animation of the entire movie. Lubezki and Cuarón employed a decid-edly low-tech method to initially block the actors. “The camera moves are really

As the astronauts’ situation grows increasingly desperate, Kowalski uses his experience and humor to reassure Stone.

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complex, but we started in the most simple way — first with storyboards, and then with a bunch of puppets and toy versions of the International Space Station and the space shuttle Columbia ,” Lubezki explains. “We talked about them in the most primitive terms with the animators. It was great to start with some puppets, then have the animator come back with a black-and-white block animation, and then start to add volume, color and light. It’s truly about

layers and layers of work.”

Cuarón laughs as he recalls the surprises inherent in blocking characters in a zero-gravity environment. “The complications are really something, because you have characters that are spinning. Say you want to start your shot with George’s face and move the camera to Sandra, who is spinning at a different rate. You start moving around her, and then you start to go back to George, only to realize that if you go back to George at that moment, you will be shooting his feet! So then you have to start from scratch. Sometimes you find amazing things accidentally, but some-times you have to reconceive the whole scene.”

Webber adds that the camera moves for a few of the shots were motion-captured with a small rig that the filmmakers moved in a real space to create moves within the CG environ-ment. “We wanted the camerawork to have a natural feel,” says Webber. “So, rather than have everything key-frame-animated, we did some virtual camerawork in a small motion-capture studio. Alfonso, Chivo and I could take the rig and just wander around, controlling the camera and framing up shots, and we later tweaked it a bit to make it feel more like zero gravity.”

Lubezki believes that the long take ( plano sequencia in Spanish) brings the audience into the movie in a striking way. “The main thing about the plano sequencia is that it is immersive. To me, it feels more real, more intimate and more immediate. The fewer the cuts, the more you are with [the characters]; it’s as if you’re feeling what they’re going

◗

Facing the Void

This sequence of images shows key steps in a progression that begins with the prelight animation (top) and proceeds to the live-action production shoot (where soft fill light is applied), the first-pass

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through in real time. This is something Alfonso and I discovered on Y Tu Mamá También and Children of Men.”

Cuarón notes that whenever he was tempted “to do a camera move just because it was cool, Chivo would not allow that to happen.” He cites the example of the opening take, which ends with Stone drifting away toward open space. “When we were doing the previs, as she started floating away, I said, ‘We don’t need to cut. We can keep following her in the same shot, so the first two shots would be just one shot.’ But Chivo said, ‘I think when she’s floating away is the perfect moment to cut. If this were the chapter of a book, this would be the last phrase of the chapter.’ And he was right. Otherwise, we would have started calling attention to the long take and creating an expec-tation that that’s what the film was about. But that’s not what it’s about. The camerawork serves … I don’t want to say it serves the story, because I have my problems with that. For me, the story is like the cinematography, the sound, the acting and the color. They are tools for cinema, and what you have to serve is cinema, not story.”

In another memorable camera move, the frame starts on Stone’s point of view, looking through her helmet and its reflections, and then goes through the headpiece glass, ending on an exter-nal wide shot. Cuarón explains, “There’s a purpose there. At the beginning of the film, we wanted to present a kind of objective reality, where we just see a routine mission. After disaster strikes, we continue to follow Stone objectively

until we grab a POV and go to a subjec-tive experience. The interesting thing is that from the moment it comes out of that helmet, the camera is no longer either objective or subjective. It becomes an immersive experience, as if the viewer is right next to her.”

After the creation of the previs animation with virtual camera moves, the next stage was the prelight, when Lubezki defined the CG lighting in concert with the team at Framestore. “Working with a lot of digital gaffers, I

This progression sequence begins with the previs phase, followed by images that show the live-action footage captured in the “LED Box,” the first-pass integration of the live action with virtual elements, and

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G

ravity was a complex production that mixed virtual and real imaging elements in innovative ways. What follows is a rough outline of the key steps involved in the project’s workflow. CG lighting supervisor Paul Beilby of Framestore and senior producer Michael Dillon of Technicolor provided these details, with additional input from other members of the film-making team.

1. Orbit Path — Framestore

Cuarón works with the team at Framestore to define the trajectory of the film’s action above the Earth, which will define the Earthscapes in the film.

2. Previs — Framestore

Cuarón and Lubezki work with a team of animators to produce a low-res animated version of the movie with virtual camera moves.

3. Prelight — Framestore

Lubezki works with a team of technical directors to produce the lighting design of every virtual sequence in the film. The CG assets are simplified to

facili-tate fast rendering and feedback. 4. Pre-DI

Using two separate, accurately cali-brated DI theaters in Los Angeles and London, Cuaron, Lubezki, supervising digital colorist Steven J. Scott and visual-effects supervisor Tim Webber refine the color timing of four rendered film clips, working in real time. Results are rendered out (sometimes as just a single frame) and sent to Framestore as reference for the final look of the shots. 5. Techvis — Framestore

The previs and prelight data are used to produce camera-movement trajectories and lighting environments for both characters’ points of view for use in production.

6. Live-Action Production with LED Box — Shepperton

Techvis data is processed on set to

produce motion-control camera moves and animated lighting in the LED Box. Lubezki tweaks the illumination from the LED images, adding human-controlled hard light for the sun. The speed of the camera moves is modified to adapt to the actors’ performances. 7. Live-Action Production with Puppeteering Rig — Shepperton Techvis data is processed on set to move

Bullock on “puppet strings” to simulate zero gravity in the space capsule. This sequence is lit traditionally.

8.Live-Action

Production/Traditional Shoot — Shepperton

Most of the space-capsule interiors, as well as one 65mm scene set on Earth,

are lit and shot traditionally.

9. Conform and Rendering — Framestore

A. Animators and riggers work on the “performances” of the spacesuit “charac-ters” and space-vehicle actions using production data as a reference.

B. Modelers create high-quality versions of the previs assets.

C. Look-development technical direc-tors and texture artists refine the look of the materials using reference photogra-phy from NASA and material samples. 10. Integrating Live Action and CG — Framestore

A. Compositors work on the live-action plates received from the shoot and conform them back into the previs. Several teams of animators, animation supervisors, creature-effects supervisors and technical directors collaborate with the filmmakers to create the final actions and camera moves based on the actors’ perfor-mances.

B. Lighting technical directors work with internal visual-effects supervisors

and lighting supervisors to produce lit shots, ensuring that they match the live action.

C. Compositors work with

visual-effects supervisors and compositing supervisors to integrate the shoot data and the CG imagery to create the final images, which are then reviewed and fine-tuned by Cuarón and Lubezki. 11. DI Ingest — Technicolor

The finished 2-D files from Framestore are ingested, accompanied by external mattes to facilitate separate color timing of important individual elements in the frame.

12. DI Grade — Technicolor

Scott works with Lubezki and Cuarón to refine the 2-D image, using many layers of animated rotoscopes. The final files are used to create a 2-D DCP, Kodak Vision 2383 release prints and an HD master.

13. Stereoscopic Conversion — Prime Focus Film and Framestore

Prime Focus converts the live-action material and some visual-effects elements to 3-D. Framestore converts the rest of the picture.

14. 3-D Grade — Technicolor

The filmmakers optimize the grade for 4.5 foot-lambert and 7 foot-lambert brightness levels of projection for 3-D white screen and Imax 3-D, respec-tively. As part of this process, they selec-tively apply a reverse-vignetting adjustment to compensate for the hot spot associated with RealD’s silver-screen projection system.

File formats

- Live-action production: ArriRaw 2880x1620 deBayered to Log C v3 - Framestore CG output: 2060x876 10-bit Log C DPX

- Framestore external mattes output: 16-bit RBGa TIFF

- 2-D graded files: 2048x858 10-bit Log C

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was able to design the lighting for the entire film,” says Lubezki, recalling that there were about a dozen people work-ing on the lightwork-ing of different scenes.

Paul Beilby, a CG lighting supervisor, notes that the prelight with Lubezki was designed for speed and was much more involved than the process had been on any previous Framestore project. “We worked directly with Chivo,” he says. “We used rough inter-pretations of very primitive objects because he is used to very quick feed-back in terms of what the light’s going to look like.”

Senior visual-effects producer Charles Howell explains that Gravity ’s lengthy shots required the filmmakers to make many decisions early in the process. “I think there were only about 200 cuts in the previs animation, [whereas] an average film has about 2,000 cuts. Because these shots had to be mapped out from day one, many of the lengthy shots didn’t really change in the three years of shot production. Because we did a virtual prelight of the entire film with Chivo, the whole film was essentially locked before we even

started shooting.”

Lubezki emphasizes that Gravity ’s blending of real faces with virtual environments posed a tremen-dous challenge. “The biggest conun-drum in trying to integrate live action with animation has always been the

Top: Before shooting the actors in the LED Box, Framestore provided multi-screen frame-by-frame animations of the technical packages, including calculations for robotic camera movement (left), reference frames from the prelight (top right) and camera framing (below the prelight), and a dashboard with key motion variables for the camera and actor turntable. Middle: To prepare for a scene in which Stone floats in a space capsule, the filmmakers did a test by suspending a stand-in from a “puppeteering” rig, with motion programmed to match the previs. Lubezki used traditional lighting for this sequence, with reflective panels standing in for the capsule interior. Bottom: A similar stand-in test was done for a scene in which Stone fights a fire inside the capsule. Lubezki played the CG fire on LED panels through diffusion (offscreen left) to light the actor with a virtual fire.