American Cinematographer - January 2007 - 98

During the
chase, the

hapless Mr. Q
must contend

with

a

number

of

quirky

characters,

including
ferryboat

captain
Wolfgang
Watersworth

(above)and

lights and covered the windows with
black drapes. He then used Atlantic
Frost to gel a 2.5K Par and a 1.2K Par
equipped with medium-flood lenses and
bounced the units into the white fiber-

Par with

ceiling to give the space a bright,
quality. Bragg also placed a single

beam of

board
stark

tube from

Betty Bright
(below). Top
right: Bragg
records the

hilarity using a
Sony HDW-750
PAL camcorder
with a P+S
Technik Pro35

Adapter and
Zeiss Ultra
Prime lenses.

4' Kino Flo above the twins

pick up their hair and create a subtle
reflection in the surrounding machines.

launderette
twins Paula and

a

to

The

filmmakers

were

mined not to show London in

a

deter¬

familiar

and this made the exterior shot
dog approaches the laun¬
derette especially tricky. To ensure that
no reflections of the surrounding build¬
ings could be seen in the launderette's
windows, Bragg and Bucknell placed
three Easy Lift Telescopic Stands
outside the building and rigged them
with goalposts across, then hung large
swaths of black drape. "Andreas
wanted to keep the launderette fairly
mysterious from the outside," says
Bragg. "For the wide exterior shot
where the dog walks into the laun¬
derette, we exposed for the outside and

way,

where the

left the interior darker." He used a 1.2K

a

narrow-spot lens to rake a

light across the front of the
vintage washing machines.
The shots on the ferry were also
a challenge, because the number of
people who could be on board was
limited. Bragg couldn't bring his gaffer,
and he had to capture all the shots in the
direct sun. "Fortunately, the skipper was
able to orient the boat so the dog was
always in the light. We shot while the
boat was moving, so when we reached
a certain point, the skipper would have
to turn around and start again." For the
shot inside the boat's cabin, Bragg used
a 650-watt tungsten light powered by a
small electrical converter.

Dog & Bone was finished at
Moving Picture Co., where it
was graded by Thomas Urbye in a Quantel iQ suite. Urbye had met with Hafele
and Bragg during prep to discuss the
look they wanted to achieve. Bragg
recalls, "Thomas suggested we would
London's

have the

opportunity in the grading

suite to create the look

we

wanted,

so

shouldn't force things too far in any
direction during the shoot. We should

we

hit the exposure towards the high end
of the scale, so the image would have a
broad

dynamic range with all the high¬
lights and shadow details present."
One thing Urbye did was a great
deal of sky replacement. Bragg and
Hafele wanted the final film to have rich

they shot with
they would shoot one pass
of the scene with the actors, then keep
the camera locked off, take a reading for
the sky, and shoot another pass without
any action. "We could then take one of
our correctly exposed blue skies and
have Tom paint it over the gray sky,"
says Bragg. "It's a very stylized look, but
it works well for this film. [Post] went
really well because everything was
graded and onlined at one facility. If we
saw one tiny element that we wanted
to change, we could do that." For the
theatrical and DVD presentations,
Urbye reframed the native 16x9 footage
blue skies, so whenever
a

wide lens,

at 1.85:1.

By all accounts, the biggest chal¬
lenge of the production was working
with the canine hero. "Multiple tasks
like stopping on a mark, holding his eye
line, and keeping the phone in this
mouth during a London heat wave
proved quite a challenge," says Hafele.
"I think, however, that the Frankfurt
sausage treats he received after every
shot helped to motivate him."
■

96

January 2007
American Cinematographer - January 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2007
