American Cinematographer - April 2008 - 33

“At the Hard Rock Casino, there is very little light, but amazingly, we were able to shoot,” continues Carpenter. “I decided to shoot with a 360-degree shutter and added about half a stop of gain. I never went over that with the gain because it was too noisy for my taste. Overall, the Genesis was an invaluable tool for that environment.” One feature of the Genesis is that the user can shut off the “shutter,” something that is impossible to do with a film camera without blurring the image. “Basically, it allows the CCD the maximum amount of time to collect light before it ‘dumps the charge’ and resets to capture the next frame of information,” explains Carpenter. In essence, you’re changing from a 1/48th-second exposure (24 fps at a 180-degree shutter) to a 1/24th-second exposure (24 fps at a 360-degree, or no, shutter). The longer exposure time allows approximately one additional stop of light but is also half the speed necessary to capture rapid movement, so motion blur or “trails” can appear around highlights. However, Carpenter attests that this was not a major problem on 21. “There are very minor motion artifacts that happen on the set with a 360-degree shutter, but they were not significant enough to be a problem. The only time the lack of shutter became a concern was at Planet Hollywood, where we had bright pillars of light in the architecture. When we were dollying quickly past the pillars in the foreground, we saw a trailing effect on the monitor.” He notes, however, that the trail visible on the monitor did not translate to the recorded image. “As it turns out, the CRT monitors can’t react as fast as the CCD [chip], and we saw a pronounced trail on the CRT that was not being recorded to tape and will not be recorded out to film. Honestly, the motion artifacts were not the problem I thought they would be.” Since the dawn of the digital revolution, the cinematographer’s mantra has been “protect your highlights,” because it’s a well-known axiom that digital imagery has the inverse characteristic curve of film, with a soft, sloping toe and a short shoulder. Once a highlight clips past 100 IRE, no detail can be recovered from that highlight ever again. Another axiom about digital is that it “sees deeper into the shadows.” On 21, Carpenter found these “truths” required modification. “I found the Genesis to be very, very good with highlights, but I also found I needed to protect my shadows more,” he says. “If you go with the popular wisdom and shoot for the highlights and then Above and left: For the film’s opening sequence, which shows Ben riding his bike to work, the filmmakers utilized a SuperTechno 30 crane and a Wescam helicopter rig, blending the shots in post to appear as one continuous take. Bottom: On the job at a haberdashery, Ben explains the finer points of casual style. Inside the shop, Carpenter explains, “we primarily lit through the windows using a couple of 18K and 12K HMIs.” American Cinematographer 33

American Cinematographer - April 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2008