American Cinematographer - April 2008 - 66

Sundance 2008: Mining for Movies Our general philosophy was ‘less is more,’ and we had to be brave.” When he was able to incorporate a light or two, Crawley and gaffer Len Stanga worked with a lighting package from Arri CSC’s Florida location. They also worked closely with production designer Jerel Levanway to incorporate practical sources within the locations. To help illuminate night exteriors set just outside of the brothers’ homes, the production installed a telegraph pole with 1K halogens on the top. “I put some trace on the [halogens] to diffuse them, and I used some color as well,” recalls Crawley. “I used some blue and a bit of green so it looked kind of sickly.” If additional light was needed for closer shots, Crawley and his crew would simply bring in a bounce board. In a pivotal scene, Marlee and her son are run off the road by a carload of thugs to whom James owes money. Most of the car interiors in this and other driving scenes were unlit, but “on a couple of occasions, mainly when I was losing light, I used a little LED light,” says Crawley. “I’d hold it up next to the camera or pin it up somewhere just to fill in the driver a little bit.” However, for a scene in which Lawrence drives his truck through town at night, Crawley chose not to add light inside the vehicle. “I pushed that scene 2 stops, and it’s amazing how it holds up,” reveals the cinematographer, who worked with Kodak Vision2 250D 5205 and 500T 5218. “The blacks are a little milkier than they would otherwise be, but it’s nothing unpleasant.” (For the rest of the film, Crawley rated the stocks normally, and he often shot with the lenses wide open.) When Marlee loses her job, she offers to take care of Lawrence’s store. The production found a working store they were able to commandeer for a few days, and Crawley embraced the mixedsource lighting the location offered. “I shot on daylight stock because of the number of windows,” he explains. “I didn’t correct any of the lights inside. I just let the stock deal with it, and then I shifted things a little bit in the timing. Sometimes you can even things out too much; I think it’s okay if the exterior is a bit cold and the interior is a bit green.” Crawley returned to the States to join Hammer in supervising Ballast’s photochemical finish. Working with Aidan Stanford at Technicolor’s North Hollywood facility, the filmmakers printed to Kodak Vision Premier 2393. The film ends with Lawrence, Marlee and James driving in silence to the store, the three of them at last functioning as a unit, however tenuous their bond may be. Recalling his own bond with the director during the shoot, Crawley offers, “Lance pushed me all the time to be braver and braver, as he should. But as the cinematographer, you don’t want to screw it up. On another film, I might have done things completely differently, but this is how Ballast was supposed to be.” — Jon D. Witmer King of Ping Pong Cinematographer: Askild Vik Edvardsen, FSF, FNF Director: Jens Jonsson With its pale, icy palette and symmetrical framing, King of Ping Pong was one of the most visually distinctive films at Sundance this year. Having collaborated on 10 shorts and one TV miniseries over the past decade, Swedish director Jens Jonsson and Norwegian cinematographer Askild Vik Edvardsen, FSF, FNF, consciously set about creating a new stylistic challenge for themselves with their first feature. The director explains, “We wanted to do the whitest film ever made! We thought it should look like a glass of milk.” The result netted Sundance’s In a scene from King of Ping Pong, which won the Excellence in Cinematography Award-World Dramatic this year, the estranged father of Rille (Jerry Johansson, left) and Erik (Hampus Johansson) takes them for a spin on the ice. 66 April 2008 King of Ping Pong frame grab courtesy of Bob Film Sweden. Edvardsen photo courtesy of the cinematographer.

American Cinematographer - April 2008

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