American Cinematographer - April 2009 - 12

Top left: Stewart enjoys a laugh with the crew, including co-production designer/chief lighting technician Matt Vest (in doorway), whom Wunstorf calls “my MVP.” Top right: Wunstorf checks the light on his subject. Below: The woman begins to suspect she is waiting in vain. phy was split into halves because Wunstorf wanted to capture the autumnal textures of Fort Edmonton Park, where the house exterior is located, and at the time, he hadn’t yet cast the film’s sole actor. “I always imagined the film taking place in the fall,” says Wunstorf. “It’s prettier, and it underscores the fact that she’s in a dying relationship with the person who doesn’t show up.” By the time he locked in the interior location and cast Stewart, it was winter. The interior set was the second level of a heritage house in downtown Edmonton. In the film, every room is bathed in soft daylight, an effect that was harder to achieve than one might think. “Some of it is daylight, and some of it is re-created daylight,” says Wunstorf. “Using natural light meant being lucky with the sun.” He and his 15-person crew worked for four days, taking 10 hours each day to capture shots that would comprise the film’s single afternoon. The daylight hours were short, from about 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. “When the sun is that low in the sky, it penetrates the room really nicely, but it also moves really quickly!” notes Wunstorf. He arranged the shooting schedule so the camera would be pointed toward the windows during the daytime. To hide details outside the windows, including the adjacent apartment buildings, he let the windows blow out and asked for sheer curtains to be hung in them. Window-screen frames from Home Depot — “a tip I learned from Stephen Burum [ASC]” — were lined with ND gels and used to cut down the overexposure and bring out the texture in the curtains. Any time the camera was pointed away from the windows, it was either before sunrise or after sundown. The windows were gelled with 85 to warm the daylight coming in and make it easier to match the tungsten lamps set up inside. “It was easy to re-create that ambience with 500-ASA film,” notes Wunstorf. In the interest of efficiency, very low-wattage lamps were used; only about 2K worth of lighting was up at any given time, bouncing off muslin or a ceiling or wall, or sometimes directly through half or full gridcloth. At one point, Wunstorf came up with an idea for a poor man’s space light, utilizing a laundry hamper from Ikea. “The hamper has no color, it’s very light and portable, and it can be compressed into a flat disk about 18 inches in diameter. You can hang it from a C-stand or stand it on the floor. Ikea’s a great resource, especially when you’re working with a small budget.” In the winter months, after Stewart was cast, Wunstorf was unable to shoot around the snow-covered grounds 12 April 2009

American Cinematographer - April 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2009