American Cinematographer - April 2009 - 47

wanted to shoot most of the film handheld, and I wanted to give him a great operator, which Peter McCaffrey is,” says Duggan. “Alex likes the intimacy between a handheld camera and the actors; he enjoys letting the actors influence and determine the blocking, and using a handheld camera gives the operator more freedom to respond to the performances.” McCaffrey reports that he was “pleasantly surprised” by the Red One. “The only downfall of the particular build we used, #15, was shooting low-light scenes at night,” he notes. “I struggled with the brightness and resolution of the eyepiece, and we eventually solved that problem by using an on-board 5inch Transvideo HD monitor, which gave a much better picture. I believe Red has improved the eyepiece in the later builds. “To determine the intensity of the camera movement, Alex and I established a caffeine-based system,” McCaffrey continues. “A very steady shot was a ‘one cappuccino,’ whereas a chase sequence might be ‘four or five cappuccinos.’ Some scenes required a more aggressive handheld feel — for example, when Koestler is trying to solve the secrets of the numbers, the camera becomes more active as he gets agitated. In other scenes, Alex would want the camera to create a slightly unsettled feeling. We did handheld dolly work on the back of ATVs and, for high-speed work, on a rickshaw system. I’m a big believer in riding on toys when you can. The versatility of key grip Toby Copping’s approach and the rigs he built were fantastic.” Duggan favored short, lightweight zooms for the majority of the shoot, reserving prime lenses for interiors with low light levels. “The One has a PL-mount, so I used Cooke S4 primes and [Angenieux] Optimo zooms,” he says. “The [T2.6] 15-40mm Optimo was used the most. Alex’s coverage was often mid-shot and wider, even in intense coverage of a scene. He prefers to contain body language in the frame.” Duggan says his basic approach to lighting didn’t change with the One. “I’ve always lit by eye and then taken meter readings, and that didn’t change, except that I was also using the camera’s built-in histogram. Under tungsten light, the 5000°K chip is a bit more sensitive to skin tones, and they can be a little light. I used the monitor to stop down by eye if I thought the skin tones were becoming artificial. My exposure settings were always slight- ly under what the histogram suggested. For the first couple of weeks, I also used the highlight-clipping zebra at half a stop under what the chip can handle to get familiar with its exposure range.” Rushes were delivered as QuickTime files and viewed via an HD plasma screen or 1K projector. “Seeing the rushes that way was a bit off-putting,” Duggan acknowledges. “It’s a far-from-ideal method of looking at the day’s work. I was, however, reassured about the quality of what we were getting by my visits to Park Road Post, where I viewed Above: Lucinda (Lara Robinson) stands in front of her Boston elementary school — in reality, the University of Melbourne. “The location looks the part — lots of large, leafy trees — and I used a lot of dappled light in these scenes, which are mainly walkand-talks,” says Duggan. Left: Cage and director Alex Proyas (standing next to the actor, in red shirt) work out an impactful dolly move with the crew. American Cinematographer 47

American Cinematographer - April 2009

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