American Cinematographer - May 2007 - 26

Right: Actor Frank Whaley (left) prepares for a take as cinematographer Andrzej Sekula eyes the setup from behind the camera. Below: The crew executes a dolly shot of the motel’s exterior, which was built at Disney Ranch. Motel interiors were shot on a Sony Pictures soundstage. cannot be wrong. With hard light, things are more dangerous. You have to hit exactly what you want in the ratio between shadow and light. Once you miss, you may not see an actor’s face. That’s the way I prefer to work.” Meisenheimer, one of Sekula’s frequent collaborators, adds, “You don’t get that look very often these days, and people take notice. Andrzej’s movies don’t look like other movies. He works right off the Fresnel light with little or no diffusion. It’s intense light, but not necessarily a lot of light. He doesn’t use standard techniques in lighting placement either — you won’t usually find key, back and fill. Often there’s just a single-source key and maybe a backlight. He likes a very high contrast ratio.” For scenes in David and Amy’s room, Sekula used large sources set as far away as possible. The set was built on a large stage, and although the grid was modified to get lights as close to the true stage ceiling as possible, Meisenheimer says, “I could have used more space to get the spread we were after with the 18Ks. I could have used 20 more feet.” Naturally, Sekula’s method kept him from relying on the small practicals in the room. In classical Hollywood fashion, he shaped the light from large sources to suggest they were coming from those fixtures. Meisenheimer notes, “I gaffed two films with Richard Kline [ASC], and he taught me that if you have a practical somewhere in the background, an audience will buy a certain amount of fudging. Once they believe there’s a light in the room, they’re not going to be concerned with exactly where it’s coming from. So we had a lot of practicals in the motel room that gave us a lot of leeway.” But the sources weren’t all 10Ks and 18Ks. Sekula also used smaller Fresnels, 2K Baby Juniors and 650-watt Tweenies. He also made extensive use of 1'x1' LitePanels LED lights for fill, controlling spill with a light cone in front of the source. “The LED was a real workhorse,” notes Meisenheimer. “It put out a lot of light, and we could dim it without the color temperature changing. It was a very flattering light for Kate, even when she was looking disheveled and terrified.” Sekula shot Vacancy in the standard 1.85:1 aspect ratio using a Panaflex Millennium XL and Primo primes, and he did most of the operating himself. “It’s a handheld camera, but we didn’t want to look shaky, so I tried to be as steady as possible,” he says. “Of course, when you shoot that way for 10 straight hours, your body plays tricks on you, and there might be a little move here or there. But that was fine because it helped create just a bit of fear by suggesting the couple are always being observed. We didn’t try to put the cameras in places to make that point, but there are little imperfections in the shots that [suggest] that.” Though Sekula enjoys experimenting with different techniques, he admits to being something of a purist. For example, he dampened the producers’ initial enthusiasm about shooting Vacancy with Panavision’s digital Genesis camera because he did not believe it was the right tool for the project. And although the postproduction path had not been determined when he spoke to AC, he was inclined to argue for a photochemical finish. “I originally wanted to use the bleach-bypass process for some shots, but after we wrapped I decided against it. It’s become a common technique, and also, I didn’t want to break the film’s reality, the sense that this could happen to anyone. Once you stylize your [images] too much or in the wrong direction, viewers no longer believe what they’re seeing is real.” When he saw the first set of dailies, Antal knew Sekula had been the right choice for his project. “If you use just one quote from me,” he says, “please write that I love Andrzej Sekula!” Sekula says he also enjoyed working with Antal. “Someone can have a fantastic body of work, but you still might not click,” he notes. “But when I met Nimród, we started clicking right away. I saw his vision and his personality, and soon we were like kids, talking about all the movies we like. I knew then that the collaboration would be a good one.” ■ 26 May 2007

American Cinematographer - May 2007

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