American Cinematographer - May 2009 - 60

A Friend in Need Above left: 18K tungsten balloons boosted the ambience inside Disney Hall, where key grip Herb Ault and key rigging grip Dhamarata Dhiensuwana designed an overhead camera trolley. Above right: Ayers perceives the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s rendition of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 as color and light, a phenomenon known as synesthesia, which the filmmakers created incamera by shining a Mac 2000 down the lens or through the eyepiece. could sit below him in the car’s passenger seat and shoot Robert, who appeared to be driving. It was just wonderful to have, and we used it a lot.” (Matching cars were kept at the ready for wide shots of the car or for singles looking through the windshield from a hood mount.) “When we were imagining the sequence where Nathaniel plays the cello for the first time, I wanted the chance to cross the city and lend a kind of elevation to [the shot],” notes Wright. As Ayers connects with the instrument, the camera pans away and lifts up through an opening in the tunnel to reveal a wide shot of downtown. “We used a 100-foot Strada crane with a Libra head, and we released pigeons to help lead the camera up,” says McGarvey. As Ayers continues playing, a sequence the cinematographer calls “the city symphony” plays out, combining shots from a FlyingCam with images filmed by aerial director of photography Doug Holgate. “Visual-effects supervisor John Moffat then animated some birds into the [aerial] shots to lead the eye,” notes McGarvey. “I opted to shoot the aerial sequences on Super 35mm in order to keep the weight down. The spherical zoom lens also afforded us a wider stop and greater flexibility for composition.” A similarly symphonic approach graces camerawork in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, home of the L.A. Philharmonic. Moved by Ayers’ story, the orchestra’s publicist, Adam Crane (Michael Bunin), invites him and Lopez to attend rehearsals and performances. The production shot these scenes at the real location, and the filmmakers “wanted Disney Hall to look like what it is,” says Woodside. Accordingly, his crew worked closely with Disney Hall’s lighting technicians and used the facility’s tungsten stage lights. To boost the ambience in the auditorium, Woodside floated three 13' 8K incandescent sausage balloons, which also served to accommodate a large truss rig the crew hung from the ceiling to move the camera. “Seamus and Joe wanted some shots where we would start wide and come into a fairly extreme close-up of the conductor,” explains Ault. “I designed the rig and my rigging key, G [Dhamarata Dhiensuwana], put it in for us. It was basically a Cablecam shot, but the camera rode on a trolley. We hung it in such a way that we could angle it and make it run from high to low or low to high. We could also fly it up out of the way so we could shoot wide angles without seeing it.” As conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen lifts his baton to lead the Philharmonic into a rehearsal of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 (“Eroica”), the camera flies across the auditorium from behind the musicians into a close-up of Ayers. With the notes filling the air, the scene is increasingly filtered through Ayers’ point of view. Finally, “all the ambient light drops and we’re left with the stage lighting,” explains McGarvey. “We wanted to create a feeling of going inside Nathaniel’s head, through his ears and into his brain.” Ayers’ sometimes-obfuscated point of view is evoked in other sequences — often with flares, and occasionally through the use of moving crystals on monofilament just in front of the lens — but in the concert hall, his perception is presented as pure light and color dancing in time with the music. The visuals are intended to simulate a phenomenon known as synesthesia, in which a stimulus produces an apparently unrelated sensation (such as a sound causing the listener to see a color). Explaining the creative process that led to the synesthesia sequence, Wright says, “I really wanted the audience to listen to this extraordinary piece of Beethoven music, but I felt I probably couldn’t get away with having a totally black screen. Because the scene is set in Disney Hall, [I decided to create] a bit of an homage to Fantasia, and also to some of my art-school heroes, like Stan Brakhage.” To create the synesthesia 60 May 2009

American Cinematographer - May 2009

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