American Cinematographer - July 2007 - 76

Meltzer shoulders the camera while capturing a scene with actors Tim Cowgill (as Rose’s father) and Robinson. that looks too much like high-definition video.” He rated the stock normally and used ND filters on the lens when shooting day exteriors. “Hoku was a little nervous at first,” he recalls. “It was really dark, we were shooting 200-ASA stock, and we didn’t get dailies until three days into the night shoot — and they were on DVCam, so they weren’t much to judge things by. But even on the DVCam dailies, Hoku was happy with what he saw. We definitely pushed the limits of the toe of the film stock.” The 11-day shoot took the crew to Piru in Ventura County and Tejon Ranch on the border of Los Angeles and Kern counties, where they shot in the woods at an approximate altitude of 3,000'. The logistical problems of hauling equipment to the Tejon location and shooting there were numerous. Meltzer recounts, “It was hard to get stuff to the location because there were dirt roads. We shot in December, so it was freezing outside. On two different nights the generator, which was lighting not just the scene but the whole set, gave out, so we were stranded in the dark for hours while waiting for the rental company to bring us a new genny. Then, a massive branch fell down and broke through our trailer. We had a Condor, but it was so windy there we often couldn’t send anyone up in it.” Lacking the budget to rent large HMIs, Meltzer had to make the most of natural light. He used Fomecore bounces, Ultrabounces, and negative fill during the day, and a Nine-light MaxiBrute gelled with 1⁄2 CTB when magic hour drew near. He always sent the light from the mirror boards through frames of Opal to add softness while maintaining the sourcey quality of the light. He added 1⁄4 or 1⁄2 Tiffen White Pro-Mist to the lens on day exteriors in the woods to help give the image a fantasy feel. The primary lighting consideration throughout the film was Rose. “We were trying to create a world where the dead and decayed are beautiful, so we wanted Rose to have her own special light,” says Meltzer. “This was the kind of movie where giving the lead her own light was appropriate.” To enhance the character’s ghostliness, Meltzer didn’t give her an eyelight and intensified the shadows under her eyes by placing 6'x6' solids above the actress to cut some light off her. The biggest challenge was shooting outside in the woods at night. Meltzer typically lit these scenes by keying 5K tungsten Fresnels and 2K and 1K open-faced tungsten units off 6'x6' or 12'x12' frames of Ultrabounce, wrapping light softly around the actors. Uchiyama wanted to make sure viewers could see as much as possible in the surrounding woods; to accomplish this, Meltzer placed a 24K Moleeno gelled with 1⁄4 CTB on a Condor to serve as backlight and/or moonlight. For larger scenes, Meltzer added 5K and 10K units through Opal frames to bring up the overall fill in some of the darker areas in the background. “The tricky part was that we didn’t have the crew, the space or the time to move the Condor every time we turned around,” he recalls. “Instead, we’d flip the action and slightly change our camera angles so the backgrounds didn’t look exactly the same.” The film was processed at FotoKem, and DVCam dailies were provided by Magic Film & Video and graded by Jerald Jones. Uchiyama had a 1.85:1 matte added in post because he believed it enhanced the landscapes in the film. He and Meltzer carried out the final color correction themselves, working on editor Hovig Menakian’s Final Cut Pro system. “I’d shot the film very lowcontrast so that in post we could bump up the contrast to give it that dreamlike feel,” say Meltzer. “On top of that, we desaturated the image until all that was left were little touches of color. We used a vectorscope, which allowed us to determine exactly how much color we had in each scene. All of this helped to give Rose its aged, surreal look.” s To have your short-form project considered for coverage, send us a copy of the work on DVD (Region 1) and include a brief description of the photographic techniques used and your contact information. If you want the DVD returned to you, include a postage-paid, selfaddressed envelope. Upon request, you must be able to provide highresolution stills (TIFF or JPEG) for illustration purposes. Send to: Short Takes, c/o American Cinematographer, 1782 N. Orange Dr., Los Angeles, CA, 90028. Because of the volume of submissions, personal responses are not possible. If you do not hear from us within 6 months of submission, you can assume we are unable to cover your project. 76 July 2007

American Cinematographer - July 2007

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