American Cinematographer - July 2007 - 8

Editor’s Note t’s been 12 years since we last saw John McClane delivering wisecracks while whupping the bad guys, but Live Free or Die Hard promises enough state-of-the-art mayhem to make even Jack Bauer look lazy. Bruce Willis is back onboard for this summer’s biggest action blockbuster, and cinematographer Simon Duggan, ACS assures us that while McClane is “older and a bit wiser, age certainly hasn’t wearied him.” Describing the fourth film in the franchise as “incredibly kinetic,” Duggan notes that technical advances allowed him to fulfill director Len Wiseman’s main goal: achieving a level of realism that would make the series’ gun battles, car chases and stunts seem even more spectacular. “Even when the [onscreen] events are pushing the boundaries of reality, the audience doesn’t want to be taken out of the moment,” Duggan tells Australian correspondent Simon Gray (“One-Man Riot Squad,” page 32). “Shooting a large part of the movie on location, the style of the stunt work, and the cinematography all came from a desire to create a sense of realism.” A more stripped-down version of realism informs Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn, the harrowing true tale of a U.S. Navy pilot who endured months in a Laotian prison camp before leading fellow inmates in a daring escape. Collaborating once again with cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger (Grizzly Man), Herzog is back at what he does best, setting human drama against intimidating natural environments — in this case the jungles of Southeast Asia. As Zeitlinger notes to Fred Schruers (“Laws of the Jungle,” page 44), “There is a key sentence in Rescue Dawn when Dieter and the other prisoners in the camp are talking about escaping, and one of them says, ‘The jungle is the prison.’ That was leading Werner’s intention; that’s the reason we tried to make it as real as possible and keep the audience in the world of the jungle, rather than show it to them with long-lens photography. [Long lenses] make for beautiful pictures, but that’s not the world you are in.” Harrowing adventures are also ahead for anyone who watches the newly restored French World War II drama Army of Shadows. Released last year in U.S. theaters and now available on DVD, this 1969 classic teamed director Jean-Pierre Melville with cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, AFC. Recalling his work on the film and its subsequent restoration (“Pièce de Résistance,” page 70), Lhomme tells Paris-based correspondent Benjamin B that the digital-intermediate process allowed him to create a new negative that may be more faithful to Melville’s vision than the original print was. “By doing the restoration of this film, I restored my own memories — no joke,” says Lhomme. “To restore is to discover, and 35 years [after I shot this film], I rediscovered it on the big screen and saw its extraordinary cinematic qualities.” After absorbing all of this hard action and heavy drama, some of you may want to seek out lighter, more family-oriented fare. One fun option is Nancy Drew: The Mystery in the Hills, shot by ASC member Alexander Gruszynski. In bringing the famous girl detective to the big screen, Gruszynski and director Andrew Fleming crafted a variety of looks to reflect all of the movie’s moods. “The film has elements of a thriller, a comedy, a mystery and an adventure, all wrapped under the label of a teen film,” Gruszynski observes in his interview with David Heuring (“A Hollywood Whodunit,” page 54). “The nature of the material made it difficult to create a consistent style, and jumping back and forth between the different looks helps to create some excitement.” I Getting the perfect shot is always a tricky job! But the Cine 30 HD and its new sideload mechanism are the trick to that perfect shot! www.sachtler.com 8 Stephen Pizzello Executive Editor Photo by Douglas Kirkland.
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American Cinematographer - July 2007

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