American Cinematographer - July 2008 - 33

One of the first puzzles to solve was how to best compose for the Imax frame. The production was advised to enlist a large-format director of photography for that work, but with Nolan’s support, Pfister decided he and his crew could adapt quickly enough to use the format effectively on their own. “We just needed to shoot and learn,” he says. “There’s a whole booklet about how to film in Imax, but our inclination was to break all those rules. In the end, we incorporated some of the ideas to a degree, but for the most part, we did what felt right to us and addressed composition shot-byshot.” Imax protocol stipulates maintaining an enormous amount of headroom because in most theaters, seeing the top third of the screen requires craning one’s neck. “The rule of putting the crosshairs on top of the head seemed a little extreme,” says Pfister. “Plus, we felt like we were wasting all this great negative. So we put the crosshairs on the eyes for close-ups. A ‘normal’ close-up is often way too big in Imax — if you hold it for a while, the audience is going to be looking at one eye or the mouth. You have to back up a bit. “Chris didn’t want any of us freaking out about makeup flaws and the like, but the reality is that you see every little detail — that piece of camera tape down the street in the frame, the one you don’t normally worry about, had to be removed. We had to condition everyone on the crew to a higher level of discipline, especially [production designer] Nathan Crowley and his team. Everyone had to be meticulous.” During the week he spent testing Imax MSM 9802 and MKIII cameras and Hasselblad lenses in Toronto, 1st AC Bob Hall found a number of limitations that had to be overcome or avoided. The cameras were incompatible with Cine Tape or Panatape, electronic focus assist devices that camera assistants have come to depend on, and the viewfinders were not up to standard quality. The stiffness of the Hasselblads’ mechanisms meant focus could only be adjusted with specially modified Preston remote motors. “When we saw the depth-offield test projected, it was pretty scary,” recalls Hall. “It was a close-up, and very little of the face was in focus. I didn’t dwell on how hard and complex [the job] was going to be, and I don’t think that hit any of us until we saw the dailies from the first day’s bank-heist sequence. It was an epiphany for everyone. We were seeing extremely wide shots with the depth of field of a telephoto shot.” ¢ Above: The Joker attempts to intimidate Gotham’s strongwilled assistant D.A., Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Left: Batman’s alterego, billionaire Bruce Wayne, finds he has a new rival for Dawes’ affections: District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), whose battle against the Joker has severe personal consequences. American Cinematographer 33

American Cinematographer - July 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 2008