American Cinematographer - October 2007 - 10

Letters Keelhauled on Pirates 3 In the otherwise excellent June article about Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (“All Hands on Deck,” p. 32), one paragraph has caused serious concern here at Image G. The paragraph is on page 47 and begins with the sentence: “One of the most challenging shots in At World’s End features the demise of Lord Cutler Beckett aboard his ship, the Endeavour.” In discussing a motion-control shot staged for this sequence, the show’s director of photography, Dariusz Wolski, ASC, says, “On the first take, the rig broke. Then they decided to go with a simpler rig that didn’t have a pan head.” Unfortunately, this quote is imprecise and potentially harmful to Image G’s reputation for successfully delivering difficult special-effects shots. Following publication of the article, I spoke with Dariusz about this, and he told me he had intended to say, “in testing, [camera] heads broke” — which they did. The positioning of the 120' motion-control track on the deck of the Endeavour required a compensating back pan to track the actor descending the staircase. Shots of the ship being ripped to pieces around him were achieved as a number of matching passes at different dolly and camera frame rates. Extreme speed was required for the “overcranked” elements of Beckett’s demise, and a motioncontrolled, winch-driven “Rocket Sled” rig was built by Image G specifically for this shot. The Sled achieved and precisely repeated a 30'-persecond move with a dramatic 5' stop. In testing, there was no “standard” head that could withstand the extreme G-force caused by the sudden stop with the 145-pound PhotoSonics package. An Arri and a vintage Worrall were sacrificed in the attempt — happily, on Image G’s test track, not on the set! To solve the problem, we engineered and constructed a unique panning head that proved capable of both repeating and withstanding the sudden stop with the heavy camera mounted to it. During the actual shoot, Image G’s Rocket Sled and the custom head performed flawlessly. Sincerely, Andrew Harvey, Producer Thomas Barron, Director Image G Studio City, CA 10 DVD Playback Ace in the Hole (1951) 1.33:1 (Full Frame) Dolby Digital Monaural The Criterion Collection, $39.99 After being fired from several high-profile newspapers across the country, abrasive news reporter Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas) finds himself in New Mexico with no money. Flaunting his crackerjack portfolio, he bullies Albuquerque News boss Boot (Porter Hall) into giving him a job, and after spending a year covering small-town news, Tatum stumbles upon a local story he knows could be his ticket to the top: a nearby cave housing ancient Native American dwellings has collapsed, and local roadhouse owner Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict) has become trapped deep within it. While Minosa’s parents try desperately to free him by calling in the authorities, his bored, brittle wife, Lorraine (Jan Sterling), sees his predicament as an opportunity to leave him and the life she has grown to hate. When Tatum learns that the complicated process to extract Leo might take 24 hours, he manipulates the mining engineers at the scene to prolong the rescue attempt into a week-long process, and then entices Lorraine and the local authorities to stick around. Tatum’s tabloid skills lead to best-selling news stories about the desperate Leo and his heartsick family, and it isn’t long before the roadhouse and its grounds attract national interest, luring spectators and other journalists in droves. Tatum carefully feeds the media circus by conducting exclusive interviews with Leo inside the cave, and Lorraine begins raking in money at the roadhouse. It’s clear that Tatum and Lorraine understand each other, and the tension between them erupts when she, impressed by his incredible opportunism, makes the now-famous remark, “I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you, you’re 20 minutes.” Ace in the Hole was ignored by audiences upon its release in 1951, prompting director Billy Wilder to refer to it later as “the runt of my litter.” But this scathing indictment of the media as a parasitic presence in American life was far ahead of its time, and seems even more relevant today. Astute, unflinching and crackling with incredible dialogue (written by Wilder, Walter Newman and Lesser Samuels), the film was Wilder’s followup to Sunset Boulevard, and to make it he called upon one of Hollywood’s most trusted cinematographers, Charles B. Lang Jr., ASC. Lang had collaborated with Wilder on A Foreign Affair (1948), and he worked closely with the director to give Ace in the Hole the bold, tabloid quality it needed without drawing attention to the camera. The monochrome picture comprises sharp contrasts with a tight gray scale to convey the often-stark exterior lighting juxtaposed against the shadows of the cave where Leo waits for rescue. So successful was this collaboration that Wilder and Lang would reteam on Sabrina (1954) and Some Like It Hot (1959), both of which would earn Lang Academy Award nominations. (Lang, the recipient of the 1991 ASC Lifetime Achievement Award, earned 18 Oscar nominations in all, winning only once, for 1934’s A Farewell to Arms.) Previously unavailable in the U.S. on any home-video format, Ace in the
American Cinematographer - October 2007

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