American Cinematographer - December 2015 - 20

Top: Marcus
(Jordan Mosley,
right) tries to
shelter his younger
brother Martell
(Erick Bowman)
from their
neighborhood
gang life in Run.
Bottom: Aguilar
operates a Freefly
Systems Movi
M10 gimbal for a
scene with Marcus
and Dean (Heston
Horwin, on
the ground).

underexposed whenever we worked with
it," says Aguilar. "We rated it at 320 and
640 ISO, depending on whether it was day
or night."
With the Epic, he used Arri/Zeiss
Ultra Prime 20mm and 24mm lenses - as
well as a Rokinon Cine 24mm and a Zeiss
Planar 50mm for the Canon EOS 5D Mark
II. "Perhaps 90 percent of the film was shot
with the 20mm," Aguilar reports. "My
shooting stop was T1.9 most of the time in
night exteriors, while interiors were at
T2.8." Aguilar says he rated the Epic at ISO
800 and then "let things go dark when
they needed to be." No lens filters were
used on the production.
"My thought was to keep it
simple," Aguilar says, "but stylistic enough
so the characters feel threatened and
chased. I wanted to close the gap between
the audience and the action as much as
possible - that's why I chose wider lenses
and stuck basically to a single lens for the
whole picture. I wanted the audience to
have the ability to look around if they
wanted to, while allowing the actors to
really carry the action and emotion of every
moment. I wanted them to feel like Marcus:
slowly discovering the space and hoping
20

December 2015

not to make a wrong turn."
Aguilar operated for nearly the
entire movie, which was shot over six days,
most of it with the camera on a Freefly
Systems Movi M10 gimbal. But several
shots required multiple operators and
complex hand-offs. "I set up a remote
control for the Movi so I could control the
frame as it passed from one operator to the
next, and I communicated with my operators over walkies," Aguilar explains. He
lists Pascal Combes-Knoke, Al Stevens, Rob
Sandberg and Matt Komorous as operators. He also credits 1st AC Jon Wang for
"pulling off distances and always hitting the
mark."
The majority of the movie - an estimated 85 percent - was shot with practicals, but Aguilar nevertheless carried a relatively substantial lighting kit and worked
with two gaffers, Luka Pascalicchio and
Mike O'Kane. The kit included two Kino
Flos (a 2' four-bank and a 4' four-bank], one
Arri M18, an array of Mole-Richardson
units, and two Luminys Systems 1K
sodium-vapor lights and a 1K metal-halide
fixture. Aguilar also purchased about 20
household fixtures and 50 lightbulbs that
were carefully placed and controlled
American Cinematographer

through dimmers and sometimes gels.
When simulating or supplementing
practical streetlights and industrial work
lights, Aguilar notes, "falloff was a creative
choice. At times we chose smaller units
closer to the talent, and other times larger
units farther away. There's a sort of intimacy
when using smaller units."
Most challenging about the shoot,
says Aguilar, were the long sequences,
especially the second-to-last scene, a catand-mouse shootout with numerous
extras, in the dark, in and around vehicles,
which Aguilar shot with the Movi M10.
(Handheld was reserved only for the last
shot of the film.) "I had to create a style and
cohesive voice visually so it doesn't look like
a bunch of kids chasing people around in
an action sequence," he says. "These are
two men bonded by family and kinship. My
challenge was to put these characters in a
real-looking world and make the cinematography as invisible as possible."
The production was edited at Chapman University by Mackenzie Marlowe.
Company 3 colorist Bryan Smaller
performed the digital intermediate using
DaVinci Resolve. As the cinematographer
explains, "We shot 5K, edited in 1080, and
●
finalized a deliverable in 1080."
To view Warbird Pilot: Behind the
Visor, visit vimeo.com/103092939. To
watch The Defeat (x3), visit
vimeo.com/91547188. Run can be viewed
at vimeo.com/123509259. For more about
the Student Heritage Awards ceremony,
visit
www.theasc.com/site/news/ascannounces-student-heritage-awardwinners/.

http://www.vimeo.com/103092939 http://www.vimeo.com/91547188 http://www.vimeo.com/123509259 http://www.theasc.com/site/news/asc-announces-student-heritage-award-winners/ http://www.theasc.com/site/news/asc-announces-student-heritage-award-winners/ http://www.theasc.com/site/news/asc-announces-student-heritage-award-winners/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2015