American Cinematographer - December 2017 - 32

Top (from left): First AC Andy Chen, 2nd AC Grant Friesen, cinematographer Tinx Chan and
gaffer Jesse Lee. Above: Colorist Sam Daley (left) and Chan work on the short's final grade at
Technicolor-PostWorks in New York.

us visually, as opposed to static cuts or
following the action closer with a wider
lens," Chan notes. "The long lens also
helped hide some parts of the park that
would have revealed we were shooting in
modern-day California instead of old
China!"
He also decided against shooting
wide open, preferring a T4/5.6 split that
helped keep the background in focus,
thereby allowing the audience to appreciate
the landscape.
32

December 2017

The sparrow is a central character in
the story, and the film opens with a watercolor illustration of the bird, painted by
Deng herself. The illustration transitions into
a live-action shot of a real sparrow, and
when it flies away, the camera tilts down to
find the boy, Li (Arthur Welch), in the grass.
"It's our first introduction to the boy," Chan
says, "and we hoped that the audience
would associate his character with the innocent bird."
The shots of the locusts bring to
American Cinematographer

mind the plague of insects in Terrence
Malick's Days of Heaven, shot by Néstor
Almendros, ASC. "Interesting enough,
while we were shooting live locusts with
available light, we didn't reference Malick at
all," Chan says. "We shot the locusts on a
long 85mm lens to maximize our distance
so we wouldn't disturb the bugs. We also
had a bug wrangler for a few hours on set
to keep them tame as we filmed."
Empty Skies was cut in Adobe
Premiere and finished in 2K ProRes 4:4:4:4.
Since the color red was synonymous with
the period and the communist politics,
Chan knew it would be key to the short's
palette; red appears onscreen in a propaganda painting, Mao's Little Red Book, firecrackers, and the girl's hair ribbon. During
the color-timing session at Technicolor-PostWorks in New York, colorist Sam Daley used
Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 12.5 to
regain some of the saturation and contrast
the vintage K-35 lenses had suppressed.
"During that time period in China,
there was this façade that 'everything's
okay' when in actuality it wasn't," Chan
says. "Even in some of the propaganda art,
we see saturated colors and smiling people
with bushels of wheat, while the reality was
actually quite grim. Deng envisioned the
film in saturated colors for this reason, and
we worked with Sam to keep the film warm
in the beginning, up until the final scene
where we cool it down, as reality hits the
boy."
Chan was pleased with how Empty
Skies turned out, particularly its critique of
political propaganda brainwashing the
innocent. "I come from the school of Ed
Lachman [ASC] when it comes to my philosophy on cinematography," he offers. "I'm a
firm believer that the images we create
should have metaphoric value in relationship to the story we're trying to tell. The
look and style of the film came out of how
we thought the world would look from the
perspective of these children.
"At the end of the day," Chan
concludes, "I just want to move hearts with
●
the moving image."

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2017