American Cinematographer - December 1997 - 22

them to

Spirit DataCine
Perfection
1

Pure

Digital

scapes.

the way

expansive, bright snowy land¬
"I wanted that to be a shock,
light can surprise and give rev¬

elation," the director notes. This use of
motif, pro¬

contrast becomes a visual

a sense of hope in the otherwise
bleak tale.
Per Egoyan's directive that The
Sweet Hereafter have the sense of a
"dark fairy tale," Sarossy's imagery is
imbued with an otherworldly quality -
a scheme partially attained through the
use of naturalistic lighting. One of the
film's key sequences, a frequently re¬
turned to flashback depicting the fateful
bus crash, was photographed in bright

viding

The

Spirit DataCine film scanner
at the following fine
post production facilities:
is available

daylight during five days of exterior work.

NORTH AMERICA

A series of events ends in horror

bus
and

The

Tape House-New York
Filmworkers Club-Chicago

SMA Video-New York

Crawford Communications-Atlanta
Command Post-Toronto
Swell

Pictures-Chicago

Filmworkers Club-Dallas
Warner Bros. Studios-Burbank

Modern Videofilm-Burbank
Downstream Editorial-Portland

Shooters

Inc.-Philadelphia

GTN-Detroit
New Art

Digital-Mexico City
The Post Group-Hollywood
Laser Pacific-Hollywood
FotoKem-Burbank
EUROPE

VTR-London

Geyer Video Gmbh-Berlin
TEVA-Paris

Ecoutez Voir-Paris
Video

Copy Company,
Goritschining and
partner KG-Hamburg
Augustus Film-Rome
Michael

La Truka Post Produccio-Barcelona

Channel 4-London

runs

off the road into

COMING SOON

The Mill-London

Moving Picture Company-London

elaborates, "In dusk

The

Atlantic

Tape Works-Chicago

Film-Hamburg

PHILIPS

scenes we

would

81EF filter on the
lens, which half-corrects for daylight. So
as you're playing down the middle, the
tungsten sources are slightly warm, and
the daylight is slightly blue, which is an
interesting mixture."

Mollinare-Madrid
Film and

as the
frozen lake

plummets through the ice (accom¬
plished with CGI from Toronto effects
houses TOPIX and Mad Dog Digital).
The locale's surrounding
snowscapes amplified the desired sense
of purity, but also posed timing problems
which Sarossy had to later solve in the
lab. "Shooting in snow really reveals any
day-to-day inconsistencies in the pro¬
cessing," the cinematographer explains.
"You see it in the whites. One day they
might be a little pink, and the next day a
little green. Our timer [Chris Hinton from
Deluxe in Toronto] had to even that out.
Also, our helicopter shots were done on
a very sunny day, yet our crash scene
was shot on an overcast day, so he had
to massage that a bit to make the dis¬
crepancy less apparent."
Sarossy explains that his light¬
ing approach frequently entailed the mix¬
ing of color temperatures. For daylight
shooting, he often mixed in illumination
from tungsten-balanced Maxi-Brutes. He
occasionally

Interactive SPA-Milan

a

use an

cameraman notes

that the

twilight shots, photographed at the end
of five consecutive days, proved tricky to
pull off with the older Panavision E-series anamorphic lenses. "You are obliged
to work at a certain T-stop - usually T4
for them to perform well," he says.
-

"With the

daylight diminishing with ev¬
passing minute, you have to catch it
just at the perfect moment. And you can't
ery

FiUn

ssi
□RTF

20

December 1997

really go any more open with the lens or
performance gets very poor and fo¬
cus becomes problematic." This neces¬
sitated using Kodak Vision 500T 5279
for all interiors and night exteriors,
while 100 ASA EXR 5248 was employed
for the day exteriors.
Sarossy sometimes departed
from classical lighting methods by recall¬
ing inspiring illuminations he'd seen dur¬
ing sleepless summer nights spent in
New York City. "I remember lying awake
in my room being absolutely fascinated
by the window shapes projected on the
wall by passing headlights. One of the
streets lights was white, and another
was orange, and there was also a yellow
one
I began to realize that there are
so many confused light sources. As a cin¬
ematographer, you learn the cardinal rule
that the most elegant way to light a
scene is with a single source, yet in real
life
even in the daytime - this rarely
occurs. I began to wonder why there is
the

-

-

this tremendous fascination with the tra¬
ditional style."

Exemplifying this multiplesource

strategy - and Sarossy's fond¬

ness for practicals - is an extramari¬
tal rendezvous between Billy Ansell

(Bruce Greenwood) and Risa Walker
(Alberta Watson) at the Bide-A-While
motel. Billy waits for her in a darkened
room, illuminated almost solely by the
small lamps on the wall. The glow from
the motel sign outside penetrates
through the green curtains, forming a
colorful pattern on the inside walls.
Risa enters wearing a winter coat, and
removes it almost immediately. The
headlights from a passing car suddenly
stream through the window and illumi¬
nate Risa's body, revealing her to be
clad only in undergarments.
For all their careful preparation
during The Sweet Hereafters produc¬
tion, the filmmakers were very much at
the mercy of the harsh Canadian ele¬
ments while working in Merritt. "If we
had shot there a week later," Egoyan
recalls, "we would have been completely
closed down by the most massive snow¬
storms B.C. has ever

whole

experienced - the

province

was paralyzed." But the
director attests that he and Sarossy have
so

far scored

an

impeccable track record

with Mother Nature, explaining one
more reason for the pair's lasting part¬

nership. Adds Egoyan with
stick

together for luck!"

a

laugh, "We
>■
American Cinematographer - December 1997

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