American Cinematographer - May 2000 - 133

result, ever/ time the cheetah and biker

Of course, the shot of the rider

together in a shot, the image is a
composite that was done in post.
These composite images were
generally shot first with the cheetah,
then again with the rider, matching
distance and focal length. For the
sequence featuring the rider's jump and

reaching down the cheetah's throat was
also an effect. Footage of a full-sized,
stuffed animal made specially for the
shoot by Douglas White Effects was
blended with shots using the real chee¬
tah. To get the live cheetah to hold his
mouth in the proper, tilted-back position,
a stick of meat was dangled over his
head. According to Frisch, it was still
difficult to keep the cheetah stationary
as long as necessary for the shot. He
explains, "We shot at 60 frames per
second to slow the time down." During
post, Method artists Olivier Gondry and
Andrew Eksner used a proprietary
morphing software written by Gondry to

appear

his reach down the cheetahs throat, the
rider was photographed against bluescreen so

he could be extracted

more

easily. "We shot all of the bluescreen
elements on location to match the light¬
ing," says Frisch. "That's a key to the
quality of the compositing - plates that
really match, lighting-wise."
Another task for Method

was

transforming California's dry, brown
landscape into something more like the
green grasslands of Africa. "One of the
big differences between shooting in
California and Africa is that California is

bare," says Frisch. "In every shot, we
really finessed all of the details to try to
maintain that African look." Using stills
and footage from Africa, artists at
Method created background matte
paintings, which they then tracked to the
movement in the foreground.
One of the most convincing gags
in the spot is the moment when the rider
leaps from his bike, flies through the air
and tackles the cheetah. During filming
of the short sequence, three people
played the rider: the actor (for close-ups
so

and shots in which the rider's face

visible),

was

(for the leap), and
Rosenaur, the trainer (for shots requiring
physical contact with the cheetah).
a stuntman

extend the shot

even

more, so

the chee¬

tah would appear to

have his mouth
open wider and for a longer time. In all,
Method spent about three weeks on the
spot, running three Discreet Logic Infer¬
nos and one Flame day and night. "We
could never have done the job without a
team of eight or nine artists that we have
here," he says. "It was really a team
effort."

Chasing the Wind
by Stephanie Argy

cinematographer who tracks exception¬
ally foul weather.
In the latest spot, "Storm
Chaser," Lisius is shown pursuing and
photographing various kinds of threaten¬
ing weather, and he says that nearly all
of the storm-footage elements -
including an enormous tornado shown at
the end
were shot by him. "It's about
97 percent real footage," he says. "Digi¬
tal Domain composited it with the prod¬
-

uct shots and the location

shots."

Lisius lives in Dallas-Fort Worth,

Texas, where he

runs

Prairie Pictures,

a

production company, and StormStock, a
library of extreme-weather footage. To
get shots for the library, Lisius goes out
about 35 times a year, mainly in the
spring, with a 35mm camera and an
assistant or two. "The goal in chasing for
me is to get a good photographic angle
on anything interesting, like a tornado,"
he says. "I chase from the northern half
of Texas to Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado
and eastern New Mexico.

Especially late

in the season, we'll go farther north -
the jet stream lifts north as summer

approaches, and with the jet stream
goes the tornado."
The central belt of the country,
from Texas up to

Chevrolet's

campaign for its
S-10 pickup truck features a series of
real-life professionals whose line of
work matches the tough, reliable image
Chevy wants for the truck. Among those
appearing in the spots have been a
stuntman, a Navy Seal, a bounty hunter,
a

new

rodeo rider, and now, Martin Lisius, a

among

the Dakotas, is known
meteorologists as Tornado Alley.

The United States has

more

tornadoes

than any

other country, and Tornado
Alley has the most of any region of the
country. Lisius explains that the condi¬
tions necessary to produce tornadoes
are very specific: warm, moist Gulf air
combined with cool, polar air and dry,
desert southwest air. "There's

no

other

part of the world where they come

together so regularly," he says.
Lisius shoots mainly with an Arriflex 35-III. "It's made like a tiger tank. I
think the Arri 35-III is

more

durable than

of the storm chasers are. It's an
excellent, heavy-duty, rough-and-tough
camera, great for this type of shooting."
To reduce the overall weight, the
any

camera

Cinematographer
Martin Lisius
aims his lens at
the funnel of

a

menacing
tornado.

124

May 2000

mount.

is customized with

"Nikon lenses

are

a

Nikon

substantially

lighter than cinema-style lenses," Lisius
explains. "Our favorite is a Tamron 28105, 2.8mm lens. It's lightweight - no
than 2 1/£ pounds. An equivalent

more

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