American Cinematographer - May 2000 - 44

Death

or

Glory
There's

Right: Director
Ridley Scott,
who likes to

himself

on

don't care.' At least if

many

occasions, takes
a break from

photographing
a gladiator

one

battle

options for
as he
duels a

reveal

hoplomachi
(fighter in
enliven the

leashes

are

slowly allowed
move closer
for a potential
human feast.

to

frame rates

a

clear

sword

movement

through the air. "We got into trouble
one
day with the light towards the

armor). To

chain

photographed the

at various

45-degree shutter. This
technique, employed to great effect
for the battle scenes in Saving Private
Ryan, helped to make the combat¬
ants appear more aggressive, and to

Maximus

on

scenes

and with

Below: Victory
or death are
the only

tigers

condition."
Mathieson

bout at the
Colosseum set
in Malta.

bout, hungry

then there's clouds, and

f***ing snowing!' He yelled, 'Cut! I
you've got
multiple cameras in that situation,
you can get a lot of coverage under

operate the
camera

sun,

then there's smoke. I said, 'Ridley, it's

'Well, you're over here. This is
going to happen, so point the
cameras that way.' It was a struggle
and a bit of a rush to get through
such a big schedule. I would just do
what I thought was going to be good
in a given situation."
Having a large arsenal of up to
say,

seven

cameras

at

a

Mathieson and Scott

time allowed

operate peri¬
odically, along with A-camera opera¬
tor Peter Taylor and Steadicam
operator Klemens Becker. "Peter's
very good at handheld work; he kind
of floats along," Mathieson testifies.
to

"Klemens's Steadicam work is very

elegant and precise. In those [multi¬
camera] situations, I was thinking,
'Someone has got to be getting some¬

thing good."
Throughout the production,
the filmmakers steered

more

toward

end of the battle, so we couldn't
shoot

degrees," he reveals.

45

at

"Instead, we shot everything at 8
frames, which gives you two more

variety of tracking shots (accom¬
plished with dollies and a mobile

stops, and printed that

Giraffe

frames. Then

a

HotHead
crane

crane

mounted

with

a

II), as opposed to sweeping
Mathieson submits,

moves.

"Ridley and I don't like a lot of high
shots. The light flattens out. All of the
operators just had to learn to get
really strong frames - Ridley Scotttype frames!"
The cinematographer main¬
tains that Scott was quite flexible
when it came to getting what he
wanted
photographically. "We
didn't wait for the light," he explains.
"Look at the opening sequence.

back to 6

stretched that back

we

[to 24 fps]. Of course, each expo¬

out

is

really long. You've got these
people swinging swords, and it's no
longer frenetic with all of these sharp
edges - you get a far more brushy
sure

stroke. The sword becomes almost
like

a

fan

as

it gets

pulled through the

air. It worked very well for the scenes
in question, which happen as the

battle

is

winding down. The
approach wasn't designed ahead of
time, but Ridley is flexible like that."
The film's lengthy battle
campaign was shot using uncor¬
rected Kodak Vision 200T 5274, and
the only filtration consisted of polar¬

izers, which helped to keep

simple while yielding

a

things
cold winter

look. Much of the blue hue of the

tungsten film was taken out during
timing sessions at Technicolor in
London

and

London,

we

results from

Los

Angeles. "In

got some very nice

[timer] Keith Bryant,
print [in Los

and Dale Grahn did the

Angeles]," Mathieson

says.

"We used

5274 and

[EXR 50D] 5245, which I
often pushed by one stop. The idea
was to keep it simple. I used 5274
outside for [scenes set in] Germany,
all of the

38

May 2000

night exteriors and some of
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