American Cinematographer - December 2000 - 108

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On board NP1

or burgundy
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To

The solution for

a

successful wireless shoot!

photograph conversations in the elevator's close quarters, Zimmerman and director
employing the

Paul Marashlian decided to use the elevator's mirrors rather than
traditional shot/reverse shot method.

Zimmerman

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Marashlian says

he says. "I used a 1 for close-ups, usually
on the women, too. I've never liked

he didn't miss it. "I like
right in the middle of the mix," he
says. Zimmerman notes, "Paulie had very
definite ideas about the way he [wanted]
things composed. F)e was really nervous
about getting too tight for the big screen.
[He'd ask,] 'How tight is your close-up?';
'Are you chopping their heads off?'; 'Are
you just above their chins?"' I wasn't
nervous about it. I argued for a more inti¬
mate look, for using as long a lens as possi¬
ble. He actually thanked me afterwards."
Some of the movie's most impor¬
tant sequences take place in the Bryson
Building's 1919 gilded elevator. The
elevator's interior was only 8' x 5 W, so
using a long lens became difficult. "I
think a 50mm was as long as we could
go," says Zimmerman. The elevator also
became quite crowded. "Paul, the sound
man, my focus puller, the actors and I

ProMist filters; I think

were

photographed Merry
using
short-ends and recans. Through connec¬
tions with Otto Nemenz in Salt Lake City,
Christmas

on

he worked out

Kodak EXR 5298,

a

deal

on an

Arriflex BL-3

from the

company's L.A. branch. "We
wanted the smallest, cheapest package
we could get," the cameraman says. The
package included a set of standardspeed primes, ranging from 16mm to
100mm (though Zimmerman stayed
mainly in the 24-85mm range). For a
humorous jump-cut sequence, he went
as wide as a 9.8mm Kinoptic, and in one
shot featuring a woman emerging from
darkness, he used the 100mm.
Zimmerman made

Soft/FX filters

heavy

use

of

the production. "I shot
almost the whole film with a ]/i Soft/FX,"
on

they affect the
image, [whereas] Soft/FX filters
only affect the highlights."
Zimmerman
also
employed
Tiffen's LLD filter. "It's intended to give
you an 85 correction after the sun goes
down, and you don't lose any stop with
it," he says. "It gives skin tones a little
warmth, and I used it to warm everything
up a bit. I might have used tobacco filters
or corals, but there was no budget."
To save money, the production
didn't have a video tap, either, but

to be

Picture 61

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106

all in there for about 10 hours!"
The elevator had two mirrors, one

entire

each side, which Marashlian and
Zimmerman used to make the shots
on

more

interesting, especially during a
in which Charlie is telling sad

sequence

Christmas stories to
riders. The sequence

a

series of elevator

is shot from behind
Charlie, focusing on the reactions of the
people listening to him. Because Charlie
is visible in the foreground, Marashlian
felt he didn't need excessive coverage. "I
didn't want to have any reverse shots of
American Cinematographer - December 2000

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