American Cinematographer - October 2001 - 74

Shattered lives
work and

a

car-chase sequence -the

camera's low

profile facilitated easier
positioning inside the vehicles.
To capture some unique
point-of-view shots from Ruby's
perspective, Kivilo employed a Slant
Focus lens. He notes, "The perfor¬
mances are

realistic and the relation¬

believable, but we gave the
slight edge that we hope will
draw people deeper into the story
and make them empathize with
Ruby." One key sequence occurs the
morning after Ruby learns of her
parents' death. "She faints, and we see
weird light patterns on the ceiling,"
ships
look

are

a

Kivilo details. "She has

a

mobile

hanging in her room, and it's moving
and painting the ceiling with shad¬
ows. You figure out pretty quickly
that she's flat on her back, looking up
at the ceiling. I used the Slant Focus
lens to give the scene a sort of quirk¬
Top: Although she

iness. We rotated the

initially enjoys
her

new

Ruby's

and

cut

close-up looking down
Ruby. We wildly overexposed the
film, slowly rotated the camera on a
three-axis head, ramped into slow

home,

sense

camera

to an extreme

of

on

entrapment
grows more
and more

motion and then went back to 24

claustrophobic.
Though the
practical location

frames

featured many
windows to the
outside world,

she opens her eyes. I think
five stops overexposed. She

as

we were

looks

was

totally white with her head on
pink pillow. It was a very graphic
way of suggesting her disorienta¬

handled in

tion." Later in the shoot, he used the

a

much of the
interior work

meticulously

Slant Focus lens to convey
POV for a scene in which

Ruby's
Ruby's
friends pay a visit after the Glasses
have fed her tranquilizers.

recreated sets

Sony
soundstage,
where a 50' high
by 300' wide
painted backdrop
on a

used to
simulate the
exterior vista.
was

Bottom: A

"family" dinner
fails to cover up
the tension that
is building

between the
Glasses and

Ruby.

suggestion. For example, instead of
staging the accident that kills the
Bakers in its entirety, the filmmakers
show the audience glimpses of what
happened. There's a slow-motion
shot of the windshield wiper trying
to remove

rivulets of rain, and we

Grace Baker's

slightly out-of-focus

face contorted in
"The accident

see

an

unheard scream.

[is built from]

expres-

sionistic details," says

Kivilo. "ft was
actually pouring when we shot the
scene,

but

we

chose not to

use a

rain

deflector. We let the rain spatter on
the lens and distort the image."
70 October 2001

The filmmakers wanted to

Kivilo worked with Panaflex
Platinum and Gold

standard

cameras

and

a

of Primo

primes, as well
as the Primo 11:1 (24-275mm T2.8)
and 4:1 (17.5-75mm T2.3) zooms.
Sackheim liked to push in on the
actors,

set

and Kivilo often used the 4:1

to execute an

"invisible"

zoom.

He

used the 11:1 for exteriors. When
both the A and B

cameras were

being

used, they were generally on the same

plane, usually with one providing
coverage that was a bit wider or
tighter. The cinematographer also
carried

an

Aaton 35 for handheld

stylized crash sequence for
Ruby flashes back
to her parents' deaths, and a strobing
effect helps sell the illusion that the
sequence was shot on a real road -
create a

the moment when

which it wasn't. Kivilo first shot

a

test

Swing & Shift lens that put
slightly out of focus. "I
placed individual white strobe lights
on separate white cards that were
placed on the 'road surface' to simu¬

using

a

the road

late the white lines of the
he

highway,"

explains. "When the strobes were
fired sequentially, they created the
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