American Cinematographer - April 2003 - 96

Sundance 2003: Varied Palettes
mph on the highway, pebbles
fly up and crack them."
Aesthetically, if not economically,
that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
Lens distortions create interesting
At 140

would

some of these shots
in the film. "In a couple of
instances where lenses were totally
destroyed, we got some really
abstract images on the freeway," says

effects, and
ended up

Cianfrance. He also made
camera

use

of

a

that had been smashed when

a car wiped out after its tire blew;
though its plastic casing was wrecked
and its lens pockmarked, the camera

still worked, and it was

used to

capture a shot of a car barreling
toward it at 100 mph, peeling out,
and

smacking right into it. "The
got thrown 50 yards and was
still working!" says Cianfrance. That
shot was incorporated into a scene

camera

Above: Quattro

(Robert Smith)

where Quattro
similar spin-out.

soups up an
Acura Integra by

that it took him awhile to embrace
the

"happy accident." At the begin¬
ning, he had a friend drive him
around town so he could practice
using a slow shutter speed. "He
started jerking the car and popping
the clutch, and I was telling him to
keep the car steady, but he wouldn't

used during

the shoot.

Right:
Cinematographer
Derek
Cianfrance (left,
with carmounted

camera)

says

a

Still, Cianfrance acknowledges

cutting its
springs. Fearless
young drivers
piloted the highperformance
cars

and Noza have

talk

he

my life in
those kids'

to me.

He made

me

look at the

"put

frame, and I started seeing every¬

hands"so that

thing that

he could achieve

learned

the visual
ambitions of
director

Curtis

Joey

(right).

sequences

with 10 Sony DSR-

PDlOOAs and PD150As that

were

tioned its

Cianfrance, Curtis and
editor/sound designer Jim Helton all

providing a fore¬
ground element toward which the
background would rush. "That's
what George Lucas really discovered

outfitted

with

cameras. Much of the 300
hours of footage was also obtained by

operated

taping, strapping and suctioning the
tiny Sony camcorders onto car
bumpers, hoods, and windows -
any flat surface that measured at least
5"

across.

dozens of

For
cars,

scenes

that involved

Cianfrance set

assembly line in

a

up an

K-Mart parking
car for

lot, where he examined each
April 2003

character of its driver, and then

wide-angle
adapters and lenses, and they used
three Canon XL Is for dialogue

often

scenes.

92

lighting and the
posi¬
camera accordingly. He

its lines, interior

often tried to frame the shot to maxi¬
mize the Z-axis,
or

with the car bumper

road surface

with the

run on

Wars: what

the Death Star in Star

happens when

you go
into the frame," Cianfrance says. "And

that's what

really wanted to do."
appendages, the
cameras were essentially treated "like
hammers," Cianfrance proudly
admits. "A lot of lenses got destroyed.
As

we

race-car

to

was happening. Once I
break the rules, I discov¬

ered many other
After that,

possibilities."
Cianfrance let it all

happen. He would set the Sony
cameras at F4 when barreling down
the highway at 140 mph. He'd tense
his hand and shake the camcorder,

using a 'snare drum' technique he'd
perfected as a percussionist, to
achieve the curlicue light patterns.
He'd slow the shutter speed both in
the

car

and in other

scenes

-

employing it, for instance, when
Quattro and friends install a new
turbo in his car engine while horsing
around with judo inside a garage.
"When I watch that scene, I
was

crazy

think I

for doing it that way, but I
American Cinematographer - April 2003

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - April 2003
