American Cinematographer - May 2004 - 79

magnetic north
tive. If I'm

-

it's that sensi¬

looking at

absolutely

time in. We therefore timed
CRT for

Baadasssss!
taught him a great deal about using

print to Kodak Vision
[2393] through a series of
proprietary look-up tables, and we
got a print that was very faithful to
the timed image from the CRT. The

HD with dark-skinned actors: "I

blacks

sometimes rode the gamma during
the shot. By riding gamma as

there. Premier is

opposed to riding the iris, you can
change just the middle tones, so the
blacks and whites stay the same but
the midtones are corrected slightly
to help bring out detail in a dark-

from HD, you can

an

pristine monitor, I'll get the picture
where I

want

Primes

it."
says

skinned actor's face."
lot of

lighting, Primes puts a
fixtures through Chimera

soft boxes. "What I don't like about

Chimeras is that

you're taking a
light that isn't designed to be a soft
light and adding an appendage that
makes it unbalanced and bulky and
takes up a lot of room," he notes.
"But what I love about them

are

the

30-degree, 60-degree and 90degree metal grids you can slip in.
They take up zero space, and you
can actually control the light and
still have a soft-light quality in a
Fresnel pattern. You can make the
light fall where you want and
fall off where you want. Also,
because of the configuration of the
honeycomb cells, as an actor gets
closer

to

the fixture, the fixture

virtually flags itself."
Because Van Peebles'
was

to

goal

release Baadasssss! theatri¬

cally, Primes knew he was shooting
HD for an eventual film print. "I
knew I'd have little printing lati¬
tude and would therefore have

to

get the

image closer to exactly right,
a little like working with
reversal film," says the cinematog¬
rapher. At Laser Pacific, the picture

which is

was

color-corrected

on a

standard

CRT monitor and recorded to film

(in the standard 1.85:1 aspect ratio)
on an

Arrilaser. "Laser Pacific

was

wonderful," Primes notes. "They
did

so

much with the

tiny budget

had, but they couldn't give us
the big projection room to color¬

we

Cinematographer:

Premier

are

black; the contrast is
hard stock

a

shoot film for, but with

gamma
the stock.

laser out

a

us

[2383] test and

a

a

Kodak

Premier

and Premier gave us blacker

blacks and

contrast that spread over
image range. It had a bit
more snap and a greater perceived
sharpness from that increased
contrast. I regard Baadasssss! as an
energetic, edgy, punchy, in-your-

the whole

face film. It's
we

went

more

telecine

and

Power

better than

anybody, with the possi¬
exception of colorists," he main¬
tains. "Digital image-manipulation
tools are powerful, and if we don't
ble

have control of them, then some¬
one else will be
co-authoring our
work. It's essential that

cinematog¬
raphers do the same kind of
research on postproduction that we
lenses,

cameras

stocks. Post tools

are

and film

part of our

arsenal."

Though the Baadasss! team
significant challenges in terms
of time and budget, Primes
emerged from the production with
an extremely positive view of the
experience. "Despite all the choices
we made,
making a movie like this
means you have to be able to shoot
from the hip," he says. "You can't
design something and say, 'Now
build me this.' We improvised a lot
faced

because that's all
I'm

offenders once they got out of
prison. How would they reintegrate
into society when they could be
sex

we

as

convicted child molesters

in front of neighbors

and colleagues?
play about it, which so
impressed one audience member,

He wrote

a

Nicole Kassell, that she made a cold
call to the playwright and begged for

permission to adapt

a

screenplay.

Three years later, Fechter and
Kassell were onstage at the Sundance

adaptation, which Kassell directed,

Windows better than editors, better
than postproduction supervisors,

on

wondered what it would be like for

stars

know

Megan's Law was passed
playwright Steven Fechter

boldness and

"Cinematographers have got

do

When
in 1995,

Film Festival, basking in a standing
ovation for The Woodsman. The film

drama.

to

Director: Nicole Kassell

so

about subtleties,

not

with

Xavier Perez Grobet

branded

"Laser made
Vision

to

work with the
curves to optimize

image's

test,

For

The Woodsman

on a

a

had time

to

do.

really very proud of the result."
Jay Holben
-

Kevin Bacon

as

Walter,

a

felon

returning home after a dozen years in
prison, who still struggles with his
attraction to prepubescent girls. The
Woodsman manages to turns this
social pariah into a flesh-and-blood
who suffers

enormously from
guilt. At the same time, it
offers no pat answers or uplifting
endings. Despite help from a loving
woman
(Kyra Sedgwick), Walter's
"recovery" is uncertain.
man

shame and

The Woodsman represents a
achievement for a

remarkable

neophyte director. Kassell, a former
film editor, not only demonstrated
considerable directing chops, but
also the good sense to surround
herself with experience and talent. A
key collaborator was Xavier Perez
Grobet, the 39-year-old Mexican
cinematographer who made his
mark with Before Night Falls (see AC
Jan. '01) shortly after moving to Los
Angeles.
Hired just two weeks before
production began in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, Grobet had to hit the
ground running. Fortunately, Kassell
had

done

her

homework.

She

presented the cinematographer with
American

Cinematographer 75
American Cinematographer - May 2004

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