American Cinematographer - December 2004 - 99

was a

Mitchell-Fries that was part of the

motion-control rig. The lens was a Zeiss
Variable Prime, but he didn't zoom it. He
also shot a lot of digital stills with his
Canon D60

so

that artists at RhinoFX

could

study details of the environment.
On all of his jobs, Bennett shoots
digital stills with the Canon, colorcorrects the images in Adobe Photoshop,
and sends them to the colorist at the lab.
He admits that it's

a

challenge to keep

colors consistent because monitors

calibrated

color correction

chooses

are

differently, but to make his
more

accurate,

he

neutral gray

"We

just had to try out possibilities,"

says Matin. "Every day, we tried new
ideas until something worked, and then
we

would finalize that." He says that the

Carmichael Lynch, was very
cooperative. "Typically we create some¬
thing, make it look good, and then show
it to the agency. But on this project, we
had to keep the agency involved from
the previsualization to the end so that
they could give us approvals at the earli¬
est point possible. We knew we couldn't
risk one change, because it would have

ones a

into RhinoFX, we ask, 'How would you

approach something like this?'"
On "Transformations," Matin was

agency,

had

an

avalanche effect."

Matin's

cinematographer would use on
cinematographers come

set. Whenever

happy to work with

a cinematographer
of Bennett's caliber and experience, but

he

was

also concerned about how

Bennett would

respond to the CG trans¬
cinematographer
says he is pleased with the results:
"They very accurately used my lighting
design to illuminate the objects moving
around in the spot - they had to,
because it was all evolving toward my
real objects!" In the end, he adds,
"Transformations" met the expectations
raised by an early conversation he had
lation of his work. The

desktop for his
laptop computer. "If you color-correct
against a blue background like the
default Apple desktop, the colors get
torqued," he explains. "But gray is like

own background is in CG
lighting, which he says has made him
very picky about how it's done. He is

and the need for it to be

with Matin, who brushed aside the

the neutral walls of

direction

complicated technology they would
need to use and explained the spot by
comparing it to Transformer toys. "The
best spots are essentially simple, but
very complex," says Bennett.
■

a

a

telecine suite. The

still

photographer Douglas Kirkland
turned me on to that technique."
Once the shoot

was

artists at RhinoFX took over,

the
and Matin
over,

spent his time sitting with three or four
animators, each taking on one transition.

also well

aware

of the limitations of CG,

given a definite
job. "CG by itself is
cold, sterile," he says. "But CG based on
on

each

film elements has
stresses that it's

a

lot

more

to it." He

important for CG artists
to know and incorporate the aesthetics
of cinematography and other visual arts.
"The principles I apply are the same

95
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