American Cinematographer - May 2005 - 109

n

switched to Panasonic AG-DVX100s and

makers to capture some intense, wheellevel POV shots. "That's an attempt to

shot in 24p

Advanced mode. Tony

translate onto film how fast, violent and

Tamberelli of Tamberelli Video in New

gut-shaking the game is," explains Rubin.
"When you get hit, your entire insides
shake, your bones and every organ. That's
almost impossible to put on film." Contact
mikes on the wheelchairs help convey the
impact, and the broken focus mechanism
on Rubin's camera provides offscreen
evidence of the sport's intensity.

Mini-DV cameras, but after that,

they

York

City loaned them equipment for a
year and a half - for free. "He just loved
the project," Shapiro explains. Rubin
adds, "He has a big, big heart."
From the beginning, Shapiro's goal
was a 35mm blowup for theatrical distri¬
bution. "Naively, I thought, 'Of courseth\s
will go into theaters. Why not?' No one
believed us, and that's part of why we got
such good access!" With theatrical distri¬

At the Vancouver tournament,
Rubin often used the

telephoto lens to
play¬
speeding by in the foreground. The

shoot Soares

across

bution in mind, Rubin used Panasonic's

ers

AG-LA7200

Panasonic's shutter

16:9

anamorphic lens
adapter. "We decided to use it because
of the improved image quality, but it was
limiting for veritematerial," he notes. "In
those real-life scenes, you want to be
able to zoom in as close as possible to
people's eyes, to what they're looking at.
You cannot do that with an anamorphic
lens [adapter], I was getting very frus¬
trated."

Nervous about

shooting key tour¬

naments in Vancouver and

Athens, he

course midway through the
shoot. He tested several alternatives -

changed

the camera's normal 4.5-45mm lens, a
36-72mm

telephoto, and two fisheyes -
footage to Film Effects and

and sent the

Deluxe Canada to

see

what

a

35mm

transfer would look like. "I

really wanted
okay to take the
anamorphic off and put a telephoto on,"
he explains. "I wanted it to have the
same degree of crispness onscreen, and
it did." Rubin subsequently relied more
heavily on the telephoto, which he often
used from a rolling wheelchair.
All of the games involved two to
three cameras, and Shapiro and David
Rodriguez operated the additional units.
"Every game has its own aesthetic
approach," Rubin points out. In Sweden,
the filmmakers were only permitted to
get as close to the action as the court's
outer boundary, so Rubin attached a
MiniDV camera to a long monopod and
dipped it into the field of play while
running up and down the court's edge.
to know if it was

Another MiniDV

camera was

affixed to

a

player's wheelchair with a BogenManfrotto Magic Arm, enabling the film¬

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Vi20 for

was

camera was

at court

level, and

a

third

positioned high in the stands. "The
truth is, the game looks extraordinary
from a low level, but you can't make any
sense of it [from that perspective]," says
Rubin. "It's just a bunch of wheelchairs
colliding."
When the production reached the
Athens game, that bird's-eye view
became the dominant one, chiefly
because the filmmakers were prohibited
from crossing the grandstand railing.
Later, however, they realized that this
restriction had worked to their advantage.
"The sport went from being very kinetic
and violent, almost like a smash-up derby,
to being almost like a ballet," says
Shapiro. "The Athens game is epic. It's
filmed from up high and in slow motion,
which gives the game a coherence that
was lacking in the first two games. From
up high, you can actually see the strategy
and the plays."
Despite the vivid game footage,
the filmmakers are proudest of Murder-

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intimate moments. One such

moment came after Team USA's defeat in

Athens. The filmmakers

after the team

came

off the court, and

Rubin peered between
the huddle of relatives encircling Zupan
just as the weeping player and his girl¬
friend touched foreheads. "It

was a

very

powerful moment," says the cinematog¬
rapher. "The truth is, it's very hard to be
there to capture true human emotions. It's
the most fleeting thing. Had they won, we
never

Completely updated and revised,
the Second Edition of

kept shooting

with his telephoto,

would

height

Removable

sharpening effect. Another

a

more

truck

cranked up to

was

ball's

Does not increase

the court with

have had that."

flrricam features both
a

book and

a

DUD. Jon Fauer,

with seemingly inexhaustible
reserues of energy and

enthusiasm, has updated the
book to reflect today's trends
and has added a DUD featuring
interviews with leading
cinematographers and 60
minutes of nuts and bolts,
how-to tips and techniques.

■

www.tbeasc.com
American Cinematographer - May 2005

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2005
