American Cinematographer - April 2006 - 34

Dr. Caligari's
charge Cesare
(Doug Jones),
the prime
suspect in a

murder, abducts

been able to maintain a balance."

Nevertheless, Gainer received a
saw the first output neg

shock when he
at

the dead man's

fiancee (Lauren

Technicolor's Complete Post, now
as Technicolor Digital Intermedi¬

known
ates

(TDI). "The first pass was bad

Birkall) and

what

we saw on

flees

what

we saw

prosecution in
The Cabinet of
Dr.

Caligari,

a

remake of the
classic German

Expressionist
film.

-

the CRT monitor and

projected onscreen were
entirely different things," says the
cinematographer. ASC associate
member Dana Ross, senior vice presi¬

two

dent of feature-film relations for TDI,

stepped in to expedite the creation of a
lookup table, which was
configured by ASC associate member
Joshua Pines, TDI's director of imaging
customized

and research. "The difference

A Modern Take

was

what

we saw on

the CRT

what

we saw on

the

was a

was exactly
big screen. That

Words such

fabulous moment."
Gainer

and

colorist

Wayne

Hampton then spent three days grading
picture with a da Vinci 2K Plus. "We
ended up with a final product which, on
its own, looks quite nice. To understand
MiniDV's capabilities, look at the
sequence where Kico is sitting in the
bedroom with the girl from Beverly Hills.
I lit it with a [Kino Flo] Wall-o-Lite and a

the

able to

looks nice."
He cites

an early scene in the
example of the opposite
approach: "When the skaters' band is
performing in a bedroom in south L.A.,
that's an example of no control, no plan
for what we were doing - it's Larry
Clark rawness. In this project, I tried to
bridge the gap between something
that's beautiful and something very raw
and real, which is what Larry really

film

as

an

loves."

Despite the production's chal¬
lenges, Gainer says he would work with
Clark again in a heartbeat. "Making this
movie was very difficult on all fronts,
but the result is something I think Larry's
fans will appreciate and enjoy. I now
hold the record for shooting the most
Larry Clark films, three. And I'm ready
for number four."

30

April 2006

"classic" and

Trek convention. "I showed it to him,

The dramatic lighting and
expressionistic sets created a world

to do

genre.

celluloid.

was

the

and about five seconds later he

light and
photograph the action properly, and it

instance where I

was

as

to use backgrounds scanned from
original film and shoot modern-day
actors speaking new dialogue against a
greenscreen. To convey the concept to
prospective backers, he captured the
backgrounds from a DVD of Caligari and
created a brief composite of himself
walking through the town scene. Toting
the demo on his laptop, he ran into
producer Leonard McCleod at a Star

was

medium and launched the serial-killer

that had

Par. That

Dr.

"groundbreaking" are often bandied
about, but few films are more deserving
of superlatives than The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari. Directed by Robert Wiene, this
seminal silent film, made in Germany in
1919, reshaped the aesthetics of the

an

1200-watt HMI

on

Caligari
by Elina Shatkin

miraculous," says Gainer. "Suddenly,

never

before been

seen on

Although Wiene never made
equaled Caligari, the
picture's influence extended well
beyond its era and has inspired an array

another film that

of filmmakers.

Among them is writer/director
developer

David Lee Fisher, a software

and visual-effects artist known for his

work in the

video-game industry. The
engineer, Fisher became
interested in technology at an early age,
and he says it was always his ambition
son

of a NASA

to be a filmmaker. "I had a lot

of inter¬

est in both

ment, so

computers and entertain¬
it felt natural to combine the

two."
Fisher

had long wanted to
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, but
he "wanted to approach it in a way that
was respectful to the original. I didn't
want to do a modern Hollywood
remake, I wanted to create something
along the lines of what someone would
do if he was covering a song." His idea
revamp

agreed

it," recalls Fisher. McCleod single-

handedly funded the project's six-figure
budget.
Fisher found a 35mm print of
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari that had
been spirited out of Europe during
World War II; the print is owned by film
restorationist David Shepard, who
supported Fisher's project and allowed
his print to be transferred to DVD. The
original Caligari was filmed at approxi¬
mately 18 fps, and although its aspect
ratio was close to 4x3, Fisher decided to
finish his

project in 16x9.
print was transferred in 4x3
and the new footage was shot in 4x3,
and during postproduction, the tops and
bottoms of both images were cropped
to create a 16x9 image. "It helped with
matching the shots because it gave us
some leeway to move the background
plates up and down," explains Fisher.
When the film was up-converted in the
final digital intermediate (Dl), the black
bars at the top and bottom were
removed and the image was enlarged
The

to its final 16x9

output.

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McLeod;

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American Cinematographer - April 2006

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