American Cinematographer - July 2006 - 22

Olive and her

family

are

crushed to

discover they
are a

few

minutes too late
to

register for

the pageant.

that bus," says Suhrstedt. "There were
times in there that Jeff was handhold¬

ing a 75mm lens for a close-up. Every¬
body was of the same mind: we really
wanted to get the feeling of a family in
a Volkswagen bus. We even went
largely with production sound, because
we wanted to get the noise and the fact
that people would have to raise their

beginning, the film¬

[spherical] lenses. In retrospect, I think it
good decision, because we were
in some incredibly cramped spaces in

widescreen aspect

the bus, and the fact that we weren't

ratio suited the material. It seemed the

quite as worried about focus gave
everybody a little more peace of mind.
The extraction and blowup that CFITechnicolor did was great, and color
timer Lee Wimer did a really good job."

energy

of

was a

From the
makers believed

a

voices to be heard from the backseat to

the front."

three-shots. So much of the film is not

percent of the movie was shot on Kodak

just about who's talking, but also how
people are reacting to that person." The

Vision2 500T 5218, with the rest on
Vision 200T 5274. "Everything inside the

Sunshine in

shot

Little

Miss

Super 35mm 2.35:1 using

Panaflex Platinum and Gold II

cameras

and Primo lenses. Overall, he encour¬

aged Faris and Dayton to use handheld
of the story. "They not
only embraced it, but went further with
it than I thought they would," he says.
"They liked the flexibility of it, the fact

for the purposes

that

we

could react to the actors and

create a little more

energy." As an
example, he cites an early scene that
shows the family sitting down to dinner
before embarking on their voyage. "We
were trying to play off the chaos and
July 2006

accelerating

right choice "when you read the mater¬
ial and pictured a Volkswagen bus
going across that Western landscape,"
says Suhrstedt. "Also, we knew there
were going to be a lot of two-shots and

Suhrstedt

18

confusion and
that dinner."

next decision was whether to shoot

anamorphic

Super 35mm. "For most
of the prep, I was advocating anamor¬
phic lenses because I like the way they
look, and I was trying to avoid the opti¬
cal extraction and blowup to [2.40:1 ] -
we

were

or

certain

we

wouldn't have

money for a digital intermediate.
did some tests, but Jon and Val
to be concerned about

bus with

handheld

So we
began
climbing into a
and

Suhrstedt estimates that 80

bus, all other interiors and the night
was 18, but the full-on sunny

material

day exteriors were 74. I'd had pretty
good luck matching 74 with 18 before,
and it enabled us to save some money. I
might have used 18 for the whole film,
but the 74 is slightly less expensive, and
we flushed out the budget with that so I
could

use

an

climactic

anamorphic lens. They thought we
might be a little more nimble if we used

ers were

a

camera

18 for all of the interiors."

When it

came

time to shoot the

beauty pageant, the filmmak¬
well prepared. "Jon and Val
had been working on the film for several
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