American Cinematographer - December 2006 - 101

Wars Emotional Toll

Relative calm

prevails

the
heads

as

convoy
down

a

deserted

highway. The
show's
on

location

in Ouarzazate,

Morocco,
which doubled
for

would have done

DIT controls the on/off switch for

of the FilmStream look and boosted

the system,

the red and blue channels to match

seen

the film-out, I believe it was the
on

film, and it

worked fine.

war

scenes were

shot

would encounter in Morocco and

right decision. It was exactly what I

really hard.
Second, I feel it's really important
that the operator rather than the

compressed. Having only recently

Iraq.

The actual

recording process
seems to be very good, and it's great
to see a large, really clear picture of
what you're getting. The first few
days I used my exposure meters, but
I

soon

realized I didn't need them

much. As

as

the waveform
the picture,
you're getting what you're seeing,
monitor

long

as

backs up

and that's great.

Digital is clearly the

way

for¬

ward in years to come, so

the more
we cinematographers can be in on
the ground floor, influencing how
they make these cameras, the better.
We recorded using FilmStream,
leaving most of the grading till later,
as we only had a 36-day shoot and I
knew we'd be pretty rushed off our
feet. I would very much like to see
of the Viper,
because the current version needs to
the
be

next

more

version

robust in certain

First, it's difficult to

see

areas.

fine detail in

the black-and-white viewfinder.

Particularly in

our

helicopter night

work, differentiating what was
92 December 2006

going

below

on

was

and there are too many
tiny switches and drop-down
menus

to

advice I

deal with in the field. The

given, which was to
capture the data and not try and
grade it on set, was good, because a)

we

was

didn't have the time for it, and b)

there

many things you can do
image in post. I was really
happy with the look you and I got in
the tests. It was fairly neutrally

to

are so

the

color-balanced

-

not

in any way a

final look for the film, but

a

good

starting point.
[Writer's

application of gain, matrix, detail or
other such visual corrections. Thus,

correctly color-balanced
images in this mode, one must
apply a look-up table (LUT) to the
picture for proper on-set monitor¬
ing. The LUT Tony and I applied to
the Viper footage was a slightly day¬
light-balanced color with black lev¬
els barely above 0 percent to be able
create

to see

into the shadows with the

varying monitoring conditions

the green.

However, as this was a
"basic" look, it appeared

very

warmer

in

cooler in

others.]

some

situations and

If

you've got the Thomson
Luther box [a color-space converter
able to implement a LUT] with a few
good LUTs built into it, there aren't
huge surprises when you get to the
grade, quite frankly. Had I had more
time during prep, I would have used
filtration and gone to more
of under- and overexpo¬

more

extremes

note: The Viper's
FilmStream mode disallows the

to

Spokane. In this way, the LUT
removed the overbearing green tone

we

sure.

But we had

I took

no

time to test it all,

reasonably conservative
approach toward principal photog¬
raphy.
How did you and your col¬
so

a

laborators arrive at the decision to
the Viper?

use

Pierce-Roberts: In prepro¬
we had three cameras out

duction
on

the

and

a

test: a

Sony F900/3,

a

Viper,

Mitchell S35 with Kodak

[Vision2 500T] 5218. Originally, I
proposed shooting Morocco on film
and Spokane on HD for two rea-
American Cinematographer - December 2006

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