American Cinematographer - December 2006 - 109

Wars Emotional Toll
A drunken,

distraught Will
provokes his
family by inviting
three complete
strangers to join
them

on

Thanksgiving.

filmed war

how easy it would be for all the
actors in uniform to end up looking
the same. I did need to use supple¬

you're in Spokane. The majority of
the picture's look was implicit to the
way we lit the scene, and the rest I
achieved later in the grading

mental

process.

previously, I knew

scenes

lighting on their faces from
time to time. There are a few
instances in Home

of the Brave,
flashbacks, where we've gone for a
slightly different look. Initially, the
flashbacks were given a somewhat
exaggerated grade by, I suppose, the
digital post team; it had an infrared
quality I found distracting, so I
graded most of it out. This isn't a
film like De-Lovely [see AC July '04],
where Irwin and I were definitely
going for a very theatrical look.
In terms of the finished

look,

I wanted Morocco to be much hot¬

One of the

found in
sandy bits
are
slightly pink because it's a claybased soil. We graded that out to
make it look more yellow, more like
Iraq. When we come to Spokane, we
have a very, very different look -
ter.

Morocco

was

things

we

that all the

cooler, somber and wet. There's
transition

from

a

In

of

lighting and
shooting, Morocco was slightly
more complicated, but we didn't
need a lot of light. For the Hummers
terms

and other vehicle interiors,

cut to

of Will, there's
100 December 2006

that big crane

no

shot
question about it:

Irwin allowed

times of day

me

to

shoot

at

the

I wanted, we saved a lot

of time and effort, and the result is

exterior work, and I told Irwin and

dinner, and he's had too much to

[producer] Rob Cowan, 'Look, if we
shoot this at exactly the right time, I
won't need to light it, because the
sun will
give us what we need. But if
we leave it until late or early in the
day, I'm going to have to put towers
up outside the windows and put

drink and has

18Ks

the

towers. It

able

we

FilmStream mode. Because Rob and

Will

Will

minute

it seemed to handle contrast in

couple of battery-powered Pars
gelled with Va Opal to soften the
light a bit. A prime example of light¬
ing choices would be the ambush
scene, when Tommy and his two
colleagues rush into a building, go
up some stairs and enter a room,
where they shoot some insurgents.
This sequence called for interior and

time and effort, and

[Jackson] arriving home. The

used

a

cemetery in
Morocco, where Jordan is shot, to
a

we

through the windows, and I had a
tiny, tiny bit of light on Brian
Presley, a 200-watt HMI. The con¬
trast was quite extreme, but the
Viper handled it really, really well. In
fact, I was very pleased with the way

on

to

will be
we

rush from inside

a

lot of

won't be
to

outside

again to get the rest of the scene.' In
this example, the sun did come

quite

interesting scene.

an

Is there

a scene

in

Spokane

that you feel best encapsulates your

approach to lighting the U.S. mate¬
rial?
Pierce-Roberts: In the most

lighting-intensive of all our scenes,
comes home to Thanksgiving

brought along three
gardeners he's met. We
used directional light, but always
diffused, generally bounced off
Ultra Bounce or Griffolyn. Overall,
we lit the scene softly except on Sam,
Mexican

when

we

in which
more

needed
case

direct.

to

define his face,

I used

something

Because

it

was

Thanksgiving and a jolly sort of late afternoon
of him

scene, I wanted the irony
getting drunk outside the
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