American Cinematographer - December 2006 - 139

one

of "enhanced

want to reinvent or
m

there;

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wanted to embrace it. The

result is

reality." We didn't
change what was

depth and texture to the
Philadelphia location work that reflects
the character of Rocky and the city. Rocky
has lived a life that's seen everything -
there are scars, mileage, layers. There's
also a diversity of color, especially at
night. The wide ranges of sodium vapor,
fluorescent and store signage opened
the door to wonderful color mixing.
But what about Rocky as an
inhabitant of the past? The character is a
bit of an anachronism. He clings to
a

memories and trades

the shadow of

his former greatness while

occupying the
present-day world. In completing the
look of Philadelphia, I wanted to honor
and somehow incorporate the work of
Bill Butler, ASC (Rocky Rocky ll-IV) and
Steven Poster, ASC (Rocky V) in my treat¬
ment. (I also watched the amazing work
of Owen Roizman, ASC in The French
Connection over and over again.) I
wanted to evoke the feeling

of the earlier
calling attention to the fact
doing so. Most importantly, I

films without
I

was

wanted to create this echo of the past
without taking the audience out of the

story.
To

new

generation

accomplish this, I combined

hard, theatrical lighting with available
light. Normally I would see these two
methods as dissonant partners, but here
it seemed to make perfect sense. I mixed
in many colored lamps (mercury and
sodium vapor, CTOs, CTBs, Plus Green)
with

ungelled direct Fresnels. I graded all
(along with lens diffu¬
sion and focal length) to track the famil¬
iarity of moments and places Rocky
of these elements

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boy. His fights have been designed and
"staged" for many years. His opponents
have been carefully selected, and he has
been

never

tested.

his

story

Dixon rejects the promoter
and agent who have built this hollow
career. In search of a truthful identity, he
returns to his old neighborhood gym, and
it's there that his lighting is similar to
Rocky's. It's a place that, for him, has
history and character.
Technical specifics are best left to
another piece, but one highlight of our
progresses,

shoot
We

was

the Zeiss/Arri Master Primes.

were one

of the first U.S. films to

use

them, and Clairmont Camera did an amaz¬

ing job fighting for them. (As it turns out,
are Rocky fans.) These
lenses allowed me to reach out to the city
at night with unprecedented clarity and
brilliance. By working at minimal (read:
scary) light levels, I was able to extend
our "set" far beyond the action area and
increase production value dramatically.
So there you have it: a logical
blending of past and present. Done. Actu¬
ally, not quite. When it came to the big
fight, Sly, like Rocky, had one more trick
up his sleeve. He wanted the entire thirdact boxing match to be treated like a payper-view event, with video, multiple
cameras, on-screen graphics, and so on.
The moment Rocky steps from behind the
curtain into the Mandalay Bay arena, film
and traditional narrative techniques give
way to hi-def video and live-television
conventions. (Whatever you do, don't tell
Sly he reminds you of Dorothy.) There was
nothing more challenging than the techni¬
all the folks at Arri

cal hurdles of this creative choice, and
there was

sources.

In stark contrast to this, Dixon's

Jmthu>

where this house exists. He is

neighborhood, I brought in softer,

world is

HydroHead-

night in his steel-and-glass home, we
nothing beyond. We have no idea

see

visits. As he ventures outside the old
modern

Now available with a third axis foi
even more range of motion.

a contemporary, homogenized,
sterile, indoor one. Sly and production

designer Franco Carbone picked loca¬
tions that embodied this, and the photog¬
raphy became an outgrowth of the
concept. Dixon's color palette was
neutral and without any depth or charac¬
ter. There was also a lack of connection
to the outside world. When we see him

nothing more astounding to me
perfection with which the crew
pulled it off. 1 st AC Brian Osmond, digital¬
imaging technician Peter Gray, and Clair-

than the

mont's Mike Condon created

redundant

fiber network that could feed up to

eight
Sony F900 cameras at any given point in
the Mandalay Bay arena. The tough part
was that it had to be superimposed over
the existing HBO network and function
without any interference or dependency.
It also had to be laid out in a way that did

American Cinematographer - December 2006

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