American Cinematographer - Best of 2006 - 29

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/mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 10 Zsigmond’s
crew had high praise for the veteran cinematographer, whom they described
as “exceptionally generous with his knowledge.” From left: 2nd AC
Alexandre Szabo-Fresnais, A-camera focus puller Alexander Bscheidl,
Zsigmond, and gaffer Nimi Getter. found this project to be a lot of fun,
because the movie has quite a few interesting transitions, like window
wipes that start in the middle of the shot and work their way to the outer
edges of the frame. Those were an interesting challenge, because I had to
make the following scene match into the previous scene and track the
windows with my color correction.” Zsigmond, of course, is no stranger
to creative image manipulation. In fact, he can be considered a pioneer in
that regard. On McCabe & Mrs. Miller, he famously flashed his negative with
light to create a desaturated, Old West feel; on Deliverance, for which he
used the Technicolor dye-transfer process, he introduced a black-and-white
matrix to mute the forest colors and create a more ominous, suspenseful
tone. On later projects, he went back to flashing and also experimented
with the Technicolor’s ENR process. He maintains that the DI allows a
level of creative control that goes well beyond these old-school tricks.
“The DI gives us a lot of tools that allow us to do practically
anything, and I don’t think I could do another movie without one,” he
says. “We can make the look more contrasty, less contrasty, more
colorful, less colorful and so on. We have a tool here that really
improves the final answer print. Before the DI, we were very limited in
what we could do with the timing of a print. In order to control our
images and get a good result, we had to be very sharp and very good on the
set. Today, we sometimes can let certain things go on set if we don’t
have enough time to fine-tune the lighting or if we don’t have the right
weather. For example, we can rely on the DI to diminish the difference
between sunny footage and overcast footage. That’s a great thing for us.
Today we have the problem of never having enough time in the schedule, so a
DI helps in that regard as well.” “Some people say, ‘Today we have
faster films, so you don’t even need to light.’ But I say regardless
of whether you have slow film or fast film, you still have to create a
look! It did help me to have a 500-ASA film on this movie, because I
needed a negative that allowed me to control contrast. With
black-and-white film, we always had that kind of control — if you needed
more contrast, you overdeveloped your negative, and if you needed less
contrast, you underdeveloped it. With color, you could not do that to the
same degree. But now, with the DI, we can achieve those results much
faster.” Zsigmond’s continued enthusiasm for his profession is
obvious, and his love of moviemaking was readily apparent to his
crewmembers. Speaking to this point, Getter has the last word: “Vilmos
is not only a great craftsman and artist, he’s also an amazing person,
and you can feel that straightaway. On the set he’s quite amazing.
He’s not young, as we know, but he has an incredible amount of energy,
and more than that, he belongs to a generation of working people, which is
becoming rarer and rarer, especially when you become a star in your
profession. He’s up on his feet from call time to wrap time. Even when
we were doing a very, very complicated shot, where it would take an hour
or two to reset for the next take, he would not sit down to wait for
everything to be ready. He would constantly walk around, look around and
find something to improve here or there. He’s extremely willing to adopt
whatever ideas you can give him.” I TECHNICAL SPECS Super 35mm 2.35:1
3-perf Arricam Studios, Lites; Arri 435 Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm and
17-102mm zooms; Arriflex Lightweight Zoom; Zeiss Ultra Primes Kodak
Vision2 500T 5218 Digital Intermediate American Cinematographer 29 Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid
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American Cinematographer - Best of 2006

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