QUICHE OR CHAOS?
Of the Genesis, Semler declares, "Ive fallen in love with the damn thing!"
By Jon Silberg Photos by Suzanne Tenner
With today's hectic lifestyles, it can be hard for those married with children to find time for romance and the Fosters, Phil and Clara, (Steve Carell and Tina Fey), are no exception. The two worn-out suburbanites at the heart of the new Fox comedy, Date Night, can barely muster the energy after a typical day of kid-and job-related stresses to honor their mutual commitment to go on one of their weekly dates. But, in a moment of inspiration, Phil whooshes Clara off to the hippest restaurant in Manhattan, the Claw, where they impersonate another couple just to get a table in the booked-up eatery. Not a good idea. As Phil and Clara soon find themselves mixed up in international intrigue; fighting off armed assassins and speeding through the streets of New York in a stolen sports car!
Director Shawn Levy, hot off his wildly successful Night at the Museum franchise, collaborated for the first time with Dean Semler, ASC, ACS, because of the cinematographer's facility with a wide array of genres. Best known for dramatic epics like Dances with Wolves and Mad Max, Semler has also carvedout a niche working with top comedy talent.
I enjoy working with great comedians, he says. I've worked with Eddy Murphy, Billy Crystal, Adam Sandler and Jim Carrey. I loved working with Steve Carell previously on Get Smart. Steve also had a part in the Jim Carrey comedy, Bruce Almighty. Both he and Tina Fey are certainly among the best comedy talents working right now.
Semler's work on the epic period film Apocalypto may be the best proof of concept to date for Panavision's Genesis camera. The punishing demands the DP made on the Genesis sensor and camera body became the stuff of legends. I was shooting one and a half foot candles in the jungle at night and in a quarry full of white-hot limestone in the noonday sun, he recounts, and I could hold whites and blacks where I wanted to.
Of course before Semler sent the Genesis into Apocalypto's equatorial jungles and rivers, he was among the first to bring the technology to comedy features; Click's star, Adam Sandler, for example, loved the system's ability to shoot continuously,no burning film or running out. It was scary for me to work with a camera truck that had no film stock, Semler says of that shoot. But the dailies became immediatelies' and that has really turned out to be a great way to work.
The initial iteration of the Genesis involved the use of an onboard SRW tape deck, which reportedly caused some strain to operators' shoulders. Recently, Panavision also started offering lighter SSRs (solid state recorders) and Date Night's extensive camera package included both. Regardless of media, the camera records in Panavision's pseudolog format, Panalog, which increases the range of information over a linear HD format such as rec. 709.
On Date Night, Semler made use of EFilm's Colorstream technology, which takes the RAW signal in one end and adds LUTs non-destructively to affect the image for display on a standard HD monitor. The LUTs exist only as metadata and do not alter the digital negative. The Colorstream box allows Semler and his collaborators to see material with the attributes of a favorite film stock (in this case Kodak 5219) applied as well as those of the film-out and photochemical process. On set, Semler can also dial in color correction in the form of a CDL (color decision list) that travels with the image files into the final DI at EFilm, where they remain all the way through post, augmented or discarded totally without any loss of image information. Semler says he generally prefers to build his look through lighting and exposure, rather than digital augmentation. I shoot the Genesis same way I would shoot negative, he relates.
Editor Dean Zimmerman says the digital workflow helped him collaborate more closely than on a film show. Zimmerman and his team were on location, and we could see material with Dean's [grading] applied right there with him and Shawn. We could see immediately something much closer to the final look than you can get from traditional dailies, he reports. The editor could also import versions of the 1920x1080 HD files into the Avid (albeit slightly compressed). It was incredible for cutting because we knew there wouldn't be surprises in the final timing, Zimmerman adds. It was also great for screenings, as well. I could spit an HD tape out from my Avid that could easily stand up to being projected on a 50-foot screen.
Virtually all of Date Night takes place at night and director Shawn Levy (see Exposure this issue) wanted Manhattan to stand out from the couple's New Jersey home, with saturated colors and sets that tended to be slightly exaggerated - the restaurant where the initial mix-up occurs is heavy on the glamour, the couple's ally, played by Mark Wahlberg, lives in a mysterious loft that reflects the character's air of danger, and the street exteriors reflect a throbbing metropolis.
Semler brought considerably less lighting gear to the exteriors than he would have for a film shoot because of the Genesis's sensitivity to low light levels. I start at 180 degree shutter with no gain, he explains. The next step would be going to a 270-degree shutter, which gives me half a stop. If I need to go further, then I'll add half a stop of gain, which gives me now [EI] 1000. If I still need more, I go to a 360-degree shutter, which brings me to 1500. That adds a bit of motion blur that sometimes looks good for fast paced action scenes. One stop of gain above that would take me to about 2000. But I don't usually add that much gain unless truly necessary.
That level of control allows Se
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QUICHE OR CHAOS?
