highdef magazine

interview by David Thompson

Q. What specific role did you fill during the production of Speed Racer?

As the cinematographer I’m responsible for all things photographic at the principal photography stage of production. It’s a long list of responsibilities, but chiefly the look of the movie through lighting and photography. Once principal photography is finished then the baton is passed to Visual Effects. For Speed Racer our Visual Effects Supervisors are John Gaeta and Dan Glass (The Matrix series and many others). They inherited our foundation and then they and about 500 other digital artists composite and polish the background layers. This is very much a layered look, with a lot of green screen photography, mostly on stage. I think we did all but two days outside on location. 95% was shot on the stages at Studio Babelsberg in Berlin. Now it’s in post and I am in Vancouver, Canada working on The Day the Earth Stood Still. Because it is such a heavy visual effects production, the brothers (Larry and Andy Wachowski), John Gaeta and Dan Glass are nursing Speed Racer through its incredibly complicated post phase.

Q. Prior to Speed Racer what experience had you had with High Definition?

This was my fourth outing. I was involved early on in HD and cinema with the F-900 camera on Star Wars, Episode II and then again on Episode III with the 950. A couple years ago I got to use the Panavision Genesis system for a movie called Next. This is my fourth different system on a different movie and quite a different sort of set up. I really only have good things to say about HD.

Q. How and why was the decision made to produce Speed Racer in High Definition?

Did you have a part in that? I did, yes I was brought on fairly early in the pre-production stage. Larry and Andy Wachowski were looking for something new and different, as usual. They march to their own drum and they have this kind of “sink or fly” daring when it comes to the photographic look and the aesthetic choice. They wanted to do something different to what they had done before and what everyone else was doing at the time. They wanted to go in the direction of a very sharp, super saturated, new glossy look, with deep, deep focus. You’ve got a fighting chance of getting it with HD, especially the way in which we ended up shooting it, by layering foreground, midground and background elements separately against blue and green screens. After a test it became apparent that was the way to go.

Q. What did Andy and Larry think of their experience with Highdef?

After the initial trepidation they definitely warmed to the process. With every new show they are trying something new and different. Eventually any trepidation went away and they became very enthusiastic about it. What’s not to like about full rez, 50 inch monitors on the set and instant full rez playback and all the other “pros” that come along with the pipeline.

Q. Describe the production flow.

We recorded on to SR decks as well as a Codex drive. Recording directly onto the hard drive offers all sorts of advantages, principally a compression free negative, instant HD playback and the ability to grab stills at full resolution while shooting. We created a huge library of reference stills that all departments could use easily. It is possible to finely tune the color timing of a scene on the Codex, a huge advantage for me! After just a little bit of set up time at the beginning of the day with gray scale and Macbeth charts camera settings could be locked and I was free to operate the camera, checking light values with an on-board 5” wave form monitor. It wasn’t necessary for me to sit with the engineer as I had on previous HD shoots. It was great to be back on the floor, close to the action, close to the directors and the actors and being able to judge the lighting more clearly.

Q. What cameras were utilized and how did they perform?

We used Sony F-23 cameras with Zeiss digiprimes. We had two parallel units, with each having two cameras. We had an additional F-23 that was “shared” between the two par- allel units, as needed. We tested many cameras prior to selecting the F-23. The cameras came to us from PACE, as he bought them specifically for this show. They were the first five F-23 cameras that Sony made. The cameras performed beautifully. I can only think of one limitation and that has to do with shooting at a high frame rate. The limit is 60 frames per second and for extreme high speed we had to switch to scientific cameras. We used the Phantom camera that can shoot up to 1,000 frames per second in HD. This limitation did not really affect us on this production. The look is noteworthy. It’s a strong, graphic, comic book look with extreme super saturated color mixes accentuated with deep focus.

Q. What was unique about the production of Speed Racer?

It’s a very kinetic show. A lot of mobile camera work, including whip pans, crash tracks and trombone zooms. It’s a pretty lively show. This new idea that John and Dan came up with for creating plate backgrounds was accomplished by tiling thousands of digital still shots of existing beautiful locations. Then running the finished digital files through a series of photoshop filters to accentuate and exaggerate colors and hues. We had a stills unit that traveled the world and they shot the most beautiful palaces, hotel foyers, post modern architecture interiors, and anything that was visually interesting or unusual in terms of space and light with a special camera that tiled a 360 degree view of each space. It was nicknamed “the bubble unit.” These images were tiled together to create a virtual 3D bubble where you could put the camera anywhere in that space and shoot pretty much any focal length and still retain a sharp, vivid background plate. The production challenge was to get that part of the show completed before principal photography started. We had all of the bubbles in place so that once we did start shooting with the actors we had a very good idea of what the backgrounds were going to be when we were shooting on green screens. Once the show is all polished and dry and all of the backgrounds and the layers have been added, it should be pretty extraordinary.

Q. What advantages did you have by utilizing Highdef, not only during production, but as an end result?

Most of the advantages will be experienced through the visual effects and compositing process during editorial. Our editors, Roger Barton and Zach Staenberg, are editing on full rez HD Avids. They had a projector which could project to 12’ across in the edit space to give them a better idea of how the movie will look. This provided an advantage for judging the pacing of the action and examining the fine details. Usually it is a bit of a surprise once you finally go to film and you get to see the large image. You also get surprises due to focus and pacing.

Q. What did you like about using HD overall?

It was totally appropriate for us and the look that Larry and Andy were aiming for. The 2/3” chip digiprime lenses naturally create a deeper focus than shooting on 35, plus the HD aesthetic being smoother and grain-free was tremendous. We actually shot at minus 3 db gain to heighten the sharpness. It was the right choice.

Q. Any dislikes or any areas for improvement with HD?

I think the format is definitely “there” for some types of movies. The format is strongest with stage bound shows and shows with an emphasis on, or large percentage of visual effects work. It would be more difficult to shoot something like Vertical Limit. It was a film I did several years ago in New Zealand and mostly we were shooting over 10,000 feet elevation in blizzard conditions with lightweight handheld 35 mm cameras. That was the right choice for that type of film. I have difficulty imagining dragging the engineering tent and monitor assembly through those kinds of extreme location and weather conditions. I shoot both 35 mm film and HD and I am comfortable with both, and I also see the advantages and disadvantages of both systems.