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FEATURE THE FORGIVEN
Bana looked at the camera and read the brand name on it, thinking that was what the magic was,” William continues. “We talked about it and I said yes, that’s part of the magic, but what he’s talking about was that when they’re in the moment, in these intense scenes, they didn’t lose the moment. We could keep going.” Speed, William says, is one reason to use zooms. “The other is that having a huge box of [prime] lenses, which costs a lot to rent, is necessary with some cameras. You need the speed. With this camera you don’t need the speed... it cleans up the cart, we don’t have all this junk to move around.” A final benefit, he says, is sheer flexibility. “With this lens I have a 22.5mm or a 46mm. I have never done a zoom shot with these lenses, never. It’s a variable prime.” As to quality concerns over zoom lenses, which are inevitably more complex than primes and involve more pieces of glass, William’s response is simple. “I started using them because I blind test lenses. All modern lenses are pretty much the same. Yes, there are subtle differences, but the technology is so advanced that in an actual scene in a movie you can’t tell the difference from one lens to the next. I stress, there are subtle differences – but do they matter?” He’s cautious, too, about the approach to lens tests that is often taken. “What a lot of people do is shoot a test and look at it on the camera, and they haven’t gone through colour correction. That’s like holding up a piece of orange negative
taking bulbs out of fixtures to create the mood. Obviously, we’re using light fixtures too, but it’s a whole different philosophical approach than what I’ve been doing for thirty years. It’s subtractive.” With regard to equipment. Williammentions “a survival kit of battery operated LED lights that I bought on Amazon from China. I would buy them one at a time to find one that worked, that met colour standards. Then I bought a bunch of them. Instead of going to the movie industry and getting the light that costs $2000, I have the light that costs $50, and it came with two batteries. I can’t do a whole movie with it, but in that prison we did the vast majority of it with that stuff. The guys down there loved it so much that, as far as my carnet was concerned, I lost them.” THE GO-TO FUJINON LENSES William is confident that Cabrio 19-90mm zoom lens covers “90% of what you’ll ever do with A camera. The 85-300 on the B camera is the same thing. So, when you’re in dusty, dirty environments you’re not changing lenses. But the most important thing is when you change lenses it’s a three- minute operation – but make-up and hair hears it, maybe I will go in and tweak something, so that three- minute procedure becomes seven minutes, ten minutes. If we’re on the 19-90mm or the 85-300mm, we reach down, zoom it a little bit, you’re good to go and we didn’t even cut.” Things moved so quickly that even the cast started to notice. “Eric
LENSES ARE GETTING SHARPER AND SHARPER AND ACTORS ARE HATING IT MORE AND MORE
DEFINITION APRIL 2018
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