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Dog Days
Home Grown DISSECTING VERA MAY 2018
“I wanted to persuade Lynne (Ramsay) that digital could easily emulate film and the only difference between the two was that the camera wouldn’t have a mag of film on the top of it.” That film-to-digital- conversion conversation was commonplace five years ago, but DOP Tom Townend still fields the ‘I want to make it look like film’ question all the time when shooting on digital. However, Tom reckons that digital is 80% of what he shoots now. “Lynne was resistant to the idea initially because it was not what she was used to. We actually shot a test on Kodak 500T film alongside the ALEXA, day and night, just on a street corner and took that into a grading suite to really prove that the look of 35mm could be emulated, and we added grain as well. That satisfied Lynne and I promised her there was no difference in working practice. As it happened, of course you don’t have to re-load every ten minutes and the camera will keep on rolling, something that she really embraced. It suited her and Joaquin Phoenix to shoot without interruption just to see what would happen. I think she mildly regretted it when she came to the edit. If she’d had the discipline of film imposed on her the natural breaks would’ve come with that. “From my point of view I don’t treat them differently . I meter everything, but interestingly 800 ASA on a light meter does not automatically translate into the correct exposure as it should be on the ALEXA. Why that is I don’t know. It’s a guide at any rate. We only ever had one monitor on set which was Lynne’s and mine, and I would occasionally look just for some sort of assurance of what it was we were shooting.” Verdict It’s a shame that when a top director like Lynne Ramsay wants to shoot on film she can’t but a mix of an understanding DOP and a great DI helped. Were You There? LYNNE RAMSAY’S DARK TALE JUNE 2018
SURVIVING STOP MOTION APRIL 2018
A great episode mainly because of the skill of the DOP but also because of his close relationship with the director who encouraged the new moves. Verdict the main reason I prefer them to REDs. It’s this practical benefit of having three NDs. You quickly press a button on the camera and it’s ready to go.” The ITV drama series Vera is well known as a hotbed for new cinematographers. They are encouraged to stretch their visual legs. Ed Moore shot the memorable episode, Darkwater. “It’s good to try something new and we were often told to calm down by the producer,” he says. “You can take it too far but it’s better to be overshooting the mark and coming back onto it rather than always doing the safest thing possible. We just pushed against the norm in a friendly way. We’re also very fond of frames within frames so you have a situation where you’re looking through something, like a door or window. I also try to make something as completely black as I can get in every shot and something as white as I can get, even if it’s a tiny little specular highlight, like the inky blackness inside a van and the doors open to a bright sky outside. It just helps draw the eye in.” It’s because of the location-heavy shooting that Ed chose an ARRI ALEXA Mini. “I try and make the cameras as light as possible, to get the camera into interesting places. It’s a friendly battle I wage with the camera assistants not to put more and more equipment on the camera. Sometimes you end up with the tail wagging the dog and any attempt to move the camera package takes ages. An ALEXA Mini just stripped down with a lens can be held over my head but an ALEXA Mini with batteries, transmitters, monitors, matte box and baseplate attached might as well be a full-size camera. “The built-in motorised ND is perhaps
Isle of Dogs was shot on digital stills cameras, in common with many other recent stop-motion productions, although Tristan Oliver, the DOP, emphasises that the recently-developed CanonEOS-1Dx DSLR is much better for stop-motion work than pre-existing options. “Ever since we stopped using 35mm we’ve picked cameras that aren’t very good because… no still camera manufacturer is making a camera especially to shoot stop frame on. “We ask of it more than it’s ever designed to do. We force it into providing a live image off the chip pretty much all the time. That takes it toll on chips – they get very hot, you get density fluctuations, you get fluttering in the shadows.” Canon’s 5D family had previously been popular for stop-motion production but it also has a tendency to overheat when used continuously in live-view mode, often to the point where magenta flickering became visible in the shadows. During the production of ParaNorman , “a gang of people in VFX” had been retained “whose job it is to sort out the overnight fluctuations and flicker,” recalls Oliver. “This time we didn’t have to do that. We spent more money on the cameras but saved that money on the fixes. That was the same camera, the 1Dx, that Aardman used to shoot Early Man on – we both did a full testing programme of cameras out there and both came to the same conclusion without knowing what the other had chosen.” Camera and lighting equipment for Isle of Dogs was purchased outright, given that it would be required continuously for two years. “I bought 600 C-stands,” Oliver recalls. “They all get sold at the end – someone gets a fab deal!” “It entirely takes over your life,” says Tristan Oliver of stop-motion cinematography. You don’t have any holidays for two years. Hats off, Tristan. Verdict
46 DEF I N I T ION | SEPTEMBER 20 1 8
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