HDProGuide.com: What cameras did you shoot with? What camera techniques and technologies did you use to capture special shots and scenes?
Radium Cheung: We had the Sony F3 with the newly shipped S-Log at the time. That gave us the 12 stop dynamic range we needed for shooting in the harsh direct sunlight in the San Fernando Valley without having to bring in big bounces for fill lights. More importantly though, we had always wanted to shoot anamorphic as opposed to spherical because Sean had wanted to capture the always-present hot blaring sun in the valley and let it become a character. The old uncoated anamorphic lenses would catch the flares and stretch it across the frame just the way we envisioned this film. We were very, very lucky and had just the right Karma to have come across a set of beautiful vintage Lomo anamorphic lenses in the nick of time.
On one shot Sean wanted to track with Jane as she walks along some power lines while talking to her mother on the phone. Sean remembered hearing in an interview where Jim Jarmusch talked about a similar shot on Mystery Train. They had a small jib mounted on a pick-up truck and pushed it in neutral gear. So we borrowed that idea. I then remembered one of my old friend and mentor Derek Wan, H.K.S.C. has just the right jib at his company All In One Productions – the very same jib I used to set up for him when I worked as his grip in the late 90s. They were very supportive and gave us the jib for the duration of our shoot for a nominal token rental. On the day, we strapped it on the pick-up truck of Adam Kolkman, our amazingly resourceful and handy AC. The set up worked for us perfectly and it was also very fun to have the entire team (producers and crew) pushing the truck during those shots.
Excerpt from interview conducted by Wynona Luz, Contributing Writer for HDProGuide.com
Resources:
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