The first film-out test, using an unnamed laboratory, was, as Pierce-Roberts put it, “a disaster.” The company contacted Technicolor in Los Angeles to redo the digital transfer so that he could truly see what the cameras would give them. “In the meantime, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to visit David Fincher and Harris Savides (ASC) on the set of Zodiac,” he says. “When I told Harris what we were planning to take the Vipers to shoot in the desert, he told me, ‘Don’t do it. Go home immediately.’”

The time Pierce-Roberts spent with director David Fincher and discussions with director Michael Mann and his producers was well spent. “The way people were prepared to share their experience of HD was very gratifying,” he says. “I’m extremely grateful to both David and Michael for their time.”

The new film-out lead Pierce-Roberts to the decision to use Vipers throughout the production, and record in the Film Stream mode, “where you merely record data and do all the grading later, as opposed to video-streaming, where you can do a polished grade on set,” he explains. “Given our very sort shooting schedule (36-some days), we didn’t want to spend time discussing these issues on set and I’m very pleased we went this route.”

“When we viewed the tests against the 35mm film footage, the choice was made to go with the Viper for the entire feature,” adds Green.

“Unfortunately, when I received that information, it was Thursday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. We had prepped the 900s all week to take to Morocco and we were supposed to ship on Friday. Plus 8 stayed open for us Saturday and Sunday in order to make a new deadline of Sunday at 1:00 p.m. We worked 12-13 hour days to organize our package that would have to be right, as shipping to Morocco is never fast! A mistake could have cost us delays of three days minimum.

“The other important issue was the fact that this was being shot in the widescreen format, which I believe for the Viper is considered 2.37:1. So, the lenses had to be good from frameline-to-frameline, as feature films shot in widescreen rarely center frame actors. And, Tony is an artist and loves to paint the picture edge-to-edge. The hunt was on for lenses that would perform this task. The only lenses that we found to be able to handle this challenge were the Zeiss DigiPrimes and DigiZooms (6mm-24mm), which in 35mm terms would equate to 15mm-60mm. Tony preferred that we re-label the lenses in terms that feature filmmakers would be familiar with. We also used a longer Fujinon Zoom equivalent to a 25mm-250mm when necessary.”

One of the things that Pierce-Roberts learned from people who “knew” the format was “that I should expose as though I were shooting reversal film stock and therefore expose for the highlights. We did this on our film test,” he explains. “People would come up and say, ‘Look at the sky, its burning out.’ Having seen my tests, I feel one should take this advice with a pinch of salt, since we did have several black actors. I didn’t want their flesh tones to be too compressed. Anyway, even if I had been shooting film in the desert situation, I would have wanted the sky to burn out a little to convey the sense of heat. I wanted to see facial expression under the helmets. So, I read and adjusted the waveform monitors accordingly.

image is. Then you wander over to the D.I.T. station and look at that same image run through the LUTher box with a basic look assigned to it and you are stunned. The way the camera and lenses hold details in the blacks and highlights amazed me. The camera saw things that were almost invisible to the eye. I had to really emphasize my habit of visually sweeping a scene for reflections, boom shadows, tape marks, anything that might show, because this camera sees everything.

“But that brings me to the biggest problem for an operator,” Shotz adds. “The viewfinder. It is pretty much useless. You can’t see any details or potential problems through it. As an operator, it was a constant battle to just see my frames with this finder system. Having shot features and television on the Sony F900, 950 and the Genesis, the Viper is way far my least favorite viewing system.”

Despite the challenges of the Viper system, Shotz marks shooting Home of the Brave as a remarkable situation. “Because of Tony Pierce-Roberts,” he says. “Peter Green introduced us and Tony hired me on his recommendation. I found him to be the DP all others will have to live up to from here on. He is very much old school hands-on and nothing escapes his attention. But, no matter how good or bad the situation, he never lost his perfect English gentleman’s demeanor.”

Despite the tight schedule, Cowen and Winkler did their best to allow Pierce-Roberts the time to shoot scenes when the light would be best for the camera. “That doesn’t always happen,” he says. “But, it did save a lot of lighting time.

“I’m particularly fond of a sequence where Brian’s buddy gets shot in a cemetery. It ends in a crane shot, starting on him holding onto his best friend and widening out to include a helicopter flying over, carrying actress Jessica Biel,” Pierce-Roberts recalls. “We shot the close-up of Jessica handheld in the helicopter, which was a considerable squeeze. We completely ignored the waveform and allowed the shot to over-expose completely, as the sun flooded the cockpit. I was really impressed with how well the Viper and the Zeiss DigiPrime lens handled the over-exposure.”

Another favorite sequence for Pierce-Roberts was an interior shot in Spokane. Although most of the interior sequences were done as naturalistically as possible, Pierce-Roberts decided to change things up on a scene where 50-Cent’s character has a breakdown and holds several people hostage, including his ex-girlfriend. “It was a drive-in restaurant and we shot the scene at night at the point where the police have surrounded the place,” he explains.

“I suggested to production that we might get a little more drama out of the lighting if we used a helicopter to fly overhead with one of those very powerful Xenon lamps,” he adds. “As we only had the chopper for about an hour, I was then able to simulate the same source coming from a regular Xenon on top of a tower, with an electrician moving it as though it was really in the air. We also had several Condors with 18K HMIs with 1/2 CTO on to accent light the building and lots of ‘whirligig’ lamps flown in from Los Angels to simulate the flashing lights on police cars. Again, I would deliberately punch some lights directly into the lenses for flare effects. The Zeiss Digi lenses handled them very well.”

When the team finished principal photography, Tony Pierce-Roberts came to Los Angeles for a week. “We graded the Morocco scenes there because Millennium/New Image wanted something to show at Cannes. I did see a film-out of these scenes. They have a very good system there, whereby, on the left of the screen you can view your digital grade and on the right side you see your film-out. This eliminates any arguments about matching. Technicolor transferred the data to Technicolor London. Jeff Smithwick came over to grade with me, and took that grade back to Los Angeles for the film-out of the inter-negative.”

For Pierce-Roberts, the short schedule and HD process was an interesting challenge. “I’m happy with what I saw while shooting,” he says. “The final process of post in Los Angeles, at Technicolor, will tell all.”