MAY CONTENT:


SPIDER-MAN 3, DP Bill Pope, ASC
By Pauline Rogers
FRACTURE, DP Kramer Morgenthau
By Bob Fisher
LUCKY YOU, DP Peter Deming, ASC
By Elina Shatkin
YEAR OF THE DOG, DP Tim Orr
By David Geffner
30 ROCK, DP Vanja Cernjul
By Elina Shatkin
PRESIDENT'S LETTER
By Steven Poster, ASC


 PARTNERS ON THE SET, The Tourist DP Dante Spinotti, ASC and Operator Duane Manwiller, SOC
By Pauline Rogers
OPERATING TIPS
By Bill Hines, SOC and Joe Chess, Jr., SOC
NEW LIGHTING GEAR
By Bonnie Goldberg
ICG HERITAGE: BILL BIRCH
By Pauline Rogers

By Pauline Rogers
Photos by Jonathan Wenk

THE PROJECT:
The Tourist (produced by Seed Productions)

THE STORY:
A thriller about a mild accountant (Ewan McGregor), who is introduced to
the freedom of a private sex club called The List by his enigmatic lawyer
(Hugh Jackman). Soon he is involved in a possible murder and
a multi-million dollar heist.

THE BUDGET:
$25 million

THE SCHEDULE:
Nine weeks

THE PARTNERS:
DP Dante Spinotti, ASC and operator Duane Manwiller, SOC
 

“For me, the camera operator issue has never been a question,” says cinematographer Dante Spinotti, ASC, who is an accomplished operator himself. “There are simply too many complex situations in lighting and rigging. A cinematographer cannot do both.”

For the Hugh Jackman produced independent film The Tourist, Spinotti brought in his long-time operator Duane Manwiller, SOC, who began with Spinotti as a first assistant. “Operating a camera is a true art form,” adds well-known commercial director Marcel Langenegger, who relied heavily on the Spinotti/Manwiller partnership for his feature debut. “It deals with composition, tension, and timing—a feel for the actor and for the moment. A lot of this is talent and instinct that can’t be taught. I was very fortunate to work with Duane on The Tourist. He is an artist in the truest sense.

“Having him on set allowed Dante and I to work closer together—literally,” Langenegger adds. “And sitting close to Dante Spinotti on a film shoot is any director’s dream. Generally, whether film or HD, a shot is a shot. The collaboration stays the same. What makes the difference is the camera operator because he strengthens this collaboration between the director and DP.”

Spinotti had several challenges on the film. A conservative budget, short shooting schedule, multiple locations at night and exterior nights, and company moves from New York to Spain were only half of it. To give Langenegger as many options as possible, Spinotti suggested they mix the shooting processes. “To keep the locations, we chose the Panavision Genesis system,” says Spinotti. “When we were on stage in New York and to emphasize the finale, we chose film for the exteriors in Spain.
DP Dante Spinotti, ASC relied on his operator Duane Manwiller, SOC (pictured) to capture interesting angles and happy accidents that director Marcel Langenegger wanted.

“When you shoot with the Genesis, the operator has a sort of simplified schematic idea of what he is looking at. He is far away from the main tools. One person—the cinematographer—has to be in what we called ‘The Mother Ship’ to work with D.I.T. Rick Nagle. Here I could watch the HD monitor and work with gaffer Jay Fortune while Rick would extract JPEG images of the various set-ups that had been color corrected from our computerized LCD monitor and send them to David Francis at Company 3 in New York, so our editor would have proper images to work with. The screened dailies in HD projected at Steiner Studios’ theatre looked terrific and matched the color corrected images that we e-mailed to Dave.

“I relied on Duane to get the shots that Marcel, who is always looking for interesting angles and happy accidents, wanted.”

“Dante had a lot to do,” adds Manwiller. “He was always checking exposure, working with the wave form monitor, making sure the highlights weren’t clipping and the blacks were not crushed, checking color temperature, etc. The list goes on.

“Take one location in NYC with a hotel that was dressed up with an Asian theme. The shot was at the base of a spiral staircase and done on a Fisher 10 dolly with a Power Pod. As we were looking straight up, we saw a figure start to appear at the top of the stairs, running down. As the figure spins around the stairs, the camera does as well, until Ewan McGregor breaks past the final step and finds himself in the lobby of the empty hotel late at night.

“We lit this with a Chinese vibe—dark, eerie, and neon,” he explains. “With the limitation of space, the ‘Mother Ship’ was three

 
 

floors above and Dante was able to watch every move and make the adjustments he needed. Dante was also in touch with his entire team, myself included, over walkie-talkies. The ‘Mother Ship’ was, in a way, the camera eyepiece for Dante.”

“A talented camera crew that understands the format is extremely important on an HD shoot,” adds Spinotti. “I am often far away from the action and need to know that the people behind the real eyepiece can do the job. The Genesis is adaptable to many styles of shooting. When it goes handheld or on Steadicam, the camera crew has to act like a formula one pit stop team. The operator has an added responsibility of not only knowing how to make the shot in the best way possible, but also how to get the best out of the equipment and crew.”

When the company moved to Spain for a completely different look, the team went back to the tried-and-true film format. Both Spinotti and Manwiller agree that even though it seems more important for a DP to have an operator on an HD show, film shows are no different.

“Marcel likes to work with both cinematographer and operator while setting up a scene,” explains Manwiller. “We worked as a team, figuring shots out, the tools needed to make them happen, and the best and most efficient way to go about making the shot work.

“In Spain, we had a very small window of daylight so we all had to be on our game,” he adds. “There were a couple of occasions where we would start to set up a shot in one area and then, after we all figured out the game plan, Dante could hopscotch ahead to another area to get a head start on our next scene.

“One example that comes to mind is a location in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor,” Manwiller recalls. “The morning started out quite hectic. We had car mounts to do, Technocrane shots to set up, and various other shots in and around the plaza. While Dante was lighting a car rig, he was having me pop off shots of Ewan walking up a steep little street that leads him into the plaza. All at the same time, working out where the Technocrane shot starts that brings Ewan from the tiny little street to the vast plaza.

“You really have to work as a tight knit team to make something like this happen and a DP-director-operator team makes it work so well.”

“To me, you can’t be everywhere at once,” adds Spinotti. “Do I miss having my hands on a camera? Not really. In a way, the knowledge of what a good cameraperson can do has helped me let go. I am a big fan of encouraging talent and moving people up in my family. I’ve seen potential in terrific assistants who have become great operators, Duane, Gary Jay and Chris Moseley, for example. Knowing that I have that kind of talent behind the camera allows me to concentrate all my efforts on minor things like being creative and the rapid changes in lighting that happen when a director works with an actor to work out a scene. The person behind the camera can deal with just that—the camera”