It is 2001 and Tom Sterling (Josh Hartnett) is a new type of rock star. He drives a cool vintage car, dates beautiful women and lives in a giant Manhattan loft. The Internet start-up company that he started with his brother, Landshark, is the talk of Wall Street but in reality, it’s all a façade. The company’s stock price is in a free fall, a corporate raider (played by David Bowie) is ready to pounce and in a few weeks, the unimaginable will happen. August, which was written by Howard Rodman and directed by Austin Chick, paints a vivid portrait of a unique and recent time in America—during the dot.com boom just before the dot.com bust and the tragic events of 9/11.

“The script has this heaviness, this cloud over it, so I wanted to give the film a light touch with the cinematography,” explains cinematographer Andrij Parekh. “I really didn’t want the audience to be aware of the camera or lighting. It didn’t seem like it needed any more drama than the events of 9/11 happening shortly after the timeline of where the movie ends.”

The up-and-coming DP, Parekh, studied cinematography at the FAMU film school in Prague and at NYU’s Tiscsh School of the Arts. He has shot eleven features to date, including directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Bowden’s last two features—Half Nelson and Sugar, which also played at this year’s festival. Parekh was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film” and one of Variety’s “10 Cinematographers to Watch.”

For the look of the film, Chick and Parekh watched a lot of films together, with John Boorman’s 1967 existential crime thriller, Point Blank (shot by Philip H. Lathrop), being the biggest influence for it’s silver and gray palette and shots framed within frames of glass. They also took a walk through the Metropolitan Museum of Art, looking at paintings by such artists as Balthus, Lucian Freud, Mahler, Vermeer and Carpaccio for their color palette, texture and tone.

August was originally going to be shot in Super 16 with a DI, or on 35mm with a photochemical finish (for budgetary reasons), but Chick was adamant about shooting the film in widescreen. “The budget was pretty tight,” reveals Parekh. “Because of the physical spaces that we would be shooting in, Austin thought that widescreen would be more effective. Knowing our budgetary/format paradigm, I suggested shooting in anamorphic so we could go widescreen and still finish photochemically. And the reason I like shooting anamorphic is that I love the way anamorphic flares. The way that light kind of blurs. I think there’s a special quality to anamorphic that Super 35 doesn’t have.”

August was shot in 24 days in Manhattan with an ARRICAM LT and ST from CSC, and with anamorphic lenses designed by Joe Dunton. “The lenses were really lightweight and very convenient for handheld work,” explains Parekh. “We had a set of 40, 50, 75, 100 and 250mm lenses. The workhorse was the 100, which we shot probably 50% of the movie with. The 50 would open up to 1.4, which is kind of unbelievable for an anamorphic lens.”

Because of their tight budget and shooting on the fly, Parekh went with Fujifilm Eterna 500 as his film stock. During prep, Parekh, Chick and Hartnett took the camera out to see what they could get away with shooting in New York City night exteriors. He shot two ratings tests, one at 500 and the other at 1000. “It was two separate rolls shooting the same exact things in available light,” explains Parekh. “Eterna 500 rated at ASA 1000 held up really well. The blacks didn’t really fall apart and the detail was there so we ended up rating it at 1000 for the entire film.”

Throughout the film, Tom is constantly in motion. He could be in a button-down corporate boardroom one minute and then dart off to a seedy neon lit strip club the next. “This movie is really about an egomaniac,” says Parekh, “and I always saw him as being on one side of the frame. He outcasts himself in a way. In terms of shooting widescreen, it was a great way to really isolate a character in space and time but also among people. I think we did a pretty good job of accomplishing that with the widescreen format. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about shooting anamorphic but for me, it was a wonderful experience.”

Parekh also collaborated very closely with production designer Roshelle Berliner. “Roshelle was very open to suggestions,” says Parekh, “and was really great in terms of understanding the needs that I had in terms of natural source lighting. For the Landshark

office space, we worked very closely in finding places to put practicals into the location. She put in a Landshark sign that’s illuminated from the inside that looks like a Jeff Wall photograph. We were very stringent in terms of the color palette, tone and texture because at the time, we weren’t sure whether we were going to end up posting photochemically or with a DI, and I really wanted to protect for the photochemical finish.”

In terms of lighting, the most difficult aspect for Parekh was shooting numerous scenes during magic hour. “It’s always kind of a ‘pull your hair out’ experience as magic hour starts to disappear,” reveals Parekh. “How you constantly need to keep balancing the light to match the exterior day light, while cutting the interior light. Gaffer Steve Calitri was invaluable in helping me manage those situations. For exterior night shooting, I used Maxi Brutes on top of roofs and 9 Night Fays bounces.”

One of Parekh’s favorite scenes in the movie was also one of the simplest to shoot. Having finished a sequence early, the crew decided to steal some shots of Hartnett driving around Manhattan during magic hour in his vintage Plymouth Barracuda. The scene has a floating, ethereal quality to it as a Radiohead song plays in the background. “It was basically shot in available light in the back of Austin’s pickup truck,” explains Parekh. “It was a great feeling to shoot that sequence just knowing that they were going to use that particular music for the scene.”

The film was processed at Technicolor in New York. Although originally planned for a photochemical finish, the production was able to come up with the funds to do a DI at Orbit in New York. Parekh, who has done over five DIs, still prefers to finish photochemically. “I understand the benefits of a DI, but I feel there’s a certain texture and depth that is lost,” he says. “I try not to rely too much on them. Sometimes people change their minds about the process they want to go through, but I’d rather not rely on that. The thought of ‘fixing it in post’ always scares me and I think it’s a dangerous attitude to have.”

On working with Chick, Parekh had nothing but praise for the young director. “He was very open to my suggestions and very trusting,” says Parekh. “It’s always great to get that from a director you’re working with. It allows you to do some amazing work when someone puts their trust and faith into your hands.”

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