Q 5 Park City Standouts then, he says, “If we had five scenes in the room, we’d shoot out in one direc- tion and keep changing the actors’ wardrobe and background players.” The canteen, a second-floor loca- tion, was lit entirely with natural light through the windows. In locations that required supplemental light through windows, including Ila’s apartment, the crew positioned 4Ks on tall stands instead of Condors or scissor lifts, which are costly to rent in India. “The stands go incredibly high — much higher than would be allowed in the West!” says Simmonds. On most domestic interiors, he used fluorescent fixtures. “In reality, a A young vampire on the streets in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. room in someone’s home might be lit with a single fluorescent tube, but I used more than that on any one angle,” he A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night Born in England to Iranian says. Director: Ana Lily Amirpour immigrants, Amirpour was raised in the By contrast, Saajan’s home Cinematographer: Lyle Vincent United States. She attended art school features tungsten practicals. Batra notes in San Francisco and eventually found that for Indians, this is meaningful: Imagine hearing this elevator her way into UCLA’s screenwriting Only Catholics use tungsten, whereas pitch: “It’s an Iranian vampire Western, program. By the time she made A Girl upwardly mobile Hindus, like Ila, use shot in black-and-white, with a bomb Walks Home, she had written 10 feature fluorescents. Simmonds strove to tease soundtrack.” That was writer/director scripts and created a graphic novel out such cultural nuances. “There is a lot Ana Lily Amirpour’s one-liner for A based on her vampire film. of subtle subtext in Ritesh’s script, and I Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, and Amirpour’s film is a mash-up: encouraged him to make some of that cinematographer Lyle Vincent recalls, The actors are Iranian, the dialogue is more obvious to a Western audience,” “When I heard that, of course I wanted Farsi, and Bad City is a desolate Texas he says. to sign up!” oil town with Farsi street signs. (The Apart from giving feedback on He is glad he did. Collaborating movie was shot in Southern California.) some screen shots that were emailed to with Amirpour on her debut feature The archetypical characters include a him, Simmonds was not involved in the allowed him to create a unique world, Persian James Dean; his father, the final grade, which took place at one that channels a little David Lynch, Gambler; a tattooed Pimp; a Prostitute, Laboratoire Arane Gulliver in Paris. some film noir and the wide, empty and, of course, the Vampire. This “Being present at the color correction on spaces of a Spaghetti Western. When bloodsucker is a young pixie in full an independent film means that you conjuring the Iranian ghost town Bad chador, but underneath she wears a happen to live in the city where it’s City, home to a host of sordid souls and striped sailor shirt, and she rides a being timed, and this was an interna- one vampire, Vincent found himself skateboard and grooves to British rock. tional project, with a lot of elements reveling in the distortions of vintage Of her inspirations, Amirpour writes, happening in different places,” he notes. Xtal Express anamorphic lenses, which “It’s like Sergio Leone and David By the time The Lunchbox was he paired with an Arri Alexa Studio. Lynch had an Iranian rock ’n’ roll baby, released in the United States, in late Vincent and Amirpour are birds and then Nosferatu came and babysat.” frame grabs courtesy of the Festival. Sundance Film February, it was already a big hit in India of a feather, both coming from art back- Specific inspirations included Once and abroad. Simmonds became aware of grounds. Vincent, who won the 2006 Upon a Time in the West, Rumble Fish, this when he arrived at an Indian restau- ASC John A. Alonzo Heritage Award Blade Runner and all of Lynch’s films. rant in Atlanta, Ga., to shoot a scene for for student cinematography, dabbled in The idea was to mold these his next feature. “I mentioned I’d shot painting and fine-art photography disparate parts into something timeless. The Lunchbox, and I was an instant before heading to New York University, “Black-and-white gave us a lot,” notes celebrity!” where he earned an M.F.A. in film. His the director. So, too, does the gliding — Patricia Thomson feature credits include another 2014 camerawork, which was accomplished Sundance Film Festival entry, Cooties. chiefly with a Steadicam. “We owe a lot Home Alone at Night Walks A Girl Photos by Sina Kappelt,Sayyah andTodd courtesy of the filmmakers. 86 April 2014 American Cinematographer Q 5 Park City Standouts Top: Cinematographer Lyle Vincent (right) and director Ana Lily Amirpour assess a shot. Bottom: Preparing the scene are (clockwise from foreground left) 1st AC Joey Alvarado, Vincent, Amirpour, actress Sheila Vand and best boy electric Jake Magee. Panavision Cs, but even funkier,” says Vincent. His well-worn lenses were re- built by Panavision optical engineer Dan Sasaki and Guy McVicker, the camera service manager at Panavision Hollywood. Panavision then supple- mented Vincent’s lenses with some Cooke and Zeiss Xtal Express anamor- phics and added an Angenieux Optimo 25-250mm HR zoom and a 100mm macro lens. Fortunately, color matching wasn’t an issue because the final image would be monochrome. “The lenses are all over the place, and the contrast is really low, so they don’t look great in color, but in black-and-white they really shine,” says Vincent. “They gave us more latitude, and the blacks came up a to our Steadicam operator, Scott anamorphics, but they were not avail- little. Lily and I loved them.” Dropkin,” says Vincent. “He came in for able when it came time to shoot. (Some Vincent’s go-to lenses were a a week and gave us everything we test shots that he captured with them Cooke Xtal Express 25mm T.3 and a needed.” made it into the film, however.) Zeiss Xtal Express 35mm T1.3. “The Equally important to the look and So, he dug out some of his old 25mm is a beautiful lens, and we used it feel are the hard, noir-style lighting and Zeiss Xtal Express lenses. “They were for POV shots and when the father is the 2.40:1 anamorphic image. Of the not in good shape,” he says, but they sick and tripping out,” he says. “We latter, Vincent observes, “Lily and I love proved ideal for the part. Spherical usually stopped that down.” The 35mm all the weird flaws of the lenses — the lenses adapted with a Shiga anamorphic “was a really funky lens. The edges are flares, the streaking, the breathing, the element, they had a fast aperture and a very distorted, and that’s particularly distortions.” The cinematographer orig- vintage coating that gave a very expres- noticeable in shots where the highlights inally hoped to use Panavision C Series sive look. “They were pretty close to the are really stretched, like right before the 88 April 2014 American Cinematographer Persian James Dean and the vampire meet on the street. On the Alexa with a full 4:3 frame, those distortions become even more apparent. It was perfect for the painterly, expressionistic tone we wanted. “My lighting was basically all hard, single-source light,” he continues. “We only used tungsten lights that were avail- able in the 1940s because we wanted the noir look of that era; we had one 5K, some 2Ks and smaller units.” On the haunted streets, he tended to use avail- able light from the streetlights and then position a 5K for backlight. In general, he says, his approach “was about keeping deep, rich shadows. We always wanted a black reference and a white reference to make true black-and-white photography. I don’t like when black-and-white is all gray tones. I like to see the full range of tones.” The images were recorded in ProRes 4:4:4:4 to SxS cards. “We were shooting available light in a little town at night, and I pushed it to the max: 3,200 ISO and a 270-degree shutter,” Vincent recalls. “In color, you’d see more of the noise and grain, but in black-and-white it just blended in. There is some stopped- down, deep-field focus on some exteriors because we wanted more of that Spaghetti Western feel. So on day exteri- ors we’d get down to a T8 or T5.6. But we were always at T2 or T2.8 at night.” Vincent used Arri’s Look Creator THE WAY TO to devise a black-and-white viewing © Jarmo Pohjaniemi LUT, which he applied on set to a Sony OLED monitor. “It was a very deep PERFECT LIGHT contrast,” he says. In post, “we trans- formed the color images into mono- chrome using the color channels in the DaVinci Resolve, and then fine-tuned from there.” The color correction was done at Los Angeles facility Runway with colorist Zak Meadows. While excited about the film’s enthusiastic reception at Sundance, Amirpour was especially thrilled by her See us at NAB Booth C5446. uncle’s reaction back in Iran. “He loved it,” she says. “He said, ‘The kids are defi- nitely going to get this on the black market.’” — Patricia Thomson www.chimeralighting.com ¢ 888.444.1812.