1. Post Focus
I Creating Reality for a Greenscreen Shoot
By Noah Kadner
often compromised. It was a very exciting challenge to shoot every-
thing onstage and then try to make it look real.”
Chicks was shot at Film Production Studios in Lödz, Poland.
The Polish feature film Man, Chicks Are Just Different, shot by Zielinski used a primarily local crew that included camera operator
Jerzy Zielinski, ASC, is a simple story about two men (Adam Ernest Wilczynski, gaffer Hubert Stawicki and key grip Wojtek
Woronowicz and Robert Wieckiewicz) conversing as they drive Piasecki. He shot in 1.85:1 using a Panaflex Millennium XL, Primo
through city streets at night. “The concept was very anti-cinematic,” lenses and Kodak Vision3 500T 5219.
says Zielinski, who shot the picture for director Marek Koterski. “The “Shooting the actors and the backgrounds separately gave
question was, how can we make this premise interesting and bring us visual options that simply wouldn’t have been possible on loca-
the audience along for the ride?” tion,” says Zielinski. “For example, I could shoot the actors with a
The filmmakers explored the possibility of shooting entirely 50mm lens and then capture the background plate later with a
onstage, with the actors in a stationary car in front of greenscreen, 10mm in order to see more of the surrounding environment. This
and compositing the backgrounds during post. Zielinski researched enabled us to create a complex, hyper-real look.”
the look of nighttime car interiors by driving around at night and In order to maximize the shooting time with the actors, Zielin-
shooting short videos, and he paid close attention to the optical ski devised a fixed lighting setup for the greenscreen. “We created
quality of the resultant imagery and the nature of the interactive a ‘chandelier’ fixture out of 20 4-foot Kino Flo 3,200°K tubes. We
lighting in the footage. He then shot a series of tests with actors and bounced them up like a shining tube just above the roof of the car,
crew using a car on a stage to show the producers that the green- and they evenly lit the entire greenscreen backing. It was very simple,
screen approach could look credible. and it ensured that the background was lit and ready to go first thing
“This movie depended on two things: the dialogue and the each morning.”
performances,” Zielinski explains. “Marek wrote a very precise script, For the two actors, Zielinski used a variety of Rosco LitePad
and the actors weren’t allowed to improvise at all. I’ve shot a lot of LED panels to emulate the look of the car’s dashboard lighting.
driving sequences, and in real moving cars, you’re always limited to Completing the general look of the car scenes, Zielinski created a
very few camera angles and lighting positions, and the sound is system of moving lights to approximate the effects of various exter-
74 August 2012 American Cinematographer

2. nal sources, such as other cars and street
lamps. “For the streetlight effects, we used
2,000-watt and 1,000-watt Arri Fresnel
lamps either direct or bounced off a rotating
mirror,” he says. “We sometimes added 1/4
or 1/2 CTO to create a sodium-vapor look.
Finally, we placed an 800-watt Redhead on
a dolly to simulate the headlights of passing
cars.”
The production used two versions of
the car, and each was stripped down to
facilitate rigging and accommodate a vari-
ety of shooting angles. “The rigging team
removed everything from the cars that we
didn’t need, including the engines and the
windows,” says Zielinski. “To help the actors
concentrate on something, we also placed a
large TV monitor that played POV driving
footage in front of the car.”
After completing the three-week
studio shoot, Zielinski went out with a
smaller crew and a Panavision Genesis to
shoot exteriors for the background plates
and the reflections that would be added to
the car’s windows in post. “I wanted the
texture, grain and deep blacks of 35mm film
for the actors’ faces, but for the night
plates, I switched to the Genesis because I
knew we’d have to shoot a lot of material,
and that we’d have minimal lighting. This
hybrid approach gave me the option to
build up the depth in post.” Referencing
storyboards that depicted each scene’s
setting and background requirements,
Zielinski shot the plates slightly out of focus
to achieve a more natural optical look.
Going into post, Zielinski collabo-
rated closely with Warsaw visual-effects
house The Chimney Pot. The work entailed
selecting the desired takes from the green-
screen shoot, matching them with the
appropriate background footage, and then
adding digital windows complete with
reflections, dirt and interactive lighting.
Visual-effects supervisor Jacek Skrobisz and
The Chimney Pot’s managing director,
Jedrzej Sablinski, worked on the project for
a year, beginning with preproduction test- 2K, and we then moved footage through light that would come from outside and
ing. post as 2K DPX frames.” penetrate the interior, so we added edge
The initial challenge in post was to “I spent about four months working flares motivated by the street lamps to help
match the 35mm footage with the HD directly with The Chimney Pot,” says Zielin- make it more believable.”
Genesis footage. “We received the Genesis ski. “We sometimes had very soft edges to “Jerzy’s involvement in the effects
material in 1080p on HDCam-SR tapes,” key with, because a strong backlight would- work was extensive, much more than the
explains Sablinski. “The 35mm negative n’t have looked right for the interior of the director of photography usually has,” says
was scanned at 4K and then downsized to car at night. I was also missing some kind of Sablinski. “He worked closely with editor
www.theasc.com August 2012 75

3. Andrzej Kowalski to select the right fore-
ground takes and then match each with the
corresponding background material.” Of
the movie’s 443 shots, 341 contain visual
effects.
The Chimney Pot’s team of 10 visual-
effects artists and compositors used The
Foundry’s Nuke software, supplemented by
Autodesk Flame, for most of the composit-
ing work. They also used Autodesk Maya
for 3-D animation and RealFlow for physical
fluid simulation. In one notable scene, heavy
rain begins to fall as the men are waiting at
a railway crossing for a train to pass. Sablin-
ski explains, “The rain was very special,
involving a lot of work with raindrops on the
car window and reflections on the actors.
The wiper blades and windshield were
created entirely in 3-D with Maya. Interac-
tive rain drops and splashes were simulated
with RealFlow.” For a scene showing the
men driving across a bridge, “the resizing of
the background plates was very demand-
ing.”
Zielinski continued working with The
Chimney Pot as Chicks was edited, compos-
ited and color corrected (by Victor Sasin).
“We used Nucoda’s Film Master system
with a SAN and Fuse assist station for the
grading and conform,” says Sablinski.
“Everything was screened with a Barco D-
Cine Premiere DP90 projector on a 4-meter
DI screen. Each shot was graded three or
four times for all of the separate elements
and then the final comps. The final shots
averaged up to five layers of material. It was
a big puzzle, and it was a lot of fun to put
together!” The Chimney Pot also created
the final film prints and DCP version.
“Having all the post work completed
under one roof really made a difference,”
says Zielinski. “Typically, you deal with many
different post houses on a project with this
many visual effects. What was really fasci-
nating for me was seeing how we could use
all of this digital technology to create hyper-
realism rather than fantasy.”
76 August 2012 American Cinematographer