Arri-news 2011

he reports. “You could find information in areas that appeared at first glance to be completely black, while color and contrast were excellent.” Tavenner concurs that the tests “all went spectacularly well. Everyone in the workflow came together and it became obvious to me that we were only as strong as the weakest link in the chain.” To keep that chain strong, he brought on board Abby Levine, a DIT based in New York. Together, they managed the workflow in a way that allowed Menges to focus on creative aspects of the shoot. “Those two guys are consummate technicians,” says Menges. “They allowed me to concentrate on the composition and the light, which is what I’m normally thinking about on a film set.” According to Tavenner, the system performed so well that, “By mid-way through the show, a lot of us could have forgotten that we were shooting digital because you work EXTREME LATITUDE AND INCREDIBLE CLARITY Chris Menges, BSC, ASC, chooses ALEXA and ARRIRAW for Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close While many ALEXA productions opt for a ProRes workflow using the camera’s on-board SxS PRO cards, an increasing number of major feature films are now taking advantage of ARRIRAW recording to access full sensor resolution, raw uncompressed data and the greatest flexibility in post. One of the first of these to be released will be Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , the story of a nine-year- old New Yorker named Oskar Schell, who embarks on an investigative quest after his father is killed in the 9/11 attacks. Director Stephen Daldry originally wanted a New York-based DP for the production, and recruited Harris Savides, ASC, who conducted a series of tests with ALEXA and decided to shoot ARRIRAW, using the Codex OnBoard recorder. Sadly, just a few weeks before shooting began, Savides fell ill. Daldry needed a quick replacement and turned to legendary cinematographer Chris Menges, BSC, ASC, with whom he had worked on The Reader . Menges recalls, “I arrived in New York in February 2011 to meet the crew and start working with 1 st AC Gregor Tavenner, who reintroduced me to the ALEXA. I had first met the ALEXA three months before when I spent a day understudying Bob Richardson [ASC], shooting Hugo for Martin Scorsese.” Menges set about shooting his own tests and was impressed by the camera’s latitude at both ends of the exposure range. “In post I found that you could recover even larger latitude, which made the ALEXA very exciting,” Chris Menges, BSC, ASC, with ALEXA and Codex OnBoard recorder 4 ARRI NEWS