Freeze Frame, ICG April 2014

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DIS]RICT g INDIE NIAGICIAN TRENT OPALOCH RAISES THE M1\RVEL SIIIELD FOR
THE EPIC THRILI,ER CAPTAINAMERICA; THE \,YINTER SOLDIER
by TED ELRICK I photos by ZADE ROSENTHAL
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"In Auengers ute had one Helicarrier and in
Captain America ute haue three - on the gunal
deck, and command touter - all fully rendered CG
slrots utith CG characters."
I ILM VISUAL I]IiIIF]C'I'S SUPER\/ISOR RUSS]]],], IIAR], }
Tl:.e Winter Soldiet leaps forward in time from its
predecessor, with Rogers str-uggling to embrace his tole in the
modern wotld and new threats posed by his most dangetous
advetsaty, a n:thless Soviet agent known only as the \)Tintet
Soldiet. Also appeating in the film ate Scatlett Johansson,
tepdsing her role as Black \7idow ftom The Aaengers, Samuel L.
Jackson repdsing cl'Laractet Nick Fury from Iron Man and The
Auengers, Robett Redford as Alexander Pietce and Sebastian
Stan as Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers' best friend. ri(/ho is the
Winter Soldiet? Comic book fans know; the test must.r,ait fot
the film helmed by Anthony and Joe Russo.
And Captain Ameica is a surprising departure fot the
Russo Btothets, whose background includes indie favorites
ltke Welcome to Collinwood and You, Me and Dupree, as well. as
cdtically acclaimed sitcoms li'ke Arrested Deuelopnent and
Communiry.
\X4rat made them dive into Marel's epic world of good
and evil? "We grew up on 70s thrillers, watching the late show
with out father,"Joe Russo explains. "It's always been an aspiration of ours to u/ork on an action film, and the thriller component of this script tealiy appealed to us. In addition, I had
been collecting comic books since I was about ten yeats old."
The Russos chose Trent Opaloch (Distict 9, E/1siun) as
their DP because of the visceral, exciting lighting and cameta
work Opaloch achieved for the low-budget South African hit
Dhtict 9. "We loved the combination of realism in that mone
"There was a lot ofgrit and dirt in the special effects shots that
teally excited us because we wanted to do a mote gtounded
vetsion of Captain America."
And Opaloch says it was the Russos' thirst for realism that
gabbed him. "I loved the idea of Cap in the modetn wodd,"
Opaloch explains, "and that dictated a 1ot of out decisions. It
was almost ls.ke a Boame Identilt qpe of thing in that it is an
action picture based in reality."
Discussions about the film's visual style included ref
to 70s thtillets hke Three Day of the Condor, Marathon
Man and The ParaJlax View. "Itwas neat when Robet Redfotd,
who started in Condor, came to wotk on the fiIm," Opaloch
shares. "As we discovered, we were instinctively setting these
gritty kinds of frames [ike in a 70s thriller style], and here's [an
actor] who defined that style of shooting."
To capture that look, the production opted fot AI-EL\Opaloch shot Efrsiun with the RED EPIC but had become
erences
familtar and comfortable using the ALEXA on his preriou=
worth of work in commetcials. "And Man-el has suc.l
a wonderful pipeline with the Alexa," he adds. '\\-e had nr
Codex [recotder], and I thought the combination of the -1-e u
year's
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"We did stunt sequences in
Cleueland with our operators
right in the action like combat
ph,otographers."
{
A CAMERA
1ST AC TAYLOR MATHESON }
with the anamorphic lenses looked good. Matvel was happy
with it, so it was a win/win for a11."
A-camera 1st AC Taylor Matheson says that because digital shovrs the impetfections of lenses more readily, particularly
in low-depth-of-field situations, Panavision made certain they
had the best glass to shoot with. Matheson, who keeps a list of
all the lenses used until the film is released in case of reshoots,
says that the anamorphic lenses were all pdmes from various
series. The "A" set of lenses included the G25, 30, 40, 50,
60,75 and 100 as vzell as the E35, 135 and 180. The
included the C25,30,35, 60 and 75 as well as the E40, 50, 100,
135 and 180 mm. For zooms they went with the AWZ 40-80
mm and .lvTZ70-200mm.
In addition to the four Alexas, the ctew also pressed into
seryice several RED EPICS for ctash cam and the extensive
hand-held situations. 'qwe did a numbet of stunt sequences in
Cleveland with out operators right in the action, almost like
combat photographets," Matheson explains. 'The Alexa, fully
loaded, with all ofthe stuffin a studio configutation, proved a
Iitde too cumbersome. So \ve took some Epics, stripped them
dowr, took the base plates off the bottom and screwed in a
hand gdp reminiscent of an o1d 2C that had a pistol gnP on
the bottom. The total package was Lightweight and could be
operated easily in these situations."
"That was pretty exciting," relates A-camera opetator Andrevz Rowlands, whose coverage was augmented by B-camera
operator Ian Fox. "We needed to be running through sets
where cars wete exploding and people were firing guns. We
would be low then high, so you had to be pretty agile. It was a
great setup with a camera being just a lens, the grip, one focus
motot and a small transmittet and iust running flat-out with
the actors going tfuough all this mania."
\il{hile the Russos used storyboatds, there was loom to
deviate. "The storyboard ,vas like a rough dtaft we used as a
guide," Opatoch shates. 'qX/here'we held close [to boards] was
the heavy visual effects; we knew the elements were already
being built and we had to help those guys out. !7hat I really
love though, is the intuitive stuff - follovring tlre actors and
having the camera breathe with them."
The Russos' television experience made fot a brisk pace
on set. "In television you're constandy working vdth a limited ,-ount of resoutces in a limited time frame," Joe Russo
explains. 'oThere were years whete v/e were working on two
shows at once. Sometimes you're teshooting footage for a new
episode tlree days before it goes on the air while preparing
for an episode that airs in three weeks. It's hard on yout body,
hard on you psychologically," he adds, '1f you start going 1 3,
14, 15 hours - limiting people's ability to sleep, to recupeiate,
the quality of their work will slip, so it's important fot you to
work quickly to give them time for tecovery." Russell Eatl,
Visual Effects Supervisor, Industrial Light + Magic.
The most challenging sequence in Winter Soldietwas
shot over 14 days in the Russos'hometown of Cleveland, on a
stretch of the freeway leading into the city. It is one of the key
action sequences for the epic showdown between the forces
of good and evil.
"It was a big sacrifice for the city to allow this," Anthony
Russo says. "There would be no forgiveness, so we couldn't
run over. We had two units running, we caught some bad
weather, thete was just no room fot error. But we had an
amaztng team, and it all worked out."
Additional challenges in the sequence were in ptoviding
the live color-cottected image to the filmmakers from the mul-
bigger and could be used on tracking vehicles. And for the
Steadicam we used the Teradek ttansmitter, very short range
but it also has zero delay like the Bond system. My tent was so
far away wehad to run fiber optic cable because B and C cable
is limited to somet}-ing like 200 feet. We also used the Codex
S recotder, vrhich was riew to us but smaller and wotked well
for all the handheld."
DataManzger Kyle Spicer estimates that most days, an
of fout to five houts of footage was shot. "In those
^vet^ge
hand-held run-and-gun scenarios there's a lot of stuff to process," Spicet shares. 'qWe had a Codex Vault on set. We had
used it on lron Man; we'd actually used the very first two Vaults
so vze carded those ovet to Captain Aneica as well because it's
the workfow Mawel likes to use. It's a smaller on-set system
that allows us to rename all the metadata on the Codex XT
cards, review things and export it out into a number of functions the way you'd like to see the footage. We had prerly
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open workflow so that you could have it when you wanted it."
Not only did size matter in data management, but
ILM visual effects supervisor Russell Ead says Tbe lVinter Soldier tpped the ante
in effects as wel). "In
Aaengerr we had one
Helicarrier, and in Captain Ameica lve har.'e thtee Helicattiers," Earl erplains, "rvith destruction and crazy battles that
include this kincl of a broadside, pirate ship battle. Thete are
some great shots of the He[carrier in Aungers, but thcy ate a
handful. !,n lYinter Sa/diel r.ve'te up close, on the guns, on the
deck, on the commancl tos'er, all luliv rencieted CG shots rl"'ith
(-(i
characters.
"The individual tendet ftames started at 90 gigabvtes, 40
hours per frame, ancl w-ere optimized to 50 gigabytes at 10
houts a frame, al1 on 12 core machines," Earl continues. "In
tetms of scene memor,y, on the heaviest shots lve weren't able
to load all the catriets into one scene, we couid onlv load one
at a time. A single carrier could be as much as 46 gigabvtes,
then u,e're also destrol-ing these carriers. So it g'as a lot ofdata
and detail to be pushing around."
Eatl details horv nearly 1,000 VFX shots for Vinter Saldier
u,'etc spLit betv,'een ILN'I's generalist and ttaditional pipeline.
The traditional pipeline uses I{atana V rav; the genetalist pipe[ne uses thtee studio N{acs, V-rar- basecl. The.v also usec] think
ingParticles on the studio X{acs ancl Plume, ILN'I's proprrctaq-
softl'ate for effects and explosions.
Gaffer Jeff NlutteJl, rr,ho has rnant- r,ears of s'otking l'ith
Opaloch on commetcials, praises the suPPort from \{an'el.
"Their formula for making l mor-ie is r er\- smatt in tetms
ofw-hat's needed," Nluttell obsen'es. "They know-the scoPe
and sizc, so we \vere able to come up rvith some teallr' cool
things from a lighting standpoint that normallr- w-ould have
been met with: 'That's ar.vfulll- expsn5ive; can't vou do that
another way?'
"For examplc, the lighting w-e built fot an elevatot fight
sequence," Nluttell adds. "This glass elevator trar-els ftom a
dav exterior to subteranean, thcn to a rvorlcl that is completely
industrial. To cteate that onstage lor an elevator that doesn't
actually mo\re, we built 20-b,v-14-foot LED panels, kind of
like a Jumbotron, and created a r-ideo feed through a media
serrrer so it flowed naturally and u.ould shilt color and cteate
a repeatabiliw of the lighting for various takes as the elevator
descends."
Desctibing rvotking within the Mafi'el system, Opaloch
remembers a clav when the1. were shooting some green screen
footage with the Falcon. "It w-as the same dav the numbers
came in fot the Iron Man 3 box office," the cinematographer
sa\.s. "[Producetl I{er-in Feige and fErecutir-e Producet] Louis
D'Esposito and a bunch of the Nlatvel btass r.vete walking
atound, and it s'as so neat because they 16o[sal ]ike 6 veat o1d
kids on Christmas morning. You can just te11 how much ther
lor.e the stoties ancl the chatacters, and you never get the feel
ing that it's a big sausage factorv. You wdk around the officesl
everr,-body's got collectible figutines on tl-reir desk. Thete's real
passion and creative energl., ancl that's ptetw cool." E
CREW LIST > Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Director of Photography: Trent Opaloch
Operators: Andrew Row ands. lan Fox, Kent Harvey
Assistants: Taylor Matheson, Roger Wall, Mark Santoni
'or" Bar'o.q-o J"
.
Film Loader: Alexandra Matheson
Digital lmagingTech: Ryan Nguyen
Data Management Supervisor: Kyle Splcer
Digital Utility: Jajalra Corria
Still Photographer: Zade Rosentha
Publicist: .John Pisani
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