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MillimeterFade to Black:
Phedon Papamichael, Cinematographer
Nov 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman
Following his success shooting Sideways for Alexander Payne in 2004, Greek cinematographer Phedon Papamichael immediately rolled into The Weather Man for Gore Verbinski (see the October issue of Millimeter) and the Johnny Cash biopic, Walk the Line, for James Mangold. He's now in the middle of shooting The Pursuit of Happiness, starring Will Smith, for Italian director Gabrielle Muccino.
Such a workload typifies Papamichael's career. Working for a disparate group of directors like Verbinski (Mouse Hunt, 1997), Brad Silberling (Moonlight Mile, 2002), Joe Roth (America's Sweethearts, 2001), Tom Shadyac (Patch Adams, 1998), and Jon Turtletaub (Cool Runnings, 1993), among others, he has developed well-honed instincts for “choosing” his directors.
Papamichael says, “[Those choices represent] probably the biggest pressure of my job at this point in my career. [The various directors] all have such a diversity of approaches — it's exciting in the sense that each story requires very different methods of visual storytelling. And I pride myself in not having the movies I've worked on immediately recognizable as something that has been ‘shot by Phedon.’
“So, in figuring out what type of project will interest me and what kind of a director I can share a vision with, I try to find people who want to make the kinds of movies I want to make,” he continues. “I turn down scripts I like if I feel that synergy with [the director] isn't there. Lately, that means mixing it up. I do have a great relationship with four or five directors that could always keep me busy. But coming out of Sideways, I've found myself getting exposure to other filmmakers I admire. Now, after Walk the Line, for instance, I have a good relationship with James Mangold, with whom I feel I share a similar cinematic style.”
Another criterion for Papamichael: He clearly prefers location work.
“If I'm on a stage all day, there is inevitably a preset look,” he says. “It's not very exciting to me. That's why I avoid big-stage pictures and do a lot of smaller movies. For Walk the Line, for example, we shot in about 100 locations on a 50-day schedule. That constantly challenges you to come up with new solutions, and I find that more interesting.”
On Walk the Line, Mangold and Papamichael intentionally avoided “a sleek Hollywood biopic” look. They preferred, instead, to make the imagery reflect their theory that Johnny Cash, in his early years, was “a diamond in the rough,” as Papamichael describes him. “We wanted a raw, rougher quality that we felt reflected [Cash's] personality,” he explains.
The DP suggested initially that the piece be shot Super 16 followed by a digital intermediate “to create that energetic feel of a handheld 16mm camera.”
Mangold eventually vetoed the 16mm idea, largely because of the studio (Fox). “[Fox] didn't want to make the movie seem like a smaller movie than it already was,” says Papamichael. “They also initially told us there was no budget for a DI, but in the end, we did get it [performed at Modern Videofilm, Burbank, Calif.], and that let us shoot Super 35 [Kodak Vision 2 5218 tungsten and 5205 daylight stock] and still adjust the contrast and saturate things considerably later on.”
But most of the rough quality that Papamichael wanted was captured in-camera for Walk the Line. During production, in order to avoid “typical, modern stage lighting” during musical performances, he used the frontal concert lighting of the era.
“I also did research on older lenses that would flare more than newer lenses that have better coating,” he explains. “I talked to [Panavision senior technical advisor] Dan Sasaki, and he found some older Angenieux zoom lenses that worked great for that purpose. We also used some [Panavision] SP lenses that were over 25 years old. They flared nicely when I shot directly into the spotlight. Dan also gave us a flare filter that, when we put it in front of the regular Panavision Primo lens, created an authentic looking flare lens, rather than later creating the flare effect [in post].”
