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MillimeterThe Morris Microscope
Jan 1, 2008 12:01 PM, By Michael Goldman
Errol Morris mixes media in a documentary examining the Abu Ghraib photos.
Robert Richardson, ASC, (left, pictured with Errol Morris) was one of two cinematographers on Standard Operating Procedure. His job was to create the re-enactment sequences of the film using various combinations of 35mm and 16mm film and high-speed digital imagery captured with a Vision Research Phantom v9 camera. Photo: Mark Lipson.
Shooting S.O.P.
Errol Morris split photography duties on Standard Operating Procedure between two past collaborators: Robert Chappell and Robert Richardson, ASC. Chappell shot all the first-person interviews seen in the film using a Sony HDW-F950 digital camera system, while Richardson used a Vision Research Phantom v9 camera to capture a combination of 35mm, 16mm, and high-speed digital imagery at 1000fps or more for the re-enactment sequences.
During production, Richardson — who has previously shot both commercials and documentary sequences for Morris that date back to Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control in 1997 — was segueing between S.O.P. and Martin Scorsese’s Shine a Light. He says Morris — although a fundamentally different kind of filmmaker than Scorsese and who requires “a distinctly different portion” of his brain — shares “a creative madness” with Scorsese that first lured Richardson in during Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control and hasn’t let go since.
“Would any person of sane mind refuse subject matter that combined mole rats, a lion tamer, and an eccentric topiary gardener atop of the brilliant mind of a robotic designer?” Richardson asks. (Watch Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control if you want to know what, exactly, Richardson is talking about.) “[For S.O.P.], the photographs taken at Abu Ghraib stand on their own as one visual element. [For the re-enactments], at no time did we attempt to replicate the quality or composition of those images — subject matter, yes, but style, no. The contrast of style between interviews, photographs, graphics, and the supplemental imagery we produced provide a textural heartbeat that amplified the words spoken.”
Richardson says this mission required him to shoot various combinations of 35mm with an Arriflex camera and Angenieux zoom and Cooke prime lenses, 16mm with an Arri camera outfitted with Canon zooms, and the Phantom for a large number of specialized shots because Morris “wished to stretch the visual palette of the film.”
Iconic imagery and close-ups were periodically shot at such ultra-fast speeds as 1200fps, using a Vision Research Phantom v9 camera in order to create what Errol Morris calls “the closest thing to a still photograph without being actual still photography” as part of the aesthetic Morris designed for the movie. Photo: Nubar Alexanian
“There were few limitations beyond the obvious budget and time,” he says. “Reality was not strictly sought [for the re-enactments]. Strong contrast in the lighting, ultra-slow motion, whether via film or video, 16mm black and white, 35mm color, and so on. It was a creative mantra that was constructed by weaving the various formats into a textural representation of the primary issues and emotions within the film. The approach toward combinations of these distinct textural components was entirely the design of Errol — his brain is well suited toward manipulation. Errol has an innate capability to juxtapose captured mediums.”
For example, close-ups of dripping blood, a blasting shower head, a barking military dog, and an unexploded mortar falling to the ground were captured with the Phantom camera at speeds as high as 1200fps in order to create what Errol Morris calls “the closest thing possible to a still photograph without being actual still photography.”
Richardson says that the speed and clarity of the movement of those particular frames simply gave filmmakers, conceptually, a better way to maintain a basic aesthetic Morris has attempted to paint in other ways in previous films.
“This paradigm has been established in previous films by Errol. From as early as The Thin Blue Line [1988], pivotal images or symbols are created and, by their placement, come to represent a far larger context,” Richardson says.
Likewise, for specific emotional reactions to particular images, Richardson used 16mm Arri cameras to create the “Bob TV” technique that he and Morris first tried on Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control. “That means I take the dailies and a 16mm camera and rephoto-graph them off a television screen,” Richardson says. “We also used the 16mm camera for black-and-white photography on set.”
The colorist known as “Sparkle” color-timed digital dailies at Complete Post, Hollywood. After Morris and editor Andy Grieve cut the movie, Rob Legato’s editing team conformed it (see p. 22), and then Stefan Sonnenfeld color timed it at Company 3 in Santa Monica, Calif.
“Errol, with Stefan, made corrections to the original [color], from minute to grand,” Richardson says. “But that said, overall, I consider the digital intermediate process as a clarification and refinement on that which has been established in dailies. That is why dailies are increasingly important. The days of one-light dailies are coming to an end.”
— M.G.
