Russell Carpenter, ASC shares his experiences shooting the anamorphic feature Killers using ARRIRAW with the D-21.

Killers, the first Hollywood motion picture to be photographed with anamorphic lenses on ARRIFLEX D-21 cameras using ARRIRAW in Data Mode, has recently wrapped after shooting in Atlanta, the South of France  and the Bahamas. Directed by Robert Luketic and shot by Russell Carpenter ASC, the $50 million film stars Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl as young vacationers who meet while abroad, fall in love and marry. After they return home, life becomes complicated when they discover that their neighbours may be assassins hired to kill them. Billed as a comedy action thriller, Killers will be released by Lionsgate in June 2010.

Four D-21 camera packages were supplied to Killers by ARRI CSC Florida, with support from ARRI CSC New York and ARRI Media in London. The D-21 is the only digital cinematography camera with a 4:3 sensor area that allows ‘true’ anamorphic to be captured in the same way as they are captured on 35mm film. By using the cameras in Data Mode, the production was able to output raw anamorphic data to S.two 2K Digital Field Recorders (DFR).

Which decision was made first: to shoot anamorphic or to shoot digital?

The two decisions were made at the same time really. Robert, the director, wanted to shoot in anamorphic because he loves the characteristics that anamorphic lenses give the image. He also very much enjoyed his previous experiences shooting digitally and felt really good about knowing what he had before the end of the day rather than having to wait for dailies. So I did some research and it became fairly obvious that the D-21 was going to offer the best of both worlds. In testing the D-21 we just fell in love with the image characteristics, especially in terms of how the image was rendered in the highlights. We got a beautiful, creamy rendition of both shadow and highlight areas, but there was a sort of silkiness in the way the highlights were rendered that was different from our experiences testing the other systems. We basically thought the D-21 offered a particularly pleasing image.

How was your experience of shooting with the Hawk anamorphic lenses?

I think one thing I would like to have experimented with more was the degree to which we wanted to be careful with the wider anamorphic lenses in terms of what was happening with distortion around the edges of the frame, especially in locations that have a lot of vertical geometry. We found the lenses performed better when we weren’t shooting wide open, so we tried to stop down at least two-thirds of a stop to one stop whenever we could. If I’d had more time to experiment I think I would have tested the D-21 at different ASA ratings; I found that there was plenty of information to be mined in the shadow areas. Some of the other digital systems don’t give you any room to move in terms of printing up, but with the D-21 there’s quite a bit there. Maybe in the future, using the system again, I would become more confident in using higher ASA ratings, but this was sort of a maiden voyage for everyone concerned and I think everybody learned a lot.

Did any particular features of the D-21 system prove useful?

The optical viewfinder definitely helped our operator. I think one of the positive points of the D-21 system is that it is set up very much like ARRIFLEX film cameras, so there is certainly an ease with which people can transition into working digitally. You’re not having to learn an entirely different nomenclature procedure to move into this system as an operator or as a 1st AC; you’re using a system that has been perfected with the ARRI film cameras. We did have on-board HD monitors and I found that the focus pullers came to rely on those monitors because the image was so good that they could instantly tell whether they were in focus or not; so they added that to their arsenal of focus-pulling techniques.

How did the D-21 handle bright, sunlit scenes in locations such as the South of France and the Bahamas?

I would say that this is an area where the camera really excels. The ability of the D-21 to hold very bright detail was, I felt, stunning. We were in the South of France on a pure white super-yacht under the Mediterranean sun and the camera really did extremely well at holding both the highlights and the shadows.

Is the postproduction workflow progressing smoothly?

Although I haven’t really got started on the postproduction yet, in our initial test we saw that there was plenty of room to manipulate the image. Certainly in comparison with other large sensor cameras the D-21 comes as close as I have seen in the digital world to having the latitude and room to move that you get with a film negative. It will be interesting to see how we get on in post, but my guess is that it will go rather well.

Mark Hope-Jones