Hawk class‑X and T1s Teamed for Cop Drama
“The combination of Hawk lenses and the new Sony Venice camera is formidable,” says Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC. “The results we achieved on Black and Blueare simply stunning.”
Spinotti, a two-time Oscar nominee, is one of the world’s most respected cinematographers, with a career that goes back to the 1960s, when he worked as a documentary cameraman at RAI in his native Italy. Today, his credits include dozens of major features like TheLast of the Mohicans, The Insider, LA Confidential, Heat andAnt-Man and the Wasp.
He paired Hawk glass with the Sony Venice on the set of Black and Blue, a New Orleans-set cop tale directed by Deon Taylor and starring Naomie Harris, Tyrese Gibson and Frank Grillo. One of the main sets on the shoot was a cavernous abandoned warehouse, and Spinotti preferred to work with the natural light coming through the windows, rather than bringing in large units.
“I wanted to make the most of the existing light, and I found that the Venice camera combined with the VantageOne T1 spherical primes gave me amazing opportunities to shoot with incredibly low light levels,” says Spinotti. “Peter Rosenfeld, operating the Steadicam, could not even see his camera shadow on the subjects in the viewfinder. At times, we were pushing the camera to 5000 or 6000 ASA, with stunning results. Pushed that far, the camera still had a very natural rendering. It doesn’t look pushed at all. In a few situations, that capability allowed us to do quality work even if we were running out of light.”
For the majority of the film, Spinotti used Hawk class-X Anamorphics, the newest lens line from Hawk. The class-X lenses are designed from scratch and built in a strictly classic way with no floating elements. They deliver an organic 2x anamorphic look, working hand-in-hand with today’s digital sensors and lossless postproduction. A set of class-X lenses includes eight primes, one 55 mm macro lens and two zooms, offering added flexibility. Spinotti found that the two lens sets intercut smoothly, in spite of the format differences.
“We loved the anamorphics,” says Spinotti. “Sometimes, we reduced the format and pushed in rather than switching lenses, which is quite an advantage. When I saw the movie towards the end of grading on a 4K projection, I thought the sharpness and perspective and depth you get on a close-up or an over-the-shoulder with the 110 mm was fantastic. There’s a three-dimensional quality of presence in these faces that is really remarkable and distinctive.
The combination of spherical and anamorphic lenses in a single film is a relatively new opportunity for directors of photography. Spinotti relishes the benefits of that flexibility, and says that he might always carry a set of sphericals in the future. In one of the final shots in Black and Blue, he used the T1 sphericals. Naomie Harris walks away from the precinct with a graffiti-covered wall in the background.
“Our focus puller, Dennis Seawright was simply amazing,” says Spinotti. “But for this shot, I used an old trick. I had Naomie hold a rope in her hand so that she would maintain a consistent distance from the lens and stay in focus as she walked along the dolly tracks, as we moved with her in close-up. The lens was wide open or nearly so, in part to match well with anamorphic depth of field. It also rendered the graffiti as a beautiful cloud of colors. At that T-stop, the T1s deliver some really interesting and surprising flares. In the film days, you had to be very careful with flares, but now we can see them and really control them. On occasions when needed, it was easy to make them strong and functional.”
In the final scene, set in a cemetery at night, Spinotti leveraged the T1’s idiosyncratic response to light in a different way. “We were in a covered situation, and the background was way brighter,” he says. “In the finished shot, the light is eating away at the sharp edges of the silhouette of the hero in a really unique way. It’s really a great lens design.”
Spinotti is currently working on another project with Taylor. “He has a lot of passion and energy,” says the cinematographer. “It’s a pleasure working with him, so why not?”
Screen Gems’ Black and Blue made its theatrical debut on October 25, 2019.
Watch the official trailer here
images: sonypictures/Vantage Film
