| TV PRODUCTION |
 |
Band of Brothers: an epic for the small screen
 |
 |
 Computer generated parachutes and supplies dropping on live action set of town. (PHOTO: ©HBO) |
Band of Brothers is an HBO miniseries based on Stephen Ambrose's 1992 book chronicling the war experiences of Easy Company, a group of men who participated in several key episodes of World War II, including the D-Day landing, the Battle of the Bulge, and the capture of Hitler's lair at Berchtesgaden, Bavaria. Band of Brothers was executive produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, and employed eight directors, two cinematographers, 500 speaking roles and more than 10,000 extras.
The ten hour-long episodes were mostly filmed at a 500-acre site at Hatfield Aerodrome in Britain. Cinematography duties were split between Remi Adefarasin, BSC, and Joel Ransom, CSC. Episodes averaged 25 shooting days. Mikael Salomon, ASC, who directed episodes three and 10, says, "I treated it very much as a feature, except I think you need more energy on the TV screen than you do in a movie theater. Almost all the action shots were handheld.
"Usually people fighting in a war are dug in much further away from each other than I had them," he says. "I decreased the distances to get the Germans and the Americans in the same shots at the same time. I felt that was important."
Salomon and Ransom agree that while Saving Private Ryan provided a visual template, each episode had its own look and feel. The mandate from Spielberg was realism.
"There were certain things that Steven did not want done, in order to keep the violence of the battle," says Ransom, who photographed five of the episodes. "He didn't want the whole battle on long lenses and in slow motion. That's too beautiful, and war is not beautiful. Still, we did decide that somewhere in amongst war, there had to be beauty. Sometimes these battles took place in beautiful sunny weather, with the flowers in bloom."
|
 |
| Band of Brothers is an HBO miniseries based on Stephen Ambrose's 1992 book. (PHOTOS: DAVID JAMES/ HBO) |
Some aspects of the look were achieved during digital film mastering at Cinesite London. Cinesite scanned the negative and performed color manipulation to emulate the desaturated, grainy look of authentic World War II footage. Cinesite also worked with HBO's visual effects supervisor Angus Bickerton and post-production supervisor Bruce Everett to develop a process to allow greater flexibility in aspect ratio and delivery format to satisfy diverse international broadcast markets.
"We worked closely with Discreet, Philips, Panasonic and other suppliers to integrate new hardware and software into an efficient, customized production pipeline," says Courtney Vanderslice, head of production at Cinesite London. "This was a learning process for all of us because so much of the equipment we were using and the way that we were adapting it to our specific requirements was unique and hadn't been attempted before."
More than two million feet of dailies were telecined at the BBC facility in London. After editing on Avid systems and conforming, the cut negative was scanned into 2K digital files with a Philips Spirit DataCineTM. After the effects work and color grading was complete, the images were output to 24P Hi Def master.
Ransom credits colorist Luke Rainey with a crucial contribution. "It was great having the ability to fine-tune images," says Ransom. "It's gaining popularity and becoming a very handy tool. We gave it the equivalent of a bleach bypass look, adding some grain and increasing contrast. We used it to make certain colors pop, like flowers or blood, and sometimes we used it to mute colors. The year we shot in London it was so wet and rainy that the control really helped us out."
The bleached white skies were a factor in Ransom's choice of film. "At least 80 percent of the time the sky was overcast," he says. "Sometimes we used bounce, and we used a lot of negative fill. If the shot was looking one way, we could light it and add negative fill and get away with it. But when we're making 360 degree moves, sometimes with multiple cameras, things can become complex."
"I chose the (Kodak Vision 500T) 5279 film about 90 percent of the time," he says. "It was amazing, because we were retaining depth of details even looking into the clouds. At times we were shooting 45 degree shutters, which costs two stops, overcranking with long lenses on a cloudy day, and it's amazing how fast the light goes."
Adefarasin and Ransom viewed each other's dailies. "We did a lot of talking during prep and both hoped to go down the same road," Adefarasin says, "but the scripts were by different writers with different directors and each story had a different slant. I felt each episode should have a different look as long as there is some consistency. Look at those documentaries made during the war by hundreds of different cameramen. It's still World War II."
Honesty was the watchword for Adefarasin, who also shot five episodes. "We wanted it to look as if a modern documentary team had dropped into the war zone and covered events as they were unfolding," he says. "We limited crane shots and other devices that distance the audience from the feeling that it is actually happening. I used color correction filters but hardly anything else on the lenses. The directors, my operators (Martin Kenzie and Alan Stewart) and I viewed hours of documentary footage and read books documenting the war to prepare. Some of the most memorable moments come during a spectacular event that we witness through a single person's plight."
Adefarasin used a mix of Kodak Vision films, including the 200-, 500- and 800-speed stocks. In episode nine, he chose to shoot a large segment at 27 frames per second, without an 85 correction filter. He also pushed the film two stops. "That was to get a distinctive look," he says. "Cinematographers never do things straight anyway--they use their paint thick or thin depending on what they are saying."
Like Ransom, Adefarasin gave careful consideration to framing epic events for display on television screens. "We tried hard not to get too close and lose body language," he says. "We saved closeups for special moments."
Cinesite London also provided digital effects including compositing and computer animation to bring battle scenes to life. For example, in episode two, a night-time paratrooper invasion sequence features computer generated planes, smoke, tracers, flak bursts, and explosions. In some shots only the sky and the ground is real. In episode nine there is a shot that emulates an actual photograph used in Ambrose's book Citizen Soldiers. The photograph shows a seemingly never-ending procession of German POWs snaking into the distance, with allied tanks and vehicles passing either side. More than 25 separate elements, both live action and computer generated, were used for this shot, including crowd replication and digital landscaping.
"We had fabulous sets and magnificent performances," Adefarasin says. "It was our job to make it look believable, including the pain and suffering, the resilience of the soldiers, the horror and the humanity, all in a straightforward way. It was an eight-month project where everyone on the team performed brilliantly. It was an honor to be part of it."
|
