TV PRODUCTION

Point of Origin - Tom Sigel directs first film

	The HBO film Point of Origin is based on a true story.

During the late 1980s, a series of unexplained fires struck the Los Angeles area, including one that killed four people and another that destroyed 47 homes. The clues pointed to a serial arsonist, but no one suspected that it was a fireman involved in the investigation.

The HBO film Point of Origin is based on that true story. After directing many documentaries, this is the first narrative directed by cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel, ASC. He chose his long-time Gaffer, Anthony Nakonechnyj, to shoot the film.

"I found it fascinating that the arsonist was working with his colleagues on the investigation and fooling them every day," Sigel says. "We had to figure out how to dramatize the extraordinary psychology that drove this individual."

Sigel chose long-time gaffer Anthony Nakonechnyj to shoot Point of Origin.

Sigel prepared for the project by studying the literature and talking to experts. He and Nakonechnyj developed an ambitious plan for drawing the audience into the story, including action sequences with fires and motion control shots, all of which had to be accomplished on a 35-day shooting schedule.

"We talked about how to illustrate character development, including costumes and production design," says Nakonechnyj. "Tom wanted each character to have a certain look and feeling. He wanted to control that partly by taking the film into the digital world for color timing and mastering, where we could use telecine techniques to manipulate the images."

From the beginning, they planned to convert the 35mm negative to 24P HD files at The Post Group in Los Angeles. The idea being that they would be able to enhance or diminish colors and contrast selectively within each frame by using software technology.

"Knowing we could manipulate those qualities of images in a real-time environment gave us tremendous freedom while we were shooting and later in post-production," says Sigel.

Sigel and Nakonechnyj had a plan to photograph fire as a fascinating and frightening visual element.

"There was some talk early on about shooting this project in hi def," says Sigel. "I immediately ruled it out because I don't think that the capture medium is at a state where it can handle highlights the right way. That was a big issue for me because we wanted to hold fine details in the flames and also in the darker, shadow areas of scenes. We weren't in a position to do elaborate lighting set-ups, so we needed the widest possible exposure latitude without the images going either mushy or grainy."

Nakonechnyj tested some of the faster stocks. "I was wondering how well we'd hold contrast on faces that were two or three stops underexposed with the fire eight to nine stops overexposed," he says. "I experimented with pushing and pulling, and then I heard about the new (Kodak Vision Expression 500T) 5284 stock. It's a low contrast 500-speed negative. I did some bracketing and found that at two to 2.5 stops underexposed, I was holding fine details."

Nakonechnyj used the 5284 film for both night exterior and day interior fire scenes. He exposed the day fire interiors at a stop T-5.6, and night exteriors at T-4. Nakonechnyj also used the Kodak Vision 250D film 5246 for other exteriors, and the Kodak Vision 500T film 5279 for other interiors. In addition, he chose the special purpose Kodak SFX 200T film for blue and green screen elements of composite shots for putting characters into raging fire backgrounds.

Sigel accentuated the feelings of horror by using motion control techniques while photographing characters against green screens without compromising the energy of a moving camera. At times, Sigel and Nakonechnyj under- and over-cranked to slow down or speed up characters in the foreground to provide the audience with a subjective sense of their frame of mind. They also manipulated shutter angles to make the fire seem to dance more menacingly.

Sigel tied all those various elements together with computer generated smoke effects and interactive lighting composited into some fire scenes. One elaborate 45-second motion control composite plays entirely backwards. The firemen are "walking backwards", carrying victims into the building, while the flames shrink down and eventually become smoke. Sigel conceived that shot after learning that arson investigators try to "think backwards" to understand a fire's genesis.