Fade the Flames by Karim Hussain CSC - Canadian Cinematographer magazine article
Article appears in the May 2022 issue of Canadian Cinematographer magazine, a digital version is available for free.
Fade the Flames
- By Karim Hussain CSC -
My relationship with the Cinefade system began a while before I even knew it existed. While prepping director Brandon Cronenberg’s 2020 feature Possessor, we had a crazy idea that we had never seen done before. When the character of Vos (Andrea Riseborough) would jump in and out of possessing someone, the world around her would start blurry in shallow depth of field, then sharpen up in focus, revealing her surroundings. Effectively a depth of field rack in shot while maintaining a single focal plane, without affecting the lighting.
With the technology that we thought was available at the time, this was easier said than done. It would require synchronizing the lighting with the iris control, and during camera tests, our attempts to do so were disastrous. We scrapped the idea for Possessor, with the hope that one day this effect would be possible practically with more R+D and means.
Little did we know that a few years prior, Cinefade inventor Oliver Janesh Christiansen had a similar idea. Instead of trying to synchronize lighting with the iris, he developed a system where a mechanical remote variable ND in the matte box could be synchronized to individual lenses, their stop rings and values set to match the values on the ND, so in theory, without a visible change to the lighting, the depth of field could change in shot. At the time of Possessor’s prep, it had recently hit the market, primarily in Europe, and was used on a few features and commercials, but as local rental houses didn’t carry it, I was not aware of its existence.
Once I was hired to be the director of photography on Keith Thomas’ 2022 re- make of Stephen King’s novel Firestarter, we had a few challenges ahead of us. The script was much more streamlined, intimate and character-orientated than Mark Lester’s bombastic 1984 original, so we decided to go for an entirely different look and visual style than the first movie, which I enjoyed for nostalgic reasons like many horror fans of my generation, but also recognized that it was a product of the hyper-drive ‘80s and we were making a completely different movie.
While Giuseppe Ruzzolini’s photography on the first movie was quite bright and even, we would approach it from a dark and moody perspective, with some occasional bold splashes of colour and a smoky, soft atmosphere that reflected the burgeoning inner darkness in the characters, with Rembrandt chiaroscuro light for most of the close-ups.
One of the main challenges posed was how to visually illustrate a key plot point, where the characters of Andy McGee (Zac Efron) and young Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) “push” people, that is to say, control them telepathically to get them to perform acts or see things that are not there. In the first movie, they just used a sound cue and a nosebleed primarily. But we wanted to up the game and come up with a practical on-set visual cue.
While searching through the ARRI website, I stumbled upon a page that introduced me to the Cinefade. Used mostly up to that time on movies like The Commuter (2018), shot by Paul Cameron ASC, and Mank (2020), shot by Erik Messerschmidt ASC for subtle depth of field change effects and its mechanical remote Vari ND, it was the perfect tool to illustrate how the world bends around the characters of Charlie and Andy when they push. Ultimately many techniques were used in the final product for these sequences, but the Cinefade would be the practical technique we would be employing on set. At least in theory. It was a difficult and rare piece of equipment to get, not commonly used and there were not a lot of units in existence. Very few camera assistants I knew in Toronto or rental houses had experience with it.
Before going through the specifics of the “push,” Keith and I had to lock down the basic look of the movie. After doing extensive tests at Keslow Camera in Toronto, we settled on using as our main primes MasterBuilt Classics, which would give us the softer, more vintage look we wanted while providing modern mechanics and T1.4 shallow depth possibility, as well as the use of one of my old standbys, my 1970 original Angénieux 25-250 vintage zoom lens, nicknamed “Lucky Pierre,” along with some Helios 44 lenses for sequences needing more skewered bokeh. Black Pro-Mist 1/8th diffusion on everything that could take it. Since this was for Universal, who don’t insist on using 4K origination cameras, we luckily were able to use my favourite camera, the ARRI ALEXA Mini, though originating at 3.4K Open Gate in ArriRaw and 2.8K ArriRaw for select lenses such as the zoom, which could not cover Open Gate. We shot in Super-35 for a 2:39 frame extraction at the end.
Keslow Camera were absolutely amazing in their help and support in getting two Cinefade units to us, along with their C-Motion wireless controllers. Camera tests began at Keslow with A cam 1st AC Chris Gruggen and A cam 2nd AC Eric Pinsonneault, where we began to play with the Cinefade, and it took a certain amount of R+D to get it right. The initial challenge was to see how to fit the Cinefade in a Mattebox (the full system takes up two 4x5.6 tray spaces) while being able to use one additional stage for diffusion, and the possibility to also use a diopter in the 138 mm stage, all at the same time.
Chris Gruggen explains: “For matte boxes we ended up only using the Arri LMB 4x5 system. This was because it was one of the only matte box systems that allowed to swing away, and still allow for the Cinefade to fit into its tray system. We tried other swing away units, but the Cinefade wouldn’t fit all the way down and would cause vignetting. The LMB 4x5 was a great fit and let us keep the build of the camera small but the lens changes to be a lot easier. Otherwise, we would have to disconnect the Cinefade cables, then recalibrate everything once we had changed the lens. This way, while in VariND mode, we didn’t have to recalibrate the Cinefade since it didn’t matter what lens we had selected on the handset; it was only changing the filter value in the Cinefade itself.”
The other advantage of using the Arri LMB 4x5 system was its ability to tilt, which was definitely useful when it came down to filter ghosting. As with any time you are using many filters and diffusion, ghosting (duplicate images of highlights in reflection) can happen, and with the Cinefade you are adding two layers of glass to your lens, in addition to any diffusion. On Firestarter, before any scene involving fire, we tested the shots with a smaller flame to see if any ghosting could happen. It did occasionally, and anything we couldn’t rectify with tilting, we ended up erasing digitally in post. Ghosting can happen with any use of filters, and in only very specific lighting situations did we occasionally encounter ghosting, which the MasterBuilt Classic primes were very sensitive to.
To perfect the complex Cinefade effect – the racking of depth of field while keeping lighting consistent – it was more a game of trial and error. Mostly this effect is used with small start and stop distances on the iris to minimize exposure fluctuations during this effect, but as I am not very interested in going halfway, we wanted to rack from wide open to as far closed down as we could, and vice versa, to get the maximum visual impact, sometimes very fast.
As Chris says, “The biggest thing we ran into was having to limit the range of the stop to avoid getting the stop shift at either end of the move. We ended up limiting it to go from T1.4 to T11, and that seemed to help mitigate a lot of the shifting issues we had. This was because the Polarizer in the Cinefade only has so many stops in its range, so going past its range would cause a flickering effect and exposure shifts. The biggest thing I feel helped us was to reprogram the buttons on the handset to do exactly what our plans for it were. This meant changing the MB1 button to Calibrate all Motors, changing MB3 to Choose Lens, and UB2 to Change Filter Mode (Cinefade, Pola, or VariND). We would also have to set the Iris to be controlled by the knob, then we would also set the trigger button (BB1) to press and hold while we turned the knob to set the limits for the iris. This allowed us to streamline the setup and avoid going into the menus as much as possible.
“Since our units were pretty new, we didn’t have access to the Camin MDR unit. We used an RF Cmotion Motor instead. The Camin MDR would have helped keep weight down especially on the Ronin in VariND mode. We ended up having to attach a small rod to the back of the gimbal to hold the motor while it acted as an MDR.”
It took many tries to get the feel of how to do the effect as well as we could. During tests, I soon discovered that in Vari ND mode, I could maintain the constant shallow depth of field we wanted for the whole movie (lenses mostly wide open for run of show), but be able to balance out our primes (which were rolling primarily at T1.4) and our zoom, which was minimum T3.2-T3.9 depending on where you were on the barrel, with great ease by lighting for the slower lens, but adjusting by eye with the CMotion Cinefade Vari ND controllers to get both A (usually on a Prime) and B Cam (frequently on a zoom or on a 135mm prime with a doubler) on the same page. This saved a ton of time on set, but also helped compensate for every DP’s frustration that most NDs come in one stop increments, and to make a perfect match to such imprecise lenses in terms of their matching, sometimes you need a 1/3rd stop ND or 1/2 stop ND. Well, with the Cinefade, that’s possible just with the turn of a knob.
Realizing this, I made the decision to shoot the whole movie using the Cinefade in Vari ND mode and make it a major part of my workflow. As one of our lead performers was a SAG minor, which when you came down to it ultimately meant we had her for only 6 hours of shooting time per day after all the technicalities, on most days we could not even shoot later than 10 p.m. to midnight with her. So the faster we could move, the better. The Cinefade saved a ton of time on set, in terms of light balancing between setups and avoiding filter changes. Adjustments that normally would take time, were again, done with the simple turn of a knob.
“Basically, I’ve made a powerful new ally in the ever-evolving world of cinematography. The Cinefade is one of those dream tools that you always wished you had.”
- Karim Hussain CSC
Of course, in lighting for Vari ND mode, you have to take into account that the minimum ND compensation the Cinefade can work at is ND.4, so no matter what you are losing one stop and a third from the get-go. I set all of Firestarter to ISO 1280 on the camera to have a consistent digital grain structure and latitude throughout, so when I was lighting, my meter would usually start at minimum ISO 500, which is still pretty good. Considering this, we were actually able to do multiple night exteriors using the Cinefade.
Sometimes with the Cinefade, if you go to the darkest extremes of where the Vari ND can go (ND 2.7 if you turn off the “optical safe range”), you can get soft vignettes, darkness on the edges of frame. Sometimes this looks great for a shot, other times it’s not wanted, so then you could use the internal NDs on the camera to get to a starting point to where you’re comfortable, then pick up with the Vari ND to finetune where you want to be, but not go harder than ND 1.8 on the Cinefade.
So my exposure control tree now consisted of four units. Two Preston remote iris controllers (for A+B Cam) and two Cinefade C Motion controllers (also for A+B Cam). We placed them on a small stand where we could move them rapidly with ease, as I like to vary between the large OLED 25-inch monitors at village or work off of two calibrated 7-inch monitors in a tiny tent if I need to be closer to the action. Since the CMotion Controllers are very power hungry, we discovered that the best way to make them work without interruption was to power both units off of a single V-Mount battery that we attached to my tree.
We were also plagued with every cinematographer’s nightmare on pretty much every day exterior, extremely variable clouds and sets that placed the sun exactly where you didn’t want it to be when the time came to shoot certain scenes. Due to the titular fire starter’s status as a SAG minor, we sometimes had to start scenes and shoot out her closeups along with anything you would see her face in first, in different scenes, then once she was shot out come back to complete day exterior sequences, frequently hours later, once the sun was in a completely different place or it had clouded over or started raining.
We employed the usual arsenals like large HMIs and diffusion flyswatters to try and limit the pain, but in addition to great final colour work by my regular colourist Jim Fleming at Company 3 in Toronto, the Cinefade greatly helped during shots where the sun would cloud over then peek out mid-take, where I could make exposure adjustments without affecting the depth of field as the action happened.
It’s called Firestarter, so of course, the challenge of any cinematographer when shooting large explosions or flames is the need to stop down as the flames are at their highest point to maintain detail in them and not over-expose, then gradually open up as they subside to get back to your initial exposure. In the past, that meant always a change in depth of field. But with the Cinefade, we could maintain our depth of field and compensate by eye as the flames rose, then subsided to keep them looking as detailed as possible. It was something particularly helpful for this very specific project.
For process trailer shots done through the front windshield of a truck, we set the Cinefade to the Remote Pola setting, where from the camera car monitor, I could myself adjust the polarization live during a take to see the performers in the best way possible through the windshield as the light and surrounding reflections changed in movement.
The Cinefade had basically changed the way I exposed images for cinema, as mentioned before. So much so that on the project I shot just after Firestarter, Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, we replicated the same workflow and Vari ND lens control tree at village for me, using the Cinefade pretty much all the time for A and B Camera. It worked brilliantly. That movie was shot on the sunny beaches of Croatia and the industrial misery of abandoned buildings in Hungary, and the Cinefade shined in all these conditions.
Basically, I’ve made a powerful new ally in the ever-evolving world of cinematography. The Cinefade is one of those dream tools that you always wished you had. Hopefully as word spreads, it will become an industry standard available at every rental house, instead of a special-order item that isn’t commonly used or discussed.