Kubrick had already achieved legend status among gear nerds for using ultra-rare lenses acquired from NASA to shoot 1975’s Barry Lyndon by candlelight, and Cruise rightly assumed the Light Ranger would be of interest to the auteur. Hall had signed on as director of photography, and found the Light Ranger tremendously useful in calibrating on-the-move closeups of running legs.Īlso impressed was Tom Cruise, who’d stepped in as producer on the film while gearing up for Eyes Wide Shut with Stanley Kubrick. The most prominent early usage of the Light Ranger 1 took place on Without Limits, a 1998 sports drama about distance runners. “The puller” - the person working the knob that keeps the images onscreen in focus - “could simply press a button, and as long as he kept the crosshair on a subject, they’d stay in focus,” Preston says. (The name refers to the pulse of infrared light used by “time of flight” cameras.) It made the work of keeping a subject in clear view simpler and more intuitive. Throughout the 1990s, Preston produced three beta versions of what he’d dub the Light Ranger. “The idea was a device that someone already handling the work of adjusting focus could use, which wouldn’t require a specialist on the payroll.” “Something affordable, viable for on-set use, something that could fit in a case,” Preston says. Preston envisioned a way to improve on the autofocus system for both analog and digital cameras. Preston Cinema Systems has been expanding the frontiers of what cameras can do since the late 1980s, a time when the changeover to video had experts rethinking a lot of what they’d taken for granted. That would be Howard Preston, the inventor of the Light Ranger and a friendly guy who’s modest about his estimable achievements. “It’s already started.” Everyone interviewed for this article echoed some version of this same sentiment, and the word revolutionize was used by all but one person.
“The Light Ranger 2 is going to revolutionize this piece of the industry,” Silano says. That is, if not for a focus-calibrating device called the Light Ranger 2, which has amassed a cult following among Hollywood’s camera crews. The combination of unpredictable choreography and a depth of field flattened by distance would’ve made focusing these scenes impossible. 'Uncut Gems' cinematographer Darius Khondji Courtesy of A24 “The margin of error in these extreme closeups is less than an inch,” says Chris Silano, Khondji’s A-camera assistant on Uncut Gems.
They also believe that actors work best when hulking machines aren’t all up in their faces, so they prefer to situate their cameras far from a scene’s action and shoot using super-long zoom lenses.
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The co-directors get some of their best material by fostering a sense of spontaneity, so they eschew marks - electrical-tape X’s on the floor tipping off actors on where to stand - and encourage free movement about the set. That sensation of constant propulsive force was a tonal must for the film, but the Safdie brothers’ particular filmmaking methods made that a unique challenge. That the film’s cinematographer, Darius Khondji, won’t get any recognition at the Oscars this Sunday is yet another reason to cast doubt on the Academy’s judgment. Harried jeweler–slash–gambling addict Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) hustles through midtown Manhattan’s Diamond District, up and down Sixth Avenue, back and forth from his home on Long Island to his philandering-pad in the city.Įven the closeups have a jittery sort of kinetic energy to them Howard is always rocking back and forth, pacing, at times seemingly vibrating in place.
Josh and Benny Safdie’s Uncut Gems is a film of relentless, unceasing motion.
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