From:fujifilm.com
Background
When cinematographer Jacek Laskus, ASC was asked to shoot the pilot for CBS drama The Guardian, he was interested, but also a little nervous. He'd enjoyed working with Executive Producer/Director Michael Pressman before, and the premise of the show—a high-powered Pittsburgh lawyer (Simon Baker) is court-ordered to use his talents to help underprivileged children—sounded substantial. Laskus, who began his career working on documentaries with lofty subjects, was excited that the show would be about something meatier than much of series TV. But he was also worried that the hectic pace of grinding out hour-long dramas in eight days could compromise his work.
The series' creator, David Hollander has no complaints about Laskus's contribution on the pilot or the series, every episode of which Laskus has shot. "This show," says Hollander, "really depends on its visual style to help create a sense of realism and immediacy. Jacek has made a tremendous contribution to that style." Originally from Warsaw, Laskus graduated from what was, in the late 1970s, the country's only film school and subsequently worked as a camera operator in Poland. He arrived in New York in the early 80's and spent four years working on documentaries for the BBC. Subsequently, he shot a number of smaller-budget features, such as quirky thriller Stepfather II and pre-Friends Courtney Cox-starred, Opposite of Sex and How to Live with Them. He mixed features with made-for-TV movies, including Robert Altman's version of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Common Ground with Jason Priestley and Mimi Rogers.
Pressman, who directed the pilot for The Guardian, had worked with the cinematographer to develop a style for the show. Before the pilot went before the cameras, Pressman asked Laskus to watch Director Steven Soderbergh's Traffic and Michael Mann's The Insider as a jumping-off point. "We were especially interested in The Insider," Laskus recalls. "They would cross the line all the time. One shot would use a wide-angle lens, the other a telephoto, and the camera was always moving. I spoke to The Insider DP Dante Spinotte, ASC and he had a name for the technique: 'carefully choreographed documentary.' That's the approach we like to use on The Guardian. I think it gives the audience a sort of voyeuristic sense, a feeling of realism and energy."
Goals & Challenges
Most scenes are shot with two cameras rolling simultaneously. In some cases a single actor might be covered in both a tight shot and wider angle in a single take. Other times, A-camera might be on one actor and B-camera on someone else across the room. This, Laskus explains serves the double function of both speeding up the schedule and allowing a certain freedom on the set for spontaneity. Traditional rules about screen direction and cutting on movement are deliberately ignored in favor of this documentary feel. The editor is encouraged to cut in or out of the middle of a pan or to jump cut from one shot to a different take of the same actor from a slightly different lens. "I use a lot of focal lengths," says Laskus, who always mounts Zeiss Ultra Primes on each of the Arri 535Bs. "We might do one take with a 50mm lens and the next time do the same exact thing with an 85mm. Or we might have two characters in a scene together covering one with a 40 and the other with 100. This isn't the traditional way to cover a scene. We try to give the editor a lot of variety so the show never becomes visually repetitive." Though The Guardian is shot almost exclusively on the Sony Pictures Entertainment lot in Culver City, CA Laskus makes every effort to create the feel of a real location shoot. Rather than making use of the high degree of control afforded by working on a soundstage, he tends to max out the contrast range of the film to the point where a backdrop out the window will blow out almost completely. "The show is about contrasts," he points out. "It's about light and dark, and it's supposed to look in some sense like a documentary. When you shoot a documentary in somebody's house or in an office, the light levels are not perfect, they're not like in a studio. There are dark shadows in some areas and really blown out highlights out the window." He shoots almost exclusively at 1/3 of a stop under T2.8. "We started lighting sets so that things would fall into the shadows at around T2 and we were able to achieve a nice peak at T5.6. Then I'd light the backgrounds to a T8 and you could still read something out there but it enhanced the sense that we shot on location. If we just lit the background a stop and a half or two stops over the key, it would be too present. I want to make it recognizable that it's 'outside' but I want it really blown out."
Film/Stock Choices
Laskus recalls that there was early pressure on the show's creators to originate on High Definition video rather than film. Skeptical, the DP shot a series of tests comparing film and HD before production commenced on the pilot. The results confirmed for Hollander, Pressman and the whole creative team that HD was not the way to go for The Guardian. The format's lack of latitude in the highlights would seriously compromise the look of the show. "You can be subtle with highlights in film," he says. "In High Definition you get to a certain point and it clips the highlights and all that's left is noise. It would have been impossible to get that blown-out look I was talking about. HD might work for a more controlled environment, but it was all wrong for The Guardian."
The DP alternates between Fuji's Super F Series 64D, 250D and 500T 35mm stocks as circumstances demand. The negative is then color-corrected and transferred to Panasonic's D5 High Definition format at Modern Video Burbank. "When we originate on film and then adjust the look during the telecine sessions," Laskus says, "that is a wise use of both the formats and I can get the look I want." Since schedules don't permit the cinematographer to spend much time away from the set, he has devised a shorthand way to communicate to Modern Video how he wants particular set-ups to be handled. By using a Fujifilm FinePix S1 Pro digital SLR, he can photograph a set-up, import the still image to Adobe Photoshop, perform some rough adjustments and send the file off to Modern to use as a guide for exposure and color bias.
Laskus approaches the lighting on the sets for day interiors with 10Ks and 20Ks aimed through windows with sunlight as the motivating source. Inside he likes to fill in by bouncing a smaller instrument like a 2K off a muslin surface. He also makes extensive use of Chimeras&151;"those wonderful black boxes with diffusion. They're really useful and you can use them with various patterns to spread and shape light. Under other circumstances, I might use a lot of flags and things to do that, but we don't have time for all that on a television schedule." Which brings us back to the fact that he had some concern about the compromises inherent in shooting a television series. He admits that some of his trepidation has turned out to be justified. "When you work on television," he observes, "there are two things that are more important than anything else: One is money, the other is money. When money is tight, schedules are rushed and, yes, your lighting can be compromised. But I'm really enjoying the experience and I welcome the challenge."
Laskus explains his thinking, "A skilled cinematographer should be able to pull all his tricks out of a hat and produce an interesting image on a moment's notice."
"If you'll notice," he smiles pointing to the hat he's wearing, "I am never without my hat."
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