Directed by Ben Affleck (Ben Affleck), the story focuses on the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran. The film is based on true events: In post-revolutionary Iran, when mobs surround the US embassy, CIA agent Tony Mendez tries to rescue six Americans. Mendez planned to masquerade as the producer of a low-budget sci-fi film, with Americans as cast members. Mendez came to Hollywood from CIA headquarters in Langley, set up a production company as a guide, and eventually arrived in Tehran to carry out a rescue operation.
From a video point of view, designing slightly different images for these different locations helps viewers establish contextual relationships in a fast-paced narrative. "When we cut to Tehran," Prieto explained, "it was just a matter of looking at the picture and knowing where it was right away." The same goes for Hollywood and Washington. "
The movie opens in Tehran, and the embassy is blocked by the crowd. “We wanted this part to have a documentary feel, reminiscent of news footage from that era,” says Prieto. “The idea of shooting the Tehran scene was to shoot it hand-held, with a bit of grain. Initially, we tried using 16mm film, but we found it was a little too soft. Escape from Tehran is a widescreen film, so I used 35mm ARRICAM, shot in 2-perforation mode. The rest of the movie was on 35mm anamorphic (also known as ARRICAM), which was cleaner and less grainy. Tehran was a bit harsher, so I went with Kodak's The old film, Vision 2 (5260), has a bit more grain than the new 500-speed emulsion of Vision 3. It was just discontinued. We managed to get our hands on the last of the films. I also emphasized the negative one-stop, and it worked. It brings more contrast and grain. "
The Hollywood part of the plot involves two people who were previously in the film industry (Alan Arkin and John Goodman). They were active in the low-budget film scene that prevailed in the late 1970s. Affleck and Prieto watched some films from that era, and “we felt they had a bit more color saturation, and we wanted to emulate that,” recalls the photographer. "We tested Kodak's Ektachrome 5285D reversal film and thought it looked very similar to the late '70s films we saw, but it was a real challenge to use," explains Prieto. It's 100 degrees, and it's the daylight type. It's especially troublesome to shoot inside and outside at night. So we chose to use negative film, 5219 (500 T) and 5207 (250D)-we made a high contrast and high saturation The look-up table (LUT) was used on our dailies, and later at EFILM, colorist Yvan Lucas used it for grading work. ”
Commenting on the process that went into creating this picture style with EFILM's imaging experts, Prieto said: "Based on our experiments, EFILM has designed a color look-up table that allows us to see a normal picture with inverted colors," said Prieto. Reto points out that EFILM’s Cinemascan technology combines 2K scans of the original negatives (done with ARRISCAN) with color metadata to generate dailies that truly reflect the look of the film. After that, the negative was scanned in 4K again (using ARRISCAN) to be used to generate the Digital Intermediate (DI) with Lucas.
"The initial reversal looked a little too extreme, and we had to pull back a bit," Prieto said. "But since we didn't embed anything directly into the frame, we could apply the reversal style at 100% strength, or receive 70%. We could modify it shot by shot. It gave us the freedom to choose reversal. The intensity of the style of the film is then applied to all the Hollywood scenes, and it is more flexible than shooting directly on a reversal film. ”For the Tehran scene, Prieto used a handheld camera, a news-style shooting method. He and Affleck watched several '70s films whose cinematography also influenced the Hollywood portion of Escape from Tehran. "We also watched sci-fi movies like Logan's Run and many others." We both enjoyed John Cassavetes' The Killing of the Chinese Boss (a Chinese Bookie). We like the way the camera moves...sometimes it doesn't move at all. There are a lot of shots where the camera stays at an angle and the lens zooms, and the scene gets tighter." This is the third time he has In collaborated with gaffer Randy Woodside. The crew chose Illumination Dynamics to provide the lighting equipment. Cameras used included ARRICAM LT, ARRIFLEX 435, and 235 modified with 2, 3, and 4 holes, and ALEXA, all supplied by Clairmont.
For the CIA scenes before and during Mendez's trip to Iran, Prieto opted for anamorphic lenses in hopes of getting the cleanest, most modern look. "We moved a lot more shots, used a lot of Steadicams, and the motion shots were very smooth, rather than moving with a handheld camera," he said.
Eventually, the camera crew created a fourth style of photography in Istanbul, where Mendez sought the documents he used to enter Iran and carry out his plans. Prieto used the same anamorphic lens but mounted on an ARRI ALEXA digital camera. “It’s easy for the audience to interpret this as Tehran,” he says, “so I used Alexa, and the imagery was very different from the rest of the film.”
Prieto could also take advantage of Alexa’s ultra The high exposure index made it possible to shoot in the dimly lit Hagia Sophia. It was very dark, with just a few giant chandeliers in the central area and small fluorescent lights, which gave the environment a cyan tinge that made such a beautiful place look a bit ugly. We replaced it with 4,000 7-watt incandescent bulbs. dropped those fluorescent tubes, but it's still pretty dim, but now the tone is more like a warm incandescent light. I also used a couple of (ARRIMAX) 18K dysprosium lamps to hit the wall for reflections to complement the sunlight coming in from the windows. "These are still not very light due to the huge space, but they are good enough for an ALEXA at [exposure index] 800. ” Prito concludes: “The result is beautiful, and the gap between the rest of the film is just right." The audience is completely You can identify locations without losing the story. ”
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