In Camera 01/03 Interview with Director of Photography Wolfgang Wambach The collaboration of Director Jan Thüring and Director of Photography Wolfgang Wambach on their first short animation movie, Terminal: Paradies, was a resounding success; appraised at more than 100 festivals worldwide, it went on to scoop 30 awards. Das Floss (The Raft), their second short animation movie, relates the story of two castaways adrift at sea and starving, when a passing seagull drops a fish onto their raft. The Digitalisation of Das Floss. Thüring and Wambach initially planned to use 35mm footage and classic stop-motion technique, with 3-D animation to create sea and skies, but facing potential secondary digitalisation challenges with the combination of the originally filmed material and the virtual 3-D elements, they reflected on a means to digitalise the entire production procedure. DP Wambach shares his experiences with us. Why did you choose Kodak´s DCS 760 digital camera for the principal photography? "We tried several digital photo cameras, but Kodak´s DCS 760 was brilliant. We were able to achieve a great depth of field as the chip is bigger than a 35mm negative and the image steadiness of the photos is perfect because no footage is transported. Since we used digital set extensions, contrast was important and the 760 helped us with its extremely large contrast, particularly high resolution and desaturated colours, making it possible to match all the shots in post-production. We could also use flashlights and avoid the keying process in blue screen shots by using a white screen, common in photography." What lighting did you use? "Digital photography needs a great deal of lighting. We had a special technique for separating the background from the foreground of raft and puppets, so I had the idea of shooting with three Swiss-made Bron flashlights, which are very exact, and two Bron generators. For each animation phase I used the checkerboard method, shooting one picture with flashes of the puppets on the raft with a dark background and then another with flashes on a white background, the raft remaining unlit in the foreground. Using the key light without a soft box made it possible to perfectly imitate sunlight" Did you use any custom-built equipment? "I installed a switch to separate the foreground and background flashes so I had a computer station with three computers and a TV set for video assist from which I could control everything. I also built a special gear to pull focus on the camera, because in animation when you want to animate eight seconds, you need 200 pictures. I took one of the motion control motors and connected it to a toothed gear wheel that moved a belt and was connected to the focus of the lens. We made a print of the belt from plastic and put it around the lens so that it grabbed into its own negative form and perfect rack focuses were possible frame by frame." How did you structure your workflow?" "We created a virtual environment in Lightwave 3-D animation software, including digital water and skies. I had two different styles of camera movement programmed in Lightwave: the camera swimming on the virtual waves to capture what´s happening on the raft and the second for shots on the raft comprising 90% of the movie, where the camera moves in a documentary handheld style. It was my special wish to give the audience the impression that they´re on the raft between our two "actors". Lightwave sent coordinates for shooting to motion control, using interposed Kuper Control Software, so that images of the spatially fixed raft model showed the desired raft movement. The original Kodak file acquired on set was sent as raw data, using a special plug-in to the Compositing Department where the digitally acquired images were composed with the rendered Lightwave files, followed by digital colour matching and recording on 35mm in 2K film for cinema use. For recording, we used an ARRI Laser" What advice would you give others, wishing to follow your digital path? "My advice would be to use the right product for your needs and make lots of tests. Das Floss took one-and-a-half years to prepare and our workflow only succeeded with the Kodak DCS 760 and Bron flashes. Although the decision to digitalise was finally based on the effectiveness of a completely digitalised production pipeline, the potential production tool had to produce material of a quality to meet my aesthetic expectations as an analogue 35mm cinematographer. Only the Kodak DCS 760 did"
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