September 28, 2009
The plot for Gamer sounds like something out of a video game itself: In the future, there's a deadly game called Slayers that pits players against each other in a military conflict simulation, but instead of controlling a bunch of pixels on a screen, users are controlling actual human beings. Gerard Butler plays Kable, a man who has been conscripted into the Slayers arena and must find a way out.
The film comes from high-impact directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank, Pathology, Crank: High Voltage). Principal photography for Gamer took place in 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, making it one of the first major motion pictures to utilize the RED ONE camera.
"This was the first time I'd shot a big-budget anything with a digital camera," Cinematographer Ekkehart Pollack remarks. "I thought digital was a smart choice for Gamer. At the same time, I was really nervous because at that time RED was so new and no one had any real experience with it as far as light levels, latitude, lenses and ASAs are concerned."
Pollack and Neveldine/Taylor put the RED through a standard six-week camera test, watching footage, printing it to film and screening it in small theaters and big theaters, on bright screens and dark screens. "I was comparing RED to other digital cameras of the time, like the ARRI D-20 and the Sony F23," says the cinematographer. "I was really impressed by RED's image. Originally I wanted to shoot on reversal color stock to get that crisp, contrasty look, but that's easy to achieve with RED. It was also the most convenient camera choice considering its weight and its size." Pollack wanted to use cinema lenses for Gamer, and the RED's PL mount allowed him to utilize a number of 35mm-sized zooms and primes.
Another reason the filmmakers decided to employ a digital format is that doing so would make it easier to shoot with multiple cameras simultaneously. They planned to use as many as seven cameras on the many big action scenes.
"The most difficult thing about working with that many cameras is you have to make sure that they all match," says Pollack. "These were some of the first RED cameras; we noticed that all the sensors were slightly different from each other. I was on the phone with RED every day, trying to make everything work smoothly."
There were a few issues that couldn't be helped. Pollack noticed that whenever he made a fast pan, he'd see a banding pattern in the image. He showed it to the directors "and they liked it," he says with a laugh. "I guess if we were making a different movie, it would have been annoying, but for the battle scenes they thought it was pretty cool."
Soon all the kinks were ironed out and Gamer production was on a roll. Neveldine/Taylor insisted on going handheld, and both directors became actively involved with operating, each one arming himself with a camera and jumping around the set while rolling so as to cover as many angles as possible. Many of the big action set pieces were storyboarded and planned in preproduction, but often times even the best laid plans were tossed for whatever inspired the filmmakers in the moment.
Pollack recalls Neveldine's favored method of operating: "Mark is really good on rollerblades. He was wearing a Steadicam while on rollerblades. He was holding onto the sides of cars at speeds of up to 40 mph, circling around them. It was incredible."
Neveldine's and Taylor's love of cutting-edge technology, featured prominently in the film's story, extends to the filmmaking process itself. "Every movie we've shot, we've shot on a different format," Taylor explains. "We're always trying to find the latest, most technological thing, like these RED cameras."
"We've always wanted to move from the film world into new technology," Neveldine adds. "We've been HD guys from the beginning. We love to push those cameras to the limit; we love what they can do. RED isn't HD, though. It's RED. It's a whole different format; it's its own beast. It's beautiful. It's the most silky image you'll ever see. When we tried it and saw how compact the camera was and how cool it was, there was no other option but RED."
Even though they had a dedicated media manager on set, one of the things they didn't do was color correct. Pollack shot Gamer in 4K REDCODE RAW for a 16:9 finish, as they didn't want to lose any of the image's native resolution to matting or resizing. At the end of each day, he pulled stills directly from the footage he had captured and created a kind of color bible in Adobe Lightroom for the dailies staff at Company 3 in Santa Monica. The final look was set by Colorist Siggy Ferstl at Company 3.
Not all of the film was shot with the RED, though. In extreme cases, or in the event of over- or under-cranking, Pollack shot Super 35mm using an ARRI 435. The differences between the Kodak 5205 250D stock and the RED footage are virtually indiscernible.
"I really enjoyed working with the RED cameras," Pollack remarks. "The great thing about shooting digital is you get to see what your film will end up looking like, right there on the set. Brian came to me after the first week of photography, and he told me he knew exactly how the film would look. He loved the look and a lot of it was my work. To be able to create a video game-like experience with this level of cinematic quality was an exciting opportunity."
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