“THE KILLERS”

Making of….

This was a DREAM project for me! When director Alex Chikov contacted me to shoot this project, I instantly jumped at it! He wanted a pure non-digital film noir piece shot on celluloid with vintage gear…and I just happened to own these pieces of machinery.

I started as a film shooter and had migrated to digital...but I still owned several film cameras. I had recently acquired a beautiful Mitchell BNCR camera package with a full set of vintage Super Baltar primes from Martin Hill...in trade for an Arri 2C camera package I was not using….pound for pound, I got the better part of the deal.

After shooting both lens & camera tests on this 65+ year old camera, I felt confident with its performance.

Meanwhile, Alex had assembled a group of incredible actors who studied the 1940’s dialogue delivery and performance of the classic noir pictures. His wardrobe department complimented the actors with fantastic period costumes. The location was an actual abandoned diner and the incredible art department headed by Sarah Young peeled back the decades and recreated a beautiful post WW-2 interior, complimented with period props.

I had a meeting with Alex and we viewed many samples of the noir films that he wished to emulate. I studied those films and the incredible black and white hard light and exposures that those cinematographers created. MILDRED PIERCE, shot by the incredible Ernest Haller, ASC was a particular inspiring motion picture.

Director Alex Chikov rehearses the cast, who have removed their heavy overcoats & hats due to the location’s heat. Gaffer Russ Faust, in background, lights the set.

As things came together, the camera department met up and we had a quick “Mitchell ‘boot-camp’ school” and went through the process of building, loading and threading the big BNCR camera…checking lubrication and all the blimp housings, etc…needless to say, they LOVED playing with this classic camera!

Michael Wooten preps the slate as 1st AC Amy Faust and camera operator Alex Esber wait, note the array of lights in the ceiling and upper shelf of the location.

Amy Faust checks the gate, Alex Esber spins the shutter to the open position

Russ Faust gaffed this project and we spoke at length about trying to use ONLY period lights, no modern Kino or LED fixtures, ALL tungsten Fresnel units. The big fly in the ointment was that this was shot mid-summer during a bit of a humid heatwave, the location was non-air conditioned [since it was abandoned to begin with, the only power was the electricity we provided by our genny]..and the poor actors were complete troopers by doing their work while wearing fedoras, wool long coats with shirts and ties, etc… praise the makeup department for keeping everyone looking great under those hot lights and the very stuffy environment.

Shooting in Black & White means thinking in terms of gray scales…..gray tones are what colors render in B&W so you must think in terms of BOTH exposure AND Gray values. Colors of on-screen items such as wardrobe, props and set walls become gray tones, and you must understand and work with those values to separate the subjects from the environment background. Having a means to check these gray values is important…I used to use Polaroid stock to check exposures and gray values when shooting film [Polaroid 667 & 669 stock on a Mamiya 660SE camera [my AC called it “the Goose” based on the way 600SE looked in the label on the camera case]…with the advent of digital still cameras, shooting exposure tests has become so much easier and cheaper than the Polaroid days]…also the Film Noir lighting style used these gray values in a very artistic manner…the shadows and tones helped visually tell the story. Fedora hats, worn by the actors, added an extra challenge to lighting as we needed to adjust the height of our key lights to allow the illumination of the actors eyes as the hat’s brim would flag light off their face…this can be worked into the scene to either illuminate or block the light on the actor’s face, depending upon the needed emotional feel we wish to express.

The ONLY modern gear we used was my Moviecam Compact that was used for a shot inside the backseat of the 1940 Buick for the initial shot as the BNCR would never fit inside that car! We also used the Moviecam on the Lenny Arm for the high-angle establishment shot.

Gaffer Russ Faust and the Moviecam Compact on the Lenny Arm — Gaffer Russ Faust watches the Moviecam Compact on the Lenny Arm

Director Alex Chikov created a very loyal recreation of the classic film noir pictures of that era in this proof of concept short film. He established the period pacing of that era with the longer duration shots, had the actors play inside the frame and really emulated the look and feel in every detail.

Needless to say, we had a BLAST shooting it 