Bah
Humbug! PROLOGUE: Don Burgess, ASC has two holiday gifts for children and the young-at-heart. In The Polar Express he mastered a different type of motion capture technology designed to give computer animation a human touch. Christmas with the Kranks is a live-action film that explores the premise that there is drama in comedy. Both are entertaining, feel-good movies that probe the meaning of the Christmas spirit. Both were imbued with extraordinary production values by the master cinematographer and his crew. Christmas With the Kranks is an adaptation of Skipping Christmas, a best-selling John Grisham novel. This is a different type of Grisham book, with no lawyers and no mysteries. It's a character-driven comedy about how the Kranks and their neighbors on in suburban Chicago discover the meaning of Christmas. Luther Krank is played by Tim Allen and Nora Krank is played by Jamie Lee Curtis. Their daughter Blair, portrayed by Julie Gonzalo, has joined the Peace Corps and is out of the country. Luther and Nora decide not to spend money on Christmas decorations this year. They don't buy a Christmas tree from local Boy Scouts, or a holiday calendar from the police department. They also turn down invitations to neighborhood Christmas parties. Instead, the Kranks plan to spend money they save on a holiday cruise. That decision sets the stage for a conflict with their neighbors. Vic Frohmeyer, played by Dan Aykroyd, is particularly annoyed. He's the self-appointed mayor of the block, and the engine who drives the annual Christmas decorating frenzy on the street. The script is written by Chris Columbus, and the film is directed by Joe Roth, president and main architect of Revolution Studios. Don Burgess, ASC, who has recently shot 13 Going on 30 and Radio for the studio, photographed it. "(Director) Joe (Roth) had a very focused vision for what this movie is about," Burgess says. "He laid it out for me in our first meeting and never wavered. We discussed other comedy movies and watched parts of those films. One of the pictures we looked at was Home Alone, which was written and directed by Chris Columbus. We were looking at the broad strokes as a stepping stone to discussing what would work with today's audience. A successful comedy has to have heart. You have to make the audience care about and empathize with the characters. It begins with the writing and relies on the performances, but the camerawork also has to support the tone of the story." He notes that under Roth's direction Revolution Studios has consistently chosen to produce motion pictures in the United States, in the environments where the stories take place. The first question that had to be answered was whether to produce Christmas with the Kranks at practical locations in Chicago or on a backlot in Los Angeles. They chose to build an entire street in Downey, California, where North American Rockwell built the space shuttle on the outskirts of Los Angeles. "The story takes place in November and December," Burgess explains. "There is snow on the ground, a cold bite in the air and a storm is coming. We were filming in May and June, when the temperatures were likely to be 85 to 90 degrees. We needed absolute control of the environment, which is more practical in a studio-like environment." Burgess had shot large parts of Spider-Man and Terminator 3 at the Downey facility, where former airplane hangers now house sound stages. The company built a city street on a former parking lot for employees. The set included facades for seventeen houses. Four of them had downstairs interiors. Sets for upstairs interiors at several homes were built on stages. They also filmed at locations around Los Angeles. "Garreth Stover, the production designer, did a fabulous job," Burgess says. "We used extensive storyboards as guidelines, and figured out angles for the best direction of sunlight. We got the electricians and grips involved and laid cable around the whole set. We collaborated on a daily basis to make sure the sets were functional as well as realistic. They had to work for everybody, and not only from an aesthetics standpoint. We also had to consider how we were going to control light and create snowfall on sunny days." Burgess notes that each item of wardrobe and every color was designed to augment the feeling of winter in Chicago. Characters are wearing heavy coats, mufflers and hats in exterior scenes. Burgess designed and crafted a cold look. "We built an 80 by 100-foot frame with a large silk on it, and hung it from a huge construction crane, so we could create a huge shadow footprint," he explains. "One of the things which makes it feel like winter is that the sun is on a lower axis in the sky. That makes the days shorter with more shade and a lot less direct sunlight. I also tested filters, but decided it was more effective to simply print the film on the cold side." Burgess advocated framing the story in widescreen 2.4:1 format with anamorphic lenses. He notes that the use of the full 35 mm frame renders superior image quality. The widescreen format also enabled him to comfortably compose shots with multiple characters. "The anamorphics are great storytelling lenses," he observes. "For some visual gags, we composed images that show the audience what's happening in the foreground and how somebody in the background is reacting. The great thing about shooting close-ups with anamorphic lenses is how the subject stands out in the frame and separates from the background even with very wide lenses. You can use much wider lenses for close-ups than you can with spherical lenses. It makes the images jump off the screen. I also used less diffusion than I do with spherical lenses, because there's a clean quality to the images that is also softer than you can render with spherical lenses." Burgess' modest camera package from Panavision included Millennium and XL bodies with Primo prime lenses. Burgess estimates that he shot some 80 percent of the movie with either a 40 mm or 50 mm lens. His film palette was limited to the 500-speed Kodak Vision2 5218 emulsion, used for all night scenes and some daylight interiors, and the 200-speed Kodak Vision 5274 color negative, which he chose for most daytime scenes. There is a misconception in some management sectors of the industry that it costs more to produce pictures in anamorphic format, because it requires more lighting. Burgess observes that the advent of Primo anamorphic lenses and the new, faster and finer grain camera films has rendered that notion obsolete. Burgess credits special effects coordinator Allen Hall with creating believable artificial snow. There's a coat of snow on the ground in the beginning. They used a wind machine to blow artificial snow in the foreground in storm scenes, and Hall optically added more falling flakes in the background during a big Christmas Eve storm. Burgess also had a close collaboration with costume designer Susie DeSanto. "She designed costumes with the right fabrics, colors and textures to help define the characters," he says. "Nora wears reds that aren't too deep, dark or bright. Sometimes, I'd tell Susie that because of the mood of a scene, it's going to be too dark to see a fabric. She would listen and come back with something that worked." Burgess generally worked with a single camera. A second camera was reserved for additional coverage in scenes where different things happening at the same time. "The humor was both visual and verbal," Burgess says. "Tim Allen loves to perform extemporaneously. The entire crew had to be on their toes to give him room to improvise those unplanned magic moments. I was on headsets with my A camera operator, Chris Squires, and focus puller, Zoran Veslich. The key grip was Patrick Daily and the gaffer was Steve McGee. The rest of the crew was B camera operator Pat O'Brien, assistants Steven Cueva, Don Steinberg and Matt Moriaty, and Mark Gilmer was the film loader. We also worked closely with the dolly grips." The camera was usually on a remote head on either a dolly or a small Felix crane with a set of hot gears or a Libra head. Burgess notes that this tactic enabled the crew to adapt quickly and make smooth moves on the spur of the moment. "Joe is the head of a studio, but he was totally focused on this film on the set," he says. "A difficult part about directing is knowing how many takes your actors require to warm up. Take one is going to be some actors' best performance. Others need ten takes. There weren't unnecessary takes with Joe. He always knew when to move on." House lights, Christmas lights and streetlights were pre-set and controlled with a dimmer board inside of one of the houses. Burgess was in walkie-talkie contact with both the gaffer and the dimmer board operator. He could refer to individual lights by number, and tell the operator exactly how much to take it down. The response was instantaneous. Nights are short during summers in Los Angeles, so it was important to react quickly and work fast and efficiently. "Deluxe Labs delivered film dailies that we projected in a mobile screening room every day at lunch," Burgess says. "My crew and the department heads, including wardrobe and makeup, were usually there, along with the director, producer and editor. Moviemaking is an organic process where surprises happen. We were judging whether colors were sufficiently warm or cold, how lenses and diffusion were performing, and keeping track of how the actors looked and whether their makeup was working." The story takes a dramatic twist when Blair phones and announces that she is coming home for the holidays and bringing her new fiancé. She tells Nora that she wants him to experience Christmas at home with the Kranks and their neighbors. "I don't think there is a pure dramatic scene in this movie, but there are dramatic moments, including when the Kranks and their neighbors come to appreciate the true meaning of Christmas," Burgess says. "I don't want to give away the ending, but I believe people will go home with smiles on their faces and feeling good about the world." |
