DAVID MULLEN
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Meet Me in St. Petersburg
by M. David Mullen

In the fall of 2001, I met with two Dutch filmmakers, Helmut Schleppi and Geert Heetebrij, at some coffee shop in West Hollywood. Geert had written a screenplay called "A Foreign Affair", a comic tale about two hapless brothers who leave the seclusion of their farm after their mother dies, in search of an "old-fashioned" wife to take over the household chores. They travel to St. Petersburg, Russia as part of a tour group advertised on the internet to meet Russian women desperate to get married and live in America.

Moving from a successful career making video documentaries, often shot in remote locations around the world, Helmut and Geert told me that they were interested in shooting their first narrative feature in a similar manner - on video with a small crew and very little equipment. Someone recommended me because of my experience shooting the 24P HD features "Jackpot" and "New Suit," but it was my 35mm work in "Twin Falls Idaho" that particularly impressed Helmut.

Helmut originally wanted to operate the camera, as this was natural for him as a documentarian. I was hesitant, since composition is as important to me as lighting, but once Helmut added that most of the film would be shot handheld for three weeks straight, suddenly the prospect of watching from the comfort of a chair in front of a video monitor seemed more appealing. Because the film was to be shot "documentary" style in 24P HD, the producers chose a compact equipment package and crew because they wanted to be able to shoot an actual romance tour in Russia without interfering too much with its reality. The idea was to get as close to the real thing as possible. In the end, the prospect of travelling to Russia, the quality of Geert's script, and the chance to work with actors Tim Blake Nelson, David Arquette, and Emily Mortimer were enough to overcome my apprehensions over the many unknowns.

While shopping around for an HD package, Jeff Blauvelt of HD Cinema in Santa Monica introduced us to a private owner/operator named Peter Good, who was willing to rent us a very basic package at a very low rate (a Sony HDW-F900, 7.8mm-156mm Fujinon HD zoom, 14" HD monitor, 9" NTSC monitor, Miranda downconverter, tripod, plus an HMI SunGun.) We were also getting a Sony PAL Digital Betacam package to shoot some second unit documentary footage of an actual "wife shopping" tour. Since we had no idea how much PAL Digital Betacam documentary footage would be incorporated into the final movie, I suggested we shoot the entire movie at 25P instead of 24P, rather than have Helmut deal with two different frame rates later in editing. 25P would also make dealing with Russia's 50hz power supply a little easier. Esli Bijker DP'd the second unit material in DigiBeta PAL. His family's production company in the Netherlands co-produced the feature.

Since we would be shooting without a generator for most of the show, I needed a very small but power-efficient lighting package for both daylight & tungsten interiors. The budget only allowed for two Russians to serve as my entire grip & electric crew. Helmut's idea of a minimum lighting package was one suitcase of small tungsten lamps, but I usually use Kinoflos in these situations, being switchable between daylight and tungsten, low in wattage, and naturally soft and pleasing on actors' faces with a minimal amount of supporting grip equipment. I also had two 575 watt HMI's, a Dedolight kit, a Kinoflo car kit, Peter Goode's HMI Sun Gun, and a few small tungsten lamps. On our few large night exteriors, we rented a generator. On some occasions, a 4K HMI PAR was my "bolshoy" (big) light and other times it was a 10K tungsten fresnel.

My camera assistant, Cliff Hsui, arrived with the package a few days before the first shooting day. I originally thought I could use the mattebox from the betacam package, but after various experiments failed, I had to consider shooting without any mattebox at all (and thus none of the few 4x4 filters we had gotten from Holland as well), using only the small sunshade that came with the lens. I then programmed the F900 camera with the same settings I used for "New Suit", which was fairly conservative, designed to give me the most flexibility in color-correction later. I like to shoot with the master black level very marginally lifted just to make sure nothing is getting buried in the shadows - later in post, I restore the blacks. I also try to keep my highlight exposures on the "down" side. The idea is to create something like a "digital negative" - a little flatter than normal so that one can add more contrast in color-correction later (it's always easier to take out information than add it when it was never recorded to begin with.) I also use a very low-level of edge enhancement - i.e. "Detail" -- when shooting HD for transfer to film; this partially makes up for HD's lower resolution over 35mm, and if you use it carefully, most viewers can't really see the enhancement in the projected 35mm print. However, fine details seem to "pop" into focus compared to shooting with Detail turned off.

At first I thought I could live with a clean, unfiltered image for this movie, but as the story's romantic qualities became more evident, I realized that the image needed some mild amount of diffusion to create the right mood. Afterall, a large part of the story involves the two lead males being confronted, seduced, rejected, etc. by one attractive Russian lady after another. Using strong duct tape and some blackwrap for a lens hood, I taped some diffusion filters directly to the lens barrel. The #1/4 Black ProMist did a great job of softening the close-ups without looking like diffusion was being used, and it intercut with the sharper wide shots very well.

About a month after we wrapped our Russian shoot, we got back together to shoot the opening scenes on the main characters' farm. Although the script placed this location somewhere in the United States, we ended up shooting in Casas Grandes, Mexico on a remote Mormon farming community. Since we were still shooting in 25P but now in a 60 hz country, I had a few light sources (LED clocks, overhead fluorescents, etc.) that were flickering, but I was able to remove this with the F900's ECS function.

In late May 2002, we on-lined the movie, completed the sound mix and the final color-correction at Victory Studios (formerly APS) in Seattle, using a 2K DaVinci. There were a few wide-angle shots throughout the movie meant to represent the point-of-view of a brass urn (holding the ashes of the brothers' deceased mom). In the online room, editor Walt McGinn was able to create a pincushion distortion to suggest the rounded base of the urn, and then in the DaVinci, colorist John Davidson desaturated the image and then added over it a yellow-brassy hue, plus softened the corners using Power Windows. Overall, the movie took only two days to color correct; in general I've found that HD color-corrections tend to go faster than a film telecine transfer / color-correction session because the HD image recorded on the set is more consistent exposure and color-wise from shot-to-shot. Victory Studios (APS) made the transition to editing in 25p seamless.

One of the great pleasures of shooting "A Foreign Affair" was working with Helmut, Geert, the Bijker brothers, Amy Segal, our lead actors, plus some great crew people in Russia and Mexico. Everyone came together on this modest project to make it truly an affair to remember