Director Duane Clark at work in York Minster cathedral

The story of Robinson Crusoe, a fictional Englishman who sails to sea in 1651 and becomes shipwrecked on a desert island where he remains for 28 years before returning to civilization, is one of the best known in history. First published in 1719, the novel by Daniel Defoe was an immediate success and quickly became the most widely read book ever written in English. Countless spin-offs, translations and adaptations have marked the 289 years since the castaway’s first incarnation, continuing into the modern age with television and film versions dating back to 1913. The latest re-telling of this famous tale is being undertaken by UK independent producer Power and takes the form of a 13-part television series entitled Crusoe, scheduled for broadcast on US channel NBC in late 2008.

Filming for the series began in England before transferring to South Africa, where the production currently is, and the Seychelles for 17 weeks of location work. Cinematographer Jon Joffin was keen to use the recently updated ARRIFLEX D-21 film style digital camera system, having photographed two previous projects – Flirting with Forty (2008) and The Andromeda Strain (2008) – on the ARRIFLEX D-20. Crusoe is being directed by the highly experienced television director Duane Clark. “I haven’t worked with Duane before, but it’s proving a real pleasure,” says Joffin. “He’s done a lot of CSI episodes [CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation] and also Meadowlands, which I always thought was a very interesting show.”

The production was based in Yorkshire during its time in England. “We shot a flashback thread in York, set before the character gets shipwrecked,” explains Joffin. “It’s nice because this section is a story on its own; the reason I wanted to do this show is because the scripts are full of little stories and action sequences, and just read really nicely. Also it’s a period show, set in the 1600s, so it’s exciting being able to work in these unbelievable period locations, with amazing costumes and some really fine actors.”

One of the most imposing locations is York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. As is often the case with historic buildings, restrictions on how equipment can be used at York Minster influenced the cinematographer’s creative approach. In particular the lighting kit, supplied by ARRI Lighting Rental in London, was dictated to some degree by practical limitations. “The thing about York Minster is that it’s so vast,” explains Joffin. “We talked about putting up a construction crane with really big lights on it, but that wasn’t possible, mainly because of weight restrictions on the roads. So we were basically just using lights coming in through the windows and supplementing them a bit inside. The scene is a flashback, so we could shoot it as the character remembers it, which gave us a bit of license with the lighting. We didn’t make anything look unreal, but we bumped up the backlight and put in a strong shaft of light from a 10K Xenon fixture up on a 20-foot scaffold, which worked really well. The flashback shows the character’s idealised memory of his wife surrounded by rose petals, so we were blowing all these petals into the air with cannons inside the cathedral. It looked great because we were using the D-21 at 60 frames per second.”

In general, Joffin makes no distinction between the lights he needs for a D-21 shoot and those he would require if shooting on film. “My lighting needs would have been very similar if I had been on film,” he says. “The only difference was that if I were shooting on film, I probably would have chosen 500ASA stock for inside York Minster, so there would have been a speed advantage.” Part of the reason for this is that the cinematographer chose to select Logarithmic 4:4:4 RGB (Extended Range) output from the D-21, which is rated at 200 EI/ASA equivalent. “I’ve always shot in Lin [Linear] mode before,” he continues. “This is the first show I’ve done in Log [Logarithmic] mode and it has blown me away; it’s made me realise what I was missing out on!”

Although the default EI/ASA equivalent rating of Logarithmic output from the D-21 is 200, Joffin was able to use look up tables (LUTs) in Cinetal monitors on set to see how the image faired at EI/ASA equivalent ratings between about 100 and 400. “It’s nice to look at other LUTs and see what you’re going to be able to do with the image later,” he explains. “We don’t apply these other ASA ratings to the dailies, but if I feel like a shot is looking a bit dark, I can quickly flick to 400 on the monitor and see how much detail I’m going to be able to pull out. In real world situations you often need a bit more light so you bump the ASA up a bit; with Linear output that can mean the image getting a bit noisy, but the Log tests we did looked really good. I definitely feel like the D-21 is faster [than the D-20]; I would certainly use the higher ASA equivalents if I was in a jam, but in general I try to keep the ASA as low as possible.”

		The camera crew prepare a shot

Before making the decision to use Logarithmic output for the first time, Joffin spent a day testing at ARRI Media in London. “The interesting thing was that I wanted to compare the Linear and Log modes,” he continues. “So I was going to set up two cameras side by side, but Bill Lovell [Head of the Digital Department at ARRI Media] told me that I could use only one camera, because the D-21 can run Linear and Log feeds simultaneously. As great as Linear looks, when you put it next to the Log output it looks like video next to film. I really saw that difference with candlelight; our show is set in the 1600s, so it’s all windows and candles, and the way the Log held detail and colour saturation in the candle flames was just amazing. A lot of the time we’re crashing hot shafts of light from 18Ks through windows and bouncing them off the floor or a table into the actors’ faces. It’s really exciting to be able to do that and not add any other lights in the room. With Linear I always found I had to add a little bit of fill light, but with Log that fill sometimes isn’t necessary, which means scenes are quicker to light and also look more natural.”

Joffin’s choice of high speed ARRI Master Prime lenses aided this tendency toward minimal and natural-looking lighting, and he took full advantage by shooting at T1.3 both on location and on built sets. “I’ve got to say that the Master Primes blow me away; they’re just so fantastic,” he says. “Even at T1.3 they look sharp; I remember in the old days when we shot with the original Zeiss Super Speeds, they were T1.3 lenses as well, but you generally had to shoot them at T2 or T2.8, and they looked better at T4. But these Master Primes look as good to me at T1.3 as they do at T2.8. There’s something about the quality of the out of focus background that I just love. The bokeh is so buttery and beautiful; it’s almost addictive. You’ll be shooting on a 25mm and find yourself putting ND filters in front of it because you want those out of focus backgrounds. I just fell in love with the look.”

Though the D-21 has an option to record raw, uncompressed data in Data Mode, it was decided that the best workflow for Crusoe was HD output recorded via fibre interfaces to SR recorders. The production did, however, benefit from another advantage of the new D-21 – automatic Defect Pixel Correction (DPC) – with which Joffin already had some experience. “I actually had a prototype version of the DPC on my previous show,” he says. “We shot for 20 days and I only saw one defect pixel, which was amazingly good.”

The sophisticated Cinetal monitors used on set were necessitated by the fact that Logarithmic images have to be processed through a LUT before being displayed in order to replicate what the filmmakers will be working with in postproduction. A special LUT was developed by Laurent Treherne, a Technical Director at Ascent Media in London, where postproduction is being handled for the English shoot. “I love those Cinetal monitors, they’re unbelievable,” enthuses Joffin. “When we were about to shoot The Andromeda Strain there was no real solution for applying LUTs on set and the Cinetals have totally changed that. The beauty of the system is seeing what you’re going to get; it means you’re able to make little corrections and really finesse things. I know there are some DoPs who shoot in Log mode and they’re not fussy about the LUTs, but I can’t say that personally. It’s a hard sell to directors as well because they want to see exactly what they’ll get, and of course they should.”

In order to view the Cinetal monitors in controlled conditions, Joffin had a blacked-out tent erected on every set, inside which he could judge images without any interference from other light sources. “We have waveform monitors on the cameras and in the tent, but we mainly use the one in the tent. The Cinetal is so good that I tend to judge exposure with it,” says Joffin. “Then I check on the waveform monitor to see if things are clipping or see where the highlights are if I’m trying to match close-ups.”

Being able to see the effects of different iris settings with such precision and immediacy meant the cinematographer was comfortable making even major exposure adjustments in shot. “People sometimes say that moving the tent around and shooting with an HD camera is much slower,” he says. “But there’s one area where I actually find it faster, and that’s when you’re shooting the kind of scene where you’re panning around and you have someone in the foreground who’s bright but an extra in the background who’s dark. You can actually go on the iris and make changes in shot, just looking at the Cinetal monitor. I live on the iris; if I don’t have it in my hand I don’t feel like I have control of the shot. We have the LCS system in the tent for both cameras and I’m on it full-time. On my last show with the D-20 we were shooting in Hawaii and we did shots where we followed characters from inside a hotel room out onto a balcony overlooking the ocean; I had shots where I started at T1.3 and ended up at T11 – huge iris pulls.

“It also helps when you don’t have time to finish your lighting,” continues Joffin. “With film you have to run around taking light readings and know exactly where you are because all you have is the video assist. For almost any shot on this show I’m often pulling up to two or three stops; it’s really handy for shots where you dolly around someone, where you might start on a key light that looks quite flat so you want to close the iris down a bit, but then open it up as you come around. Or shots where you have people in the foreground who walk away from you and you start wide open so the background is playing really hot and then close it down as they get into the distance. It’s amazing having that control; I couldn’t live without it.”

For certain sequences Joffin is using a hand-cranked ARRIFLEX 435 film camera, which allows him to make multiple in-camera exposures that would be impossible with the D-21. “We’re even doing some quadruple exposures in-camera,” he says. “I’d used the handcrank thing on a modified ARRI III before, but it shook the camera around like crazy. This 435 system is just fantastic; you can take the camera off the tripod and hold it in your hand or even hand-crank up to 150fps, which is unbelievable. I’ve always carried a 435 on my previous D-20 shoots. It means you can do high speed shots, or sometimes you have barely any light and need to very quickly pick up a film camera and grab something. I’m very comfortable cutting the digital and film images together.”

The film style features of the D-21, such as its optical viewfinder, helped the crew switch between the two formats with ease. Joffin also had a Digital Imaging Technician (DIT), Neil Gray, to help coordinate the digital workflow. “Neil has been great, as has Chris Plevin [one of the camera operators, who had previous D-20 experience],” he says. “Chris came up with the idea of us doing our own clones at night and applying the LUT for dailies, because we were quite a way from London. We started off doing that ourselves, but the problem was that the editing department needed burned-in time code, so we did have to start sending the tapes up to London for cloning.”

Although Crusoe will not involve as many visual effects as previous D-20 shoots Joffin has worked on, the cinematographer has already noticed advantages to the D-21 in Log mode that will make things easier when it comes to postproduction. “There isn’t a huge amount of VFX work on this show, but certainly some,” he says. “We’re doing composites of the city, painting in old buildings and cleaning the image of more modern elements. The nice thing is I don’t think we’ll have to do as much sky replacement as we would on a Linear show because the Log mode seems to be able to hold the skies much better.”

Mark Hope-Jones