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Babel

Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Cinematographer: Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC

Awards Won at Cannes

Best Director:	Alejandro González Iñárritu
Technical Grand Prize:	Editor Stephen Mirrione
Prize of the Ecumenical Jury

Film Summary

Babel, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, premiered at the 2006 Cannes International Film Festival. The story begins with a tragic incident involving an American couple in Morocco that sparks a chain of events for four families in different countries throughout around the world. Tied by circumstance but separated by continent, culture and language, each character discovers that it is family that ultimately provides solace. The film, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and photographed by Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC, was shot on location in Japan, Mexico, Morocco and the United States. Following its successful showing at Cannes, the film went on to earn numerous accolades, including seven Oscar® nominations.

Cinematographer

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC. (Photo by Douglas Kirkland)

Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC was born and raised in Mexico City. He studied cinematography at Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, and began his career shooting commercials. Prieto won the Silver Ariel Award for Best Cinematography for Sobrenatural (1996), Un embrujo (1998) and Amores perros (2000), for which he also received a Golden Frog at the Camerimage International Film Festival of the Art of Cinematography. In 2003, he earned an ASC Award nomination for his work on Frida. His credits also include Original Sin, 8 Mile, 25^th Hour, 21 Grams and Alexander. In 2006, Prieto earned his first Oscar® nomination for Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, as well as nods from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and the American Society of Cinematographers. In 2007, he again collaborated with Lee on Se, jie. Prieto’s most recent credits include Pedro Almodóvar’s Los abrazos rotos, State of Play and Biutiful, which reunited him with Babel director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

“Being at the Cannes Film Festival with Babel was an incomparable experience. It’s a festival you hear about all your life, as a student and as a filmmaker. Filmmaking is taken very seriously there, and it is a big show and that helps make it exciting. I was able to enjoy being right in the middle of it, with Alejandro (González Iñárritu) and the actors, but I was not in the spotlight, so I could enjoy it immensely. At the end of the screening, the audience reacted with a long standing ovation. That was a very emotional, very special experience. Cannes is just a great celebration of filmmaking. I’m very happy that this year, a film I made with Pedro Almodóvar, Los abrazos rotos, will play in competition at the festival.

Behind the Scenes with Rodrigo Prieto,

Shooting BABEL In Multiple Formats

Babel is a textbook example of how actors respond to environments, including light and darkness at real locations, and how the visual grammar created by a cinematographer and his crew can affect the believability and emotional flow of a film.

Babel was produced at locations in four countries on three continents using three different formats, various lenses, and a mixed palette of films to visually punctuate the drama. Rodrigo Prieto, ASC, AMC and director Alejandro González Iñárritu seamlessly blended the different formats during digital intermediate (DI) postproduction.

“Without a doubt, shooting at the actual locations was extremely important to the atmosphere that we wanted to create,” Prieto says. “It is like you are breathing the air when you see shots from the different locations. They feel different. Shooting at the actual locations also feels more organic to the actors. There are times when greenscreen shots are necessary, but there is no substitute for shooting in real places.”

Babel is Prieto’s third collaboration with Iñárritu. Their first film was Amores Perros in 2000. Prieto earned his third Silver Ariel Award for Best Cinematography in Mexico for that venture in addition to garnering top honors at the Camerimage International Film Festival. They subsequently collaborated in 2003 on the critically-acclaimed 21 Grams.

Babel weaves the stories of four families into the fabric of a complex and emotionally compelling drama. As the title drawn from the Biblical story suggests, there is anguish and misunderstandings caused by verbal miscommunications.

The decision to frame Babel in Academy aperture 1.85:1 aspect ratio was made while they were scouting locations in Morocco. Prieto recalls that he and Iñárritu were looking through a viewfinder in both anamorphic (2.4:1) and 1.85:1 formats.

“Alejandro felt that the wider angle framing with the mountains, vistas and deserts was too beautiful,” he says. “He preferred 1.85:1 with the textures of the ground and rocks in the foreground giving us a feeling of being in a difficult place as opposed to the beautiful landscapes in the background.”

The story begins in the Moroccan desert where a husband and wife, played by Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, are traveling with a small tourist group. They are grieving and trying to repair their damaged relationship caused by the death of their daughter. Chance intervenes when the son of a goat herder randomly fires a rifle that was a gift from a Japanese hunter. He and his brother want to see how far the bullet will travel. The bullet hits and badly wounds the wife. The coach carrying them hurriedly detours to a local village, where the husband calls the American embassy pleading for help. He also phones their maid in San Diego who is watching their other two children to tell her that their scheduled return home will be delayed. The maid has a dilemma because her son is getting married in Mexico. She decides to take the children with her to the wedding. It turns out to be a wild ride in a car driven by her hot-headed nephew.

The complex drama takes another twist when a security agency decides that terrorists were responsible for the attack, and launches a global hunt for the perpetrators. Meanwhile in Japan, Chieko, a deaf, mute woman, is coping with the loss of her mother who committed suicide while dealing with her bereft father.

“Alejandro began talking with me about the concept approximately a year-and-a-half before we began preproduction,” Prieto says. “We looked at books with still pictures from the different cultures for inspiration and spoke about the ways that cameras and lenses were used, lighting, textures, grain and colors as a starting point.”

He cites an example: “We saw some photographs with very shallow depth of field. That immediately gave me an idea for the sequences that we shot in Japan, where the main character is a deaf mute. I thought that very shallow depth of field could visually represent how she sees the world around her.”

Prieto shot tests with different lenses, film stocks and lab processes with the goal of defining distinctive looks that were right for each environment.

“We wanted a feeling of visual continuity between the stories with each set of images having its own personality,” Prieto says. He decided to shoot the Morocco scenes in Super 16 format, the Mexican and California segments with 35 mm spherical lenses in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and the scenes in Japan in anamorphic format.

“We wanted very textured images in Morocco to represent the struggle they were having in their relationship,” Prieto explains. “I shot tests with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett comparing Super 16 film to 500-speed stocks in 35 mm format. I decided to shoot their scenes in Super 16 on (EASTMAN EXR 100T) 7248 film, which was being discontinued. There is another story with the two young boys in Morocco who fired the gun. I wanted a little finer grain structure that would be less apparent when it was intercut with 35 mm stocks. I used (EASTMAN EXR 50D) 7245, a 50-speed stock, for daylight scenes and a little (KODAK VISION2 500T) 7218 for night interiors.”

There is a helicopter scene at the end of the Moroccan sequence where the husband and wife are traveling from the village to Casablanca. It begins at dusk and ends at night. Prieto shot the night sequence when the helicopter arrives at a hospital with three-perf 35 mm (KODAK VISION 800T) ‘89 film for a slightly different look.

He says that the decision to shoot on three-perf 35 mm film was initially driven by the budget. Prieto shot some tests for scenes in Mexico with KODAK VISION 500T 5279 film. He underexposed the negative one stop and had the lab push the process to get a little more grain and contrast. When the producers calculated how much footage he would be using in Mexico, they suggested also shooting that part in Super 16 format.

“Alejandro and I felt that the scenes in Mexico needed the texture we got with 35 mm film pushed one stop, so we shot with three-perf film, which trimmed the cost,” Prieto says. “We already knew we needed to do a digital intermediate because of the Super 16 film we were using in Morocco, so it was okay to use three-perf film.”

That paid an extra dividend because there were many handheld shots often with two cameras at different angles. Iñárritu often let the cameras roll until the magazines were finished. He got 11-minute takes with Super 16 cameras. The three-perf 35 mm film allowed them to shoot for around six minutes, 25 percent longer than four-perf film.

Prieto says that the decision to use anamorphic lenses in Japan was inspired by the book “Mona Kuhn Photographs,” which features images that have very shallow depth of field. Prieto shot tests framing in 1.85:1 aspect ratio with anamorphic lenses with the knowledge that the DI would allow him to conform the different formats.

“How do you represent the world of a deaf, mute person,” he asks? “For me, it is shallow depth of field. Objects in the background, and eyes and ears on faces are slightly out of focus. The backgrounds have a liquid quality compared to spherical lenses.”

They considered using a digital camera for night exteriors in Japan because the producers had heard about that tactic being used to trim lighting costs in Collateral.

“I shot some tests with both film and (Thomson’s Grass Valley) Viper (FilmStream) digital cameras to see how they handled shooting at night in Tokyo in available light,” he says. “I used the 500-speed (5218) film at T2.8. We scanned the film and played with both sets of images in a DI suite to see their characteristics and how they handled over- and underexposure. We decided that the digital camera didn’t offer an advantage for what we were doing.

“I noticed one other important difference in the highlights. I wanted to darken a sign with a neon light behind it. It was no problem with the film images. The digital images just become gray instead of darker. I couldn’t bring any detail back into it.”

They also compared how the film and digital cameras recorded skin tones in a test shot with the lead female actress in Japan. “The skin tones we recorded with the Viper camera lacked subtleties in the colors of different skin tones,” he says. “They also felt a little flatter. Film rendered her skin much more naturally. There were variations in little bits of magenta and green tones on film that weren’t on the digital pictures.”

Prieto shot another test comparing the two formats at a night club where there was a lot of flashing laser lights. He wanted to see if the digital camera enhanced the sharpness of the laser lights. After seeing the results, they decided to use film and an anamorphic lens to keep Chieko in her own world with a little shallower depth of field.

“I did a little more lighting when we shot in the club, because we were using anamorphic lenses, but it was worth it,” Prieto says. “I think we got really interesting texture and atmosphere on the film. We followed the characters from downstairs, walking through a maze of lockers. They walked up a spiral stairway into the club and started dancing. We had intimate, close-up shots all the way from downstairs into the club.”

The ARRI SR 3 cameras he used in Morocco, and ARRICAM Lite camera and Ultra Prime lenses used in California and Mexico were provided by Otto Nemenz.

“Ann Ruark, the line producer, did an amazing job with the logistics of getting the gear and film stocks where we needed it when we needed it,” he says.

Prieto was among the first cinematographers to use the new ARRI/Zeiss Master Prime T1.3 lenses. There is a night scene in Mexico where the characters are lost and wandering in the desert. The only artificial light came from a SureFire flashlight with a 500 lumens bulb. He underexposed KODAK VISION2 Expression 500T 5229 film by one stop.

“It was a little scary,” he says. “My meter read T0.7 on faces, but we got rich black tones that feel like night with the only light on faces coming from the beam of the flashlight that bounced off the ground.”

In Japan, Prieto used Panaflex XL cameras with the older C-series lenses. The director wanted the lens to be as close to the actors as possible. Prieto says that the closest focus you can normally get with those lenses is five to six feet. Panavision modified the lens and enabled him to focus at three feet at stop T2.3.

“We were shooting wide open right on top of the actors, so that was pretty challenging for the focus puller,” he observes. “It gave us a different feeling.”

Beverly Wood at Deluxe labs in Los Angeles introduced Prieto to Yuri Neyman, a cinematographer who invented the Gamma & Density 3cP system. The system includes a digital still camera, software, a laptop computer and a monitor that is calibrated to match a monitor used by the dailies timer. Prieto documented different set ups with the still camera and used the computer to manipulate the images. Each day, he sent printed copies of the original and color corrected pictures on the same sheet to the timer. It also contained a gray scale chart representing the grading that he had done. That gave the dailies timer a visual reference of his intentions for every shot.

“I selected five to 10 minutes of the first Super 16 film that we shot in Morocco, and sent it to Éclair labs in France,” he says. “That footage was processed, scanned and recorded out on 35 mm film incorporating the bleach bypass look that we planned to create in DI. Yvan Lucas was the color grader. I had worked with him on Alexander.”

After that look was established, all the negative shot in the four countries was shipped to Deluxe in Los Angeles. They processed the negative and Modern VideoFilm created DVD dailies in high-definition format.

“The dailies were an accurate reflection of how I graded the still images,” Prieto says. “I had the option of indicating lens filters and could be very precise about setting blacks levels. That was important because there are scenes with true, deep blacks. Alejandro was happy because he could see our intentions while they were editing.”

After editing, the conformed negative was scanned at 2K resolution with a Spirit DataCine at LaserPacific in Los Angeles. Since some of the film was produced in Super 16 format, they decided on a 2K scan for a consistent look.

He timed the DI with Lucas at LaserPacific as well. The images were projected on a 30-by-13 foot screen in a theater-like environment. Prieto has extended his role into the DI suite on other pictures.

“It’s getting faster,” he observes. “You can go into parts of any shot, make adjustments, and see the results almost immediately. I was able to tell Yvan (Lucas) to make something two points more yellow and almost immediately see it happen. The first week, Alejandro was busy with mixing. After that, he started coming in most days, usually late in the afternoons. We would show him the progress we had made. He would give us some notes and we would show him our corrections the next day. There were no major changes. It was just a matter of finessing looks. The DI took about three weeks.”