Operating a Sony HVR-Z1U HDV, cinematographer Steven Fierberg, ASC sets up with his cast against the backdrop of Monument Valley.

The offbeat feature trails washed-up B-movie actors Mel (Del Zamora) and Fred (Ed Pansullo) as they travel to a Monument Valley revival screening of Doc Holiday Vs. Buffalo Bill. With Mel’s daughter Delilah (Jaclyn Jonet) in tow, they plot to exact John Ford-style revenge on famed Western screenwriter Fritz Frobisher (Sy Richardson) for physically abusing them on set decades ago.

Fierberg on a lonely road leading into Monument Valley.

Fierberg recently sat down with DV to discuss the shooting of this offbeat road movie, which screened at the Venice and AFI film festivals, among others.

DV: Searchers 2.0 seems designed to keep the audience off balance. How would you describe the movie?
Steven Fierberg, ASC: In dramatic works the journey to seek revenge is usually a tragic one. However, the movies that have been presented to us, especially recently, have mythic ideas that are false, like the idea of the revenge quest where the character who thinks he is morally right can achieve revenge and benefit from it. In [John Ford’s] The Searchers, they do go on a revenge quest, but they do not truly find glory. These characters [in Searchers 2.0] never achieve enlightenment. Theoretically, their journey is one to truth of some kind, but they don’t ever seek truth nor do they recognize it when it’s staring them in the face. They are disconnected from anything that has deeper meaning. The movie is completely ironic — the filmmaker is saying one thing while the characters are saying the exact opposite.

Why was the Sony HVR-Z1U HDV selected for duty?
The lens on the JVC looks like a junky 16mm lens I would have on an [Éclair] NPR or something. Now, they do make a better lens for the JVC, but it costs $10,000 more. The XL H1 and A1 cameras, the problem I had with them was that it’s very hard to see focus, but it’s freaky how sharp their sensors are. The reason we did not use Canon was that it records 24f, and when we were going to be doing the movie, Avid Xpress Pro, which Alex was going to use to edit, did not support 24f. The Panasonic HVX200; the producers didn’t want to risk losing a scene because someone made a mistake. Late at night, the lowest-paid person on the show after working 12 hours a day is doing something with a computer where if you make one wrong mouse click it’s gone. I’m not going to do any movie where the director or producer says he is concerned about losing a scene, and I say it won’t happen and then it does — that’s a hard thing to forgive. Just as a historical record, the idea of erasing original media I think is close to being a very bad idea. But in many ways the HVX200 is a great camera. I just wish they hadn’t dropped the ball in post. What we had to do for insurance was copy the Z1’s tapes every night and every mail them to L.A. Basically, the camera was chosen on the basis of postproduction, not on image quality whatsoever. Alex [Cox] wanted to shoot this in 25-fps PAL with a Sony Z1. I didn’t want to use the Z1. But the truth is: It’s great. That was my shock. When it came time to look at the final result projected, I was blown away. So, I was wrong and I have a new respect for Sony. There are only two problems with the camera. The focus is horrific; the only way to check manual focus is by defocusing it. And it seems to me that you can’t really pull focus on it nor is it repeatable. To set exposure, we had a portable Panasonic 7" monitor, which was fantastic, and my gaffer would put his face in the hood and I would open up or close down. I did not do the 70-percent zebra, which most people use for skin tone. I had the zebra set at 105 percent, and I would make it as light as I could before burning out. I did a lot of low angles so I’d see a lot of sky. I tried to hold as much of the sky as I could without having it go pure white. I also used a Polarizer, which helped. And we were shooting in December — it was the best thing because the sun is low, and the light is beautiful all day long. If it were summer, you’d have a longer day but 90 percent of it would look like shit.

Fierberg get some coverage with the HVR-Z1U.

Why did you shoot in PAL?
The BBC was one of the financiers of the project, and they wanted a PAL HD master. Also, the Z1 will not go 24 frames per second. It either does 30 or 25 fps. I hate 30 fps. Twenty-five frames per second was fine; it still gave me a very filmic motion.

Setting up a car mount for some on-the-road coverage.

This being a road movie, there are lots of driving scenes. How were you able to shoot car interiors while maintaining excellent detail outside the windows?
Because so much of the movie would be done in a car and we weren’t towing the car, the small camera was an essential part of what we did. In many cases, I was holding the camera against the windshield. I also had bought for $20 a little beanbag with a screw in it for a still camera and put that on the dashboard. We didn’t even need to use the wide-angle adapter 90 percent of the time. I mostly shot the movie wide so there is a lot of space around the actors, which I think is different from a lot of movies. Kino Flo gave us some prototype Barfly lights. We had one plugged into the cigarette lighter up front and one into the utility plug in the back. We’d use those for fill. If I were shooting the driver, the light would be suction-cupped below the rearview mirror aimed at the actor as bright as it could be and sometimes we’d put one on the hood in front of the driver, but it had to be low. The driver is really driving. In setting the exposure, I’d use the zebra to look at the exterior and I would darken it but still see enough detail in the actor’s face. In advance, we got a rental car with tinted windows. The tint helped us keep the outside down. We’d sometimes tape 216 diffusion onto a window that we couldn’t see in the shot. The sun would hit that, and it would light up the whole car. These are very low-tech solutions, and we designed the movie and picked our lights with the idea of plugging into what resources we had.

Fierberg operates while an assistant uses a Sunbounce.

On exteriors, how did you compete with the low winter sun for a decent lighting ratio?
We had the Sunbounce. It’s a soft, white 4x6 that’s very rigid. We had tremendous wind, and one person could hold this Sunbounce even in the wind. Mostly, that’s all we used. There were some scenes toward the end of the movie during the showdown with the villain, played by Sy Richardson, where I wished I had a bit more because his skin tone is quite dark. The bounce was right on the edge of the frame. If I had my way, I would have tried to get about 20 percent more light than I got out of the bounce. But I think if you have beautiful light in an exterior you are better off not doing anything than doing too much. The easiest way to screw it up is to bring in a light. No matter what size movie, I always try to bounce before I bring in a light. Morris Flam, a great gaffer, taught me this: When you get fading light, never use a light because over a long take a perfectly set movie light at the beginning will become too bright by the end of the take because the ambient light will have fallen. Whereas, if you use a reflector, the ratio between the ambient light and the fill will be constant, even if it gets darker during the shot. When you time it later, you can even it out.

How much tinkering in post did you do with the image?
The finishing — both assembly and color correction — was done on an Avid Nitris. Simple Power Windows are more exacting on a Nitris, but they take 10 to 20 times longer than, say, a da Vinci. We added the smallest amount of grain to the image, which I thought was a smart move. We did some contrast things to try to make it look more filmic.

The Searchers 2.0 production team amidst the epic scenery of Monument Valley.

With all the wide landscape shots, were you worried the resolution wouldn’t hold up?
A lot of people shooting video think you can’t do that shot because it won’t have sufficient resolution, but I came out of the film extremely impressed with the Z1 because those shots are sharp and I’ve seen them on a giant screen. The real failure I think of video cameras right now is in tonality. That’s where they are inferior to film. But I’m very happy with what we got.

Aboard a Western dolly, Fierberg sets a shot.

How did you achieve some of the camera movement?
We had a four-foot Western dolly on 16 feet of track, so we could only move about 10 feet or so. The hardest shot in the movie is when the main character tells his story and we dolly in. I start pretty wide and as the camera dollies in, I’m zooming in and pulling focus and I slowly stand up from a squatting position. I’m handheld. That’s like the greatest achievement in my life!

Most of the handheld shots were imperceptible. How much of the movie was handheld?
Almost the whole movie was handheld. Years of yoga!

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