IEC
"Taken" [2007]
MICHEL ABRAMOWICZ AFC
Born: 24 January 1950, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France.
Education: Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7 [History]; ÉNSLL [1974-78].
Career: Started as 2nd c.asst and focus puller with Jean Boffety. Worked with Gerry Fisher [on commercials], Pasqualino De Santis, a.o.
Ph numerous commercials dir by Louis-Pascal Couvelaire [for Corona Beer], Daniel Gruener [for Coca-Cola], a.o. Ph music videos, e.g. 'Love Profusion' [2003; d: Luc Besson; a: Madonna].
Is co-president of the AFC [2012].
Website: Michel Abramowicz
'Taken'
[2007]: ''Taken' tells the story of a man alone
who is searching for a family member in a third world
country whose language he doesn't speak,' says Michel
Abramowicz. ' What I like is the linearity in which
this story is told. It goes from point A to point Z in
a completely unrelenting way. 'Taken' resembles
one of the true 1950s B movies from RKO. Liam Neeson
is determined to find his daughter at any price and my
objective with this film is to be effective to the
same degree as his character.' But how does one define
an implacable approach with light and how can the
lighting complement or match the relentless
perspective of the story? 'In my interpretation,'
continues Abramowicz, 'it translates to a very dark
and harsh rendering of light. We must immediately feel
how much this former spy is plunging into a terrible
milieu. The image treatment must resemble hard cement
which, if you brush your hand over its surface, you
can feel its roughness. Working on something this raw
pushes me further into using low contrast with periods
when nothing is lit... except the actors to whom I
must give greater emphasis. Not seeing the eyes of
actors bothers me quite a lot. I can choose to leave
an actor in deliberate obscurity, but as soon as I see
him I must distinguish his eyes. It is more so with
someone like Liam Neeson. Certain things only take
place in his eyes and I must capture them. When faced
with such recurring adversity, his character's only
solution is to move forward and, as a cameraman, I am
obliged to follow a similar path in determining the
unique lighting solution for each frame and setting.'
Abramowicz chose two parallel but strikingly different
images for 'Taken'. The first 20 minutes of the
film, which is set in Los Angeles, has an 'American
rendering'; the rest of the story has an 'European
rendering'. Abramowicz explains: 'While everyone uses
the same cameras and the same film today, there is a
curious difference that is lost between the American
image and the European image. In order to separate the
two worlds of 'Taken', I researched and found
the American look by working quite classically in the
United States, saturating the colors, polarizing and
illuminating the characters like stars with lots of
light. On the other hand, when the hero arrives in
France, I quite abruptly take the camera from his feet
and shoot him almost constantly at shoulder height.
Even the Steadicam shots deliberately become somewhat
bumpy. The constant is my use of diffused light
because I don't want to obtain a video texture after
digital post-production. It may seem a bit
contradictory to my desire to achieve the relentless
image I have just described, but I don't care. Above
all I want to preserve the film's cinematic imaging.'
The process to which Abramowicz refers is all the more
significant in 'Taken' because, towards the end
of the film, there was a requirement for him to light
nearly two miles of a lengthy pursuit between a car
and a boat along the banks of the river Seine in
Paris. 'The electrical requirements for filming in
35mm were impressive,' he continues. 'Because I had a
portable digital video camera at my disposal I ended
up using HD. Only the large frames of Liam Neeson
remained on traditional film. My good fortune in
achieving a texture in these circumstances stemmed
from the fact that the sequence was shot at night.
It's different during daylight as HD generally retains
an image knockout and one inevitably resorts to an
electronic image. With quite a lot of filtering and
Kodak VISION Premier Color Print Film 2393 for the
final shoot, the image texture was close to that of
film.' At one point Abramowicz thought of using KODAK
VISION2 Expression 500T 5229, but it seemed to him
that it would be a little too soft for this type of
film. Instead he settled on KODAK VISION2 500T 5218.
'5218 provided me with a unity of texture,' he
remarks. 'With a beautiful subject and a beautiful
actor, I no longer wanted to trademark the light as my
own. I had to feel the ambiance and ensure it matched
the film. I can only aid the audience's experiences
with light, for example the anguish of a character.
Apart from using 5kW or 10kW Fresnel lenses for
contrast in a room or to create night time effects,
all my electrical foundations are in fluorescent
light. It mixes in the eye and allows me to illuminate
an actor without a particular light source being
discerned. This kind of light is sufficiently diffuse
to make the whole scene iridescent without emphasizing
it; I don't know of any other light sources capable of
achieving the same result. The story of 'Taken'
truly implies this kind of sober lighting style.'
[From KODAK 'Focus on Film'.]
Michel
Abramowicz: 'A Trip to Remember'
[2013]: 'Having to work with only one lens pushed us
into discovering everything that the lens could do,
which was really the purpose of the exercise. We
decided to shoot Steadicam quite a lot, as that
enabled us to get both wide shots and close-ups. The
idea of the movie is to show off the anamorphic format
as a fantastic one for cinema; for me it is the format
for cinema. When you work in anamorphic you need the
right locations and you need to build your frame
carefully. For people of my generation, who worked for
so long with film negative, leaving behind the texture
of film grain is quite painful, but if we can carry
the anamorphic format into the digital revolution then
we retain something really cinematic. We decided to
work a lot at T1.9 to keep the background out of focus
and keep a shallow depth of field. With ALEXA's
sensitivity it would have been easy to work at T4 or
T5.6, but we really wanted to restrict the depth of
field. I was very happy with how the Master Anamorphic
performed at T1.9 because there was no distortion and
no loss of the color structure, the colors remained
completely stable. Zeiss obviously worked very hard on
this lens because it gives a very nice quality of
picture. The flaring is nice but not too strong. We
were trying to maximize the out-of-focus backgrounds
and highlights, and we loved the effect. When you
focus on something specific in the frame then you are
really telling your story; with the Master Anamorphic
there is a graduation as the focus falls away that is
very nice. I do notice that a lot of films shot
digitally can look the same, but with anamorphic you
have the possibility - if you have a good focus puller
- of creating a truly cinematic picture and getting
back to a feeling of real cinema. For the nice skin
tones I think it was a combination of four elements:
the most important is the lens; then the ALEXA; then
the lighting; and finally the make-up girl! When we
showed the film on a big screen at Micro Salon a lot
of people asked me if I had actually lit it, because
there is a misconception that shooting digitally at
800 ASA or higher means you don't need to light
anything, but it's not true. Cinematographers need to
adapt to digital but we also need to continue to light
the image - this is fundamental. However, it is true
that this lens helps a lot with getting a very nice
skin texture and color; in fact these were the nicest
skin tones I have ever seen on digital. The film
looked fantastic at Micro Salon with a 4K projector,
it was just incredible.' [From the ARRI NEWS
website.]
| FILMS & TELEVISION | |
|---|---|
|
1981 |
La saisie [Yves-Noël François] 16mm/c; short/10m |
|
1984 |
L'anniversaire de Georges [Patrick Traon] c; short/13m |
|
1984 |
Epitaphe [Jean-Claude Robert] c; short/14m |
|
1984 |
Ça n'arrive qu'à moi [Francis Perrin] c; delta-plane ph; ph: Didier Tarot |
|
1985 |
Kubyre [Pierre-Henri Salfati] c; short/24m |
|
1985 |
Le bonheur a encore frappé [Jean-Luc Trotignon] c |
|
1986 |
D'après Maria [Jean-Claude Robert] c; short/30m |
|
1988 |
Tolérance [Pierre-Henri Salfati] c |
|
1989 |
La fille des collines [Robin Davis] c |
|
1990 |
Annabelle partagée [Francesca Comencini] c |
|
1991 |
Vent d'est/East Wind [Robert Enrico] c |
|
1992 |
Une journée chez ma mère/Part-time Parents [Dominique Cheminal] c |
|
1994 |
Red Shoe Diaries [ep #27 'Like Father, Like Son' dir by Rafael Eisenman] 65-part tv-series, 1992-96; 3rd season, 1994 |
|
1994 |
L'échappée belle [Jérôme Enrico] tvm |
|
1994 |
État des lieux/Inner City [Jean-François Richet] s16/b&w; cph: Pierre Boffety & Valérie Le Gurun |
|
1996 |
La ballade de Titus [Vincent De Brus] c |
|
1999 |
Capitães de Abril/April Captains/Capitaines d'avril [Maria de Medeiros] c |
|
2001 |
Sueurs/Sweat [Louis-Pascal Couvelaire] scope/c; 2uc: Charlet Recors; aph: James Swanson |
|
2002 |
Michel Vaillant [Louis-Pascal Couvelaire] s35/c; 2uc: Dominique De Wever; filmed 2002-03 |
|
2004 |
L'empire des loups/Empire of the Wolves [Chris Nahon] p/c; 2uc: Vincent Muller; filmed February-May & October (in Turkey) |
|
2006 |
Ha-Sodot/The Secrets/Emeth [Avi Nesher] c |
With actor Liam Neeson [left] - "Taken"
Photo by Stéphanie Branchu [courtesy of Michel Abramowicz]
|
2007 |
Taken [Pierre Morel] s35+HD (Genesis)-to-35mm scope/c; 2uc: Gil Pannetier; see above |
|
2007 |
Sagan [Diane Kurys] 16mm (+ 35bu)/b&w-c; prod as 2-part tvm (#1 'Un charmant petit monstre' & #2 'Des bleus à l'âme'; 2x 90m; 16mm); theatrical version (117m; 35bu) |
|
2008 |
From Paris with Love [Pierre Morel] s35 (+ D-Cinema)/c; 2uc: Gil Pannetier |
[Middle] - "Once I Was" - photo by Eldad Rafaeli [courtesy of Michel Abramowicz]
|
2009 |
Paam Hayiti/Once I Was/The Matchmaker/Love Lesson [Avi Nesher] scope/c |
|
2010 |
The Thing [Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.] p (+ D-Cinema)/c; 2uc: David Franco; aph: Hans Bjerno & Mark Hryma; reshoots January 2011; prequel to film by John Carpenter (1981) |
|
2010 |
Wave [María Ripoll] scheduled to start shooting in August; status unknown |
|
2010 |
Racing Patriots [Eric Stoltz] announced; status unknown |
|
2011 |
Stars 80/Stars des années 80 (Frédéric Forestier (replaced Pascal Bourdiaux)] HD (ARRI ALEXA Plus)-to-35mm scope (+ D-Cinema)/c; addph: Jean-Paul Agostini; ph Los Angeles: Sandra Valde-Hansen; aph: Steven Desbrow |
|
2011 |
Wireless [Jerry Ciccoritti] announced |
|
2012 |
Pla'ot/The Wonders [Avi Nesher] HD/c; 2uc: Boaz Yehonatan Yaacov |
|
2013 |
A Trip to Remember [Roberto de Angelis] HD (ARRI ALEXA Plus/4:3 & Studio/Master Scope)/c; short/8m24s; test film for the ARRI/ZEISS Master Anamorphic 50mm (MA50) lens; shot in January (3 days); see above |
|
2015 |
Lady Bloodfight [Chris Nahon] HD/c |
|
2015 |
Passion [Arthur Vernon] scope/c; short/15m; cph: Vincent Jeannot |
|
2015 |
Past Life/Hahataim/Ha'khata'im [Avi Nesher] HD scope/c |
|
2016 |
Love Locks [Martin Wood] tvm/HD (ARRI ALEXA); co-'b' camera; ph: Richard Ciupka; ep #359 of 'Hallmark Hall of Fame'-series (2017) |
| FILMS AS CAMERA ASSISTANT/OPERATOR | |
|---|---|
|
1978 |
The Cousteau Odyssey [ep (48m) 'Time Bomb at Fifty Fathoms'; tv-series] co-c.asst; ph: various |
|
1978 |
Une histoire simple/A Simple Story [Claude Sautet] c.op 'b' cam; ph: Jean Boffety |
|
1978 |
Comme les anges déchus de la planète Saint-Michel [Jean Schmidt; doc] co-c.asst (as M. Abramovicz); ph: Roland Bernard |
|
1978 |
It Rained All Night the Day I Left [Nicolas Gessner] c.asst; ph: Richard Ciupka |
|
1979 |
Dizengoff 99/99 Dizengoff Street [Avi Nesher] 1st c.asst; ph: Jean Boffety |
|
1979 |
The Hostage Tower [Claudio Guzmán; tvm] co-c.asst; ph: Jean Boffety |
|
1980 |
Un mauvais fils [Claude Sautet] 1st c.asst; ph: Jean Boffety |
|
1980 |
Les uns et les autres/Bolero [: Dance of Life] [Claude Lelouch] co-c.asst; ph: Jean Boffety |
|
1981 |
Condorman [Charles Jarrott] 2nd c.asst 'b' cam; ph: Charles F. Wheeler |
|
1981 |
Staline est mort [Yves Ciampi; tvm] 1st c.asst; ph: Jacques Renoir |
|
1981 |
Malesherbes, avocat du roi [Yves-André Hubert; tvm] 1st c.asst; ph: Jacques Renoir |
|
1982 |
Le gendarme et les gendarmettes [Jean Girault] c.op 'b' cam; ph: Jean Boffety |
|
1982 |
L'argent [Robert Bresson] 1st c.asst; ph: Pasqualino De Santis & Emmanuel Machuel |
|
1983 |
Carmen/Bizet's Carmen [Francesco Rosi] 1st c.asst; ph: Pasqualino De Santis |
