net picking:
poster
Capturing SpiderMan
Spider-Man saves the world from super-powered evildoers. Nels Israelson saves the world from bad movie posters.
The photographer behind posters for such blockbuster films as “Spider-Man 2,” “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “X-Men 2,” Nels snaps movie-goers awake with his ability to make the physically impossible seem perfectly reasonable and the physically possible, otherworldly.
Parachuting In
“One of the features of specializing in film advertising,” he says, “is the thrill-seeking schedule. My work tends to involve intervals of quiet punctuated by a big photo bell going off. Then I run to slide down my photo pole and jump into my photo boots.
“I only parachute in for my moment,” Nels says, stretching the metaphor, ”when all cylinders line up — the studio’s marketing process, the agency’s timetable, the actor’s availability and the production’s protective preoccupation with making the movie.”
Which explains, in part, why Nels switched to digital when he shot Spider-Man for “Spider-Man 2” posters.
“One of the features of film advertising is the thrill-seeking schedule. My work tends to involve intervals of quiet punctuated by a big photo bell going off.”
A Gigantic Advantage
Digitally shooting the stuntman for the “Spider-Man 2” poster “was a gigantic advantage,” Nels says. “First, we were really up against a deadline, so there wasn’t a lot of time to process film and send out for scans.
“But we also knew that, working digitally, we could be more effective at shooting Chris Daniels, the stunt man. Stunt work is very difficult work. And shooting the character of Spider-Man for the poster is a dynamic, stunt-oriented image-making process.
Modeling Spider-Man.
Stunt man Chris Daniels strikes a pose for the movie poster.
“It was great to have the digital system when we needed Chris to hit these strenuous poses, because I could gather around the PowerBook with the creative team, and we could look at it and say ‘Okay. That’s it.’”
While Daniels caught his breath following a strenuous section of the shoot, the creative team — Nels, Chris, Josh Goldstine from Sony Pictures and Rick Lynch from the BLT Agency — reviewed results on the PowerBook. “We could look at the frames and say, ‘Okay. No more balancing on one foot. We got it.’”
Right to the Limit
Part of the reason Nels was able to get what he needed in such a compressed timeframe, he says, “is that we had the review process right there. Working digitally, we could see what was or wasn’t working technically or creatively.”
Using the PowerBook, Nels and his assistants could inspect small areas of the image to make sure that the complex lighting — hard and soft rimlighting and a minimum of fill — stayed within the limits of the digital capture system.
“When you’re shooting comic book stuff,” he says, “there are certain riffs, certain kinds of lighting, posing and staging that aren’t easy to do well or right. Even after years of playing with lighting, it’s still really hard to dial in. With the high-resolution image right there on your screen, on the set, you can really push things to the limit.”