A Real Long Shot from the Movie ‘Deepfake’

Exterior Brooklyn Bridge, night. We open with a close-up of our hero’s face as she runs across the bridge, slowly zooming out until the entire cityscape is revealed.*

We added the asterisk a few weeks after finishing the shot list, which meant there were still some unresolved issues. Issues like: Was there a lens out there with enough range? Would it be fast enough to shoot at night with no additional lighting? Where could we possibly set up to get the right frame? Now, if this were a Hollywood production, the shot wouldn’t even be a bump in the road. But for our micro-budget indie Deepfake, it was Kilimanjaro. We decided to tackle the lens question first.

Our DP Robert Bevis walked over to the bridge with his viewfinder app to try to get a handle on the specs we’d need. At the wide end, it looked like 40mm would be able to capture the skyline and bridge. But he quickly ran into trouble on the telephoto side. He guessed we might need something in the ballpark of 1200mm at least. As far as super 35 zooms go, the Optimo 24-290 is considered a very fast, long-range zoom, but this kind of shot needed something in a whole different universe. This led us to the world of live sports broadcasts zooms.

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Broadcast zooms—those large box-style lenses you see at football games—can feature zoom ranges of 25 times or more. The primary issue though, aside from the huge cost, is that they’re traditionally designed to cover a ⅔” sensor. For those keeping score, a two-third inch sensor has roughly 1/15th of the surface area of a full frame sensor. At that size, we’d be lucky to get 360p. We briefly entertained the idea of trying to source a vintage broadcast zoom off eBay and mounting it on an Ursa Mini Pro 12k, but this was deemed impractical.

As it turned out, Fujinon had just released their new Duvo PL-mount cine box lens designed to cover full-frame sensors and bridge the gap between the cinema world and live events. It had the range (37.5-1500mm with the extender). It had the speed (f/2.8-5.0 max aperture). Indeed, it might have been the only lens on the planet capable of getting this shot. The problem was that this was a brand-new Ferrari, and we were looking for nickels under the couch.

First take on Duvo 25-1000mmDeepfake

Fortunately, Rob was able to track down the contact info for the Vice President of Sales at Fujinon, conveying to him our hopes and limitations. We had a couple things working in our favor. First, most of the industry was shut down at the time due to the SAG strike (we had a waiver). Second, we were lucky enough to have received a New Filmmaker Grant from Panavision, which—hopefully—might give us enough credibility to be trusted with a very sophisticated and very expensive piece of equipment.

Fujinon was sympathetic to our plight. There was a demo unit traveling around the country, and maybe, just maybe, a window would open up for a day and we could grab it. We were about a week out from principal photography and didn’t have a backup. We crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.

In the meantime there was still the question of where the camera would go. Walking up and down the bridge, we found that only a couple buildings had the height and proximity needed to pull off the shot. But identifying the best locations was only the first step. Getting access was the real challenge. DUMBO, the neighborhood in Brooklyn closest to the bridge, is not known for its affordability or its support of independent filmmaking. Most buildings politely told us no. The rest were not so polite. We would end up starting production without a lens or a location. The asterisk was getting bigger by the day.

But then we got some good news. Fujinon’s demo unit was coming to New York, and there was exactly a one-day window for us to get the shot, right at the very end of production. We were ecstatic. The shooting schedule was hastily rewritten to make room. On top of that, our 1st AC Willa Pisarski would be able to do a prep day with the lens at Panavision, who would also supply us with a Sony Venice II to help compensate for the low light on the bridge. Things were looking up.

Now we just needed a place to shoot. The buildings had uniformly rejected us. Now we were looking for residents. Friend networks were scoured. Old acquaintances were rekindled. Surely someone must know someone in one of those buildings. But we came up empty-handed, and the shot date was drawing closer and closer.

And then, less than five days out, we got our miracle. Word got back that a friend of a friend of friend lived in our dream building. And they were a proud supporter of the local arts. They could get us through the front door and onto the roof, though if anything happened after that we were on our own. It was a risk we were more than willing to take.

1st AC Willa Pisarski maintains focusDeepfake

We pulled up to the building and met our benefactor in person for the first time on the night of the shoot. It felt like we were pulling off a bank job. Our skeleton crew was dressed head to toe in black, hauling huge black cases through the lobby of the high rise. After a nervous elevator ride up, we were out onto the roof and able to take in the beautiful view of the bridge.

We quickly got to work, doing our best to stay quiet and keep our headlamp usage to a minimum. The roof looked like it would normally be a popular place for residents, but the weather had just turned cold, and so far we were the only ones out there. But any minute it could all come crashing down, so we tried to move fast. After just half an hour, Willa and our 2nd AC Michael Glantzis had the camera built and ready to go.

And then our luck ran out. Something was wrong. We were aiming our lens out onto the pedestrian walkway of the bridge, but couldn’t see any faces. As it just so happened, one of the bridge’s long structural cables was positioned right between our camera and their heads. It was positioned in a way to make the shot perfectly unusable. We couldn’t believe it. We had come so far only to get stuck right at the finish line.

What could be done? Repositioning the tripod was futile. Was there any other way we could raise the hundred-plus pounds of equipment? No. We looked back out onto the bridge. There were a few very tall guys out there who were managing to just clear the cable. Perhaps we could put our lead in heels? That line of thinking eventually got us to put her on a bike, which worked much better for the scene, and most importantly, lifted her well into view of the camera.

Rob and Willa were able to practice the move a few times while our lead Jessica DiGiovanni ran off to rent a CitiBike. When she returned a few minutes later, it was finally time to rip off our first take. Jessica got into position, we gave her the signal, and she began to pedal.

It looked better than we ever imagined. Tracking a speeding object while maintaining focus at 1500mm is not easy, but it was a testament to Rob and Willa’s skill – plus the usability of Duvo – that the first take came off so well. And as she biked off into the distance and the camera zoomed out to reveal the city, a tugboat emerged from under the bridge. Rob and I looked at each other in disbelief. Here we were, after months of discussion, somehow actually getting the dream shot.

We ended up doing seven more takes, Rob and Willa improving their flow each time. But in the end the tugboat was too good to pass up. As a few celebratory beers were cracked, we spent our last few minutes with the lens trying to shoot passing planes. The shot was officially in the can.

Needless to say, something like this could not have happened without a lot of generous support, from the teams at Fujinon and Panavision, to the friends that were able to get us up on that rooftop. And on top of that, my god, the luck. Even a little bit of bad weather that night could have killed it all.

You could make the argument that shots like these are self-indulgent, that we could’ve just used a drone, or we could have just skipped it altogether. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But making these big gambles on something wildly impractical—isn’t that what makes moviemaking fun?