Choosing Lenses - Salvatore Totino - Craft Truck - Through The Lens

The way I refer to Cinderella Man is I say it's the best movie Roger Deakins never shot. So what what was your plan going in? Thank you. Well the plan was to really try to make the the audience feel as though they were there. So for example in Russell's apartment I went through very painstaking steps not to remove walls. It was a set to work out lensing so that we were in the room and my crew was starting to get a little frustrated because there's only one door in and out. So this was your commitment? That was my commitment to try to make the audience really feel what it felt like to be in that apartment. Right. And it forced me to be on certain lenses because of the distances that I needed to be. So you know sometimes it might not have been as flattering if I had the distance to go on a longer lens and I think that that really comes out in the film and also in the boxing. You know Ron was like okay how are we going to do the boxing? Right. And we went to a gym out here in the valley way before and just got some video cameras and you know I said Ron well we'll just get in the ring with the cameras. He said well how are you going to get in the ring with the cameras? You know you're going to act this is going to get hurt. You're going to get hurt. I said no it won't. I said I think we can do this and we did a little test with some video cameras here in the valley. It kind of worked out but he's like but those are small cameras and I'm like look you know I can do it. We let's when we're in prep let's do some tests and that's what we did in prep. I got in the ring with Russell and another boxer. We studied the choreography first and then move around the choreography with them without the camera so they could see where I was. I could see where they were going and it was like doing a dance.