The latest installation of the series brings Sylvester Stallone back as the iconic underdog in Rocky Balboa. In some regards the new film harkens back to the first, this time Rocky is an aging restaurant owner who returns to the ring as a long shot to fight the current heavyweight champ. When Cinematographer Clark Mathis (The Perfect Score, Happy Endings) agreed to shoot Rocky Balboa, he was all too familiar with the original film and found its message still relevant since it’s release in 1976. “I’m really a fan of the films,” he began. “The Rocky films are full of iconic images. His character is so distinctive and such an archetypal piece of American history. It’s amazing how Rocky has become synonymous with America, not only here, but around the world.”
DP Clark Mathis (center) prepares multi-ARRICAM set up on an insert car.
In Rocky Balboa, an ESPN program creates a computer simulation of the title character taking on the current champion, Mason Dixon (played by Antonio Tarver). When the projection picks Rocky as the winner, it sparks the curiosity of the old fighter and the young champ. Explains Mathis, “Rocky is kind of a celebrity and he’s telling the same old stories over and over again. The current reigning challenger is searching for a challenge in the world of boxing. He has the money and the title, but he doesn’t feel like he’s earned it because it’s been very orchestrated up until this point. Eventually their paths cross and Rocky gives some meaning to Mason Dixon by actually challenging him in the ring.”
The cinematographer desired to create a contrast between the two main characters through lighting and color. He says, “Rocky is synonymous with Philadelphia and the community is very rich, with a lot of history and personality behind it. There was a chance, especially with all of the night shoots, to introduce a lot of urban color and not by blasting a large HMI on a Condor down the street. My goal was to embrace the depth of the city, using the naturally occurring light and mismatch the color temperatures – sort of create diversity in depth that was indicative of Rocky’s life experience. His world had a lot of texture and color to it. Whereas Mason Dixon, his world was a palace on a hill essentially. I tried to limit the palette and used soft, overhead lighting that was very flat without any color modulation.”
With locations in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, the filmmakers spent the majority of the shoot in Philadelphia for six weeks, making an effort to showcase the home of its famous hero. “We spent the most time of any Rocky movie in Philadelphia and shooting on location offered a unique set of challenges,” notes Mathis. “It helped to have my documentary background – being able to know what you need and what you don’t need, and move very quickly. Sly wanted to move and have a lot of momentum to the shoot. I designed the lighting that would allow us to turn lights on/off very quickly to create many different looks within the same environment and not have to stop and spend a lot of time relighting.”
A majority of the shoot took place in Philadelphia, revisiting such memorable sites like the museum steps made famous in the first film.
With Stallone directing, the pace of the shoot was extremely quick. “Sly is a force of nature,” the cinematographer laughs. “Basically you have to keep up! During one of Rocky’s training montages in a gym, we did 117 set-ups with two cameras in about 13.5 hours of shooting. It was the most setups I’ve ever done on a movie. Day 1 we had 79 setups.”
The script also called for more than a few scenes to be shot at night. To create this look Mathis was one of the first DPs to use the brand new ARRI/ Zeiss Master Primes, lenses with the ability to shoot at a T1.3. “I’m really happy and grateful that Denny Clairmont [of Clairmont Camera] and ARRI were able to give us the first set of Master Primes. I don’t think I could have achieved the look I wanted for Philadelphia with anything but the Master Primes, especially with so much night shooting. I wanted to shoot wide open and have the clarity and resolution to give me the chance to be bold and embrace the environment of Philadelphia. We were really limited with the budget, but I think it’s one of the biggest canvases I’ve ever shot because you’re able to see the whole city. Lighting was at very minimal levels on the actors to not overpower the natural environment. We were really able to walk that razor’s edge and produce something that has a lot of breadth and depth for what our budget would have allowed us to do had we lit it traditionally.”
Stallone, which Mathis refers to as a “force of nature,” also revisited his role as director for Rocky Balboa.
Mathis also used the lenses for bright, daylight exteriors. “The movie opens with Rocky at the grave of Adrian, his wife. We framed this wonderful tableau of him next to her headstone, with this big tree to the left of the frame and the sun in the right of the frame. We got the dailies and there was this perfect ball in the sky for the sun. There was no flare, almost no change in density in the blacks, and we were shooting right at the sun. For me, I didn’t have to worry as much about flares or spend time addressing those issues because with the Master Primes, the density wasn’t affected.”
To properly capture these scenes, Mathis relied on ARRICAMs and Kodak stocks 5229, 5218 and 5205. “This was the first Rocky movie not shot on Panavision,” explains Mathis. “The ARRICAMs have the best viewing systems in low light that I have ever seen. With superior viewing systems also comes superior video tap. Since Sly was acting and directing, he relied very heavily on watching playback. We had to have the best delivery of that image for him to review after every take. We shot a lot of nights and we were shooting in very low light. Had we been shooting with any other camera system, I think it would have been very tough for him to gauge the performance. There’s no other system that provides brighter, better video image off the path in low light than the ARRICAM.”
Sylvester Stallone was not afraid to show a less pretty side.
Actors are often known for their visually pleasing looks, but in the case of Stallone on this project; he was not concerned with a perfect appearance for the camera. “In the past when you go back to the third and fourth Rocky films, you can tell that he definitely wanted to be glamorized. There was really soft lighting and filtration. For this movie, he didn’t want any of that beauty lighting. He wanted to see the age on his face and really let it all hang out. It’s part of Rocky’s character now that he is older and that he had all this mileage on him.”
The different visual style also carried over to how the filmmakers decided to create the look and feel of the final boxing match. Says the DP who garnered an ASC nomination in 2002, “Sly wanted this film to be very different from all the other Rocky movies. He had the original concept of the finale being shot on tape like a live boxing event. For me, you’re always looking for ways to create contrast and without being too obtrusive about it. This was a chance to do a more traditional narrative in a very innovative way – contrasting the body of the movie being film with the finale on videotape. We shot it on HD 24p, going back and mixing certain parts of film for the montage sequence. Once he passes through the curtain of Mandalay Bay for the fight, we switch to video. The curtain becomes a very theatrical dividing line.”
Mathis was not new to shooting on 24P HD, but this was his first multi-camera HD experience, at times shooting up to seven cameras. “We wanted to emulate the exact camera positions and vantage points of a Pay-Per-View fight. It really brings an element of reality. It’s almost like you are watching this huge sporting event and you are subconsciously cued by the video to think this is something that is not rehearsed and is transpiring before your very eyes. It has more style than I could ever impart than if I had chosen a different film stock or process,” he says.
A mix of both cinematic and sporting events techniques were employed to cover the boxing match. “In the middle of the fight, there’s this montage that has not been done in a Rocky film before. We mixed high def and film with the amazing Photosonics camera. It creates this completely different perspective on the movement, really time extended. With the video cameras there were things you couldn’t do with a film camera. I could increase the shutter speed to 1/10,000 of a second. So you have this look beyond Saving Private Ryan with the articulation of motion. We mixed up the film footage in conjunction with shutter stuff of the video footage. When I wanted designated areas of slow motion on video, we would switch the cameras form 24p to 60i to unzip the video and create a slow motion later to do on playback.”
A mix of both cinematic and sporting events techniques were employed to cover the boxing match, employing HD and film cameras.
Shooting the elaborate sequence proved to be a massive technical undertaking, a feat that Mathis credits with a completely capable crew.
“At any one time we had the ability to go to 7 hi-def video cameras and five or six film cameras. My hats are off to all the guys in the camera and video engineering departments,” he commends. “I’m so proud of the crew and everyone involved with the confluence of film and video technology. Sometimes on productions there’s a mixing of formats for style sake but on this film there was a mixture of formats for a very express purpose of creating a reality. Any time we went back and forth, there was a dramatic emphasis and reality living together in a way that I hadn’t seen before. It was amazing to see something that complex on a technical level happen without any incident. Everything worked perfectly.”
While filming the climactic fight, the production managed to shoot during a real professional boxing match, taking advantage of the crowd and atmosphere. Says Mathis, “We basically piggybacked on the televised Taylor Hopkins fight. HBO gave us a seven-minute window where we could walk Sly out through the entryway up to the ring during the actual sold-out Pay-Per-View event. The cheapest seat in there was about $800 and you had never seen or heard these dressed-up high rollers, turned into eight-year-olds screaming for him. That to me, was just very moving. They cheered twice as loud for Sly than they did for the actual fighters at the match that they paid $800 to see. You didn’t even have to say anything, 12,000 people without having to be prompted over the PA system were screaming ‘Rocky’! It was unbelievable.”
For the cinematographer, the experience on Rocky Balboa is more than just a new credit to add to an already accomplished body of work. “There were a lot of amazing, larger-than-life moments that I’m still processing since I’ve been so busy. Just in historical context of this, I’m very happy to have been a part of it and I think Sly’s happy, which is an accomplishment,” he laughs.
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