by Ron Magid
Unit photography by Murray Close

Director Rob Cohen recalls that when he decided to follow up The Fast and the Furious with XXX, a James Bond-style, extreme-sports action flick, he wanted his new film "to go beyond The Road Warrior, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Waterworld in terms of action, and to have the artful, big-screen photography of Dances with Wolves." Fortunately, one of XXX’s executive producers, Arne Schmidt, had just completed We Were Soldiers with the cinematographer who had shot all of those films: Dean Semler, ASC, ACS. Now all Cohen had to do was convince Semler to tackle another incredibly rigorous film on the heels of Soldiers (see AC Feb. ’02).

The premise of XXX is that the National Security Administration has decided to recruit an unusually gifted criminal for espionage work. Several candidates are selected, and they are put through a series of death-defying tests. The consistent winner is the street-smart Xander Cage (Vin Diesel), who had initially caught the NSA’s eye after he stole and flamboyantly destroyed a U.S. senator’s classic car. Cage is offered a choice: go to prison or become a spy. Once he opts for the latter, he finds himself in Prague, where he must infiltrate a group of Russian anarchists suspected of terrorist acts.

Schmidt sent the XXX script to Semler on a Friday, and the Australian cameraman called Cohen two days later. "I thought it was a different story and a good piece of action," Semler recalls, "and when I met with Rob he drew a picture that really made the action explode off the page. But I wasn’t too sure about going to Europe for a long time, and I didn’t want to leave my crew. Then Joe Roth, with whom I’d worked on the two Young Guns movies and The Three Musketeers, rang up and said, ‘Come back to the fold.’ And when Arne first rang me, he’d said the show would be shot in Tahiti and Prague, so I began thinking, ‘Hmm, Tahiti for nine weeks and Prague for a week or two isn’t bad.’ The next thing I knew, I was on board

"As it turned out," he continues with a laugh, "it was 12 weeks in Prague in the miserable cold and a week in Tahiti. But I thought the story of an unlikely spy was a very smart idea, and you can’t beat Vin Diesel as a down-and-dirty James Bond."

So Semler and Cohen set off to revolutionize action filmmaking, which is how Semler’s career began — sort of. "I’d only done two features prior to The Road Warrior, and neither had any action," Semler notes. "But I’d done a lot of documentaries, and I think that experience really helped me with Road Warrior. Normally, feature films and especially commercials have a pristine quality; there can’t be an inch of the frame with any flaws. But in the Mad Max movies and in action movies in general, you can’t get too hung up about things that in the end don’t matter. [Director] George Miller’s words were ‘Just be bold.’ He didn’t want me to worry too much about matching light or getting rid of a paper cup a mile away that might be in the shot. George liked to take risks. Mind you, we weren’t being careless or near-enough-is-good-enough. It had to be right, but if you analyze Road Warrior you’ll see that some of it is overcast, some of it has the sun on one side and some on the other. But that doesn’t matter in that sort of action — just take a look at Jaws! On Road Warrior, the camera was either handheld or, if it was mounted, George and I were constantly shaking it. I’d feel a gigantic shake halfway through a shot I was operating, and it would be George kicking the legs of the tripod from underneath! That gave the shots a raw, wild, fantastic energy."

Creating a similar level of energy for XXX required the same kind of imagination, but different tools. "Rob had just used a lot of digital tricks for speed and vibration on The Fast and the Furious, things we’d never had on Road Warrior," Semler says. "So I listened to Rob’s ideas, and we combined them with some of my own to give XXX super-high energy."

Cohen says he wants "to expand and reinterpret the [action] genre in my own way. The Fast and the Furious was a first step, and XXX is the next. I wasn’t sure whether we should shoot XXX in Super 35 or anamorphic [2.40:1], but Dean loves anamorphic, so we went that way. I told him my guiding spirit for XXX’s style was The Third Man, but that in terms of action we were going to try something new. I wanted to create a sense of the kinetic, so I told Dean to bring a Technocrane and a Libra head because we needed to swing our perspectives around."

Producer Schmidt made it possible for Semler to take 14 of his key crew members, including A-camera operator Mark "Marko" O’Kane, A-camera first assistant Tony Rivetti, B-camera operator Richard Merryman and B-camera first assistant Fred McLane. "Arne had seen them at work on We Were Soldiers, and he understood how important their contribution would be to XXX," Semler says. "I was extremely lucky in that regard." A number of Czech technicians rounded out the crew in Prague, and "they quickly became part of my working family," he adds.

XXX features dazzling footage of extreme-sports athletes in action in a variety of settings, and a number of talented cameramen were pressed into service for second-unit work in locations around the world. Semler has especially high praise for Alex Witt, who directed and shot most of the second unit, and director James Arnett and operator Ron Hersey, who took over Witt’s duties when he moved on to another project; he also cites cinematographer Larry Blanford for capturing "absolutely amazing" second-unit footage of extreme skysurfing in Tahoe.

Semler used almost all of the same equipment he’d employed on We Were Soldiers, with completely different results. "I’ve always shot Panavision — I think the count is now 38 movies," he states. "It’s part of the family. We had a full set of Primo [T2 anamorphic] lenses and a full set of C-series lenses for Steadicam, crash-box and handheld work, as well as some extra Cs, a 5:1 zoom, a 10:1 zoom and a 3:1 zoom. We also used a 20mm wide-angle, of which there are only two in existence, on a couple of occasions.

"The classic black-and-white, shadowy look of The Third Man was our standard, and God knows how [director of photography] Robert Krasker got those huge street scenes in Vienna, with great depth of field, in the 1940s," Semler marvels. "I initially thought that instead of going with Kodak’s Vision 800 ASA [5289] stock, which worked very well for both interiors and exteriors on We Were Soldiers, I’d go the other way for XXX and use Kodak [Vision 200T] 5274, a really fine-grain stock, and get really gutsy shadows. But after scouting Prague, I realized that the sun was going to rise at 8 a.m. and set at about 4 p.m., and it wasn’t going to go very high on the horizon, which meant that we’d be in deep shadows in buildings. I knew there was no way in the world I’d be able to shoot a long lens of any sort, particularly in anamorphic, even in daylight. So I threw out that idea and went with my old favorite, [Kodak Vision 500T] 5279, which I rate for daylight at 64 ASA with an 85 N6 filter. My eyes are 64-ASA eyes — I could shoot forever without a light meter at 64 ASA during all of my documentary work, so I compute everything back to 64 ASA. The camera assistants would pull the filters if there wasn’t enough stop on the lens, or if they needed the depth."