Semler marvels, "An extreme-sports guy riding a European motocross bike hits a ramp and does a jump over a barn that’s about 30 feet high, so his jump is obviously higher than that and at least 100 feet long. And as he flies over the barn, it blows up right behind him, right on his tail, and we shot it all for real. The rider was fully gelled-up by John Frazier, who did an extraordinary job of following him over the barn with those massive explosions."

It wasn’t the kind of action the filmmakers wanted to film twice, but Cohen wanted much more than the typical coverage. "I wanted what I called ‘Cubist action,’" Cohen explains. "You know how Picasso would show you the front of a face and the profile? I wanted to do that on film. I wanted to film an action moment from the greatest number of possible angles, so Dean and I went to work. In combination with dutching, we used the Technocrane and Libra head and the SpaceCam and began to move the perspective around the given moment."

"I’d never set up so many cameras on a stunt in my life," Semler acknowledges with a chuckle. "We only had one shot at it. I set 13 cameras up, literally surrounding the stunt, so the light wasn’t ideal for some of the angles. But I knew we’d be doing a digital intermediate and would have access to more correction tools than normal in post."

About half of Semler’s 13 Panavision cameras were manned. Some were in crash boxes and some were lockoffs, and some were running at 96 fps to give the action maximum impact. "The hardest thing was trying to get the right amount of light in there, especially at night," Semler notes. "To run 96 frames, you’re losing two stops, and we were shooting anamorphic. I used the Panavision 400mm a lot at night, which has a stop of T3. I also pulled out the ‘Hubble,’ the fabulous Primo 3:1 270-840mm zoom, which requires about a T4.5. To get that stop at 96 fps requires a lot of light, so I had to light it up to T11 for a start. My gaffer, Jimmy Gilson, brought in two big Muscos and two little Muscos in order to give me enough stop, and they were fantastic — the large units were generally in fixed positions and the smaller ones were mobile and able to move very quickly."

When it came time to edit the sequence, Cohen realized he’d pioneered a new type of action sequence: "Those 13 cameras set up all around the action gave editor Chris Lebenzon and me a chance to take the audience through the experience in a giddy, you-are-on-the-motorcycle way. Our goal was to make the audience feel as if they’re into this like they’ve never been into an action moment before."

After shooting in Prague, Austria, Colorado and California, XXX wrapped up with three days in Tahiti. "I didn’t take electrics over there because Rob said we wouldn’t do any interiors," Semler recalls. "But a couple of days before we left, Rob said he wanted an interior shot after all. I told him we weren’t taking any lights, but I thought I could make it work. In the shot, the camera is indoors, looking above a table and out the bungalow doors at Vin and Asia, who are sunbathing on the deck with a turquoise lagoon behind them. The camera just pulls back and drops down into a close shot of a tiny handheld device on the table, which has a monitor showing Cage’s boss [played by Samuel L. Jackson] saying, ‘XXX, where are you?’ I had [key grip] ‘Bear’ Paul and [key rigging grip] Kim Heath put a 12-foot tower in the lagoon outside the window, and I put one reflector on the tower and another inside the room. It was a billiard shot — we bounced light off a reflector onto another reflector and back onto the table, and it worked. That was a nice way to finish."

Semler says he was very happy with the lab at Prague’s Barrandov Studios, where the majority of XXX’s negative was developed. He put the finishing touches on the show with color timer Mike Stanwick at Deluxe Hollywood and colorist Steve Bowen at EFilm. "I’ve worked with Mike for a long time, and he and I both worked with Steve on the digital intermediate for We Were Soldiers," he notes. "Mike brings an amazing eye to the digital work, and after having such a wonderful experience with EFilm on Soldiers, I was really looking forward to going through the process again."

Speaking of nice finishes, at press time Semler had just been notified that he’d been awarded the Members of the Order of Australia. "The Australian AM honors people in sports, medicine, science, education, religion and the arts and so on. This year, for the first time, they honored three cinematographers: me, Johnny Seale [ASC, ACS] and Milton Ingerson [ACS], a retired cameraman and longtime president of the ACS," he says. "It’s beyond being recognized by your peers; it’s being recognized by your country for services to the arts. It’s about five steps short of a knighthood! That came as quite a surprise, especially because my wife’s been saying all these years, ‘Stop working 16 hours a day, six days a week, show after show after show. No one’s going to give you a medal!’ And here it is."

TECHNICAL SPECS Anamorphic 2.40:1 Panavision Panaflex Platinum, Lightweight Panaflex, Panastar Primo, C-Series lenses Kodak Vision 500T 5279 Digital Intermediate by EFilm Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393