With a raft of features under his belt at the age of 27, Danish-born director of photography, Marcel Zyskind, appears to have had the kind of accelerated career that most twenty-somethings in the film industry can only dream of. In part, this is down to his successful collaboration with Michael Winterbottom, after a big break working as DoP on the prolific director's harrowing people-smuggling drama, 'In This World'. Shot on DSR-PD150Ps using anamorphic lenses to give it an epic, cinematic feel, the film incorporated several improvised and covertly-filmed scenes. Zyskind has worked on all of Winterbottom's subsequent features. Now their latest collaboration, 'A Mighty Heart', has once again brought the duo back to Pakistan. While filming in Pakistan and India was never going to be as low key as previous Winterbottom endeavors, the feature is shot in the same bare documentary style as 'In This World' and 'The Road to Guantánamo', using an HDW-750P supplied by Arri Media, and using natural light where possible. "We had to be quick and flexible. Filming was a case of driving around Mumbai, filming, jumping in a car again and moving on," recalls Zyskind. He admits that it was harder to shoot this way with 150 paparazzi following their every move. "The first day of the shoot in Mumbai, Dan Futterman and Angelina Jolie let the press take good shots of them walking in front of the hotel and by the beach. But then, when a week goes by and you still have lots of people chasing after you, it becomes a bit much. Sometimes we'd send out a decoy ahead of us and then go off and shoot in the opposite direction. "Because of previous problems getting official permission to shoot in Pakistan while filming 'The Road to Guantánamo', Zyskind traveled to Karachi alone as a 'tourist' to steal beauty shots for the film, and the Indian city of Pune doubles for Karachi in most of the dramatic scenes. According to Zyskind, digital cameras were a definite plus when it came to border control. "They are less conspicuous. It was easier to get in than if we'd had film cameras and crew," he says. 

For more information press the link below:
https://www.cinematographers.nl/PaginasDoPh/zyskind.htm