“I love westerns and I’ve always wanted to make one,” says director Ron Howard, who himself appeared in The Shootist opposite John Wayne. “I wanted to do one all on location and shoot it quickly.” So Howard, fresh from his Best Director Oscar win for A Beautiful Mind, jumped at the chance to make The Missing, a western set in New Mexico in 1885 that stars Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones. “It’s definitely a western, but it’s not your typical genre piece,” notes Howard, who wanted a director of photography who could bring both scope and intimacy to the story.

Howard found his man in Salvatore Totino, who had previously shot only contemporary films such as Changing Lanes and Any Given Sunday. "And that was exactly what I wanted," says Howard. "Someone whose work was contemporary and psychologically driven, but who could also give me the beauty and grandeur of the locations."

Likewise, Totino, who shot the film in Super 35, wanted to "re-imagine the genre" through the use of innovative camera angles. "I wanted to approach the western in a more unconventional and suspenseful way because it’s also a thriller," Totino says. "Camera movement and different angles draw the audience into the film. That’s why I stayed away from standard coverage and didn’t rely on over-the-shoulder shots or traditional masters. The idea was that the style should underscore the emotions and the tension."

The pair began by watching old westerns and studying contemporary still photographs. " Ron stressed that he wanted audiences to feel the journey the characters take," says Totino. "They start off in the mountains and move down to the Mexican desert, so the change in the color palette was important. We shot in this gypsum mine at the Zia Pueblo, with very white sand, and then at Ghost Ranch, which had bright red sand, and we decided to really accentuate the locations and colors."

To this end, the DP used three different stocks. "I used Kodak 5248 100 ASA for most of the daytime exteriors," he reports. "I like the contrast and color saturation you get with the stock. At some locations I used the 5246 250 ASA, and then for the night shoots I went with 5218 500 ASA, as it has a lot of latitude and I knew that I could be a little bit under-exposed but still get the detail I wanted."

Totino also used various filters to underscore the emotion of a particular sequence- at the tense scenes at the mine, he used a blue filter, while the bloody, fast-paced shoot-out and rescue at Ghost Ranch were overlaid with a coral filter, "to help bring out the color." For a deer-skinning scene, he used yellow straw filters.

"Getting the shot was always a challenge as most of the locations were very remote, which meant we had to hand-carry equipment in, and we had very extreme weather conditions," adds Totino. Indeed, the rugged New Mexico locations ultimately required much ingenuity on the part of Totino and his crew. One area was so muddy and remote it wouldn’t support a crane. Other locales were so rocky and uneven that any attempt to lay down dolly tracks failed. In one instance, Totino mounted the camera on some "sliding plates we put on top of the tripod to simulate the movement of a camera on a dolly." This was the invention of his key grip, Doug Cowden.

"Ron loves to move the camera, and so we also used a lot of Steadicam shots with operator Will Arnot, and a lot of hand-held camera work using an Arri LT," he reports. "That way, I was free to concentrate on the actors’ performances. The Arri LT handheld camera is also very easy to adjust and reframe, so it allows you to be more spontaneous, almost like a still photographer. And Ron gave me so much freedom. We’d plan a shot and, a couple of takes in, I’d have an idea and start to reframe and he’d let the scene keep playing. It was a truly creative atmosphere."

"I was also very lucky in being able to do a digital intermediate on the film," says Totino. "It was scanned in at 4K and downresed to 2K at EFilm in Hollywood." The DP, who worked closely with colorist Steve Bowen, notes that the DI "let me keep tweaking the look in post-production. For instance, I’d gone a bit too far with the straw filter, so we were able to bring it back a little in post."

Summing up, Totino says that shooting The Missing was "definitely the toughest assignment I’ve had yet, but also the most rewarding. I’m very pleased with the way it looks."