Gold rallies to four-day high as DXY recovers after touching fresh three-year low.
US Senate passes $4.5T tax cut bill; Bullion market largely unmoved by fiscal headlines.
JOLTS Job Openings and ISM data support Powell’s wait-and-see stance; ADP and NFP in focus next.
The Gold price rises over 1% as the Greenback pares some of its earlier losses, which sent the US Dollar Index (DXY) to a three-year low. Meanwhile, the US Senate passed the Trump tax bill, which is ready to be sent to the House of Representatives for its approval. At the time of writing, XAU/USD trades at $3,340, trading around four-day highs.
Bloomberg revealed that “Senators voted 51-50 to pass the bill. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. The package, which now goes to the House, combines $4.5 trillion in tax cuts with $1.2 trillion in spending cuts.”
The passage of the bill was ignored by Bullion traders so far. Economic data from the United States (US) was not ignored, justifying Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Jerome Powell’s wait-and-see stance.
The US Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) revealed that vacancies increased in May, exceeding economists’ forecasts. Manufacturing activity, as reported by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM), contracted for the fourth consecutive month but showed signs of improvement, approaching the expansion/contraction threshold.
Recently, Powell crossed the wires and remained slightly hawkish.
Aside from this, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that countries could be notified of higher tariffs as the July 9 deadline approaches.
This shortened week, ahead of the US Independence Day on July 4, will feature ADP employment figures, Initial Jobless Claims, and the Nonfarm Payrolls report for June.
Daily digest market movers: Gold price climbs as US yields and US Dollar advanced
Gold continues to rally, even as US Treasury yields rise. The 10-year US Treasury note is yielding 4.242%, a three-and-a-half basis point increase. US real yields, which are calculated by subtracting inflation expectations from the nominal yield, are also moving up close to four basis points to 1.979%.
The latest JOLTS report revealed that job openings in May rose to their highest level since November, reaching 7.769 million, up from 7.391 million, and exceeding forecasts of 7.3 million.
The ISM Manufacturing PMI in June improved, although it remained in contraction for the fourth consecutive month. The index rose to 49.0, up from 48.5 in May and above estimates of 48.8.
Powell revealed that policy is modestly restrictive and added that he can’t say if July is too early to cut rates, though he wouldn’t rule anything out. He said that if not for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the US central bank probably would have cut rates further.
Citi expects Gold prices to return to $2,500 – $2,700 by the second half of 2026.
The jobs data will be announced on Wednesday and Thursday. The ADP Employment Change is projected to improve from 37K private jobs added to the workforce to 85K. June’s Nonfarm Payrolls figures are likely to show that the labor market is indeed cooling down, projected at 110,000, down from May’s 139,000.
Money markets suggest that traders are pricing in 62 basis points of easing toward the end of the year, according to Prime Market Terminal data.
Source: Prime Market Terminal
XAU/USD technical outlook: Gold price poised to challenge $3,400
Gold uptrend remains intact, although traders need to achieve a daily close above the 50-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) at $3,322, which would keep them hopeful of higher prices. Bullish momentum has increased as portrayed by the Relative Strength Index (RSI).
That said, if XAU/USD climbs past $3,350, the next area of interest would be $3,400. On further strength, the following resistance levels would be $3,450 and the all-time high (ATH) at $3,500.
On the flipside, if Gold falls below the 50-day SMA, the first support would be $3,300. A breach of the latter will expose the June 30 swing low of $3,246.
An unexpectedly strong solar storm rocked our planet on April 23, 2023, sparking auroras as far south as southern Texas in the U.S. and taking the world by surprise.
Two days earlier, the Sun blasted a coronal mass ejection (CME) — a cloud of energetic particles, magnetic fields, and solar material — toward Earth. Space scientists took notice, expecting it could cause disruptions to Earth’s magnetic field, known as a geomagnetic storm. But the CME wasn’t especially fast or massive, and it was preceded by a relatively weak solar flare, suggesting the storm would be minor. But it became severe.
Using NASA heliophysics missions, new studies of this storm and others are helping scientists learn why some CMEs have more intense effects — and better predict the impacts of future solar eruptions on our lives.
A paper published in the Astrophysical Journal on March 31 suggests the CME’s orientation relative to Earth likely caused the April 2023 storm to become surprisingly strong.
The researchers gathered observations from five heliophysics spacecraft across the inner solar system to study the CME in detail as it emerged from the Sun and traveled to Earth.
They noticed a large coronal hole near the CME’s birthplace. Coronal holes are areas where the solar wind — a stream of particles flowing from the Sun — floods outward at higher than normal speeds.
“The fast solar wind coming from this coronal hole acted like an air current, nudging the CME away from its original straight-line path and pushing it closer to Earth’s orbital plane,” said the paper’s lead author, Evangelos Paouris of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “In addition to this deflection, the CME also rotated slightly.”
Paouris says this turned the CME’s magnetic fields opposite to Earth’s magnetic field and held them there — allowing more of the Sun’s energy to pour into Earth’s environment and intensifying the storm.
Meanwhile, NASA’s GOLD (Global-scale Observations of Limb and Disk) mission revealed another unexpected consequence of the April 2023 storm at Earth.
Before, during, and after the storm, GOLD studied the temperature in the middle thermosphere, a part of Earth’s upper atmosphere about 85 to 120 miles overhead. During the storm, temperatures increased throughout GOLD’s wide field of view over the Americas. But surprisingly, after the storm, temperatures dropped about 90 to 198 degrees Fahrenheit lower than they were before the storm (from about 980 to 1,070 degrees Fahrenheit before the storm to 870 to 980 degrees Fahrenheit afterward).
“Our measurement is the first to show widespread cooling in the middle thermosphere after a strong storm,” said Xuguang Cai of the University of Colorado, Boulder, lead author of a paper about GOLD’s observations published in the journal JGR Space Physics on April 15, 2025.
The thermosphere’s temperature is important, because it affects how much drag Earth-orbiting satellites and space debris experience.
“When the thermosphere cools, it contracts and becomes less dense at satellite altitudes, reducing drag,” Cai said. “This can cause satellites and space debris to stay in orbit longer than expected, increasing the risk of collisions. Understanding how geomagnetic storms and solar activity affect Earth’s upper atmosphere helps protect technologies we all rely on — like GPS, satellites, and radio communications.”
To predict when a CME will trigger a geomagnetic storm, or be “geoeffective,” some scientists are combining observations with machine learning. A paper published last November in the journal Solar Physics describes one such approach called GeoCME.
Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence in which a computer algorithm learns from data to identify patterns, then uses those patterns to make decisions or predictions.
Scientists trained GeoCME by giving it images from the NASA/ESA (European Space Agency) SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) spacecraft of different CMEs that reached Earth along with SOHO images of the Sun before, during, and after each CME. They then told the model whether each CME produced a geomagnetic storm.
Then, when it was given images from three different science instruments on SOHO, the model’s predictions were highly accurate. Out of 21 geoeffective CMEs, the model correctly predicted all 21 of them; of 7 non-geoeffective ones, it correctly predicted 5 of them.
“The algorithm shows promise,” said heliophysicist Jack Ireland of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was not involved in the study. “Understanding if a CME will be geoeffective or not can help us protect infrastructure in space and technological systems on Earth. This paper shows machine learning approaches to predicting geoeffective CMEs are feasible.”
During a severe geomagnetic storm in May 2024 — the strongest to rattle Earth in over 20 years — NASA’s STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) measured the magnetic field structure of CMEs as they passed by.
When a CME headed for Earth hits a spacecraft first, that spacecraft can often measure the CME and its magnetic field directly, helping scientists determine how strong the geomagnetic storm will be at Earth. Typically, the first spacecraft to get hit are one million miles from Earth toward the Sun at a place called Lagrange Point 1 (L1), giving us only 10 to 60 minutes advanced warning.
By chance, during the May 2024 storm, when several CMEs erupted from the Sun and merged on their way to Earth, NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft happened to be between us and the Sun, about 4 million miles closer to the Sun than L1.
A paper published March 17, 2025, in the journal Space Weather reports that if STEREO-A had served as a CME sentinel, it could have provided an accurate prediction of the resulting storm’s strength 2 hours and 34 minutes earlier than a spacecraft could at L1.
According to the paper’s lead author, Eva Weiler of the Austrian Space Weather Office in Graz, “No other Earth-directed superstorm has ever been observed by a spacecraft positioned closer to the Sun than L1.”
By Vanessa Thomas NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Celebrity stylist Liat Baruch and NBC Universal media executive David Vickter were set up by mutual friends in the summer of 2021 after a long-anticipated introduction. “I was traveling quite a bit at the time, so we started off as friends,” Liat, whose clients include Kirsten Dunst and the Richie sisters—she was the mastermind behind Sofia Richie Grainge’s viral wedding wardrobe—remembers. “But we quickly found ourselves spending most of our free time together. Whether it was grabbing coffee, running errands, meeting for lunch, or venting about the dating scene in L.A. over drinks, we always found an excuse to hang out.”
Eventually, their relationship evolved into a real-life When Harry Met Sally… story. “In November of 2024, we decided to give ‘us’ a real shot—and it just clicked,” Liat remembers. “We’re still best friends who genuinely love doing life together… only now, we get to do it as partners.”
The two got engaged in March of 2025. On Sunday mornings, they’d made a tradition of hiking Fryman Canyon, and on this particular Sunday, Liat geared up in her weighted vest and ankle weights, ready for their usual loop—but David suggested they take a quieter, less-traveled trail to the top. “It was one of those perfect L.A. days—clear skies, warm sun, and not a soul in sight,” Liat recalls. “As we reached a secluded spot overlooking the horizon, the world felt completely still. The only sounds were the birds and the soft breeze around us.”
And then, David proposed. “I was so surprised and overwhelmed with joy, that all I could say was, ‘This is so cool! And, of course, yes!’ which somehow felt exactly right.” They completed the trail, reveling in the moment, and letting their big news sink in before telling anyone. “It was simple, beautiful, and completely us,” Liat recalls.
Shortly after their engagement, they set their wedding date for June 15, 2025 at Hummingbird Nest Ranch in the Santa Susana Mountains—and jumped right into planning mode, which they somehow pulled off in just two-and-a-half months. “Thankfully, we had Rikki and Mal to help plan and coordinate everything, and it all came together so smoothly,” Liat explains. “With both of us juggling full schedules, we knew from the start that we needed support. Bringing in people we trusted to help guide the vision, handle the details, and make the whole experience feel fun—instead of overwhelming!—was key.”
Imperceptible electrical signals delivered to the brain can improve college students’ mathematics skills, a new study has found.
The researchers say that the technology is not far from being ready for at-home use — though one expert emphasized that more research is needed.
In the new study, the researchers recruited 72 students from the University of Oxford. The researchers assessed the volunteers’ math prowess with tests before dividing the students into three subgroups with matched abilities, meaning each group had a mix of people with weaker and stronger math skills.
For the experiment, individuals in each group had electrodes placed on their scalps that could deliver mild electrical signals to the brain. Two of the groups received stimulation to either the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) or the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) — brain areas linked to math ability in previous research. The third group received a sham stimulation.
The team then applied transcranial random noise stimulation (tRNS), which is just one of many types of non-invasive brain stimulation but is known to be more comfortable than other options. The current passed through the scalp is very low.
“Most of the people do not feel whether they’re stimulated or not,” said senior author Roi Cohen Kadosh, a neuroscientist at the University of Surrey. Each participant in the treated groups received 150 minutes of stimulation, paired with math tests, over five days of testing.
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The tests assessed the students’ calculation skills and “drill learning.” Calculation learning requires existing mathematical ability and challenges participants to work out the answer to a presented problem. Drill learning, in contrast, requires no mathematical ability and instead asks users to memorize a series of presented equations.
Based on past research, the authors hypothesized that dlPFC stimulation would enhance calculation learning, because this area is associated with learning new skills and high-level cognition. They thought that stimulating the PPC, meanwhile, which handles the retrieval of already learned skills, might enhance drill learning. In the study, they found dlPFC stimulation was indeed tied to improved calculation ability but PPC stimulation didn’t improve drill learning.
Before testing began, the team had measured the connectivity of their participants’ frontal and parietal lobes, found at the front and on the top of the brain. These two lobes are the sites of the dlPFC and PPC, respectively, and are activated together during math learning. The team hypothesized that having stronger connections between the two lobes would be linked to stronger calculation learning. This was borne out by the data: at baseline, the team observed a stronger connection in participants with better calculation abilities.
People with weaker connectivity who were in the sham stimulation group had a harder time getting to grips with the calculation problems than those with stronger connectivity in the same group. But individuals with weak connections who had their dlPFC stimulated showed the biggest improvements in their scores.
Notably, an earlier, small study the team undertook with a cohort of math professors showed that stimulation actually worsened the pros’ performance on math tests. This suggests those who already have high math ability should avoid stimulation.
“It’s an optimal system,” Kadosh said of the math professors’ brains. “You enter new noise into that, it’s going to cause a detrimental effect.”
Kadosh is the co-founder of Cognite Neurotechnology, a brain stimulation company, and is optimistic about rolling out the technology to the general public. Kadosh said that people in universities, workplaces and training centers could all benefit from it. He added that he was interested in expanding the technology to people with learning difficulties and neurodevelopmental disorders such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Meanwhile, Sung Joo Kim, a psychologist at Binghamton University who was not involved in the research, noted that while similar stimulation devices have already been cleared for at-home use, analyses looking at how well they work have made it clear that more research is needed.
Kim added that such devices may need to be personalized to individual users to reflect differences in their brain shapes. “When you’re targeting to stimulate certain brain regions, it might not necessarily work so well unless you really consider the brain anatomical structure of individual people,” she said.
Kadosh also said that any consumer devices borne of the research need to be anchored to solid evidence, and he argued that many existing consumer brain-stimulation devices have little scientific basis. “We need to show that we can use this technology at home,” he said.
Brain quiz: Test your knowledge of the most complex organ in the body
In a new study published in Science Signaling titled, “Restoration of striatal neuroprotective pathways by kinase inhibitor treatment of Parkinson’s linked-LRRK2 mutant mice,” researchers from Stanford University and University of Dundee have shown that inhibition of a specific enzyme may rescue neurons that are dying due to a type of Parkinson’s disease that is caused by a single genetic mutation in a mouse model.
About 25% of Parkinson’s disease cases are caused by genetic mutations. Activating mutations in leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is one of the most common Parkinson’s associated mutations. Overactive LRRK2 leads to the loss of primary cilia in neurons which disrupts crucial communication that makes the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Overactive LRRK2 can be mitigated using MLi-2 LRRK2 kinase inhibitor. Given that the genetic mutation is not the only mechanism of overactive LRRK2, the inhibitor treatment might help with other types of neurodegenerative diseases.
“Findings from this study suggest that inhibiting the LRRK2 enzyme could stabilize the progression of symptoms if patients can be identified early enough,” said Suzanne Pfeffer, PhD, professor of biochemistry at Stanford and corresponding author of the study.
In a healthy brain, many messages are sent between dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra and the striatum. This signaling is possible because dopamine neuron axons reach the striatum to communicate with neurons and glia.
Dopamine neurons release Sonic Hedgehog (Shh), a signaling protein critical for brain development and function, which plays a key role in cell growth, differentiation, and the formation of neural circuits. In a healthy brain, Shh causes certain neurons and astrocytes in the striatum to produce proteins called neuroprotective factors. Overactivation of LRRK2 disrupts Shh signaling and lowers neuroprotective factor production.
Results showed that three month-dietary administration of MLi-2 LRRK2 kinase inhibitor to mice restored primary cilia and Shh responsive production of neuroprotective factors. In addition, indicators of the density of dopamine nerve endings within the striatum doubled, suggesting an initial recovery for neurons that had been in the process of dying. The findings potentially offer an avenue to improve, not just stabilize, the condition of patients with Parkinson’s disease.
“Many kinds of processes necessary for cells to survive are regulated through cilia sending and receiving signals,” Pfeffer explained. “We think that when cells have lost their cilia, they are also on the pathway to death because they need cilia to receive signals that keep them alive.”
The earliest symptoms of Parkinson’s disease begin about 15 years before a patient notices a tremor. Pfeffer said the hope is that people who have the LRRK2 genetic mutation can start a treatment that inhibits the enzyme as early as possible.
Looking ahead, the research team will test whether other forms of Parkinson’s disease not associated with the LRRK2 genetic mutation could benefit from this type of treatment.
“We are so excited about these findings. They suggest this approach has great promise to help patients in terms of restoring neuronal activity in this brain circuit,” Pfeffer said. “There are multiple LRRK2 inhibitor clinical trials underway, and our hope is that these findings in mice will hold true for patients in the future.”
After Manchester City crashed out of the Club World Cup 4-3 to Al-Hilal in Orlando, Pep Guardiola blamed a lack of ruthlessness, and said Rodri had sustained an injury setback.
City were eliminated by Marcus Leonardo’s 112th-minute winner on Monday night at the Camping World Stadium in the shock result of the inaugural 32-team Club World Cup. Guardiola’s team wasted a number of chances, with Jérémy Doku, Erling Haaland, Josko Gvardiol, Rúben Dias and Savinho among those who failed to put City out of sight in the opening half.
Guardiola said: “In the end we have to score and be clinical. They did not create much in the first half, we did but could not finish it. I had a feeling we could go through. We allow them to make transitions [but] we created a lot. It is a pity, we have been on an incredible journey together [here] and in a good place. The vibe was really good, I cannot thank Manchester City enough and especially the players for training and how they have been playing.”
Rodri came on in the 53rd minute but was forced off in the 100th. The midfielder was making only a fifth appearance since returning from a serious knee injury. The manager said Rodri “complained about his situation”.
City opened the scoring on nine minutes through Bernardo Silva, then goals on 46 and 53 minutes from Leonardo and Malcom gave Al-Hilal the lead. Haaland equalised two minutes later to take the tie into extra time and after Kalidou Koulibaly’s strike was answered by Phil Foden, Leonardo got the winner.
Guardiola said: “We would have loved to have continued, it is only here every four years. We had a feeling that the team is doing well but now we go home and it is time to rest [physically] and rest our minds for the new season.”
The manager was asked whether enough has been seen for him to believe City can challenge again next season, having cast doubt on that before the match. “It is too early to say,” Guardiola replied. “But there have been so many good things I did not see in the [recent] past. The relationship between the players, our captain [Silva] helped a lot and the standards from our staff. I felt we were happy here, the training sessions have been really good. [But] Al-Hilal has a lot of quality. They are a complete team that can run and run – I have a big opinion of them but we [still] did a good game.”
The frustration shows as Pep Guardiola speaks to the media after Manchester City’s defeat by Al-Hilal. Photograph: Héctor Vivas/Fifa/Getty Images
The club’s elimination closed a torrid campaign which featured a dismal Premier League title defence and an FA Cup final defeat by Crystal Palace. A defiant Silva said: “When we start the Premier League, we will forget and focus on having a great season. We’ve had a lot of frustrations in the past as well, and we managed to come back. We’re going to try and do that again, knowing that we have a lot of competition.”
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Silva, who said the players were waiting to be told when they must report again for training, believes the defeat by Al-Hilal shows the strength of the global game. “Football has never been only in Europe,” the Portugal international said.
The Al-Hilal manager, Simone Inzaghi, was full of praise for his side: “Tonight we had to do something extraordinary because we knew how good Manchester City are. We knew we had to climb Mount Everest without oxygen and we were great. Guardiola is the best coach in the world but tonight we did our best and we deserved the result.”
Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi recently spoke about the company’s push for making its Games as a Service (GAAS) business model global, as it’s a sign of a company’s “good record.”
In an interview with The Game Business, Utsumi said that game companies with “a good record tend to have a strong [global] GAAS business.” In regards to Sega, while the console and PC standalone business is “getting better,” the publisher and developer is still working on making its GAAS business global. “That’s one of the biggest challenges,” he added.
Currently, Sega’s GAAS focus is on free-to-play mobile games, including the likes of Sonic Rumble, which is free to play but offers in-app purchases. In a 2024 interview with Automaton, which was translated from Japanese, game director Makoto Tase said that “monetization models that use gacha mechanics have not been very successful when it comes to games targeted towards worldwide audiences of all ages,” and that these mechanics “tend to be shunned overseas,” leading to ultimately deciding not to include them in Rumble.
While Utsumi didn’t specifically mentioned gacha mechanics, he sees developer Rovio, which Sega acquired back in August 2023, as the candidate for this business push. “Rovio has deep knowledge of the global mobile business, and very strong IP with Angry Birds,” Utsumi said. “We feel like the fit between Rovio and Sega is good. We are working closely with Rovio to have a Sonic mobile game, and we are giving them access to IPs, including Sonic, to come up with nice, welcoming GAAS titles.”
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Sega’s plans of expansion also include developing properties beyond games, with Utsumi referencing the success of the Sonic movies, which topped $1 billion at the global box office on January of this year. According to the president, the films have had a major impact on the franchise, leading to a significant boost to Sonic game sales.
“When I started to get involved in the video game business, I picked up Crash Bandicoot and started asking some of the movie studios if they were interested in turning that property into a movie,” he said. “But I was treated like… ‘hey, video games is like a toy business’. They didn’t really take it seriously.”
Live service games aren’t going through a healthy phase
Even though Utsumi said that game companies with strong GAAS business show a good record, studios have been struggling around live service launches.
Sony reportedly poured $200 million into live service shooter Concord, which was released late last year and pulled from sale within weeks, shuttering the studio behind it in the process. In January of this year, it canceled two first-party live service titles in development at Bluepoint Games and Bend Studio. Weeks later, contractors were reportedly cut at the latter.
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Mere weeks later, Warner Bros. Games announced it would be shutting down free-to-play brawler Multiversus on May 30. There’s still an interest around live-service models—Pragma, a backend engine for live-service games like Spectre Divide and Predecessor, secured a $12.75 million investment in March. Despite the decisions in the preceding months, previous PlayStation Studios boss Hermen Hulst said that Bungie’s upcoming live-service shooter, Marathon, won’t be making the same mistakes as Concord.
“I think that some really good work went into that title,” Hulst said during a fireside chat aimed at investors. “Some really big efforts. But ultimately that title entered into a hyper-competitive segment of the market. I think it was insufficiently differentiated to be able to resonate with players. So we have reviewed our processes in light of this to deeply understand how and why that title failed to meet expectations—and to ensure that we are not going to make the same mistakes again.”
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O Brother, Where Art Thou? is not the first time an entire motion picture has been digitized and then converted back to film for distribution. Gary Ross did it on Pleasantville (shot by John Findley, ASC; AC Nov. ’98), and Jon Shear color-timed Urbania, a Super 16 film, in a digital suite (Shane Kelly; AC May ’00). George Lucas digitized The Phantom Menace (David Tattersall, BSC; AC Sept. ’99), but his purpose was to integrate visual effects and live action components in literally hundreds of shots.
Although O Brother, Where Art Thou? contains a number of visual effects shots, those scenes were incidental to the decision to digitize the film. In fact, the Coen brothers saw the computer as just another tool for extending the art and craft of cinematography. There is more than a little irony in that decision, however, since neither the Coens nor Deakins think of themselves as digital mavens. In fact, the Coens still edit on a traditional flatbed console because they feel that it gives them more tactile control of the film.
Writer-producer Ethan and writer-director Joel began making movies in 1984 with the acclaimed thriller Blood Simple (which was recently rereleased in theaters in a special “director’s cut”). Their films typically explore the dark side of humanity and feature characters who stick in viewers’ memories long after the last flickering images have disappeared from the screen. O Brother, Where Art Thou? is Deakins’ fifth collaboration with the brothers, following Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo and The Big Lebowski. (He is currently shooting the sixth, The Barber Project [The Man Who Wasn’t There].) Other notable credits in Deakins’ body of work include Sid and Nancy, Thunderheart, Stormy Monday, The Secret Garden, 1984 and The Hurricane. He earned a 1994 ASC Award and an Oscar nomination for The Shawshank Redemption, as well as both Academy and ASC Award nominations for Fargo and Kundun.
Also Read: Photographing The Shawshank Redemption
“Before I read the script [for O Brother, Where Art Thou?] Joel and Ethan told me they had a film they wanted to shoot in the South,” Deakins recalls. “They imagined something dry, dusty and very hot.” Texas was initially chosen as the primary location, but the filmmakers eventually switched to Mississippi. “I’ve worked in Louisiana and Alabama [on Passion Fish and The Long Walk Home,] so I knew that the region would be wet and the foliage would be various shades of lush green — and about half the picture would take place in exteriors.”
Shielded from the Mississippi sun by some stylish chapeaus, the Coens and Deakins assess their next setup.
The filmmakers briefly considered changing locations again, but Mississippi’s unique delta landscapes drew them back. “It would have been a different scenario if we had been shooting in the winter or if we’d been able to take in fall colors, but our film was scheduled for a summer shoot,” Deakins recalls. “I had to find a way to desaturate the greens and give the images we were going to shoot the feeling of old, hand-tinted postcards, [which was the look] favored by Joel and Ethan.”
To prepare for the production, the filmmakers shot some footage at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, where the trees were particularly green and therefore similar to those they were about to be surrounded by in Mississippi. This footage was then subjected to a series of tests by Beverly Wood at Deluxe Laboratory. According to Deakins, tests such as bleach-bypass and ACE produced interesting desaturation but could not be applied in a selective way. The most promising option was a bi-pack system combining a black-and-white panchromatic dupe with the original color negative. Deakins notes that although this technique provided a great deal of control over saturation, it was not selective enough. “I remembered that some years ago, when we shot 1984, we’d had a similar problem,” he says. “We originally wanted to shoot in black-and-white, but the project’s backers wouldn’t allow it. Instead, we decided to go for a harsh, desaturated look using a bleach-bypass system at Kays Laboratory in Great Britain, where the staff was performing tests for us. The challenge was to create the very golden, colorful looks for the scenes that required them as a counterpoint to the starkness of the main body of the film. On those few scenes, we wound up using very heavy filtration to counteract the bleach-bypass.”
While doing tests at Deluxe for O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Deakins began to consider the new digital technology at his disposal. He was aware of Lindley’s experience on Pleasantville and knew of Cinesite in Hollywood, which handled all of the film scanning and recording on that project. He thought that if he could scan the entire film into digital format, he would have infinite control over the look in the digital suite, but he wasn’t sure it would be affordable. Deakins discussed the concept with the Coen brothers, who were familiar with the technique, and they asked him to conduct more tests.
Deakins is dollied past a chain gang toiling away in the sweltering heat.The same scene after desaturation.
Some of the negative from the Griffith Park tests was scanned into digital format with a Philips Spirit DataCine at 2K resolution using a proprietary look-up table developed for this application. Deakins viewed the digital images with Cinesite colorist Julius Friede. Together, they worked on manipulating the saturation of the images, and in particular selecting the greens of the trees and grass and turning them into dry browns and yellows. At that point, Cinesite recorded the digital file onto the same 35mm Eastman EXR color intermediate film (5244) that labs use for making internegative and interpositive masters for release printing. A Kodak Lightning film recorder with a high-intensity laser light source was used to convert the digital files to analog images on the intermediate film. The film was then processed by Deluxe in Los Angeles, which also made a work print.
The tests convinced Deakins and the Coen brothers. “They like to try new things,” the cinematographer says. “We knew it would be taking a risk, but Cinesite gave us a good price, and quite honestly it was the only way we could see of achieving the look that all three of us wanted.”
O Brother, Where Art Thou? was also the Coen brothers’ first experience shooting in a widescreen format (2.4:1 aspect ratio), which Deakins had suggested because of the importance of the landscapes and the epic nature of the story. He recommended shooting in the Super 35 format, in part because he liked the perspective rendered by the spherical lenses he’d used on Kundun. “Every film defines its own palette of colors and textures,” he says. “I didn’t want glossy images. The spherical lenses have the effect of pulling the audience closer to the characters; it’s more intimate [than anamorphic]. To my mind, the feeling of depth recorded on Super 35 would augment the picture-book quality of the story.”
Deakins worked mainly with a single Arri 535 camera and the new Cooke S4 prime lenses. “I think it’s important to work with the sharpest lenses you can get — especially if you’re going to convert the film to digital format — but that’s what I typically do anyhow. I rarely use filters to soften a look, so it didn’t affect my decisions [regarding] lenses and filtration.” The cinematographer notes that the Cooke lenses record “very clean” images with very little flare. A number of times he shot directly into the sun without any glare. There also were a number of night shots motivated by very bright flames, including burning torches. He says the pictures were sharp and clean with no double images or kickbacks.
After testing, Deakins settled on three film stocks. He used Kodak Vision 500T 5279 for night interior and exterior scenes, and Eastman’s EXR 5248 100-speed emulsion for most daylight exteriors. While shooting daylight sequences in shadowy forest locations, he sometimes opted for the 200-speed Eastman EXR 5293, which he also used for recording bluescreen elements of composite shots.
The entire film was storyboarded, right down to exact angles of coverage. Deakins says there was considerable discussion about the boards during preproduction. “We stayed pretty close to the plan, veering from it only when something spontaneous presented an unexpected opportunity.”
The locations in and around Jackson, Mississippi, were relatively bare, though there were some shacks and buildings that could have passed for 1930s structures. “We built a couple of sets in a warehouse, because the weather is a bit unpredictable in that part of the country at that time of year,” Deakins says. “But we were only rained out once — lucky, I guess!”
The camerawork in the film is more objective than subjective, revealing the story to viewers as if they are spectators rather than participants. Deakins offers that the result is almost like watching a play, although he notes that the picture also has moments that are like musical interludes verging on fantasy (a tactic previously employed by Deakins and the Coens in The Big Lebowski). “Those moments aren’t structurally necessary for the plot,” he says. “It is almost an operatic or circus experience, like a Fellini film in many ways.”
The camera is almost constantly in motion, though not as much as it was in, say, Barton Fink. “I generally prefer to be on a crane arm with a remote head, but sometimes it proved more practical to use a Steadicam over rough ground,” Deakins says. Much of the film was shot utilizing a Power Pod remote head and an Aerocrane jib arm. “ [That rig] allows a lot of flexibility in terms of camera movement, and it’s often a great time-saver. For one campfire scene, which leads the three main characters into a baptism ceremony, we shot all five setups with the Aerocrane on the same piece of track. We had been rained out all morning, but it brightened up enough in the afternoon to start shooting. We were in very thick forest; I knew it would be getting dark very early, so we had to work quickly.
