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he story of Cass Pen- Tnant begins with a bang, literally. The
film opens as he’s
gunned down in an at- tempt on his life before flashing back to 1958 when a black Dr Barnardo’s boy was adopted by an elderly white couple in Slade Green, Kent.
Although the film is based on his eponymous autobiography, Cass, for many years one of the most feared football hooligans in the country as leader of West Ham United’s notori- ous ICF, always saw his life as a movie.
For his first feature film, director Jon S Baird was looking for a story that hooked him from the very be- ginning.
“Cass gave me his autobiogra- phy to read on the train and by the second chapter, I was absolutely lost in his world,” says the Aberdeen- born filmmaker. “Cass writes in pic- tures, he talks in pictures and the film was immediately taking shape before my eyes.”
Baird also felt a strange connec- tion to the Cass story because his grandmother was a key figure in the Dr Barnardo’s charity movement. “When I realised Cass was a Barnardo’s boy, it seemed like this was the story I’d been collecting for all my life,” says Jon.
Cass stars Nonso Anozie, in the title role, with Nathalie Press,
Leo Gregory, Gavin Brocker, Linda Bassett and Peter Wight.
CASSFIVE DECADES OF BRITISH LIFE
THE DP VIEW
CHRISTOPHER ROSS
he film spans five decades of TBritish life so we wanted to
ground the audience in a time- frame whilst also pushing the story forwards in an atmos-
pheric way. We shot the 50’s-70’s on ETERNA 500T with Cooke Zooms to provide a soft grainy negative (en- hanced with vignettes and satura- tion adjustments in the DI).
For the 80’s (Cass’s most violent decade) we used ETERNA 400T with Canon Zooms. The low contrast /low colour saturation of the stock was ideal and the Canons helped flatten the stock even further. Our 80’s Britain was really drab!
In the 90s, Cass had completely turned his life around. We decided to go for a more modern look using ETERNA 250T and Primo lenses to minimise grain and push contrast as high as possible but we introduced backlight and stronger colours to steer the image in a retro direction.
The various looks were finessed in the DI so that we could evolve between or juxtapose the eras to tell Cass’s life story in a character-driven way.
FEATURE IN FOCUS
“For me, a film only works if it’s authentic,” says Cass. “The clothes, the music, the locations, they’ve all got to be as true to life as possible, so I got as many real people from my life to be around as I could.”
Another method for ensuring au- thenticity was to shoot as much as possible on location around Lon- don’s East End. Locations took in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, East Ham, West Ham, Canning Town and even dipped into South London for some scenes around Elephant and Castle.
Cass, which opens on August 1, was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8673, ETERNA 400T 8683, ETERNA 250T 8653 and ETERNA 250D 8663
Photo top: Nonso Anozie as Cass;
centre: Leo Gregory, Nonso Anozie and Gavin Brocker; above: Nathalie Press
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