Page 31 - Fujifilm Exposure_31 The White Countess_ok

commercial break
MOTION PICTURE & PRO-VIDEO
BMW ‘CANDLES’
BMW 3 Series combines the sleek ‘star’ of
The commercial for the new
the piece with the usual lush, wide open exteriors - but with a twist.
Director John Selby came up with the concept of the car - more ‘responsive, agile and refined’, the slogan goes - bending the flames of candles placed in the studio as the car on screen glides past. DP Peter Hannan BSC tells Anwar Brett how he did it.
Shooting on the stage gives you control over the environment, but that’s also very time consuming. There are always compromises, where you let things go, or work on one particular area to make it look wonderful. You know you don’t have time to make it look wonderful everywhere, but the stock – because of its contrast and lati- tude – worked both ways for me. It gave me black where I wanted it, and was kind to me where I needed it to be.
There was nothing hugely technical involved in the shoot, it was basically down to my gut reaction of what the stock was going to do with the image, and it never let me down. I’d love to do a proper comparison test, particularly with different types of make-up, wardrobe and colours. I didn’t have a chance to on this one, but I’m confi- dent it will work, because when we did our telecine on the commercial
I shot the commercial on the new 35mm Eterna 500 8573stock. I would have shot it on the old 500 to be honest, but when I saw the tests of
this new stock up at Pinewood I thought it had fantastic range, with some nice blacks and very fine grain.
“On our set we basically used can- dles and a lot of back projection, so it required a great deal of tolerance. I felt comfortable using the Fuji stock, I’ve used it so much that I’m confi- dent I know exactly what it’s going to do, but even so I was very pleased with the results.
I didn’t have time to test it exten- sively, I just went for it, but it worked beyond even what I was hoping for. It’s a bit like when you see wonderful Italian printing in a high-class maga- zine, it had that texture to it, which was wonderful.
We shot it all on the stage at Black
Island Studios and it was done in a
day. Basically the director came up
with the concept of the candles, we
had some wind blowing onto the
flames, and we shot some of our own
stuff to put into the back projection
where you see some other flames in ” the background. We took that directly
from the video tap off the camera, and got away with it.
Agency: WCRS Production company: The Brave Film Company Director: John Selby Producer: James Bretton, Michelle Stapleton
we hardly had to touch it. What we saw on the set was what we got, and it’s what you see in the finished thing. ■
BMW ‘Candles’ was originated on 35mm Eterna 500 8573
Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video • Exposure • 29