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FLORIAN HOFFMEISTER
“The ETERNA 500T is the best 500ASA-rated stock available I personally think.”
continued from page 22
company suggested a whole range of German cinematographers. I felt I was the young guy and yet she met me and said ‘yes’.” Hoffmeister smiles, deep in reminiscence. “It was such an invigorat- ing experience. A year later she called me again to do Cracker (the final two- hour special, with Robbie Coltrane).
Hoffmeister was quickly adopted in the UK as one of our own. “I enjoy it here,” he says. “I am a little bit spoiled
I have to say because Hamburg Cell was written by Ronan Bennett, Jimmy McGovern wrote Cracker
and, more recently I did
Five Days which was writ-
ten by Gwyneth Hughes.
Caryl Churchill’s A
Number is, of course, also
a beautiful bit of writing.
“All those projects
came with intense and
interesting directors like
Antonia, Otto Bathurst and
Simon Curtis who did Five
Days, and now James
MacDonald. Furthermore I
have had the support of
truly dedicated crews, of
Gaffers like Phil Brooks and
Dan Fontaine, of people like
Craig Feather, who has moved from Focus to being my full time B-Camera operator, and of amazing colourists like Chris Beeton and Paul Ensby. So I have been very, very lucky.”
Hoffmeister feels it has also been a privilege, in view of certain broadcast- ers’ feelings, to be able mostly to shoot on film.
“Back at the time we shot Cracker, I think the ETERNA 500T had just come out. It’s a beautiful stock, as is the ETERNA 400T 8583. I particularly loved the 400T because we were employing a lot of avail- able light on location in Manchester. In my lighting approach, I always try to find a heightened realism so sometimes I might shoot something without any film lights.
“With this lighting situation for exam- ple,” gesturing at the surrounding neon- lit streets, “I would try to avoid the high- lights burning away which they would
normally if you just open up the
f-stop: the streetlights would go chup. The 400T would hold those textures beautifully. In television, textures in high- lights are key to getting that filmic look.”
“For A Number, which was shot on the George Lucas stage at Elstree and on location, we mainly used the 500T. The whole piece [74 minutes worth] is very concentrated; two people talk, and quite often they sit and don’t move, all the while engaging in a precise almost theatrical language.
those gone before, in particular one memorable occasion when he found himself in the presence of Slawomir Idziak “a very intense man,” whose lighting career spans Kieslowski’s Three Colours Blue to Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix.
Recalls Hoffmeister: “He said some- thing that I’ll never forget: ‘For the first 10 minutes, the cinematography is really important because it bridges the atten- tion of the audience, and pulls people in. But if, after an hour, Juliette Binoche
starts crying, nobody in the world is really going to care about the light’.
“Obviously he meant it should still retain that high standard, but the really important thing is that when she hits the emotional high you are there ready to convey it.
If you sense that there’s a tension growing you must be there to try and collect that moment.”
Hoffmeister still lives by this rule. “There was one monologue in A
Number that was never rehearsed. Tom Wilkinson said he didn’t want to over-prepare it. We were actual-
ly still focusing on some other part of the action, but the monologue was approaching and then James MacDonald said, “right, we’ll just track over there and then run with it.”
“He had just sensed Wilkinson’s time coming. It was such a brilliant moment. We shot it with two cameras and I basically started crying because it was so moving. I think you could actual- ly feel that there was a moment when all the hearts and souls in the room were connected. You forgot about everything. We just knew, after the first take, that was the one.” ■ NATASHA BLOCK
A Number was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573, ETERNA 250D 8563 and Reala 500D 8592
“I wanted to avoid the feeling of theatre, so the lighting had to be extremely natural and I tried to give it an almost rough edge. There’s a situa- tion in the middle of the piece,” says Hoffmeister, “ when it’s a rainy day and one of the sons returns to confront his father with the truth. The sun fades away and it gets so dim that you almost can’t see anything, its very dark, very intense... and then chup, somebody switches on a practical!
“I love that, it has an edge; the prac- tical goes warm and it’s not too perfect yet it becomes heightened. That’s what I would refer to as ‘heightened realism’. The 500T is the best 500ASA-rated stock available I personally think.”
Hoffmeister seems to have remained grounded throughout all the challenges that his career has thrown up for him. He cites influences from
Photos: DP Florian Hoffmeister at work on various sets including, far left, A Number (with,
right, director James MacDonald, Tom Wilkinson and Rhys Ifans) and, far right, Cracker with Robbie Coltrane
24 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture