Page 36 - Fujifilm Exposure_41 Happy-Go-Lucky_ok

Coming Soon To A Screen Near You
THE OXFORD MURDERS
I
n Alex de la Inglesia’s The Oxford Murders, Elijah Wood, John Hurt and Leonor Watling team up to decipher a code linking a series of mysterious deaths. Based on
“We all loved the look, which was extremely broken down, almost unusable in fact, but great for some of the key scenes. It has great long stretches of nasty cor- ridors with masses of overhead pipes, and this location set the tone to juxtapose the beautiful Oxford look.”
Producer Kevin Loader knew that filming in Oxford would be diffi- cult, so one of his challenges was to make a film about Oxford, but to find some locations in London that matched Oxford, but were easier to get access to.
He was keen that some of the film was shot there however, as he com- ments: “Oxford is a startlingly beauti- ful city and is very photogenic.” And a final word?
“If you thought you’d seen an English murder mystery before, then you haven’t seen The Oxford Murders. It’s dark, it’s dangerous, it’s edgy and it’s weird.” ■
The Oxford Murders, to be released in the UK next month, was
originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573 and ETERNA
the Argentine author Guillermo Martinez’s 2003 award-winning novel, it is de la Iglesia’s first English lan- guage film and also stars Julie Cox, Anna Massey and Jim Carter. The film was shot over nine weeks in Oxford and London early last year.
DP Kiko de la Rica, who previously worked with the director on La Comunidad (for which he was Goya- nominated) and costume designer Paco Delgado, a de la Inglesia regular, talked about the ‘look’.
“One of the things we really like is that he’s a very visual guy and the other is that he’s always working on a level that presents an unreal world – it’s not very naturalistic and that means you can work on a level that is very much on the edge, and we really like that a lot.”
Delgado “spent several days in Oxford, feeling for the colours of the buildings, the skies and the pavement to see what kind of palette that would build – grey skies, winter and yellow stone. Normally with Alex ,we go for very strong colours, but this time we decided to go for a muted palette.”
For Production Designer Christina Casali, this was a first collaboration with the director and she found the process “challenging and intense as well as funny.”
Initially, she found that de la Iglesia had a traditional old Oxford look in mind, but explains: “Things started to really shape up when we looked round the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Hackney.
“...The Oxford Murders - It’s dark,
it’s dangerous, it’s edgy and it’s weird.”
250D 8563
Photos: Scenes from The Oxford Murders starring Elijah Wood, John Hurt and Leonor Watling; above and right: Director Alex de la Inglesia and DP Kiko de la Rica
34 • Exposure • The Magazine • Fujifilm Motion Picture