Page 26 - Fujifilm Exposure_2 Bon Jovi_ok

D ougray Scott, his hair cropped into an old-fash- ioned short, back and sides, is dressed in typical- ly 1940s high-waisted cor- duroys, supported by braces. His white shirt is rolled up at the sleeves and his shoes
are a pair of sensible brown brogues. He walks away from an office where study desks have old-fashioned,
heavy looking telephones, maps and documents and the paraphernalia of a nation at war.
All that is out of place in the image of World War II that’s being cre- ated on a sound stage at Elstree Studios is the white Styrofoam cup of coffee that the Scots star clutches dur- ing a break in the filming of Enigma, the film version of the Robert Harris’ best-selling novel about how British boffins cracked the Nazis’ secret code.
Scott, fresh from the rigours of playing the loathsome villain opposite Tom Cruise’s hero in the gung-ho action hit, Mission: Impossible 2, is starring with Kate Winslet and Saffron Burrows in the film, which is directed by Michael Apted.
It’s Apted’s first film since he ensured that audiences continued to be shaken and stirred by the latest edition in the James Bond franchise, The World Is Not Enough.
The director has been working on Enigma for four years or so and he’s determined that he should make a movie that will stand up to expert scrutiny and also thoroughly entertain.
Apted and director of photography, Seamus McGarvey BSC (High Fidelity, The War Zone) were particularly anx-
ious that a series of flash- back sequences within Enigma ought to have a specific look, but, initially, capturing that seemed elu- sive. Then Fuji, and a silk stocking, came to the res- cue.
McGarvey explained that while the film is set smack in the middle of World War II - in 1943 when Dougray Scott and the rest of the team at Bletchley Park are trying to crack the Enigma code - there are sequences which flash-back to an earlier, idyllic love affair between Scott and Burrows.
“And we wanted these
to have a different texture
to the rest of the film. We
tried different things, but
they didn’t really work,”
said McGarvey. Then he
bumped into Fuji’s Roger
Sapsford, mentioned his
dilemma and Sapsford sug-
gested that a solution might be to use a then new stock, Fuji 400.
“So I ran a test and it was perfect for what I was looking for. This Fuji 400 stock had not been released at the time that we were due to shoot these scenes, so Roger made great efforts to get the stock to us,” added McGarvey, who revealed a bit of the trickery involved in creating the romantic mood that will be evident when Enigma is released in the autumn..
“I used the Fuji stock and had a 10 denier Christian Dior stocking over the
lens; it is an old Alfred Hitchcock technique. Stars such as Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich were shot like this many times in their careers.”
McGarvey – who has completed Mike Nichols’ Witt since Enigma - also talked about bi-pack pro- cessing: “That’s when you take your colour negative, duplicate it on to black and white negative and then
ENIGMA V
ENIGMA V
John Millar reports from the set of a true-life
EXPOSURE • 26 & 27