Page 50 - Fujifilm Exposure_50th AWARDS ISSUE FULL PDF - cropped

FIRST PERSON
ADVENTUREINARMENIA
AT THE RECENT BERLIN FILM FESTIVAL, THE PANORAMA JURY GAVE THE CICAE (CONFEDERATION INTERNATIONALE DES CINEMAS D’ART ET D’ESSAI AWARD) AWARD TO HERE, AN OFFBEAT FILM ODYSSEY, CO-STARRING BEN FOSTER AND LUBNA AZABAL, DIRECTED BY BRADEN KING. THE JURY NOTED: “WE FOUND THE PICTURE REMARKABLE FOR ITS CINEMATOGRAPHIC QUALITIES AND OPEN NARRATION THAT DRAWS THE VIEWER INTO A JOURNEY-LIKE ENCOUNTER OF TWO INDIVIDUALS THAT QUESTIONS NOT ONLY THEIR PERSONAL BACKGROUNDS AND IDENTITIES BUT ALSO GEOGRAPHICAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURALBORDERS.” BRITISHDPLOLCRAWLEYREPORTSONAREMARKABLESHOOT.
“I WAS VERY PLEASED WITH THE WAY THAT THE FUJIFILM STOCKS PRODUCED GREAT DEFINITION BUT WITH A VERY NATURAL SOFTNESS.”
A week long scout led to the film being shot largely in story order. For five weeks we would follow the same journey that the characters make from the capital down
“through various towns and locations to the Iranian border before travelling back up through the once land mine-strewn disputed area of Nagorno Karabahk and on to complete filming in Yerevan.
This scout was invaluable as an insight into a country which most of us knew very little about and helped to inform us greatly how the landscapes and real interiors should be approached both creatively and logistically.
Braden had suggested early on that he wanted to shoot on 35mm in order to capture as much detail as possible in the landscapes and so I tested a range of Fujifilm stocks framing for both a 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 aspect ratio whilst also testing three different spherical lens types.
I was very pleased with the way that the Fujifilm stocks worked with the Cooke S4 lenses producing great definition but with a very natural softness which I felt was appropriate to the vision of the film.
Often these choices are based on a gut feeling about a stock/lens combination and can be difficult to articulate. Sometimes it just feels right. After viewing the tests we were definite that these land- scapes and interiors should be framed for 2.35:1 shooting Super35 in order to achieve this ratio. This decision meant that we could shoot 3 perf. with lighter and faster lenses and would have more depth of field to work with.
a set of Cooke S4’s ranging from 12mm - 135mm. We also carried a compact Angenieux T2.2 17-80mm zoom and a 4 perf. 235 as a B camera / back-up body. Like any road movie, the landscape of Armenia was integral to the story and there would be many days spent filming either from a moving vehicle or following cartogrtapher Will’s (Foster) Land Cruiser along a variety of roads.
Having no low loader meant that our angles and lighting choices were reduced and we were concerned that our driving scenes could become repetitive. For inspiration we looked at a number of films with vehicle set ups and general moods and pacing that we particularly liked such as Paris,Texas shot by Robby Muller, Gerry, photographed by Harris Savides, and Antonioni’s The Passenger, lensed by Lu- ciano Tovoli. Our grip Zak Valledian constructed some great tracking rigs and we shipped an A-frame over from the UK. This in conjunction with a Universal car rig and hand held camera inside the vehicle, created a number of very believable and varied driving sequences.
Importantly, shooting on film meant that we did not have to ND the windows and light into the vehicles even though the contrast ratio between the interior and exteriors was often very high. Film has the wonderful and unique ability to cope beautifully with these extreme lighting situations and even when it can’t hold onto the extreme highlights it ‘blows’ in such a natural way.
for long periods.
We shot with the LT hand held and housed in a
splash bag which was engineered by the ever
resourceful 2nd AC Scott Rodgers, and Derrick did a great job in keeping it pin sharp without rehearsals.
Overall ,though, we decided to shoot this film with less hand-held camera work than I had on previous films and with more classical camera movements using a lightweight dolly and track.
My approach to lighting was to embrace available light where possible for a high degree of naturalism and this was either supplemented with soft fixtures balanced to match the dominant source in day interiors or to emulate closely the look of realistic lights sources for night scenes.
I felt that a correct motivation for the light source was very important as I did not want to create an image that was too stylised but instead wanted to highlight a certain beauty in the ordinary. I think that a cinematographer should not always feel the need to do something, to impose, but that our role is also to recognise when to do nothing.
Although there were many days where we lit with nothing more than the available summer light my gaffer Andy Lowe and local best boy Jim Nalbandian had their work cut out on many of the interior locations and night shoots very early on in the schedule.
We shipped a lighting package over from Take 2 although we did not have the standard generator lighting options normally available to us and our biggest light was a 2k/4k switchable HMI.
Super 64-D 8522, Reala 500D 8592, ETERNA 500T 8573 and ETERNA 250D 8563.
This is an edited version of an articlewhichfirstappeared intheAutumn 2009 issue of EXPOSURE
One of the most difficult day exterior scenes to shoot was set in a five foot deep pool mistakenly named a ‘hot spring’. The largely improvised per- formances combined with the ability to shoot continually for up to fifteen minutes on a 1000ft magazine meant that both my focus puller Derrick
This meant that we were often working on the edge in terms of exposure but again the Fujifilm stock delivered, capturing great detail in areas three stops under-exposed and creating very realistic and atmospheric night and pre-dawn scenes.
Ultimately I chose to shoot on the Super F-64D
for the vast majority of all exterior day scenes and
Reala 500D for low daylight situations. The ETERNA
500T was used for all night interiors and exteriors
and a small amount of ETERNA 250D got me out of Peters and myself were immersed in the cool water Here was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ”
trouble if I started to lose the light on a 64D scene. We combined these stocks with a fantastic 3
perf. Arricam LT package from Take 2 in London and
Photos above: L-R: Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal in Here; Lol Crawley and Braden King (right); Lubna Azabal; Crawley in car.
48 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE