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matched the information on the Fujifilm stock.
“Story-wise, it was about achieving straight continuity despite the different environment and image capture. I didn’t want anything to jar an audience – not even subconsciously if I could help it.”
After going into what he describes as “unknown territory”, the result was, says Tufano, “a really good match between the digital and Fujifilm, which I used for the production.
“As for the overall ‘look’, it was all very simple and quite basic. While Kidulthood has been deliberately gritty and urban-looking, this time we wanted to up the ante because this was more of a middle-class story.
“There are a lot of scenes, for instance, in the family home which we decided had to be very formal com- pared to, say, the club scenes which are, just that - colourful, informal and all hand-held.
“I used the ETERNA Vivid 500T and also ETERNA 250T. What I really like about the Fujifilm stocks are the colour saturation and the acutance – the fine definition between the colours – so the film looks razor sharp.
“‘Huds’ wanted everything to be a bit more colourful than normal so I thought, ‘if we get maximum satura- tion to start with we can always con- trol it in the DI’ - which is exactly what we’ve done,” adds Tufano.
“One of our biggest problems, for example, was the cricket pitch we used at nearby Slough CC. Although we were shooting in the summer the grass was ... shall we say ... very worn. In fact there was hardly any green grass left because it’d had so much use especially with the England cricket team practicing there ahead of the Ashes series. However, we had a fantastic digital grader, Tom Russell, at Prime Focus and we managed to put as much green back in the grass as we
could. It was painstaking work, but worth it.” Another, more traditional, challenge was capturing some dia- logue-heavy scenes in a car. “We shot it all in one day on a small stage at Pinewood after making the decision to do it in a very old-fashioned way with back-projection rather than using a low-loader, for which we didn’t really have the time or the money. It was very simple and looks quite effective.”
It’s perhaps not surprising that in his dual capacity as both a practicing cinematographer and hard-working teacher, Tufano also remains very much a mentor. When, for instance, Anuvahood was in pre-production – and even, on occasion after that – he’d be consulted by co-helmer Deacon as well as the film’s DP, Felix Wiedemann, who also happened to be one of his former students at the NFTS.
Silver-haired Tufano who, laughing, admits to being ”very much the senior member of the crew these
days”, hasn’t, however, changed his “basic philosophy”: that ”the camera doesn’t exist. That’s how it should be with every film”. Like his collabora- tion, it should be absolutely seamless. QUENTIN FALK
Everywhere And Nowhere, due for a May release in the UK, was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547 and ETERNA 250T 8553
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