Page 28 - Fujifilm Exposure_45 Ondine_ok

“AS BEFORE THE ETERNA HAVE BEEN THE MOST PERFECT STOCKS.”
➤ It’s clear from conversations with Natasha Braier that she is inspired by her directors. One who made a big impression was Shane Meadows, for whom she shot Somers Town in 2008.
“He’s probably the best director I’ve worked with,” she enthuses. “With most films schedules are dictated by time and money, you’re always governed by time and making things cheaper. But the thing Shane does is shoot chronologically; he doesn’t care if he has to move locations four times in a day.
“In filmmaking you don’t normally do that; you shoot in one location the whole day because you don’t want to spend half of your day moving from one place to the other. But in the end it’s really great for everybody because we are all experiencing the film and living this journey, especially for the actors. For me it felt like there was no way back after working this way with Shane.”
Even Somers Town shares with The Infidel the theme of tolerance for those who might be considered different, as does a well regarded, BAFTA-nominated short that Braier made in 2005, Heavy Metal Drummer. That told of a Moroccan boy with a hankering for the work of Megadeth and Iron Maiden.
“It’s funny because I was talking with Josh about how The Infidel is about identity but also performance, that we all create this performance of our identity. We thought that was really interesting, and given that Omid is a performer himself, we went with this concept through the whole film.
“He either has to perform as a Jewish person for the Jewish people, or when he has to perform like he’s this very good Muslim and even an anti-Semite for his fellow Muslims, so they don’t realise that he’s actually Jewish. Everything is performance in a way. That was really interesting.”
Shooting on a combination of 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 250T and ETERNA 500T, Braier had strenuously to argue her corner to shoot on film in the face of a digital alternative.
“I’ve only used digital formats in commercials and a couple of shorts. I did my first feature on digital but in the last few years I’ve always been avoiding HD because I think the look is totally different. It’s very difficult to make something look filmic in digital. To me, you could already see quite easily the difference in every shot, in every frame.
“Production-wise I think they could also see the difference in terms of comparing it with the RED
camera, which they originally wanted to use, in terms of the amount of lights for example that I had to use. There were fewer lights because the RED camera is something like 80 ASA, and we were using the ETERNA 250T.
“Using the 16mm Fujifilm I could do it with a quarter of the lights. The lighting list gets reduced, so do the number of sparks we need, the tracks are smaller, the lighting
times are faster. There are a lot of advantages.
“So the 16mm stocks really suited the format of the film because it was low-budget, we had to do a lot of things each day and we had to be fast. For me, working in film is always faster than digital, because digital is always associated with so many technical complications and tricky things. For me, film is much more direct.” ANWAR BRETT
The Infidel was originated on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 250T 8653 and ETERNA 500T 8673
NATASHA BRAIER
“USING THE 16MM FUJIFILM, I COULD DO IT WITH A QUARTER OF THE LIGHTS.”
Photo top: Omid Djalili in The Infidel; left top to bottom: Scene from Somers Town (photo courtesy Filksi) and The Infidel Director Josh Appignanesi (The Infidel photos courtesy Eloi Sanchez Moli)
26 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE