Page 16 - Fujifilm Exposure_25 Jean Francois Robin_ok

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Robin hails originally from a little village in the middle of the Sologne in central France where he says he took photographs as a kid, but wasn’t really interested in cinema until later on. He started playing the piano at the age of eight and says he was much more involved with music early on as well as and studying physics at school.
Later, he came to Paris to attend the Louis Lumière film school after which he worked in television for several years, then as camera assistant on com- mercials and, finally, on feature films.
“Music has always been very impor- tant to me, and my background in
music has been very useful in my pro- fession. There is nothing more difficult than to talk about the visuals, l’image, in words. To speak with words about the photography of a film that has not yet been made can be very abstract.
“Or, one has to find more concrete references. Once, I had to show the director Zulawski the colour of my shoelaces in order to describe the tones I had envisioned for his film. With some directors we discuss the film by making references to pieces of music. We cite musical passages to describe the timing of a shot, the rhythm and pacing of a scene.
“With Claude Sautet, we used Bach’s piano music. There are scenes that we shot like the movements of a sonata. We would break down the sequence into the different measures of the movement; for instance, the first part we will shoot like the fourth measure, then continue with another part with another measure or musi- cal phrase. Sautet and I sometimes sing passages from Bach’s melodies. For me there has always been a strong relationship between music and l’image.”
So having photographed so many films, what’s the challenge these days?
“On each and every film there’s a challenge. After so many movies, you’ve already photographed everything hun- dreds of times - a kitchen 200 times, a bedroom 300 times, a stairway 250 times, a bourgeois apartment 400 times.
“The challenge is finding a style that works for that film. You try to find some new way to do something unique for that particular story you are trying to tell. It’s the director’s film that you have to find a style for. We discuss it thor- oughly long before the time to shoot.
“The preparation time and the location scouting are very important in order to get the art direction and
JEAN-FRANCOIS ROBIN
“For me there has always been
a strong relationship between music and l’image.”
14 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video