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proximity, selected the two Vivid stocks, the ETERNA Vivid 160T and Vivid 500T, neither of which he’d used before.
“My obvious choice would have been to go for the Fujifilm Super F-64D because I’ve always loved that stock [having used it on both Boy A and Red Riding 1974]. On this occasion, I wanted to move in a different direction, be a bit more pastelly but also maintain some colour, if I needed it, as well
as vibrancy.
“Also, because of the environment
I needed essentially four stocks in two so I basically rated the
Vivid 160T at 100ASA as Daylight stock using it pretty much for the bulk of the film.
I used the Vivid 500T every now and then, principally in Maruge’s hut which we found in a small village; it had blackened walls from the smoke of the fire and was the sort of place where it takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust to the light.”
Maruge, incidentally, died last year aged 90 – was a tough shoot but, according to Hardy was “a walk in the park” compared with his next assignment which took him to the North West of Albania on the border with Montenegro for a film which still resides under the cryptic moniker of Joshua Marston’s Untitled Albanian Project.
“It was the hardest place I’ve ever shot. It was a beautiful part of the world with a wall of mountains stretching from South to North. But the landscape itself is strewn with rubbish. The culture seems to be that nobody wants to take responsibility for anything that’s outside their own sphere. Corruption was everywhere and seemed to depend on what day it was or what the weather was like.” Marston, the California-born former journalist and teacher turned director of the Oscar-nominated Maria Full Of Grace, about a pregnant Colombia drug ‘mule’, called Hardy up after seeing the DP’s
Red Riding episode in New York. “I requested the script, which
Josh, a multi-linguist, has co-written with an Albanian writer and found it was very different to the norm. It’s a very honest contemporary story centred around a 15-year-old boy whose ambition is to start an internet café in a country that’s essentially ripping itself apart with every regime change. He’s also falling in love with his classroom sweetheart.”
So far, not so hugely out-of- ordinary. But here’s the kicker: the film is being shot in Albanian with an all-Albanian cast of non-actors. The film also deals with the country’s knotty problem of blood feuds which were first set down in Albania’s ‘Great Canon of Leke Dukagjiniis’,
a 15th Century book about codes
of behaviour.
Says Hardy, currently shooting for BBC TV a new 35mm version on ETERNA 400T of MR James famous ghost story Oh, Whistle, and I Will Come To You, Lad, starring John
Hurt: “Josh asked me to come on board because he wanted to give the story much more of a cinematic scope then he had with Maria.
“He said he’d need pushing every day to get to that point because as a writer-director who’s obsessed with performance he might clock into autopilot which, for him – as I’d noticed it had been on Maria – was medium close-up all the time.
It was a real challenge.” More of the Albanian Project in a future edition of EXPOSURE. QUENTIN FALK
The First Grader, to be released next year, was originated on 2-Perf 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 160T 8543 and ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547; Joshua Marston’s Untitled Albanian Project, now in post-production, was originated on 16mm ETERNA Vivid 160T 8643 and ETERNA Vivid 500T 8647; Whistle was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 400T 8583 and is due to be aired on BBC TV over Christmas
“I WANTED TO MOVE IN A DIFFERENT DIRECTION,
BE A BIT MORE PASTELLY BUT ALSO MAINTAIN SOME COLOUR, IF I NEEDED IT, AS WELL AS VIBRANCY.”
The First Grader – the real
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 17