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DP ADAM SUSCHITZKY ON THE VARIOUS CHALLENGES FACED WHILST SHOOTING THE LATEST TV VERSION OF EMMA
reviously made-for-TV at least seven times since 1948, the latest BBC version of Jane Austen’s ever-popular Emma recently unfolded on Sunday
night primetime across four colourful hours.
“Two feature films shot in 63 days - that’s the way we looked at it and the quality had to be of feature film standard. That’s what an audience expects and also what we expected of ourselves,” noted cine- matographer Adam Suschitzky.
For Suschitzky, the still youthful veteran of more flash-and-dash hit teleseries like Spooks, Hustle, Life On Mars, Primeval, Apparitions and, currently, Ashes To Ashes, Emma was a welcome change of pace
and period.
Working for the first time with
director Jim O’Hanlon (House Of Saddam, Mutual Friends) - and with an all-star cast including Romola Garai, Jonny Lee Miller, Rupert Evans and Michael Gambon - he said that they made a particular point of not watch- ing previous versions of the subject, including the 1996 Gwyneth Paltrow film, “because we both felt that we wanted to find our own ‘language’.
“Jim was very keen that the piece should be very naturalistic, yet not flat, dull or de-saturated. He was also very passionate about conveying the truth of the characters and their situations.”
Ironically, their main visual reference turned out to be the BBC’s acclaimed 2008 biographical drama Miss Austen Regrets, “which David Katznelson had beautifully photographed [on 16mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T, ETERNA 250T and ETERNA Vivid 160T].
“It looked great, and Jim and I loved the richness of colour, the light and shade, and the depth. It was one of our early discussion points. In my own time I looked at other period films I admired including the work of Remi Adefarasin, whose candle work I’ve always enjoyed.”
Suschitzky who had previously used Fujifilm on a rare feature outing, Out Of Depth, and Spooks, said he decided to use a couple of the stocks for the important
flashbacks in the mini-series including a key six-minute section at the beginning of episode one.
“They were fantastic. I loved the ETERNA Vivid 160T for its richness and saturation, which I then supplemented with the ETERNA 500T. It was a good combination of the two and I shot with an antique suede filter to lend it a slightly older image. Every time we put the Fujifilm up on the rushes we just loved the quality of it – and it contrasted very well with the
other stuff.”
Although the producers were
clear from the outset that they wanted Emma to be on film, Suschitzky found himself under pressure “from a number of sceptics out there who tried to dissuade me from using the two-perf 35mm, and ‘wouldn’t I rather take a digital format instead?’
“We did the tests
and they looked
absolutely beautiful,
and of course you have the advantage of all the different looks of the film stocks and the processing, what it can bring and blend in, the depth of field and, indeed the length of the takes.
“Two-perf doubles your length of a magazine, so we could get 21 minutes to a magazine on a1000-foot; and that was perfect for Emma as there were many long dialogue scenes. So, financially, it also made a lot of sense.”
The production was entirely filmed on location, principally in the village of Chilham near Canterbury which doubled as the book’s ‘Highbury’, and at Squerryes Court, also in Kent, which was the stand-in for Austen’s ‘Hartfield’.
Said Suschitzky “Jim was very anxious to find places that hadn’t been endlessly revisited by cameras. Chilham hadn’t been seen on screen for some time and also provided a 360 degree view without there hav- ing to be major dressing or CGI work
to paint buildings out. As for the restrictions you can often get shooting period, I like to think of it as a challenge, and often this can offer up creative solutions that work terrifically well. In some places, one wasn’t able to mount, clip on or screw in, in any shape or form. I worked with a wonderful gaffer, Alex Scott, who’s done many a period piece for film and TV. He came up with a wonderful solution whereby we would string very thin wire between picture rails and from that we could mount very lightweight ‘Chinese lanterns’; by doing that,
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we could still preserve the width of the room.”
Another “challenge’ was “we wanted to keep the fluidity of scenes and performances going, which meant that in some day scenes travelling from the depth of the garden and often in through several rooms with huge exposure changes. Or, on occasion, starting up in the attic and winding all the way down staircases, through hallways and into other rooms. We were regularly covering very large areas in often four- or five-minute scenes,” Suschitzky added.
“Photography for me,” he said, “is best when it’s not noticed, when it’s underscoring – like a great piece of music – in support of that narrative and great performances.” QUENTIN FALK
Emma, shown on BBC One in the Autumn, was partially originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 160T 8543 and ETERNA 500T 8573
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