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GREEN ZONE
“WE HAD A TOUGH TIME IN THE GRADE BECAUSE WE’D CREATED A MONSTER BUT I’VE GOT TO SAY THE FUJIFILM STOCK PULLED THROUGH.”
THE DP VIEW
BARRY ACKROYD BSC
For the night scenes the brief
from Paul was that it should be “absolute night, in a curfew with no help from streetlights. I chose to do that by underexposing the film sometimes as much as three stops.
We were having to cover a huge area with light but very, very thinly and carefully secreted out of shot mostly, trying to create this world of shadows and half-seen things.
The great thing with Paul is this idea that you should always go further, deeper, more sinister. ‘Show me the colour of death’ he’d say. The film stock somehow managed to hang on to all of that.
We had a tough time in the grade because we’d created a monster but I’ve got to say the Fujifilm stock pulled through. I think we pulled the whole thing off in a very dramatic and daring way.
➤ his thriller craft with the most recent two films in the hugely successful Bourne saga, starring Matt Damon as the amnesiac agent.
Damon would also become his enthusiastic ally in Green Zone, playing an idealistic American officer who in his enthusiastic quest to find WMD in Iraq suddenly begins to uncover a more sinister conspiracy and cover-up instead.
Says Greengrass: “For both Matt and me, our creative mission was ‘Can we create a film that’s every bit as compelling, filled with action, exciting, mysterious, and a privileged inside view to a secret world as the Bourne films, but can we do it in that extreme environment of downtown Baghdad in those desperate weeks immediately after the invasion?’
Despite being backed by a major studio, the approach to the filmmaking, says Ackroyd, was as if it was an “independent” film: “Paul approached it as if it was, say, the Stephen Lawrence film but with all the bells, whistles and things he’d learned from the Bourne films for that added value.
“Technique-wise, storywise, it’s very simple. We started based on what we’d done before, based on Paul’s sensibilities and with what, hopefully, I’d added to his repertoire in terms of building more continuous- type scenes and letting them run. We’d build the timeline and the story then shoot it again and again.
“We’d always work out a plan but we wouldn’t rehearse; Paul’s very much against that. If you could stand back and watch, you can imagine it’s quite a scene – cameras racing about in the midst of the
to stop you falling. It becomes quite a nice physical world.
“We always had two cameras. Klemens Becker was the main operator on the ‘A’ camera. My style is, having just lit the scene, I’ll pick up the ‘B’ camera and then tuck myself tightly behind a doorway or whatever’s nearby.”
The film was shot in two main bursts with a longish hiatus in between while Damon went off to South Africa to shoot Invictus.
Locations in Southern Spain’s Murcia province together with areas in and around Morocco’s Rabat and Kenitra provided the principal exteriors for Green Zone, while subsequent scenes – indoors and out - were shot in and around London and Surrey including a climactic firefight in Docklands.
Says Ackroyd: “The film lasts less than two hours, but you’re shooting for six or seven months, so much of it will, of course, disappear from the final film. Our Editor Chris Rouse is phenomenal. He’s responsible for putting a lot of that energy into the final film.
‘I also remember Klemens saying, ‘we’re having to keep running and chasing – and they’re only going to use maybe 15 frames at a time. I’d say to him, ‘Yes, but which 15 frames? Try harder’. The energy level has to stay high all the time.” QUENTIN FALK
Green Zone was originated on 35mm Fujicolor Reala 500D 8592, ETERNA 500T 8573, ETERNA 250D 8563 and ETERNA Vivid 160T 8543
MATT DAMON ON
BARRY ACKROYD BSC
As an actor working with him,
it’s great because he and Paul “set up an environment in which you have such freedom. Never was a mark laid down. Never was there anyone who said, ‘go and stand here and deliver this line this way’.
On the contrary, Barry and Paul’s interest lay totally in capturing something in real time and in Green Zone they went as far as something they did in United 93 which was a great idea.
Normally, you’re restricted by the film magazine, usually an 11- minute load. What they did was have a back-up camera so they’d go for 11 minutes and then one camera would be dumped and they’d pick up another one and keep carrying on.
This allowed the actors and non- actors, which there were many, to stay in this heightened reality, to stay in that world without everyone breaking down and wanting to get a cup of tea or go to the bathroom. These exercises would carry on for half an hour at a time, then they’d say ‘take a break’.
It’s very easy to buy into that reality when the camera is doing nothing at all, when it’s asking technically nothing of you. I do it professionally so I am used to the technical realities of making a film but to be totally liberated from that really gives you something in
your performance that you can’t get any other way.
”
”action with grips hanging on to you
Photos left and right: Jason Isaacs and Matta Damon in action, and centre, Paul Greengrass with Matt Damon
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