Page 9 - Fujifilm Exposure_22 Le Divorce_ok

THE DP VIEW
MERRITT GOLD
We were shooting mostly
at night, and on a low budget, so the HMIs that we used for creating our moonlight were uncorrect- ed with no extra gels on them. We went with that as our look. We used no filters and it was all very low light. That also posed a problem because it meant when you went for a tighter lens it was really tricky to keep focus.
Our worst problem was the weather as we were shooting in an English win- ter. When it rained everything took a lot longer. You’ve got to keep cleaning the front of the lens; the cars would be steaming up with people in them.
And those moments we wanted to be nice and still, with maybe a bit of smoke drifting in, we found we couldn’t because it was too windy.
The thing that surprised me was that the 250T stock worked when my meter was reading next to nothing.
I was getting a reading of 0.7 and we were getting rushes back that were very useable.
There was a classic example in the forest at Farnham. I had two 12k’s and was hoping it would be enough and it justaboutwas. Anylessanditwould have been off the scale. So the film is definitely not over lit but in the end all that darkness and shadow somehow help the characters. ■
in production
changing, or the time limitations. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and get something in the can in order to complete the scene.”
Director of Photography Merritt Gold was faced with the particular problem of matching everything that had been shot by his predecessor John Keen, who’d had to leave on commercials duty during the latter part of principal photography. Such is the lot of a low budget film, but Gold rose to the challenge on this, his first feature as a DP.
“Obviously John created a cer- tain style to begin with,” says Gold, “I just followed his lead. He complet- ed most of the interior shots, I just did a few inserts, as well as some extra days which included different
scenes in the interiors. Basically I took over from John on most of the exteriors that weren’t associated with the diner scene.”
Using Fuji 250 Tungsten stock Gold was given the onerous task of lighting, operating and working with the Steadicam as well. But the limitations on the film also allowed for a degree of experimentation that produced sur- prising results.
“My idea was that less should be more,” continues Sherard. “My initial brief to John was that I wanted it to be rich and colourful and warm inside, but still and cold outside. That was open season for him to start with. There are things we would like to have done, lit a wider area for big driving shots, but you have to choose your area and that’s it.”
Assembling a range of classic American cars – including one perfect looking police car that had the minor drawback of being a right hand drive – the crew shot most of the driving scenes on private roads or single tracks so no traffic laws were broken during the making of this film.
“We also had a lot of night-time driving scenes with dialogue,” Sherard adds, “but when we did these shots on the low loader they didn’t come out
the way I wanted. But when we did them in a stationary vehicle we found they looked far better.
“They just worked. You’d just have a couple of runners and grips bouncing the car lightly and we’d have guys with flags and branches crossing the lights to create the illu- sion of movement. But it was dark all around so you wouldn’t have seen much anyway.”
Two and a half years after film first rolled on a chilling serial killer tale set over there but made over here, Nicholas Sherard has the look of a man whose early optimism has been vindicated.
“We had every obstacle thrown at us,” he smiles, “and I don’t know how we got through it. Early on, we had the option of shooting on Super 16, but we were determined to shoot on 35mm. I think we have a movie as a result... a movie as opposed to a film.” ■ ANWAR BRETT
Don’t Look Back was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative