Page 16 - Fujifilm Exposure_9 Love's Labour's Lost_ok

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and also having to shoot in the worst possible con- ditions. “To some extent I had both hands tied behind my back,” she admits. “It was a struggle to give up some coverage of shots. Often we opted for not covering from every angle. You had to give in and say, all right we’ll just shoot that.
“Sometimes you felt you were making a painful sacrifice. We had this phrase, ‘doing will be cre- ative.’ We knew it was suicide to shoot in these conditions and went out and did it. “There was a horrible irony that when we did get a sunny day we needed a match for a rainy day. We were used to doing it the other way round. “Once or twice I had to say, ‘I cannot match that, I’m sorry’. The sun
would go in and then out and then it poured with rain. We had to put it in the hands of the graders.
“I was quite worried because we didn’t have projected rushes. All we had were Beta rushes two days later. I was concerned how much the film stock could be controlled. I had done tests com- paring Fuji with Kodak which was what I had always used in the past.
“I would still have done tests anyway because of the location. There’s a very blue cold feel in the air. You put someone in the shadows, they are very cold. It’s a cold exterior. “There was some- thing about the way we were shooting this film. It was a valley between Cumbria and Yorkshire and
MARY FARBROTHER
I have never once felt not accepted because I am a woman. In fact it’s something I don’t ever think about. It probably has to do with coming from film school and working with talented people in every sphere. Male and female... there was absolutely no difference.
has its own peculiar climate which played tricks with the light. And with the grey limestone rocks, all sorts of weird things would happen in the shad- ows that I was finding hard to know how to control because there were no projected rushes.”
But on one occasion nature came up trumps. “There was one time when we thought the weath- er had done something really interesting. There’s a strange scene where the villagers are following the girl to the site where she has seen the vision. And when we came to film, it a thick misty fog appeared which had a sense of mystery which you could not have expected - or paid for.”
After post-production, Farbrother is reas- sured that they beat the weather, though she has one big regret. “We couldn’t shoot the magic hour because the children couldn’t be there in the early morning or late evening. In a landscape like that it would have been nice to exploit that.
“But then, it isn’t a landscape film. It’s about faith and hope and how people cope with that in their life. When I first read the script I cried. And there’s a point in the film when I still cry every time.” ■ IAN SOUTAR
The Darkest Light was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos from top: Keri Arnold as Catherine in The Darkest Light
main (left to right): co-director Bille Eltringham, Mary Farbrother and co-director Simon Beaufoy; Kerry Fox as Sue inset: Keri Arnold and Kavita Sungha in The Darkest Light; Nicola Bland as Natalie in Yellow
EXPOSURE • 16