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ULF BRANTÅS
“I WAS INTERESTED IN
USING FUJIFILM STOCK
FOR THE WIDE RANGE
OF EMULSIONS, WHERE
THERE IS AN
OPPORTUNITY TO COMBINE LENSES AND STOCK FOR THE MOST OPTIMAL RESULTS.”
➤ With an initial passion for edit- ing and script writing, it was only when Brantås joined Andersson’s team of runners that he developed an interest in cinematography.
“We did some commercials for the Swedish Labourers’ Union and Roy ordered me to go up north shooting footage from the steel mills that was later cut into the commer- cials. So he literally planted a cam- era in my hands, for which I am very grateful. The first time I worked on a feature it was as a DP taking over from a legendary Swedish cine- matographer Jörgen Persson, who’d decided to leave. I had the delicate task of continuing.”
The film in question, Kvinnorna på taket, won the two cinematogra- phers a joint award for Best Cine- matography in the 1989 European Film Awards, which cannot have hurt in drawing attention to the new talent in town. Not long after, Bran- tås was to meet an individual who was to dramatically influence the path of his early career.
“Lukas Moodysson was collabo- rating with Swedish producer Lars Jönsson who suggested me to Lukas for his short, Talk,” reflects Brantås.
“We met in his flat in Gothen- burg and since I was not very im- pressed with how I presented myself and Lukas objected to everything I suggested, I thought I’d never see the man again!”
Brantås was surprised then to receive a call from Moodysson offer- ing him the job. This collaboration would go on to span three feature films: Fucking Åmål/Show Me Love, Together and Lilya 4-ever, the last winning him Best Cinematography at Sweden’s Guldbagge Awards in 2003.
“Working with Lukas definitely influenced my style but not in a de- liberate way; he is not an advocate for spending too much time on the technical aspects of filmmaking,” explains Brantås.
“Lighting set-ups and blocking was kept to a minimum and we sort of ‘collected’ the scenes with the dif- ferent camera setups. As a result,
I personally got more interested in capturing the beauty of the perform- ances rather than the technicalities that normally guide a cinematogra- pher’s work.”
There was, however, ample opportunity for experimentation, as Brantås elaborates. “In Show Me Love we had used a zoom, crashing in from a wide to a close-up, in order to save time; this was originally in- tended to be cut out but the editor decided to keep it.
“In Together we continued this zooming style and lit entirely with
practicals. Lukas then wanted to shoot Lilya 4-ever on a consumer video camera but I thought that was out of the question as it was made for a theatrical release, and for once Lukas, who is very stubborn, agreed to this. However, the look had to re- main like something shot under doc- umentary conditions.”
In 2004, Brantås was lured to the UK by the BBC to shoot their TV film, May 33rd, directed by David Attwood, the first of three Brantås/Attwood/BBC collabora- tions, most notably To The Ends Of
Photo main previous page: Ulf Brantås at work and on crane for To The Ends Of The Earth; this page main: Wuthering Heights;
and above l-r: stills from Ulf’s film work; (2nd left) camera operator Lucy Bristow and director Coky Giedroyc at work on Wuthering Heights.
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