Page 9 - Fujifilm Exposure_43 Slumdog Millionnaire_ok

“WE HAD THE FANTASTIC LATITUDE OF THE ETERNA STOCK.”
e kicked off filming with Wtwo weeks of night shoots.
We shot the “studio” stuff in the warehouse, which was due for demolition right
after our shoot, to make way for the Olympics.
We had to bring in all the rigging and black out the glass roof. The poor riggers were practically up there in the snow lashing the black- outs back down after every high wind. The Art Dept constructed the most fantastic 80s nightclub set in there and we built in a lot of lighting and hidden cable runs. It was almost a 360 degree set.
The director was casting right up until the last minute, so we didn’t have the usual pre-production dis- cussions. On the first day of shoot- ing we’d just finished niftily building in a concealed toplight into a partic- ularly tight part of the set when the lead actors walk on for the first time, and to my surprise one of them has bleached blonde hair. It was glowing rather magnificently as the net kits rattled off the lighting truck!
We did have our work cut out coping with the tonal range, as another of the leads had very dark black skin and you had to be very careful in the shadows. In many scenes, we really had the full spec- trum and to cope with it the lighting needed a lot of netting and tweaking - which never makes you popular! On our side, we had the fantastic latitude of the ETERNA stock, which was pretty impressive.
We also spent about three weeks in Birmingham shooting loca- tions, where we had the opposite problems - desperately trying to get enough contrast when you’ve got your actors so close to a white wall, you just couldn’t black off enough.
Asitwasallsetinthe80s,we had net curtains in order that the ex- teriors didn’t have to be dressed in period, while outside we’d be debat- ing how many times we’d had that same Ford Cortina in shot. A very big thanks to all our wonderful crew and the excellent team at Fujifilm!
THE DP VIEW
KATE STARK
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 7