Page 22 - Fujifilm Exposure_15 Melinda Messenger_ok

behind the camera
GOING TO EXTREMES
GOING TO EXTREMES
An interview with Daniel Cohen
Daniel Cohen’s side and back!
It’s difficult to imagine a more testing feature debut for a young cinematographer. Sex, violence, drug-taking, flash- backs, nudity, claustrophobic interiors and animal cruelty, not to mention a 10-actor ensemble, a first-time writer-director and a very modest budget.
With the twentysomething cast headed by Paul Bettany and Olivia Williams, Dead Babies - adapted from a youthful novel by Martin Amis - is set for a surprisingly wide release in the UK early next year. It is guaran- teed to be one of the most controver- sial films of 2001.
Set over one booze-fuelled and chemically-enhanced weekend in a rather dilapidated large house out- side London, the increasingly spaced-out guests – a mixture of English and Americans – eventually turn on each other in a vicious atmosphere of distrust further fanned by net-based terrorism.
From the same producers of those comparatively lightweight laughter feasts Waking Ned and Shooting Fish, Dead Babies is, you may be just a bit surprised to hear, a comedy too. Jet black.
According to William Marsh, an American stage and shorts director who not only wrote and directed the film but also plays a key role in the piece: “The comedy comes from twist- ing everyday life. In short, it’s a film that will make you laugh out loud... then scream in fear.”
Amis’s cult novel, apparently beloved by “trendsetters and stu- dents”, was written in 1974 but pro- jected into the 80s. For the purpose of the film, it is now set “somewhere in the near future.”
Yet another potential hazard for Daniel Cohen, a Londoner, who admit- ted it was “a really horrible script – if you read it cold. Actually I was stag-
gered they offered me the job. I remember asking how they expected to make any kind of sympathetic film that would bring people in. They just giggled,” he said.
“In fact, it’s very truthful to the book. It was also the director’s first feature so he wanted to make an impression. Okay, it wasn’t pleasant on paper but, naturally, the idea was to try and make it watchable.”
William Marsh was clear as to the “look” of his film, which eventually came together late last year after a very long gestation: “I wanted it to be a conglomeration of all styles that came through the last century. I picked the two styles that I believed were the most important, art deco and the Seventies, and twisted that with classical images. For instance, I love the juxtaposition of the plasma screen with 16th Century furniture. More importantly, it wasn’t a real world we were creating here, it was a hyper-real world.”
For Cohen, it was all about four weeks’ preparation and then a tight six week shoot on a tight budget. No time, nor frankly any inclination, to dwell on the fact it was his feature debut after a couple of years lighting commercials and promos.
“The script,” he said, “develops nicely from a low key start before eventually rollerballing into complete mayhem, so you’ve already got a structure. Also we were very lucky with the location – an amazing old pile near Watford.
“The restraints of the budget meant that if you could find one place to do the majority of the film then (a) you didn’t have to keep moving the unit around, which always takes up- time and (b) you could work different sets at the same time. The more time you have on set, the more material you can get. We did a great deal with two cameras.”
Then there was the no small mat- ter of the actual content ranging from the eye-boggling to the sheer stom- ach-churning – as in the way various rooms are found foully trashed. Cohen agrees that here were a band of brave and, above all, trusting actors: “Some of the stuff they had to do was horrendous.
“When it came to the nudity it probably helped that we had a mixed crew – that’s me, Lucy, my focus puller Zac Nicholson and clapper loader Julie Lemasson. This got away from the hairy-arsed concept of what camera crews can be. I don’t think the actors felt as threatened and, in fact , it seemed to help make them a bit freer and less self-conscious. The key was that everyone, on both sides of the camera, dealt with the material sensi- tively and sensibly.”
Technically, the film – veering between drug-induced fantasy and violent reality - was a terrific chal- lenge. Apart from a couple of expen- sive CGI shots, all the effects were done in-camera. “With stuff like dou- ble exposing, we were,” said Cohen, “reproducing things that were, effec- tively, done 100 years ago. We espe- cially went to town with the flash- backs and some of the drug stuff.
“I used Fuji’s 500 Tungsten – which you can underexpose quite a bit and still get very tasty pictures - and the 250 Daylight and often pushed a stop then overexposed a stop. For some of the stuff we used an old set of Primo lenses. What’s particularly nice with the older lenses is that they flare more so you get a softer image.
“We played with shutter angles, diffusion, did speed ramping, shot on video - a little mini DV then using a macro lens on Panavision to shoot material on the tiny monitor – and even had some animation.”
All that plus killing a cat and whacking a cow (“very tricky”, con-
continued on page 22
EXPOSURE • 20 & 21