Page 8 - Fujifilm Exposure_15 Melinda Messenger_ok

COUNTDOWN
COUNTDOWN
TTHE DP VIEW
DENIS CROSSAN BSC
he problem when you are charged with lighting a story of people trapped in an impenetra- ble underground bunker is really quite obvious – there is no light
source. That was the biggest challenge. In some scenes it’s supposed to be completely pitch black, and that’s
hard because you’re doing wide shots of this hole where the characters are supposed to be sleeping, and one actu- ally says ‘it’s too dark to sleep’, and then there’s some action. I just tried to just give an impression of it while keeping it all as dark as possible.
I used the F-400 for those scenes, and because it’s a lower contrast stock it also makes the colours slightly desaturated, which is an effect I wanted for the later scenes. I opted to make a black and white dupe, and gradually print a percentage of that into the end sequence so that it desaturated the colour, and as our understanding of events changes, the colours gradually become more muted.” ■
“You could look at it like it’s a psychological drama, or even a perverted love
story in a funny way, but what we were interested in is the moral ambiguity that
comes in the middle of the movie, what one of the characters becomes.”
NICK HAMM, Director
EXPOSURE • 6 & 7