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and he came up with a great palette of colours from a 1940s paintbook and so we chose all the colours to be in muted tones.
“After that Hugo and I thought it would be really great to have the walls with a sheen on them so when you have a light it would reflect down the walls. All the walls had a varnish put over them which meant they had a shine, yet were quite dark too. The brightest thing would often be just people’s faces. Because you are revis- iting so many different rooms in Snatch, they then retain a certain identity when you come back to them.
“I shot almost the whole film on Fuji 125 because by keeping it on slow stock its not a grain you’re seeing but strong, solid blacks that give it the required grittiness. The bleach bypass then further mutes the colours.”
As far as some of the film’s visual gimmicks are concerned, Maurice- Jones pays fulsome credit to Ritchie. There’s one particularly crafty sequence – a montage of four quick cuts - in which Cousin Avi (Farina) switches from New York to London in almost the blink of an eye.
Maurice-Jones claims to be proud- est of his work on the film’s climactic boxing sequence involving Pitt, as tat- tooed Mickey O’Neill, and another bare-knuckle fighter, Bomber Harris (Trevor Steedman).
“ Boxing sequences in films tends to be unrealistic because it’s always big one-hits, with the face snapping round. If you hit someone like that once, they’d be out. They then tend to get hit like that round after round.
“We were anxious to try and make it look like a real boxing match, a bare knuckle affair which is messy, dirty, and where most of the punches don’t quite connect. There’s also a lot of pushing, head-butting, elbowing, falling over and getting up.
“ I shot with a very narrow shutter angle to heighten the reality of it. There’s a lot of hand-held, even some messy framing because you don’t want it too perfectly composed.
“There’s quite a bit shot out of focus, but that didn’t matter to me because it adds to the authenticity of the bout. We’d freeze the action and zoom in just to make it look even more exciting and tricksy. I’m told the adrenaline really gets going when you watch it.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Snatch was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative. Snatch: Photographs by Dan Smith & Tim Maurice-Jones is published by VISION ON (£14.99). Snatch is released nationwide on September 1
“The film is more than just a
gangster madcap.
It is a diamond heist gone wrong, fixed box- ing matches,
a New York Mafia boss, and an Irish gypsy-turned-prize- fighter, fighting only to win his mother a newcaravan.”
Photos from top:
Snatch Director Guy Ritchie (centre) with Jason Statham and Stephen Graham; Robbie Gee, Lennie James and Ade; Dennis Farina with Vinnie Jones;
Jason Flemying (second right) with his fellow gypsies
Above: Producer Matthew Vaughn and Cinamatographer Tim Maurice-Jones Cover: Vinnie Jones as Bullet-Tooth Tony
EXPOSURE • 18