Page 34 - Fujifilm Exposure_21 The Gathering Storm_ok

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apparently seamless shot we go from the studio to rear projection of the real forest to rear projection of the toy for- est. There are lots of camera tricks but not so much that they interfere with the story or its telling. For a love scene in the forest between Rhys Ifans and Patricia, Michel wanted to do it from a low angle looking up at them. Rather than build a hole in the studio floor, he laid them on a mirror so we looked down into the mirror and you look back at a reflection of Patricia’s face.
Q. Apart from Rhys front-of-cam- era, you were the only other Brit in the team, did you feel at all isolated?
A. Although I have a regular crew in the UK I always like to work with local people when I’m abroad. My operator was Tom Lohmann and the focus puller was his brother Mike [both sons of American cinematogra- pher, Paul Lohmann]. I can’t imagine having a better crew. As the DP, the last thing I think about when going to sleep is, ‘What’s the first thing I’m doing tomorrow. How do I get every- thing prepared?’ Then I wake up and the first thing I think again is, “Have I got everything prepared?” I arrive at the studio at 7 o’clock and people start asking you questions. You’re then making decisions, thinking about five weeks ahead and worrying about what you did yesterday. Your mind is full all day then you wrap and go to watch two hours of dailies followed by a meeting about the next day’s stuff. And, as you go to bed, the last thing you think about is ‘What am I doing tomorrow...’ on a film I work and I sleep. I find it very hard. Some DPs can do a day’s work then go out drink- ing. It doesn’t come that easy to me; I have to work hard at it. If I take my eye off the ball, I’m dead.
Q. Let’s get technical...
A. This is quite a weird story and we wanted a magical quality to it. Whenever I do a commercial with Michel and we get to telecine, he
zoomsoutasfarashecantogetas much of the negative. I then say to him, ‘Michel, if you told me you want- ed to zoom out, I’d have put a wider lens on.’ Michel replies he wants to use all the negative because he hates to see grain; he likes to see things per- fect. When they’re doing interiors, most DPs will go on to 500 stock or the 250 so they can use low light with a big F-stop. I did the whole of this on Fuji 125 which is a very fine grain
stock. But I didn’t want to light the set ups too bright. I don’t, for instance, know how some people light a set up to f8 which is meant to be moody and low key. So I would light the set so dark that the Fuji 125 would only just get it. So I’d shoot at 1.3 on Zeiss superspeed lenses. I could only do this because Mike Lohmann was such a great focus puller. So, to recap, I was on 1.3 for the entire movie and using the 125 ASA.
There were certain scenes like when Rhys enters the city for the first time I wanted it to be like glistening steel and glass and really bright. I over- exposed the stock four stops so I just held on to the blacks and because the F125 is so slow and fine grained it held on to a four stop overexposure easily.
We also had flashback scenes to the Sixties. I wanted the sort of quality you get in that film from the Kennedy assassination or in footage from the Vietnam war. Because it’s faded so much it has a magenta cast. The colour’s faded and it looks slightly washed out. For that, I used a reversal film that Fuji makes called Velvia; rather than get a negative, what goes through the film becomes a positive. So we shot the stuff on the Velvia and would pre-flash it with magenta. The end result looks like a photograph someone’s put in a shop window that’s bleached by the sun - but instead of going blue, it’s gone magenta. That was the basic look. I shot Super35mm although it’s only 1:85 so we used as much negative as possible and there’s quite a lot of colour gels on the lights. Q. So how did it feel to be this Englishman in Hollywood?
A. Okay, it was Hollywood but it was not a studio picture and the pro- duction company had a family feel to it. Mind you, on the first day of shoot- ing we went very late so the two pro- ducers and first AD came in to read Michel the riot act, saying we’d have to shoot faster. Michel screamed back at them for so long and so hard they never bothered him again. It was fan- tastic to watch. After that they were very gun shy and Michel pretty much got left alone. ■
Human Nature, which opens in the UK later this year, was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative.
Fujifilm’s Velvia reversal motion pic- ture film is not available in the UK
GOING HOLLYWOOD
“And, as you go to bed, the last thing you think about is
‘What am I doing tomorrow...?’ On a film, I work and I sleep. I find it very hard.”
Photos from top: Director Michel Gondry (centre); Rhys Ifans having fun and Patricia Arquette in Human Nature
EXPOSURE • 32