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“I ENDED UP USING THE ETERNA VIVID 160T WHENEVER I PREFERRED HIGHER CONTRAST AND THE ETERNA VIVID 500T FOR NIGHT EXTERIORS WHEN I NEEDED THAT EXTRA STOP.”
time had to provide a proper frame for everything.
We were going to shoot the
entire movie on location and therefore scouting was essential as some of the locations were very difficult to work on, especially the dairy farms where the mozzarella is made, and so we needed to get every- thing finalised for the best result.
Luckily we had enough time in ‘prep’ and so we looked at everything in and around Caserta until we found what we really wanted. On
the farms, for instance, we tried avoiding aesthetic compromises even though it wasn’t always
possible because of the animals needs and timetables.
From the start, we agreed that Mozzarella Stories had to be shot on film, not only for its quality, fantastic skin tones and great latitude but also because it would give us a lot of freedom given some of the harsh conditions we were going to face.
Edoardo was very smart, bringing together a very young and keen crew that was thrilled by the project. Every single department, from the design people to costume and make-up, really believed in the film, working hard and interacting well to try and bring the movie and the characters
to life. On Mozzarella Stories the requirements of the story and Edoardo’s desire to tell it in a highly stylised way yet with a ‘real’ look, led to a visual approach, which could perhaps be labelled ‘straightforward with a hint of glamour’.
Since the characters of the
film are a bit surreal, often rather bigger than life, we thought it was appropriate to give them a sense of reality, too. We also wanted that raw sense of the Neapolitan countryside, to feel the heat of the summer, and the power of those great animals that are cow buffalo. The images had to be rich and powerful, exciting and yet not too stylised to feel fake.
I had already shot a couple of movies using Fujifilm’s ETERNA Vivid stocks like Laura Luchetti’s Febbre da Fieno and I was quite sure that using the Vivid again here, I could get what Edoardo and I wanted for the film.
Principal photography took place between July and September and I was worried about how to control natural light when the sun gets so high up in the sky.
I must thank both Flavio Trezzi and Giancarlo Chetta from Fujifilm Italy who gave me the chance to do a series of tests as they encouraged me to push the film to its limits. They guided me throughout pre- production until I spotted the right ‘look’ and lighting ratios for Mozzarella Stories.
I end up using both the ETERNA Vivid 160T whenever I preferred higher contrast and the ETERNA Vivid 500T for night exteriors where I needed that extra stop. In a few scenes I pushed the film one stop for a grittier-looking atmosphere.
I decided to use the Cooke S4 lens series, normally at T2.8 and we predominantly used Tungsten sources (Aircraft jumbos) even in daylight scenes (not always using correction) because I loved the creamier look it gives to the images. On some scenes though, the HMI sources provided that extra punch needed. It’s amazing how well the two film stocks matched in post, with their 10-11 stop latitude, deep blacks and response to the subtleties in shadows.
gave freedom to the actors and for our camera. I was surprised how flexible the film is.
I remember one scene in which two characters walk towards the camera from a very strong sunlit area through a very dark corridor. As they get close to the end of the corridor, they were lit by a very light natural bounce of light.
The result was brilliant! You could read perfectly all the bright areas in the background, there was a very rich black in their silhouettes under the corridor and you also had all the detail in the shadows even though they were very underexposed at the end of the scene.
We didn’t use any fill lighting which we would surely have needed if we had used digital. It was one of those situations in which any digital camera would have failed to render the scene in such a natural way!
We didn’t have to worry about clipping of highlights or the underexposed areas and we were able to have great texture, detail and colour saturation in our images. We were very happy and proud with our decision to shoot the movie on film!
Mozzarella Stories is about a family falling apart and we were blessed with such great actors that when discussing the film’s camera work, our main concern was to keep it simple; in other words, we didn’t want to do too much with the camera, just photograph it as best you can to let the audience focus on the characters.
We were very lucky to have an excellent camera crew: Renaud Personnaz (camera operator), Christian Burgos and Alessandro Merluzzi (focus puller) and Alessandro Vezzani (loader).
Super 35mm (2.35:1) and going through DI allowed us to shoot on 3 perf which gave us an extra 25% of film, and that was something we really appreciated, especially using two camera set-ups on almost every scene.
It has been a fantastic experience and I would especially like to thank Emir Kusturica and Paula Vaccaro, Philipp Kreuzer of Bavaria Media Italia, Elisabetta Bruscolini of
CSC Production, Mark
Lombardo of Eagle Pictures
and Giuseppe Basso of
Cinecittà Studios as they have
Mozzarella Stories was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547 and ETERNA Vivid 160T 8543
Using the ETERNA Vivid stocks
sure helped us a great deal in
obtaining a natural look since its
huge latitude enabled us to shoot in all believed in this original come”dy. extreme light conditions without
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 27
having to use too many lights or bounces to fill in the shadows. It saved a lot of time and money and