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USA FEATURE IN FOCUS
THEGENIUSPILL
BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE US BOX OFFICE HIT LIMITLESS
he idea that a single pill can Topen the door to genius is a
compelling one, and forms the intriguing basis of the US hit thriller Limitless.
But the prosaic reality for Belgian DP Jo Willems SBC and his director Neil Burger means that this effortless on-screen transformation required a great deal of work and imagination to pull off.
As they tell the story of down-at- heel writer Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper), turned into a high achieving go-getter by an untested prototype drug, the pair had to make some key decisions about conveying strong visual elements in a modern morality tale.
“The design of the film, the camera movement and composition all need to support Bradley’s performance,” says Burger. “They need to express Eddie’s state of mind. As you watch the movie you can’t really put your finger on it, but you feel it.”
Offered the trial drug NZT by a friend, Eddie discovers it throws open the doors of his perception so that he sees the world anew, and overnight is functioning at his fullest potential. Burger and Willems agreed that the look of these two distinct realities in Eddie’s life had to have quite separate visual styles.
Co-starring in the film with Cooper are Robert De Niro, Abbie Cornish and Andrew Howard.
The more naturalistic scenes, featuring what cast and crew came to call ‘Old Eddie’, were shot on the ETERNA 500T, pulled one stop to create a more natural, documentary looking image.
“We shot those scenes with a hand-held camera and longer lens,” Brussels-born, London Film School graduate Willems explains. “It’s raw and messy and not always pretty. The lighting is a little dirty. We didn’t want to make him look too good.”
This makes the contrast all the more arresting when Cooper
portrays the more polished, refined and brilliant version of his character. For these wild, drug-fuelled sequences Willems combined film and digital elements that were further enhanced in post production.
“He feels like he’s in total control,” Willems adds, “so the camera is much more controlled. The visuals are much more polished. The lighting is softer. We used wider lenses, and it’s all a bit more precise. It’s as if we’re inside his head. And because we were developing the character in a visual way, we weren’t afraid to be very subjective with the imagery and pull the audience in.”
Shooting the film on location in New York and Philadelphia, Burger and Willems managed to ensure that their central character existed within a very recognisable real world, whatever the state of his chemically-enhanced mind.
Willems could have been forgiven for a sense of disorientation himself, as he sometimes found himself shooting in six different locations a day. But he used it to his advantage using available light to create a very naturalistic look.
“It gives the film a documentary feel,” he adds. “I’m really into that style. We had to work fast but it was good fun.”
For Cooper, who also takes an executive producer credit on the film, the fractured nature of the shoot required a high level of concentration in order to remember just what state of brilliance or disrepair Eddie was in for a given scene.
Sometimes there were contrasting scenes filmed on the same day, and often – the actor adds – the scruffy hairpiece that provided Eddie’s ragged ponytail served as a useful clue. “I still remember that day,” he chuckles, “three days before the final day of shooting, it was Old Eddie’s last day. We had a little memorial for him, and finally put the wig away.”
Once these parameters were established for all concerned the
shoot ran smoothly. And in post production Willems was able to further enhance the scenes where Eddie was at the height of his powers, unaware of the ultimate cost.
“We wanted these scenes to have an almost artificial, electronic feel,” Willems continues. “We did less in post to the scenes we shot on the ETERNA 500T. I was able to build more of the look into the negative and use pull processing to take out a bit of the colour.
“Those sequences were very much the way I normally work. It’s more natural to my style of photography. The stock has a beautiful texture and grain, which feels ‘analogue’ to me. It’s those moments where film shines.”
Director Neil Burger, whose previous films include The Illusionist, was also keen to develop techniques to help demonstrate Eddie Morra’s radically changed view of the world. One, created with Willems, involved a way of suggesting a 360 degree field of vision.
“The cameras were ganged together to show 360 degrees of his perception squeezed into the frame,” says Burger. “I liked the idea of that, metaphorically. He can see everything, as if he has eyes in the back of his head. It creates a very surreal, intense image.
“I was just trying to find techniques that felt expressive of Eddie. Sometimes that meant a very simple in-camera effect, other times we did create new looks. The point was to direct it, from performance to visuals, in such a way that the audience knows what it feels like for the character.” ANWAR BRETT
Limitless was pricipally originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 500T 8573
Photo main: Robert De Niro and Bradley Cooper in Limitless; above: Director Neil Burger and DP Jo Willems behind the camera right: on location with Limitless
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