Page 49 - Fujifilm Exposure_51_Expo Intl_Spring 2011_ok

“WHEN I TODDLED ALONG TO THE FIRST UNVEILING OF THE NEW ETERNA VIVID 500T IT TOOK ME ABOUT TWO MINUTES TO DECIDE THAT IT WOULD BE IDEAL.”
Attack The Block - the title is an homage to a little-known South Korean movie, Attack The Gas Station - filmed for 11 weeks. Six of those were on location and, in keeping with a decision taken very early on, that meant six weeks of night shoots. A cast of talented newcomers such as John Boyega, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh and Leeon Jones is supplemented
with better-known names like Nick Frost, Jodie Whittaker and
Luke Treadaway.
“We decided to shoot it all after dark, which was very important,” says Cornish, who loved the thrill of shooting at night. “We thought that would immediately make it
different from other British movies that take place in a similar setting. “And we wet down every single
street, which gives it that look that The Warriors and Streets Of Fire had, where you double your money with the lights. We tried to use similar lenses to what they used in The Warriors to get the same depth of field, so that the lights in the background become jewels glisten- ing in shadow.”
Townend elaborates: “Did we talk about other films in ‘prep’? Yes, we did, but more in a stream- of-consciousness fashion than in terms of particular touchstones. We especially admired the look - an almost forgotten look - of some of those John Carpenter films of the early 80s like The Thing and Escape From New York, as well as other people’s work such as The Warriors and The Terminator, many of which were seriously low budget.
“One of the things you notice about them was the majority of night exterior work was using practical lighting with its mercury vapour, so the films have a blue-green tone to them as opposed to yellow and orange. We rather liked that. In fact, we then always tried to introduce another colour, our theory being that as there were so many night scenes, it might get tiring on the eyes.”
Townend who had shot
The Unloved on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 400T and ETERNA 500T, was already in pre-production on Attack The Block, “when I toddled along to the first unveiling of the new ETERNA Vivid 500T. It took me about two minutes to decide that it would be ideal.
“My first thought was that it’d be just used for all the exteriors because, in the back of my mind
was also the thought that when we went back to the studio [3 Mills] to do interiors we might use some other stocks. In the end I decided to use the ETERNA Vivid 500T for the whole thing.
“Look, I don’t want to give away too much, but there are, as you can imagine, creatures in the film.
They weren’t going to be expensive CG entities but they obviously should have a ‘look’ and Joe’s one overriding concept was they’d be jet black and completely featureless so that all you see on screen would be an outline.
“In any given frame, whatever tone represented full shadow, they would be as dark as that, so it seemed to make sense to stick to a stock that kept black and naturally contrasty,” added Townend.
“I’d used the ETERNA Vivid 160T several times before and was always very impressed by it, so to get a 500 ASA version of the same stock for a film entirely set at night was a good thing, really.
“Another concern we had was although this was a low budget independent British film we didn’t want it to end up with that typical kind of gritty, de-saturated, ‘social
realism’ look. It should be glossier than that. The script is pitched somewhere between serious and, I suppose, an audience having at times to suspend its disbelief.”
The film used locations all over South and East London - from a street and adjacent park in Brixton, “about 100 yards from Joe’s house, so he always had that in mind”, to the block itself, in Stratford, a stone’s throw from the new Olympic site. There were also some weeks on the notorious Heygate Estate at Elephant and Castle, now 99% vacated as it awaits demolition, which also ‘hosted’ Hereafter and Harry Brown.
The weight of night shooting didn’t seem remotely to faze Townend, who keeps constantly busy with music promos and commercials in between features: “There’s not much traffic and very few people around - a great time to shoot in London in those hours before dawn, Basically, just you and the foxes!” QUENTIN FALK
Attack The Block was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547
Photo above:
Director Joe Cornish (left) with DP Tom Townend
photos main and left:
scenes from Attack The Block
FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 47