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DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK USA/AUSTRALIA
COMING SOON
he psychological horror themes Tof Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark,
co-starring Katie Holmes, Guy
Pearce and Bailee Madison, and filmed in Victoria, Australia, sit in the shadow of Guillermo Del Toro.
The talented Mexican filmmaker has won legions of fans for films like Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth, so when his name is attached as a co-writer and producer to a project like this expectations are inevitably raised.
pleasure to have him around,” says Stapleton, “and something that could have been problematic actually turned into a very creative threesome. Every morning we met and figured out what we should do.”
In a film where the mood is so closely controlled by the use of light and shadow, where a young girl’s nightmares of horrific creatures lurking in her new suburban home are brought vividly to life, Stapleton
that before, but it is true in this case that the blacks of this particular stock are really exceptional.
“But for me what’s even more exceptional are the whites. Troy was a beam of smoke maniac; he was a big Blade Runner fan so it was all about beams and drips and all that sort of stuff.
“When we started looking at the set plans I realised there were very tall stained glass windows, in the classic horror house style, as well as lots of big bookcases and tiles, so you wanted the moonlight beams com- ing through the window. It’s very easy to do that in the day, because it doesn’t matter if the window gets really hot or blows out white.
“But of course, when you try and do that for night you want a moonlight beam, but what you’re up against is the fact that the window is going to get too bright to look like real
moonlight. So one of the tests I was doing in pre-production was to take various stocks and just have a stained glass window in a darkened studio.
“We shot a big light through it and put a maquette of the nasty little creatures on the table. The test was very simple – beam of light; stained glass window; scary creature. I sat with the colourist in Melbourne and asked him to see how much tone he could retrieve.
“The astonishing thing was the ETERNA Vivid 500T was way better than anything else we tested in actually retaining detail in that window so that when we graded the film I was able to isolate each window and keep the beam of light.
“I needed the power of the light to get the beam but then had to go to the window and make it look much darker so it didn’t look like there was a bloody great light out there. That was a triumph for the stock.” ANWAR BRETT
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547 and ETERNA 250D 8563
Photo above: DP Oliver Stapleton BSC and co-star Bailee Madison together on set; left: a scene from Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark
on 3 perf. I don’t know how many other films have done that!”
“Charlotte was amazing to photograph. She used to laugh at the way I kept putting the camera on the floor to shoot her ankles and legs. She has the most beautiful legs you’ve ever seen and I thought, ‘you can’t not shoot these legs’”.
I, Anna was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA Vivid 500T 8547 and ETERNA Vivid 250D 8546
Photo above: DP Ben Smithard BSC left: Gabriel Byrne and Charlotte Rampling in I, Anna
The film’s director, Troy Nixey, came from an animation background so relied heavily on British DP Oliver Stapleton BSC, while Del Toro lent a hand too.
“He’s such a magnificent person in every respect that it was a real
recognises that the cinematographer bears an even greater responsibility.
“One of the things you read on the net about the ETERNA Vivid 500T is lots of cinematographers who say, ‘Oh my God, the blacks are brilliant’. Well, we’ve always heard
I, ANNA UK/GERMANY
hot in London and Hamburg, SI, Anna marks the feature
debut of writer-director
Barnaby Southcombe, who has adapted and Anglicised Elsa Lewin’s 1990 first novel, a New York set ‘noir’ thriller.
Co-starring Southcombe’s mother Charlotte Rampling, as the ‘femme fatale’ of the title, and Gabriel Byrne, I, Anna’s cast also includes Hayley Atwell, Eddie Marsan, Jodhi May, Bill Milner and Honor Blackman.
DP Ben Smithard BSC (My Week With Marilyn, The Damned United), admits that the film, now in post- production, could have gone the digital route but recalls telling the director, ‘you may kick yourself if you don’t shoot this on film’. We discussed looks and various film references. One of the films mentioned, but then it often is, was Coppola’s The Conversation.
“Barnaby was basically brought up in France but in fact we didn’t
talk that much about French films. This is a very composed film; I didn’t do that much handheld. Although it’s set in London I think it still feels a bit like a French film: a lot of watching, a lot of silence.
“Apart from a week in Hamburg which we used for the interiors of Charlotte’s apartment, it was all London. We shot at lot in the Barbican which architecturally
I love, and filming took place in January and February when the light was almost entirely consistent; the sun never came out, but it didn’t rain very much either.
“We used the ETERNA Vivid 500T and also some of the new ETERNA Vivid 250D which I liked very much. Although we mainly shot on 2 perf, for two out of the six weeks, because of a camera problem, we also shot
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