Page 9 - Fujifilm Exposure_44 Damned United_ok

“FUJIFILM ALLOWS ME TO PUSH AND TAKE RISKS AND NOT LIGHT THINGS AS IT HAS SUCH A RICHNESS IN THE DARK AREAS.”
THE DP VIEW
ANDREW DUNN BSC
Halder has to go to the main
Berlin railway station ticket of- “fice to try to get (he has the au- thority to) a ticket, which will allow his best friend Maurice (who is Jew- ish), to flee the country.
It is a huge station, very late in the evening. We have to feel the weight and intimidation of the moment and the location; he is trying to remain unseen in this vast empty space.
My gaffer, Paluch Krisztian, and I scouted several times, working out various schemes, discovering what we were and weren’t allowed to rig in an old run- down station. Of course, we had to make it feel as though it wasn’t old and run down through lighting and set dressing - notable huge Nazi banners - as it is part of the new ‘hopeful’ 1930’s Germany.
Our first ideas foundered, as we were told that the superstructure was, alas, unable to support any sort of rig, although we had planned a particularly cunning lightweight one.
So all of our units were to be at ground level. To help create the daunting atmosphere, we opted to light the huge exterior windows
from outside with an array of 3 or 4 10ks & Maxi brutes, with a mixture of warm-coloured gels, predomi- nantly ‘Apricot’.
Inside, there was a corridor at the far end, plus a large waiting room, both of which we could light to gain depth, but should not see in detail, as they were, to some extent anachronisms.
We kept these areas cool, while lighting the main arena with warm colours -‘Chocolate’ & ‘CTOs’ bounc- ing the light off of the existing walls, so the warm bounced light is in the shot, creating the necessary illumi- nation at the same time!
We used some of the ticket booths (the station was still opera- tional), to gain perspective, with a confined pool of light in & around the booth, which Halder is approach- ing. Here were a mixture of ‘Half- Dome Chimeras’, 650w & 1k Fresnels, small tubes and a ‘Lite-Panel’.
We used Steadicam for a long track into the station. Gerry Vasben- ter and I operated the two cameras, hand-held in and from our booth. We shot through the night, in the height of summer. We anticipated dawn’s inevitable arrival, (huge station win- dows), so had pre-built a tent to wheel in to surround the hero booth to enable us to keep shooting to- wards the booth, not seeing the win- dows, after sun-up.
I think we managed to pull some- thing out of the hat, with limited re- sources for a defining moment in the film, despite the circum- stances. As I often say, a virtue
of necessity.
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FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE • THE MAGAZINE • EXPOSURE • 7