Page 12 - Fujifilm Exposure_28 Michael Winner_ok

T
NANNY MCPHEE
“There surely isn’t anyone in the world who didn’t wish that someone would come and bang their stick and make their children good. It’s completely universal wish-fulfilment.”
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But, explains Doran, “we have deliberately avoided a date. This isn’t quite any place or any time. Okay, there are no telephones and no auto- mobiles, while we do have horse- drawn carriages and top hats. Yet, in every aspect of it, from the production design to the costumes, there’s a sense of classic rather than period.
“What we all agreed was, ‘let’s find an image that just seems to feel like it’s been with us for ever rather than fixing it all to a specific date. It sort of takes place in memory. That’s what’s fun for the crew: to try and find a look for this film that isn’t quite like any- thing else you’ve seen before.”
That aspect clearly appealed to Kirk Jones, who when he wasn’t involved in his hugely successful com- mercials’ career, had been trying to find a suitable successor to Waking Ned, his $3 million 1998 quirky Irish comedy hit which tickled audiences and critics alike.
Although he had been working for a while on a couple of scripts he wasn’t confident enough he could take them on in to production. So he decided to look instead at other people’s scripts, especially ones that had a sense of being “nurtured” in the way his Waking Ned had been over four or five years.
“It didn’t,” he recalls, “surprise me when I met Lindsay and then went on to meet Emma that this was the case here. This script was so beautifully thought-through, so polished and I really enjoyed reading it. This had magic in every sense.
“The next question was: would I like them and vice-versa? I was pretty nervous about meeting Emma – with her success, her Oscars and having written the script too. But she was so
open and generous and has remained so throughout the project. Early on, I said I’d like to make suggestions and wanted to feel free to offer up ideas for the script. And she said, ‘Great’.
“The whole process of re-writes was completely satisfying and I feel I’ve learned a lot from her. After all, she’s made 20 films and I’ve only made one; there’s a lot for me [Jones is a very youthful-looking 40] still to learn as a relatively new director.”
As for the ‘look’, Jones says he’s “keen to fight against people’s percep- tion of what period means. It often means dark, brown and gold, and murky light. To my mind, that isn’t ter- ribly attractive to children and can feel a bit stuffy and dull.
“So we talked about colours and what colours were about in this peri- od – remembering that this is a fairy- tale too. In fact, there were extraordi- nary colours but people don’t tend to pick up on that very often and instead
for the darks and browns simply because it’s The Past.
“I still love watching films like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins and so we decided to heavily push colour right the way through the film. From very early on we were talk- ing about a sort of modern Technicolor ‘look’, but creating that feeling with colours we were using rather than the actual process.”
Putting those discussions into action has been cinematographer Henry Braham BSC – who worked with Jones on Waking Ned and many com- mercials – as well as production designer Michael Howells and cos- tume designer Nic Ede, who’d both recently collaborated with Braham on Bright Young Things.
“It was a very tight collaboration this time round and that’s what Kirk was looking for. I always think the most interesting projects are where the personality of the director is trans- lated into the film. In Kirk’s case, he’s humorous and gentle and tends to see the good in people. He’s also particu- larly good at listening to other peo- ple’s points of view but also steering his own way through.”
Like the director, the choosy Braham doesn’t tend to “take just any old film”. But unlike Jones, the DP’s other main interest resides firm- ly outside the industry. For he and his wife, Glynis Murray – who is also the co-producer on Nanny McPhee – just happen to be the UK’s biggest growers of hemp.
Their large farm in Devon is cur- rently producing nutritionally-benefi- cial, Omega-packed, hempseed- derived products called Good Oil and Good Seed. Which probably explains
the healthy glow on the faces of the cast and crew in deepest Bucks.
Brand’s original Nurse Matilda book spawned a couple of follow-ups, so it’s not surprising to discover that Lindsay Doran – an avowed fan of chil- drens’ book series like Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket - is also discreetly thinking ‘sequel’.
“In the books, she always came back to the same family. We have this notion that she can move from time to time, place to place. So, yes, we’d definitely like to do another one.” ■ QUENTIN FALK
Nanny McPhee was originated on 35mm Fujicolor F-500 8572 and F-250D 8562 Motion Picture Negative
THE DP VIEW
HENRY BRAHAM BSC
he idea from the beginning was to make a very colourful, very visually accessible film. Normally with colour photog- raphy you tend to restrict the
palette of colours you use. Here we’re using so much colour we’re not only very careful about what colour we put with what colour but also the strength of the colours.
We tested and tested and tested and I ended up reverting to a more old- fashioned style – a more theatrical style, if you like. It’s a difficult line to tread: in one sense it’s a homage to the three-strip Technicolor ‘look’ but then again I don’t think a modern audience would buy that. So you could say it’s ‘theatrical’ but without seeing the joins.
It’s getting that balance between real- ity and unreality. I always thought that Toy Story was a good reference point. That’s, of course, completely unreal – and cartoon, of course – and yet some- how you buy into that world totally.
What’s particularly interesting here is what we’re printing on – and this is the new Fuji release print stock (35mm 3513DI). We’re doing a digital grade on Nanny McPhee, that was a commitment from the beginning, which does slightly modify the way I shoot it.
My experience of the digital route is that I love it, but it is very impor- tant what stock you print on. It’s important to know your end product – the release print - what people are going to sit in the cinema and see. So that’s what I work back from.
We’ve been doing printed rushes every day. Seeing them on that new print stock has been completely fan- tastic. They’re very rich and entirely appropriate for this. Okay, I have to put a lot of light on these colours, but if you hit the print in the right place, the thing absolutely sings. ■
Photos l-r: Producer Lindsay Doran and Emma Thompson off-set at Penn; Director Kirk Jones; Lindsay Doran with Co-Producer Glynis Murray
10 • Exposure • Fuji Motion Picture And Professional Video