American Cinematographer - January 2014 - 22

AMC_0114_p022_p034_00 prod slate 11/23/13 4:45 PM Page 22

Production Slate

A Dark Chapter in German History
By Jean Oppenheimer

Directed by Brian Percival and shot by Florian Ballhaus, ASC,
The Book Thief focuses on 11-year-old Liesl (Sophie Nélisse), who is
sent to a small German village during World War II to live with foster
parents Hans and Rosa Hubermann (Geoffrey Rush and Emily
Watson). Liesl arrives with a book she has stolen, even though she is
illiterate. When Hans teaches her to read, she discovers the power of
words to nourish and heal the soul.
For Ballhaus, who moved to the United States from Germany
when he was 19, The Book Thief was an especially meaningful
project. "It's always very moving for a German to do a movie about
World War II," he says, "and this one was even more personal for me
because my parents were of Liesl's generation, and they also grew up
in a small town." (Ballhaus is the son of veteran cinematographer
Michael Ballhaus, ASC, BVK.)
American Cinematographer: What look and feel were
you and Percival aiming for?
Florian Ballhaus, ASC: The novel [by Marcus Zusak], which
is narrated by Death, moves back-and-forth in time, but the structure
of the screenplay was instead quite linear. We wanted the audience
to be emotionally engaged with Liesl as quickly as possible, so we
decided to film it almost exclusively from her perspective. Experiencing civilian life during World War II through the eyes of a young girl
meant we had to resist the drab, desaturated images of wartime that
are so common. Instead, we chose to follow the book's lead and
present these terrible times with the imaginative perspective of a
22

January 2014

child. As Zusak does in the novel, we used color to suggest the
emotional temperature of the scenes; that was very important. We
also knew from the start we wanted this to be a widescreen movie.
We considered anamorphic, but I felt that look was too modern for
the time period. We instead chose Leica Summilux-C [18mm to
100mm] primes, which are beautiful and magical, especially when
you shoot fairly wide open, and Angenieux Optimo zooms, a 4:1
and a 12:1.
Why did you choose the Arri Alexa?
Ballhaus: We considered shooting on film because this is a
historical movie, and we didn't want the extremely clean look you
get with digital. However, we also didn't want to give up the advantages of digital, particularly the ability to do long takes, which is
useful with child actors. I also appreciate having the ability to do onset grading; I try to set the look with the DIT and keep it the same
all the way through. We did tests with the Alexa and found that by
adding grain [in post], we could create something similar to the look
of film. Also, the Leicas' focus fall-off at T2.0 gave us some added
texture. We wanted to record in ArriRaw, and German productions
usually use ProRes, so I brought over [DIT] Dan Carling from
England. We had worked together on two previous films, and he
understood exactly what ArriRaw entailed. We started shooting
with the Alexa, and halfway through production, the Alexa XT came
out, and we were able to use one of those as a third camera on the
latter half of the shoot. The XT is easier to work with because it has
built-in ArriRaw recording.
How did you do the shot in the opening sequence
where the camera swoops down on the speeding train,

American Cinematographer

The Book Thief photos by Jules Heath, courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

Liesl (Sophie
Nélisse) tries
out her new
reading skills
alongside
Max (Ben
Schnetzer), a
Jewish
refugee, in
The Book
Thief.

American Cinematographer - January 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2014