American Cinematographer - February 2013 - 26

Top: The prisoners’ performance of the play is rendered in color. Bottom: The inmates
rehearse another scene in the prison courtyard, where the metal grid overhead helped
facilitate lighting control.

Die was made in collaboration with Cavalli,
who plays himself staging Julius Caesar
inside Ribibbia.
Zampagni recalls the first few days of
the shoot: “The prison guards put us on
guard, saying, ‘Don’t trust the prisoners too
much.’ It was the prisoners who broke the
ice. What struck me most was that they
weren’t ashamed of what they’d done, and
these were grave crimes. They were quite
ready to recount them, almost boasting. It’s
a powerful thing to put yourself before
26

February 2013

these assassins. It has a certain effect! But
then, they’re closed inside these walls 24/7,
and that’s painful to imagine.” The filmmakers struggled with these conflicting
emotions, he adds, “but after a week, the
rapport was almost like a friendship.”
In keeping with previous Taviani
films, two cameras were run simultaneously
throughout the shoot, and only prime
lenses were used. 4K footage from the
cameras was recorded in Red’s proprietary
Redcode raw format to onboard Compact
American Cinematographer

Flash cards. Zampagni used T2.1 Zeiss
Compact Primes, favoring the 40mm and
the 85mm. Shot composition was simple,
spare and often static. “That’s our style,”
says Taviani. “We use a fixed camera in
almost all our films. We like to make the
scene live within the frame, without requiring the camera to go looking for the
actors.” This time, however, the camera
was a bit more dynamic, occasionally
moving via a dolly or Steadicam.
However, the most unusual aspect
of Caesar’s visual design is its alternation
between color and black-and-white
photography: the performance of Julius
Caesar that begins and ends the film is in
color, whereas the flashbacks to auditions
and rehearsals are black-and-white. The
Tavianis decided to do this to make the
passage of time clear, but it was also an
expressive choice. “We chose black-andwhite as a way of doing violence to reality,”
says Taviani, noting that the goal was a
harsh, dramatic monochrome look with
screaming whites and bottomless blacks.
“The Red helped me with this
because it exacerbates the highlights,”
Zampagni says. “The data manager and I
created a LUT that extracted all the color
and put contrast to the maximum. Then, in
color correction, we upped the contrast
even more, bringing up the whites and
blacks to their maximum and trying to
remove the mid tones. This was done
together with a system of lighting that was
very cutting, relying on strong sources without diffusion.”
Zampagni also finessed the saturation of the color scenes, choosing a slightly
desaturated look for the initial sequence in
the theater and bolder hues, especially a
strong red, for the final one. “The color red
makes me think of ancient Rome,” he
explains. “I accentuated it because it also
represents a moment of liberation and
happiness for the prisoners when they
receive applause.” Taviani adds, “For one
minute, they are free, and the color exalts
this.”
Very little of Caesar Must Die
happens onstage, however. Most of it
occurs in Ribibbia’s cells, corridors and
courtyards. “It was important to present
Shakespeare in these places where the prisoners live,” says Taviani. “When Brutus is
American Cinematographer - February 2013

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