American Cinematographer - March 2017 - 65

Nocturnal Animals photos by Merrick Morton, SMPSP, courtesy of Focus Features. Into the Inferno image courtesy of Netflix.
Game of Thrones photo by Nick Wall, courtesy of HBO. Meadowland image courtesy of Reed Morano, ASC.

ers Chris Newman and Bernadette
Caulfield.
Scouting for Sensation
When we first meet Susan (Amy
Adams), the fashionable owner of a
trendy Los Angeles art gallery, in the
thriller Nocturnal Animals, she is sitting
by herself, staring into space, a troubled
expression clouding her face. Detached
from her surroundings, she is oblivious
to the well-heeled opening-night crowd
surveying her luridly provocative new
art installation. It isn't until later that
evening, when she passes through the
stainless-steel security gate that guards
her property and walks into her ultrasleek, concrete-and-glass house, that we
realize just how sterile her existence is.
"We looked at some Beverly Hills
mansions, but they didn't have the right
feel," says Seamus McGarvey, ASC,
BSC, who sat down with AC to talk
about the film. "They weren't antiseptic
enough. We wanted a sense of coldness,
a kind of rigid rectitude."
Location manager Stephenson
Crossley tracked down what turned out
to be the perfect house. "I wish I could
take credit for spying the house from the
road," Crossley says with a laugh. "In
fact, [director Tom Ford] had seen a
photograph of a house in some magazine and had clipped it out as a reference
for the look he had in mind."
Not knowing which magazine
had published the picture, nor whether
the house was even in Los Angeles,
Crossley showed the picture to Ford's
associate producer, Alex Nourafchan,
and asked if it happened to look familiar. "She said, 'I think I was at an event
there a few weeks ago,'" Crossley recalls.
He immediately tracked down the
homeowner.
To further enhance the minimalist feel, the house was sparsely furnished
by production designer Shane Valentino
- and McGarvey played with the
negative space, utilizing the emptiness.
"We aimed for oblique compositions
that placed Susan on the periphery of
frames, so you can only partially see her.
The kitchen had much warmer wood

Opposite, clockwise
from top-left: Images
from the location-based
productions Nocturnal
Animals, Into the
Inferno, Meadowland
and Game of Thrones.
This page, above:
Seamus McGarvey, ASC,
BSC checks a twocamera setup while
working on location for
the feature Nocturnal
Animals. Left: Location
manager Stephenson
Crossley tracked down
this concrete-and-glass
home from a magazine
clipping provided by
director Tom Ford.

than we wanted. We weren't allowed to
change it, so in the DI we dialed it down
to make it feel colder."
Nocturnal Animals was shot on 3perf Super 35mm film for a 2.39:1
release. McGarvey worked with
Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2
cameras, spherical Primo lenses and two
Kodak Vision3 stocks: 500T 5219 and
200T 5213. Structurally and visually, the
movie is a kind of triptych, with the
three segments continually weaving in
and out of one another. The first section
is present reality: the art gallery, Susan's
house, the revelation of her crumbling
marriage to Hutton (Armie Hammer).
A manuscript arrives at the door, writwww.theasc.com

ten by her ex-husband, Edward
Sheffield ( Jake Gyllenhaal). The narrative of said book - or rather Susan's
visualizing of what she reads - constitutes the second story. It is a brutal and
violent tale, in which Edward has cast
both Susan and himself (renamed Tony
in the book) as a married couple on a
road trip with their daughter. How
closely the events hew to past reality, the
movie audience doesn't know, but reading the manuscript takes Susan back to
her and Edward's courtship and
marriage, which comprises the third leg
of the triptych.
The events described in Edward's
manuscript are chilling. They take place
March 2017

http://www.theasc.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2017