American Cinematographer - May 2008 - (Page 28)

Right: As an adult, Jakob (Stephen Dillane) finds it difficult to open up to Alex (Rosamund Pike). Below: Years later, he at last finds peace with Michaela (Ayelet Zurer). “For the sequences set in Canada in the 1940s and ’60s, we went with a slightly subdued look in terms of color and contrast, which we accomplished through careful production design, pullprocessing the Fuji negative by half a stop, and subtle digital grading. The Greek portion at the end of the film has a more beautiful, fullcolor postcard look,” says Middleton. someone else trying to push a large dolly and chase an actor through a tiny slit. Also, it feels more organic, like someone’s eye. In all of my work, I try to use all the tools available to create an image, but I never want to allow those tools to distract the audience or make them aware of what I’m doing.” Inspired by a collection of Nan Goldin’s photographs titled The Devil’s Playground, Middleton and Podeswa encouraged camera operator Candide Franklyn “to try to maintain a sense of discovery with the camera,” says the cinematographer. “Information is not always in the actors’ faces, but in the details of their hands and their body gestures, so we wanted the camera to be subconsciously open, aware and interested. “Jeremy and I don’t really use storyboards. On scouts, we would often shoot digital stills, and during prep, those helped us figure out roughly where to place the camera and actors to create the feel and look we wanted. But those relationships come out more organically on the set.” After the soldiers leave the house, Jakob huddles in the crawlspace for hours before fleeing to the forest, where he spends a long, cold night. The next morning, he is discovered by Athos (Rade Sherbedgia), a Greek archaeologist who sneaks the boy into Greece and raises him as his own son. When the war ends, Athos accepts a professorship in Canada, and he and Jakob relocate to Toronto. Jakob and Athos’ apartment in Toronto, as well as their neighbors’ unit and the hallway that connects them, were all constructed inside a warehouse in Toronto. Production designer Matthew Davies, with whom Middleton had collaborated on the romantic comedy Cake, designed the space. “Matthew really understands using the environment to reflect a character,” notes Middleton. “The apartment is kind of closed-off, which reflects how Jakob closes himself off emotionally. We went with some darker tones inside, and we weren’t afraid to let the walls fall off into darkness. Even with the sun coming in, there was still some nice shading in the back. We also used a little smoke in the apartment to help with the depth and add a feel of dustiness.” The edges of the set extended right up to the warehouse’s fire lanes, precluding the placement of any large fixtures outside the apartment windows. “I’d experimented with hanging long strips of cyc lights at an angle above the windows,” says Middleton. “That allows the ‘daylight’ to leak in from the top [of the windows], and the lights are long and soft enough that it doesn’t feel like a single, artificial source.” Complementing the ambience from the cyc lights, he used Mole-Richardson 5K Beam Projectors to send sharper beams of sunlight into the apartment. Shortly after Jakob and Athos move to Canada, a storm knocks out the power and plunges the apartment into darkness. The characters take up candles to navigate the space, and to bolster the candles’ flames, the electricians “followed the actors with small Chinese lanterns gelled slightly orange that had a bit of a coop around them to keep light off the walls,” says Middleton. “One of our guys would be up above, with the lantern at the end of a boom pole, and as the actor walked out of range of the first lantern, we’d pick him up somewhere around a corner with another.” During the 21 shooting days in Toronto, the cinematographer used two Fuji Eterna film stocks, 250D 8563 and 500T 8573. For the 17 days spent filming in Greece, he used two Kodak emulsions, EXR 100T 5248 and Vision2 500T 5218. 28 May 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2008

American Cinematographer - May 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Global Village: The Fall Short Takes: ASC Laszlo Kovacs Short Takes: Heritage Award Winners Production Slate: Anamorph Production Slate: Fugitive Pieces Heavy-Metal Hero A Need for Speed Kink and the City Beautiful Minds A Hollywood Homecoming Post Focus: Paramount Restores The Godfather Filmmakers’ Forum: Levie Isaacks, ASC Teaches Marines to Shoot Movies New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Antonio Calvache

American Cinematographer - May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.