American Cinematographer - August 2008 - (Page 40) Fathers of the Bride story really well and knew how to deal with actors. At the end of the day, I was discovering the cinema language we needed for this film just as much as she was because a musical was something new to me. She wanted the camera to be a real participant, and we went for a quirky style; we really wanted it to be a rollercoaster of a visual experience.” The shoot began with 10 weeks on the 007 Stage at Pinewood Studios, where a multi-level set was built for the mountainside café around which the story revolves. Seven weeks of location work in Greece followed, so for Zambarloukos, the principal concern was ensuring that the studio work would match the location footage. He journeyed to Greece for the location scouts, accompanied by Lloyd, production designer Maria Djurkovic, and executive producer Mark Huffam. “Seeing the layout and where the sun would be for certain scenes on the real exteriors enabled us to plan our lighting of the stage work,” he says. “We decided what was north, south, east and west on the set and maintained that consistently. To re-create Greek sunlight, we used 350 space lights above scenes for ambient fill; I think we also used 30 20K Fresnels and 10K MoleBeams just on the overhead rig, and then more units down on the set. They were composite sets — we could do shots walking from the restaurant terrace straight through into the kitchen. The sets were built that way so we could do Steadicam shots inside and out, and shots in bedrooms where you look out of a window and see people down in the courtyard. “Maria and I would have loved to put a big tree in the courtyard of the set because we saw trees in courtyards all over Greece, but we couldn’t do it because of the crane work,” he continues. “We had a lot of Busby Berkeley-style overhead shots, so a tree would have been in the way. Colorful lighting lends a festive ambience to some of the film’s musical interludes. 40 August 2008
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