American Cinematographer - September 2008 - (Page 52) A Frightening Fable wood. It was tiny. We had the cable running through Julianne’s clothes, and when she struck the match, Sérgio would dim it up. When she shook the match to put it out, he would dim down. In post, they added a CG flame to cover the quartz lamp.” The opening scenes of Blindness depict a gleaming, modern city, but by the time the blind escape the asylum, everything is in ruins. With the doctor’s wife leading the way, a small group wanders through the devastation. “We were trying to find a suitable location in São Paulo for that scene,” recalls Charlone. “We needed a good two-block area that could be rigged for rain and dressed to look decayed. We knew that would be very difficult in a bustling city like São Paulo and would require a lot of time to arrange. “I come from Uruguay, a small country with a very new film industry, and I’ve always tried to get Fernando to shoot there,” he continues. “I told him Montevideo, the capital city, would be perfect for this section of the film — the old part of town was being restored, and it was closed off and therefore empty. He didn’t believe me, so I had a friend take photos and send them to us. Fernando was impressed — it was just what we needed — and we ended up shooting a week there.” Comparing Blindness to his other collaborations with Meirelles, Charlone notes, “Both City of God and The Constant Gardener are very naturalistic films, whereas Blindness is an allegory, a fable. This production was much more technical and more controlled. It’s the first time we’ve worked with an all-professional cast, the first time the actors had specific marks to hit, and the first time I worked with full-time standins — the stand-ins in particular A young pharmacist (Mpho Koaho) feels his way down the hall of the asylum as a government broadcast blares in the background. Charlone often incorporated reflections into shots to make the audience aware of the act of seeing. with the result because black film moving through a projector still projects something onto the screen.) After about a minute in the darkness, the doctor’s wife finds some matches and lights one. “That was a real work of art,” declares Charlone. “The match is a little gadget Sérgio made with a very small quartz lamp that ran on batteries. He cabled it with hard cable, then covered the cable with something that imitates 52 http://www.servicevisionusa.com http://www.servicevisionusa.com http://www.servicevisionsystem.com
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