American Cinematographer - September 2011 - 38

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A Mighty Pen

Top: Oxford and his patron, Henry Wriothesley (Xavier Samuel), “tread the boards” as they make their way down a muddy street. Bottom: A-camera operator Sebastian Meuschel uses a Steadicam to capture the action.

Density Soft Frost. “The light is part of the story,” Foerster observes. She points to a scene late in the film, when Oxford confronts Elizabeth for what might be the last time. As he pleads for her mercy, she descends from her dais and its dark half-light to stand with him in the full light of day. “She steps into that harsh, cold daylight to clarify the situation,” says Foerster. Only occasionally does the sun shine down warm and bright. Foerster cites a scene in which the youthful Oxford moves into the home of Elizabeth’s cunning adviser, William Cecil (David Thewlis). “The house is
38 September 2011

generally very dark and somber, but in that scene we had sunbeams shining through because Oxford was penetrating the house with emotional light,” she says. Her usual approach to this set was to bounce 18Ks through the windows off 20'x20' muslin, so for this visual departure, gaffer Albrecht Silberberg simply positioned the HMIs to point straight into the windows, aiming them through 1⁄2 Soft Frost and 1⁄4 CTO to give the light a warmer glow. While conducting her research in London during prep, Foerster became fascinated with the quality of the light filtering through old, baffled-glass windows. “That glass has different
American Cinematographer

colored pieces and is distorted by air bubbles, and the effect on the light is just incredible. When you look through it, it almost looks like there’s a painting on the other side.” Using real vintage glass would have been impractical and expensive, so the production built its own windows. After testing a number of plastics, the art department arrived at a Lexan-based polymer. The translucent panes were deliberately molded with irregularities, filled with air bubbles, and sandblasted to lend a diffuse quality to the light. The distortion also helped the filmmakers sell the painted backdrops outside the windows. The sets occupied a new wing of Studio Babelsberg, an old train depot just down the road from the main lot. The stages were soundproofed, wired with electricity and suitable for production, but they were still in the process of being converted from their original use. Inside, the giant cranes that once lifted cargo onto train cars still loomed overhead. Because of the stages’ unfinished state and the speed at which the art department was completing its work, Silberberg was unable to rig a full-sized truss above the stage. He and best boy Roland Patzelt solved this problem by devising a pulley system with steel-pipe rigs that could be lowered by ropes to specific points over a given set. (On most European crews, set electricians handle every aspect of lighting.) “Because our lenses were so wide, lighting was really tricky,” says Silberberg. Rigging gaffer Dietmar

American Cinematographer - September 2011

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