American Cinematographer - October 2007 - (Page 50)

Emotional Betrayal Chia Chih and Mrs. Yee join some friends for another game of mahjong. Scenes such as this called for some of the film’s subtlest lighting effects: picking up and enhancing the women’s flashing jewels as they caught the light during the game. Prieto falls back on a Chinese saying to describe the production: “Ang wanted us to be like ducks paddling in the water: it seems very pleasant and easy, just gliding along, but underneath the surface the duck’s feet are paddling hard. Ang wanted the film to look unburdened; he didn’t want the hard work to be apparent. But there certainly was a lot of paddling underneath! Ang is meticulous and scrupulous about everything, and it all has to be just so. To get there takes a lot of work, but we hope it doesn’t show.” Shooting in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Shanghai, Prieto had a top-notch Hong Kong crew. Many had worked with Lee previously, and some were directors of photography in their own right, such as gaffer Ng Man-Ching and focus puller Kenny Lam Ping Wah. Dolly grip Louis Jong Chi Leung, well acquainted with Lee’s precise ways, was “always ready with his tape measure,” says Prieto. “His moves were just perfect.” Though his 50 October 2007 immediate crew spoke English, others did not, so Prieto’s right-hand man and translator, Billy Yung Ka Lok, was “an indispensable part of my group.” Chinese working methods took some getting used to. “The structure of work in China is very different,” says Prieto. “The hierarchy is much stronger, so whatever Ang desired would happen no matter what! Strangely enough, it felt like working with a crew in Mexico, in that you don’t have all the tools, but your crew will do anything. Sometimes it can get tricky and dangerous. If you want to adjust a light but don’t have a Condor or lift, someone will climb a wall or get a rickety ladder. I’d say, ‘Hey, you’re going to fall!’ And they’d say, ‘No, Hong Kong-style!’ I had to turn away several times because I just got too nervous, but they were truly amazing and completely committed.” The filmmakers’ goal was to create a modern-day revision of film noir. “The subject matter is obviously noir-ish — intentions are hidden,” says Prieto, who nevertheless decided against using hard light and sharp shadows. “In the end, I mostly went with a softer lighting style, creating contrast by controlling and manipulating soft light. We decided to represent the hiding theme with focus rather than shadows; we tended to use very shallow depth of field. One of the reasons we picked Arri Master Primes was so we could work at T1.3 for certain scenes. We also sometimes used clashing colors in the lighting to add dramatic tension.” Prieto’s visual references were not film-noir classics, but rather paintings. Two key sources were the book Northern Lights, on Denmark’s Skagen school of landscape painting, and the illustrations of Maxfield Parrish. In both cases, he says, “we took the color, that magic-hour contrast of golden light with blue-purple light. That combination became an important theme for our main

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American Cinematographer - October 2007

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