American Cinematographer - November 2007 - (Page 54)

Honoring a Lost Friend Various locations in China doubled as Kabul, Afghanistan, for scenes set in the 1970s. “In light of the travel and the very tight spaces … I eventually decided anamorphic would be a bit restrictive,” says Schaefer. “But I thought we could split it up and shoot anamorphic for the wide exteriors and spherical when we got in tighter; we knew we were finishing with a digital intermediate [DI], which would facilitate that. But when we decided to go spherical, production immediately said we should shoot 3perf to save money on film stock and get longer runs on the camera, and that meant we would need separate [cameras and lenses] for anamorphic. And we just didn’t have the budget — or room on the trucks — to carry both packages. So we shot the whole thing Super 35mm, but we tried to keep the idea of a grand epic.” Format was just one of the elements affected by the production’s setting. In keeping with his previous work, Forster wanted to shoot on practical locations as much as possible, and most of the 70-day 54 November 2007 shoot took place in China’s high desert. “It was very important to me to tell the story in the most authentic way possible,” says the director. “Knowing where these characters come from and how they live is the only way you can understand them and their culture deep, deep down.” (For reasons of security, shooting in Afghanistan was out of the question.) Kashgar, China’s westernmost major city, doubled for 1970s Kabul. Located on the old Silk Road, the city has a well-preserved historic center and also offered access to Tashkurgan, a town in the Karakorum Mountains whose stone fortress appears in the film behind Amir and Hassan’s beloved pomegranate tree. Only 60 miles from the Afghan border, the Karakorum Mountains and Khunjerab Pass leading to Pakistan could substitute for the escape route over the Khyber Pass taken by Amir and Baba when they flee the Soviet invasion. The area offered another bonus: the Uighur, an ethnic Islamic minority, “bear a fair resemblance to the Afghani,” says Schaefer, and could play minor parts. Filming in the area created a number of headaches. After getting permits from the central government in Beijing, the filmmakers had to deal with two different bureaucracies in Kashgar: Chinese and Uighur. Forster recalls, “These were always group decisions, so an individual would not say no, and at the end no one said yes. So we were often stuck in waiting mode.” Then there were the living conditions. “Except in Beijing, we were in very basic, often unhygenic living situations,” recalls Schaefer. “At the hotel in Kashgar, I was lucky because my toilet didn’t overflow or leak, and I didn’t get the sewage smell coming up through the floor until toward the end of our stay.” When filming in Tashkurgan, most of the crew slept in Yurts. “It’s not everybody’s thing to go to Kashgar for a few months,” says Forster with a laugh. “The conditions

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - November 2007

American Cinematographer - November 2007 Contents Editor’s Note Global Village DVD Playback Production Slate Deconstructing Bob Dylan Honoring a Lost Friend Night Terrors Losing Control TV’s Top-Rated Short Takes Post Focus New Products & Services Points East International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

American Cinematographer - November 2007

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