American Cinematographer - January 2010 - 62

◗ Super Sleuth Holmes often finds himself at odds with the alluring Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams), and keeps a close eye on Watson’s romantic prospects. Rousselot notes that he kept the look of the main characters’ faces a bit on the cool side: “I prefer a cold skin tone to a warm one. I find it more elegant and also closer to the period — in those days, people stayed out of the sun.” director adds with amusement. “I didn’t know what that meant six months ago, but the idea is you can take the family.” (A four-quadrant movie is one that appeals to all demographics: young and old, male and female.) Rousselot, whose recent credits include The Great Debaters (AC Jan. ’08), The Brave One, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (AC July ’05) and Constantine (AC April ’05), was recommended to Ritchie, and the director is enthusiastic, to say the least, about Rousselot’s contributions to the project. “Philippe is the fastest cinematographer I’ve ever worked with, and it was the least amount of fuss I’ve ever had with a cameraman,” he says. “He’s a bit of a legend, but he’s so humble — an egoless individual. You won’t get me to shut up about the positive aspects of Philippe Rousselot! He’s a gentleman, he’s smart, he’s hard-working, he’s fit, he’s tenacious and he’s talented!” 62 January 2010 Rousselot recalls that one of the questions he asked himself at the outset of the production was: “How do I make Sherlock Holmes a Guy Ritchie film? I didn’t want it to look like a costume drama. I didn’t want it to look pretty. I wanted it to be grungy. I wanted it to look like RocknRolla or Snatch.” He initially decided to ground his approach in realism, with the intent to re-create the warm gas, oil and candlelight sources of the late 19th century. He laughs as he recalls how these preconceived ideas fell by the wayside on the first day of location shooting: “You should never shoot on the first day of shooting!” he jokes. The location was a Freemason temple where Blackwood takes over a sect and demonstrates his powers with a spectacular feat. The marble interior, Rousselot recalls, “was beautiful, but I really struggled there, because every time we placed a light it was reflected in American Cinematographer the marble. It’s as if you had mirrors all around. Actually, it would have been easier with mirrors, because then we could have lit the entire place with one light!” To complicate matters further, Ritchie set up a long, complex Steadicam shot, “almost 360 degrees, which was cut in the editing. So the only thing we could do was put lights on the floor or the ceiling.” Rousselot ended up using two helium balloons hovering above and, when necessary, a few sources on the ground. “I started out on this film wanting warm, soft lighting with dark corners, and contrast in the overall image, but that was very difficult to achieve on this sequence, and I was never happy with it,” says the cinematographer. “When I worked on it in the DI, I went the other way; I made the image very cold.” He assesses the scene’s final look as “180 degrees away from what I thought at first. It’s completely different, but I feel it tells the story a lot better. It’s darker, more sinister. There are actually many scenes in this film that ended up very different from what I thought to do at the beginning, I think for the best. “What’s paradoxical is that it’s the method that’s important, not the result … because the result escapes you,” he continues. “You can control the light, the exposure and the choice of film stock, but you can’t completely control everything that’s in front of the camera. It’s an ensemble. So the result is something you discover when the film is finished. More so than on any other film I have done, the result in Sherlock Holmes is

American Cinematographer - January 2010

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