American Cinematographer - January 2021 - 32

REVISITING MANDERLEY

Preceding pages: Maxim de
Winter (Armie Hammer) shares a
passionate moment with his new
wife (Lily James) in Rebecca. This
page, left: Director Ben Wheatley
(far left) and Laurie Rose, BSC
(at camera) angle in on their
stars. Right: As the relationship
progresses, Mrs. de Winter finds
herself living in the shadow of her
husband's first wife.

Rebecca was shot on Arri's Alexa 65, a new
camera to Rose. " I'm very excited about it, " he
says. " Russell Allen and Simon Surtee at [Arri
Rental] London were very helpful and couldn't
do enough for me. " While the camera's huge
6.5K sensor provided a generous canvas, Rose
treated it as a foundation, upon which he could
build period-appropriate imagery using several
techniques. " More and more, with bigger sensors and higher resolutions, I want something a
little bit vintage on the front of a digital camera.
I want character, texture and soul. I do that with
a bit of onboard ISO. I shot Rebecca at 1,280 or
1,600, because the big sensor has so much latitude. It can handle that high-ISO approach,
which puts a bit of grit into the images. "
To aid in his pursuit of a less clinical picture,
Rose chose Arri's Prime DNA lenses, which the
company describes as being based on " vintage
optics from different historical periods. " Shooting ArriRaw at 5.1K removed some of what
Rose calls the " wild edge artifacts " of the DNA
lenses; the show's B camera, an Alexa LF, recorded in 4.5K Open Gate, also in raw. Special
permission was granted by Netflix to frame for
a 2.39:1 aspect ratio, as opposed to the 2:1 ratio
the distributor usually prefers. Rose operated
the A camera personally, with James Layton alternating B camera and Steadicam.
" The DNAs are an ongoing project for Arri,
and they are somewhat tuneable to taste, " Rose
32 / JANUARY 2021

notes. " I had a couple of 50mm and a couple
of 80s; one was a red-dot variant. It had a little
engraved red dot and it had the most beautiful sweet spot and falloff and flare aspects that
were a world apart from the rest of the set - it
was one that I'd go to really regularly. Our go-to
lenses were the 35, 40 and 80mm. I'd go to the
80 because it just looked stunning. I almost
asked if I could just have a whole set of red-dot
variants. "
There is some mystery behind the lenses.
" We were talking about the tuning, and when
I asked Arri what they'd done with the red-dot
variants, they said DNA stands for Do Not Ask!
There's an element of experimentation, and
that's what's lovely about those lenses. "
Rose put the finishing touch on his camera
setup with Schneider's Hollywood Black Magic
filters. " I really like them, but I only used them
very sparingly. You don't want to overdo these
things - eighths and quarters only. Coupled
with the DNAs, which are quite textured and
interesting vintage-feel lenses with modern
mechanics, the filters really gave me the look
of 'holiday romance' that I was going for [in the
early scenes]. Lenses and filters only added to
the Alexa sensor rendering dreamy skintones
and color. "
Beyond the tech, Rose expresses his clear
respect for the show's Oscar-nominated production designer, Sarah Greenwood. " Sarah

designed Atonement and, more recently, Beauty and the Beast, Darkest Hour, many of Joe
Wright's projects. There's just an astonishing
amount of period detail [in those films]. The
scope and scale, the lengths they went to, were
astonishing. What I love most about production
design is when they create these universes for
us to prowl around in with a camera. It's a joy. "
Rose adds that Greenwood was also heavily
involved in the choice of locations, which included a variety of settings in both the U.K. and
France. A sumptuous hotel seen early in the
film was " a real Victorian hotel. It's an apartment building now, but it still has that area that
was originally a lobby. It was a super-grand entrance hall that we filled with period fixtures. "
The location presented its own problems,
though, with " incredible windows that were
good and bad. Immediately outside the lobby is
a conservatory, a glass interior eating area with
a terrace immediately beyond, where the couple have breakfast together. "
Lighting this area was complicated by the
local topology: " There's a 12-foot drop off that
terrace into the street, which was crossed with
a bridge - the same street you see in the show
when their car drives up - and I had to light
from that street. We had to get bigger machines
than we normally get, truck-based cherry pickers. " Other equipment included a SuperTechno
50 crane, transported to the Nice location from

American Cinematographer - January 2021

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