American Cinematographer - January 2021 - 33

AMERICAN CINEMATOGRAPHER ASCMAG.COM

Rose and the crew capture moments of
the couple's life at Maxim's lavish estate,
Manderley. Scenes set at Manderley were
shot at several historic houses in England,
with interiors and exteriors combined in
ways that would lend the house a sense of
" infinite scale, " according to Rose.

a depot in Munich.
None of the hotel's interiors, other than the
lobby, were actually shot in France. Scenes featuring Mrs. Van Hopper (Ann Dowd) were shot
at Waddesdon Manor - a location so beautiful, according to Rose, that it " barely needed
dressing. But a lot was shot in stunning heritage houses, where the caretakers are rightly
wary of film crews. Often you're not allowed
to use smoke, and I wasn't at Waddesdon. We
could do that in France - they were less precious about that in the hotel - but I categorically wasn't allowed to use it in the apartment,
which was tricky for continuity. "
Rebecca has a plot that's overwhelmingly influenced by its setting: the fictional Manderley,
an English country home that assumes almost
mythical portent as the story progresses. Rose
says Wheatley was intent on making Manderley
feel labyrinthine and unknowable, so the house
was constructed from " five or six locations that
were pieced together to create this infinite scale
for the setting. That was a challenge, because
it involved a lot of travel. The sense of walking
out of one room and into another was spread
out over a lot of locations. " Those locations included Cranborne Manor in Dorset, Osterley in
west London, Mapperton in Dorset and Hatfield in Hertfordshire.
One of Hatfield's larger spaces was disguised
with extensive flats for a party scene, but also

provided grand hallways. " The windows were
amazing, " Rose recalls, " and there's a lot you
can do without using anything at all. The interiors are relatively dark, so you have your contrast sorted out. "
The house itself also offered some practical
help, particularly in the library, " where we did a
last-minute walk-through scene. Due to access
I couldn't get any lighting into that room from
outside, so we went with available light, but the
room did have roller blinds that we could use
almost as dimmers. My chief lighting technician, Julian White, would clip very lightweight
diffusion or very lightweight blackout to the
roller blinds. You can bring them down and
reduce the light in the room, or have the light
coming from the bottom of the window only -
it's a fast and non-invasive use of controlling
what you have at hand! "
Splendor aside, Rose and his team faced a
need to make scenes set in England feel noticeably different than those set in France. But
the weather in England, Rose recalls, was " not
quite how we wanted it. We shot in high summer, but we really wanted the feeling to be autumnal, October, a bit more 'England.' "
Scenes at the high point of the story take
place at a coastal location, represented by Hartland Quay in Devon, requiring Rose to light
an entire bay. " We had a lot of firepower out
that night, " he says. " The cove was about two

kilometers across. I had five 18Ks that were giving me a level on the cove, the biggest area I'd
ever had to light. We also used a fantastic new
system called TommyBars - an array of 16
8-foot LED bicolor tubes. "
Deploying those tube arrays had some practical benefits. " Because they're without textiles,
they don't act like a sail. Often you're building
moon boxes with diffusion, and that's naturally subject to wind. Our concern of working
on that windswept coast was solved with the
weatherproof TommyBars, which gave me an
overall ambient 'moonlight' along with the cove
background. And then our heroine approaches
the boathouse using an LED-supplemented oil
lantern. "
The globetrotting narrative finally reaches
Cairo, punctuating a character point for James'
unnamed protagonist. The setting is " a bedroom where she wakes up and walks across to
the mirror. Her transformation is complete and
you see her smoking; she's a character who's
lost her innocence. "
The filmmakers tried to find a location in the
South of France that might double for an Egyptian bazaar, but the scene was eventually shot
at the Leighton House Museum in Kensington,
London. " Cairo is a greenscreen outside the
window! We put in a single 24K tungsten unit,
and we were luckily allowed atmos [smoke] to
complete the sundrenched dusty heat. "
Rebecca was finished by Goldcrest colorist
Rob Pizzey, whom Rose considers " a long-term
collaborator. He makes anything I throw at him
look astonishing, so I'm in gratitude to Rob. "
The production's shooting schedule was
achieved over a relatively compact 50 days,
and with such a breadth of locations, Rose describes the shoot as " very, very busy. We weren't
at many locations for very long at all, which was
a real challenge. I think the film has a certain
pace and sophistication, though, and the story
feels as if it covers a lot of ground. A lot goes on,
and it all feels quite deep and profound. "

JANUARY 2021 / 33

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American Cinematographer - January 2021

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