American Cinematographer - February 2013 - 28

Paolo Taviani (left), Zampagni (second from left) and other crew prepare to shoot.

talking about whether to kill Caesar, for
instance, shooting inside a real prison cell
becomes, for the actor, more true. It’s not a
stage, it’s his home, and we feel the force of
what he’s saying.”
Tech scouts and pre-rigging were out
of the question in the prison, so every morning, the crew would arrive an hour before
the directors to set up. Shooting in a prison
“is like shooting in a hospital: it’s hallways
and rooms,” says Taviani. Fortunately, the
production was granted access to the prison
chapel, a large, adaptable space on the
ground floor that featured three windows.
The filmmakers set four scenes there.
The first scene is when Cavalli
announces auditions. “Because there was
nothing dramatic to convey in that scene, I
lit it simply, using a 4K ArriSun through one
of the windows and augmenting that with a
bit of diffused light inside, a 1.2K ArriSun
bounced into a small reflector,” says
Zampagni. This, he adds, was the only
instance of diffused light in an interior.
For the audition scene that followed,
Zampagni played up the prison setting. “We
closed all the windows and made the room
completely dark. Then, I lit the prisoner who
spoke with a single Kino Flo overhead. On
the background wall, I projected prison bars,
28

February 2013

using a lamp without its front lens and
some bars constructed by us.”
A third look was created for the
script read-through, when actors seated on
benches stand one by one to recite lines. “I
closed the windows and set two 650-watt
incandescents coming from the left,” says
the cinematographer. “In addition, the
Tavianis wanted a spotlight lighting each
actor as he spoke; as in a theater, it’s a circle
of light that’s frontal and flat. In the script,
Cavalli wants to habituate his actors to situations they’ll encounter onstage. Therefore,
you see a couple of film lights in the frame.”
The fourth scene shows the prisoners deep into rehearsals. Brutus and Cassius
are at a window, watching Caesar reject the
crown while speculating about his lust for
power. Again, Zampagni darkened the
room, but this time he used the window as
the sole source of illumination, placing both
ArriSuns outside. He was pleased with the
Red’s rendering of the extreme contrast. As
always, “we were very attentive not to burn
the highlights,” he says.
Exteriors come into play for the
assassination scene. The production made
dramatic use of a narrow exterior corridor
for Caesar’s arrival at the senate. Zampagni
climbed a spiral staircase to a guard’s overAmerican Cinematographer

look to grab a high-angle wide shot, then
captured close-ups of Caesar walking
through a gauntlet of admirers with a lowangle Steadicam.
The assassination played out in a
small courtyard topped by a metal grid.
Zampagni laid a white silk on top of the grid
to control the sunlight for most of the shots,
but for high-angle shots, “we had to use
color-correction tools to compensate for
movement of the sun,” he says. “If you pay
attention, you’ll notice a wall in the background that’s sometimes in the sun, sometimes in shade. We had to work to minimize
that.”
Special care also had to be taken
with 35mm release prints, which were
necessary because many Italian theaters
lack digital projectors. The picture features
several dissolves from black-and-white to
color, so the filmmakers decided to print the
entire movie on Kodak Vision 2383 color
stock and use digital tools to try to approximate black-and-white for those scenes.
“With time and the bravura of the lab staff
at Technicolor Rome, the problem was
resolved,” says Zampagni.
“This experience was very powerful
on a human level,” he concludes. “When
we left the prison for the last time, everyone
broke out in tears. The prisoners had just
had four weeks of contact with people
from the outside after many years [without
it], and for us, just knowing these people
was a powerful experience. It left a mark.”

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.85:1
Digital Capture
Red One MX
Zeiss Compact Prime

●

American Cinematographer - February 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2013