American Cinematographer - May 2012 - 46

◗

Wild Passion
forbids tripods on the set. She just loves handheld. She doesn’t do it any other way.” The director gave Ryan a great deal of leeway in his operating. “We never shot-listed,” he says. “Andrea always had ideas of particular shots jostling around in her head, but the thing is, she has a story to tell, and once she’s found the locations she likes and the [actors] she wants, in a way, she lets me take it from there. We didn’t want any tricky camera maneuvers. The goal was to just follow the action with the rule of staying with Heathcliff’s POV — wherever he went, we went with him.” More precisely, POV meant “always over his shoulder, not someone else’s.” Another cardinal rule was to never anticipate the action with a camera move. “If somebody entered a room, we were never in the room in front of them as they came in,” says Ryan. “We didn’t want to be detached from the character. It’s almost like I was a camera rig attached to Heathcliff. It’s very much one person’s point of view, and that’s why you feel like you’re literally there. It’s a very simple approach to filmmaking, but it’s very effective.” To act as a camera rig when Heathcliff was on horseback, fighting or running down steep hills, Ryan switched to a Bell & Howell Eyemo35 and 100' loads. “They’re very faulty cameras — you can get a lot of light leakage and scratches — but we were lucky,” Ryan notes. The camera could only be used with Canon stills lenses, “but we absolutely loved the footage coming off of it,” he adds. When the despondent Heathcliff repeatedly hurls himself headfirst into a wall, the Eyemo enabled Ryan to closely follow the action. “I could run against the wall, smack the camera and fall. I could keep the camera on his head and follow him because the camera was so light.” For the numerous scenes that show characters on horseback, Ryan tried various options, but always came back to the handheld Eyemo as the

Top: This over-the-shoulder of Heathcliff and Catherine’s first encounter illustrates the emphasis on Heathcliff’s perspective. The film’s firelit night interiors showcase the capabilities of Panavision’s Primo lenses and Kodak’s 500-speed Vision3 5219. Bottom: Upon his return to the farm as an adult, Heathcliff (James Howson) luxuriates in nature.

time we started shooting, in October, the season was changing, and each day the landscape would go more and more burnt umber. It was beautiful to watch.” Ryan ultimately chose three color negatives: Fujifilm Eterna Vivid 160 and Eterna 250D 8563for day scenes, and Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for night scenes. “Originally I thought Fuji’s
46 May 2012

[Eterna] 500 would be great for the night material, but when we screened the results side-by-side, we found that Kodak’s 5219 had a finer grain,” he observes. “It didn’t bottom out in the blacks as much.” There was never any discussion about whether all the camerawork would be handheld, he adds. “Andrea
American Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - May 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - May 2012