American Cinematographer - June 2016 - 22

Production Slate

I

Faulty Tower
By Phil Rhodes

Appropriately for an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel, director
Ben Wheatley's High-Rise raises many questions - both about the
characters it presents and the environment in which it's set. The film
stars Tom Hiddleston as Dr. Robert Laing, Jeremy Irons as Anthony
Royal and Sienna Miller as Charlotte Melville, three inhabitants of a
newly constructed luxury tower where events quickly take a dark and
sinister turn.
The production marked the fifth feature collaboration between
Wheatley and director of photography Laurie Rose, and since
wrapping High-Rise, they have completed a sixth, Free Fire. Prior to
partnering with Wheatley for 2009's Down Terrace, Rose recalls, "I
was a broadcast cameraman doing a broad range of things, from
documentaries and current affairs to reality, working for any of the
main U.K. broadcasters - BBC, Channel 4. I'd always secretly
harbored a dream of doing narrative [feature] work, but the
opportunity had never presented itself."
His introduction to Wheatley came when the director "was
shooting some online, viral comedy shorts for the BBC," Rose
continues. "We became friends and stayed in touch." When Wheatley
subsequently approached Rose about Down Terrace, the
cinematographer says, "he had a feature script, but he wanted to do
it in a week!"
Rose remembers being on holiday when Wheatley reached out
regarding High-Rise: "Ben told me they had a script for it. I hadn't
22

June 2016

read the book, so I quickly bought it on Kindle." The architectural
scale of Ballard's world raised questions about achievability, though.
"People have said it's an unfilmable book," says Rose. "There are lots
of things that would be quite expensive to do. The genius of [Amy
Jump's] script was that it made a lot of things more practical. It was
the most beautifully adapted screenplay."
The production ultimately shot just outside Belfast in Northern
Ireland. "We looked at various places around the country to find a
suitable high-rise," Rose notes. "It turns out there isn't anything that's
of [the desired] period that's in any way practical to shoot in, or in a
condition that looks new." What's more, the plot of High-Rise
demanded particular events - such as a character dropping a bottle
from above onto a lower apartment's balcony - that would ordinarily
be impossible, since "balconies on high-rises aren't built like that,"
says Rose. "They're built for privacy."
To facilitate the narrative's needs, production designer Mark
Tildesley undertook a significant set build, which to Rose was "a
completely different world," the cinematographer says. "Our budgets
had been so meager. The biggest film we'd done prior to High-Rise
was Sightseers, which was [made for] a little over a million pounds."
One audience-teasing question posed by the design is whether
the story represents a historical period or a retro future. "Were we
making a film that was actually set in the Seventies, or were we trying
to pastiche something together that looked like the Seventies?" asks
Rose. "I was kicking that around and struggling with how it should
look. In prep, we talked a lot about 1975. Ben has a very big love for
that period, and I've got that from him." The question is ultimately

American Cinematographer

High-Rise photos by Aidan Monaghan and Sebastian Solberg, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

In the feature
adaptation of
J.G. Ballard's
novel High-Rise,
Dr. Robert Laing
(Tom Hiddleston)
moves into a
luxurious
skyscraper
where the
stratified society
soon devolves
into chaos.



American Cinematographer - June 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - June 2016

Contents
American Cinematographer - June 2016 - Intro
American Cinematographer - June 2016 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - June 2016 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - June 2016 - 1
American Cinematographer - June 2016 - 2
American Cinematographer - June 2016 - Contents
American Cinematographer - June 2016 - 4
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