American Cinematographer - July 2013 - 28

Above: A Vantage
Film Squeeze
Diopter creates a
blurred, doubling
effect around the
edges of the
frame during a
family outing to
the beach. Right:
The production
used director
Carlos Reygadas’
house for scenes
set in and around
Juan’s home.

characters go deeper into the bathhouse,
we filtered more of the tubes, and in the
final shot, most tubes were filtered red. We
also did tests on the steam, trying to figure
out if we were going to use real steam or a
smoke machine. We ended up using a
combination.”
Post Tenebras Lux features a number
of extended camera moves over rough
terrain, and these were mostly accomplished with an EasyRig, with a few
Steadicam moves thrown in for a varied
feel. The opening sequence of the young
girl on the field with the dogs and livestock,
shot around magic hour over three days,
was largely a Steadicam sequence. “We
actually thought we could shoot it in two
days, but it was a very short window of
time,” says Zabe, who operated the camera
when Reygadas did not. “We didn’t have a
Steadicam for the last day. There was some28

July 2013

thing in the relationship between the girl
and the animals that wasn’t quite there
with the Steadicam, so we did a third day
winging it on the EasyRig.” Steadicam was
also used for two walking shots from the
POV of El Siete, a character who brings the
class conflicts at the movie’s heart into
semi-focus.
It was EasyRig all the way on a
precarious donkey ride up the mountain.
Reygadas operated a reverse shot with the
rider perched “almost on the tail of the
donkey,” Zabe recalls. “That was done on a
wing and a prayer, basically minimum focus.
When we were on top of the mountain, we
had an EasyRig, some apple boxes, some
straps and sandbags, and a donkey, and we
were scratching our heads trying to figure
out how we would do it. That’s when ropes
and knots and that sort of stuff come in
very handy!”
American Cinematographer

Because Reygadas and Zabe were so
familiar with the location, they knew what
to expect from the weather. They shot
during the rainy season partly because they
wanted fog in certain scenes. Still, weather
can be as difficult to direct as children and
animals, and it did not always cooperate.
“We climbed to the top of the mountain a
couple of times thinking we’d get the fog,
and then we didn’t get it, so we just had to
go back down and try again another day,”
says the cinematographer. “That was a
pretty extreme hike, a couple of hours up
the mountain lugging the equipment.”
But in all, it’s the way Zabe prefers to
work. He started out doing special-effects
photography primarily for Mexican commercials and music videos, and moved on
to features with Duck Season (AC April ’06).
He met Reygadas because that film shared
production offices with Battle of Heaven,
the director’s second feature. “We realized
there were coincidences in the way we
wanted to work,” says Zabe. “We were
both looking for a minimal crew and just a
different approach to filmmaking.” In 2006,
they made Silent Light, a tale of adultery in
a Mennonite community that was “a beautiful experience for everybody. It was a long
shoot, a small crew — almost a perfect
project.”
Zabe speaks with great satisfaction
about the “DIY” nature of Post Tenebras
Lux, citing a scene in which the falling rain
gathers in what looks like pools of blood
on the ground. To achieve it, explains the
cinematographer, “we rented a couple of
30,000-liter trucks and some hoses, put
some red food coloring into the trucks,
and then had that rain on everybody. We
tweaked it a tiny bit in the color correction, but not too much. It was pretty old
school. It was a romantic way of shooting.
We just went out with some friends to a
mountain.”

TECHNICAL SPECS
1.33:1
35mm
Moviecam Compact
Arri Master Prime
Kodak Vision2 50D 5201;
Vision3 250D 5207, 500T 5219
Digital Intermediate

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American Cinematographer - July 2013

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