American Cinematographer - September 2013 - 60

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Directing for All Platforms

owadays movies have to work on a
screen the size of a stadium and on
an iPhone. Filmmakers cannot just
visualize for one venue; we have to
think about all the possible ways our
films will be seen. A movie’s life in the
cinemas is limited to, if you’re lucky,
eight weeks. After that, your movie is
only in a digital format; that’s where
everything is meant to go.
I know certain people disagree
with me about this, but I do believe the
iPhone is an incredible way to watch
storytelling. Because I watch entertainment in the cinema and on my
iPhone, my iPad and my television, I
am constantly reminded that whatever
I do needs to work across multiple
platforms. I think that opens a lot
more possibilities. When your work
has so many different ways of being
exposed, you can allow yourself to be
much more experimental, because if
something doesn’t work in one venue,
it’s going to work in another. There’s
no set arena now. To really know a
movie, you should experience it across
multiple platforms.
Thanks to the digital revolution
and increased accessibility through
things like video on demand, the
whole world is now our audience. We
are constantly being told that the audience doesn’t care for certain kinds of

60

September 2013

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films anymore, that times have
changed, but that’s not true. On the
contrary, the interest in alternative or
specialized cinema — or ‘artsploitation,’ which is what I do — is enormous.
People go to the cinema not to
see movies, but to see a specific movie.
If you want to watch just any movie,
you turn on the television, and there
are hundreds of channels that will
show you a movie, any movie. But
people go to the cinema for the same
reason they go to the theater: It’s a
conscious decision to enjoy something
in a specific kind of way. But now, you
can also enjoy it in the comfort of your
own home. That gives us options, it
gives us choices, and it also gives the
distributors a financial upside that
makes it possible for these films to
survive in the market. If our films
were limited to a theatrical run, a lot
of us would die out.
Cannes was odd this year,
because everything in the festival is
now projected as DCP. I was sitting in
the Palais, thinking, ‘God, we’re all
dressed in tuxedos, and we’re looking
at a giant television screen.’ I realized
celluloid really is part of the past now.
This is the future: one gigantic television screen.
— Nicolas Winding Refn

American Cinematographer

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Bangkok Dangerous

formats let us see what we’re shooting very
quickly, but somehow, on most movies,
we’re still working with one hand tied
behind our back!”
Drawbacks aside, Smith produced
striking results by exploiting the existing
lighting at several locations, including a
famous restaurant called the China
House. There, the filmmakers staged a
memorable encounter between Julian, an
exotic dancer posing as his girlfriend, and
Julian’s mother, who verbally flays her
dinner companions. “That scene was lit
almost entirely with practicals,” says
Smith. “All the nook lights in the wall
behind them were already there as part of
the restaurant’s décor; I just supplemented
the ambient light with various small
fixtures. I placed some Dedos very high
over the table so they would hit the white
tablecloth and create a bit of a glow
beneath the actors’ faces. I also added a bit
of light to the entrance where they come
in, just to give that moment a little lift.”
In one squirm-inducing sequence,
Chang and his henchmen stalk into a
karaoke bar and interrupt a party of
teenaged girls to brutally interrogate one
of Julian’s business associates, Byron
(Byron Gibson). After ordering the girls
to close their eyes, Chang proceeds to
torture Byron with steel skewers, turning
him into a human pincushion. “We shot
that in Chinatown, in a gay karaoke sex
club we transformed to suit our needs,”
Smith recalls. “We shot a whole night of
that guy screaming, with lots of close-ups
of those chopsticks going into his thighs,
hands, eyes and ears. I actually questioned
the logic of it — I said to Nicolas, ‘Look,
this guy would probably die of fear or
shock once you put those things through
his thighs and hands. He’d definitely be
dead by the time you reached his ears. But
hey, it’s a movie, so you can do what you
want!’ It was quite harrowing to shoot all
that. My wife and kids were actually visiting the set when we shot that scene. My
kids thought it was alright, but my wife
felt it was all a bit much!”
At various intervals throughout the
movie, Chang is shown singing karaoke to
an audience of his impassive officers at a
small nightclub, where low angles show
American Cinematographer - September 2013

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