American Cinematographer - October 2012 - 79

100-watt Photofloods with Depron attached over a wire mesh. We normally had three of those sitting on the floor; they were wired to dimmers, which allowed me to dim them down to match table practicals.” Close-ups of Jones also required meticulous work because of the elaborate prosthetics he wore to transform into Hitchcock. “Toby’s prosthetics took 4½ hours to apply every day, which was a tough turnaround on a 26-day shoot,” Pardue observes. “The makeup artists did a great job with the prosthetics, but it's still something a cinematographer has to light very carefully. Digital, even on the Alexa, shows a lot of skin detail, but the softer S2 lenses and diffusion filters helped. Julian wanted big closeups of Toby, and that’s where you start seeing blemishes in a prosthetic. I used soft light on him as much as I could. In the studio scenes I lit him with a strong, hard, three-quarter backlight, but I softened this considerably for the corresponding close-ups.” The Mitchell filters were recommended to Pardue by Joe Dunton, BSC, who also provided him with some vintage film equipment (including the original process camera used on The Birds), invaluable advice on period lighting, and insights about the ambience that prevailed on early-1960s film sets, where arc lights created a smoky atmosphere. “Joe shipped the process camera to South Africa, and we actually used it as a prop for studio scenes that show process photography against sodium-lit screens,” recalls Pardue. “Panavision U.K. sent over some mag belts so we could get the mags running. It’s worth mentioning that all of this was mobilized very quickly. I feel very lucky that Joe helped us sort everything out. “I got very involved in obtaining the correct film props for our studio sets,” the cinematographer notes. “In South Africa, we sourced an old Mitchell camera that still had its blimp and all of its accessories. We built a dolly based on a set photo from Sons and Lovers, which was shot in 1963, the same year as The Birds. The jib dollies

One of the production’s most ambitious undertakings was to create a large exterior set that could double for Bodega Bay, the California coastal town where Hitchcock had shot The Birds. “South Africa was a perfect match for California, and Julian sourced some great locations,” Pardue says. “We turned an old crayfish factory into Bodega Bay. Our first day of shooting was a big exterior rain scene, which was very tricky. The problem with the rain in South Africa is that you have this really bright sun, so if you shoot out to sea, you’re not going to see any rain — it’s that old conundrum. We managed to contain the rain between two buildings, and I just screened off the sunlight as best I could.”

we use nowadays, I discovered, weren’t invented till much later.” The production’s main location was Cape Town’s 3 Arts Theatre, which the filmmakers transformed into the movie studio where much of The Girl takes place. “The location actually functioned as a real studio after we built a lighting grid in the roof, and it was also a great location for our period backlot. The corridors, Hitch’s office and Tippi’s dressing room were all linked together as one huge set, and it had a projection room at the top that we used as Hitch’s screening room. The space was big
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enough for our production designer, Darryl Hammer, to also build all the sets we needed from The Birds and Marnie. She did a fantastic job, and everything connected in a useful way. Our assistant director, Sebastian Ballhaus, also deserves a lot of credit for coordinating our very tight schedule. “It was an interesting situation, because we were shooting period sets within our period soundstage. We lit the Hitchcock sets with vintage lights that we kept in shot; meanwhile, we lit the soundstage with modern lighting rigs kept out of shot. Our functioning period
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American Cinematographer - October 2012

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