American Cinematographer - December 2010 - 22

Above: Nicholson, Byrne and Reardon follow Firth and Rush for a key walkand-talk in foggy Regents Park. Below: The crew prepares a scene in which Bertie, accompanied by his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), delivers a disastrous speech.

Danny gave me a stop pull to incorporate between T1.4 and T2 as we were tracking backwards up the steps. At times, Colin gets very close to the lens, [which was at] absolute minimum focus. We shot without the matte box because it would have thrown a shadow on his face.” Hooper’s third stylistic imperative involved some unusual framing. “If somebody is looking off-screen to the right, you’d normally put them in the left of frame, leaving space on the right — that’s what is generally conceived as a comfortable image,” explains Cohen. “But if you put that same face very close to the right-hand side of the frame, it feels kind of jagged. It’s not an easy watch, and putting people in uncomfortable positions worked for this story.” A turning point in the film comes when a thoroughly demoralized Bertie
22 December 2010

finally listens to a recording that Logue made of him speaking — at Logue’s insistence, Bertie had worn headphones that prevented him from hearing his own voice, and he didn’t stutter. Upon hearing the recording, Bertie breaks into sobs, and his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), approaches from a doorway behind him. The scene is bathed in a warm light that Cohen reserved for scenes in which Bertie is alone with his wife. The Chinese lanterns, 650-watt Fresnels and 150-watt Peppers that illuminate the scene were all dimmed down to a golden glow. Cohen shot The King’s Speech in 3-perf Super 35mm for a final aspect ratio of 1.85:1, using two Arricam Lites and Arri Master Primes (provided by Take Two in London). “You get a bit more height in the frame with 1.85, and we were filming in these old, beautiful buildings
American Cinematographer

with fantastic ceilings, so we wanted to see as much of them as possible,” notes the cinematographer. The picture was finished with a digital intermediate at Molinare, where Cohen worked with colorist Gareth Spensley. The negative was scanned at 4K on a N orthlight, and the color correction and Arrilaser filmout were done at 2K. “It wasn’t a particularly complicated grade — our biggest task was removing modern cars from wide shots,” Cohen recalls. “We also had to add some soot to the buildings. Once London passed the Clean Air Act, people stopped burning coal at home.” In fact, creating smog and fog on the set “was a fun thing to try and do,” he continues. For a scene showing Bertie’s wife riding in a car in dense fog, “massive smoke machines were positioned up and down Harley Street, much to the neighborhood’s annoyance. There was so much smoke it set off the fire alarms in a nearby hospital, so we had to move down the street.” In another scene, Bertie and Logue walk through a foggy Regents Park, and as the scene progresses, the skies clear and the sun emerges. “We were incredibly lucky that day,” recalls Cohen. “It was the end of the day, and as they walk, they’re backlit by the sun, which is very low in the sky at that time of day in late November/early December. They argue, and then Bertie walks away, and Lionel turns and walks back in the direction he came from. He’s now frontlit by the sun, which, due to its angle, gives him an unusually long shadow. A horseman trots by in the opposite direction, casting an equally eye-catching shadow.” Cohen was delighted by the enthusiastic response The King’s Speech received in Telluride and Toronto. “The story is 80 years old,” he muses, “but it hasn’t lost its impact.”

TECHNICAL SPECS
Super 1.85:1 3-perf Super 35mm Arricam Lite Arri lenses Fujifilm Eterna Vivid 500 8547, 160 8543 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision 2383

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American Cinematographer - December 2010

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