American Cinematographer - December 2016 - 58

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Love and War
The crew preps a
nighttime party
scene in Vatan's
backyard, a
sequence that
features an
attack by German
bombers. This
setup aptly
illustrates the
challenges of
shooting a night
exterior in a lowceilinged
warehouse in
London's Gillette
Building.

ity to work with the height requirements
and still adjust the color temperature of
the lights, so that if we started the day
shooting a scene for look one or look
two, we could shift to look four - or go
from day to night - without changing
any gels."
Gaffer Perry Evans adds, "The
Arri SkyPanels created a blanket of light
above the set, and because we preprogrammed each look into a ChamSys
MagicQ lighting console, desk operator
Will Burns could switch us back and
forth [via DMX network control] when
we told him the scene number. That let
us jump around and dial the Arris
immediately to the correct light level.
Instead of being 3,200 Kelvin - or
maybe a bit warmer - for Morocco, we
could jump to the next level and go a bit
cooler, taking it to, say, 4,000 Kelvin.
And then the next one could be 4,300
Kelvin and so on."
One of the film's central shooting
locations was London's Gillette
Building - which Burgess describes as,
"in essence, a bunch of warehouses with
fairly low ceilings" - where the production constructed several sets. Evans adds
that the Gillette site "was an old factory
floor. There was no overhead grid for us
to work from. So straightaway in
December [2015], we got a gang in
58

December 2016

there and put up our scaffolding and
some grip gear in the ceiling, since
everything had to be rigged off
machines from the floor, which made it
really laborious. Normally, you go up in
the grid, throw some cables around,
throw some lamps around off tackles,
and you are up and out of the way. But
in this case we had to get in there before
they built the sets. The construction
team marked out the sets on the floor for
us, and then we rigged our lights so that
when they stood the set up a month or
so later, we had our [lights] up and out
of the way."
A similar process was followed at
other locations where the production
built sets, such as London's LH2
Studios, a facility Burgess and Evans say
was originally designed primarily for live
musical productions, and Cardington
Studios, a huge space where the production built an aircraft landing strip for the
movie's climactic scene.
Extensive camera movement was
built into the movie's aesthetic, Burgess
says, but like lighting and color, it subtly
evolved with the various looks. "In
Morocco we had a steady camera platform, so mostly [we did] no Steadicam
or handheld work - everything was on
cranes and dollies," Burgess says. "Then,
once we got back to London, things
American Cinematographer

loosened up a bit and we started to
introduce Steadicam and handheld,
especially as we began to introduce that
nervous feeling as events close in on the
characters."
During an early scene in Nazioccupied Casablanca, Nazi officers
confront Max at Café Rivoli. There, in a
scene shot at LH2 Studios, the camera
that tracks Max was mounted to a 62'
MovieBird crane. "We used the
MovieBird to establish Max moving
through the architecturally beautiful
club from one side to the other, using the
full travel of the telescopic arm,"
Cavaciuti says. "Two officers move
through in close-up and the camera
moves across their Swastika armbands as
they exit the club, revealing Max as he
walks up the stairs to the club. We follow
him across the edge of the dance floor
until he spots Marianne, and she turns
and runs toward him into a close-up
embrace. The 62-foot MovieBird is a
big beast, and we had to thread the eye
of a needle at the start of the shot as we
avoided the set, frame right - and as we
moved diagonally, we had a narrow line
to follow into the ballroom to again
avoid additional set, frame right also."
As the chemistry between the two
characters builds, they dance at Café
Rivoli. Cavaciuti shot part of their dance
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