DEFINITION April 2019

DRAMA | CURFEW

RIGHT The director wanted the street lights to be off in the London of the Curfew world

Beyond this, the production used “a good bit of rear projection. The longest real drive we had was in underground tunnels, 13 miles of them. We ended up putting practicals in there, bulkheads, in about a mile of them.” While the production was based in Manchester, much of the action unit’s work took place in Liverpool, with director of photography Stephen Murphy. “They could close big sections of main road in Liverpool,” Lavelle says, “which isn ’ t as simple in Manchester, and the buildings in Liverpool doubled for London better.” This separation of units wouldn’t have been Lavelle’s choice, but was necessary: “I love doing action, on Vikings and stuff, but on this job, the way the schedule was there was no way one person could do it.” SCHEDULES Production on the first three episodes ran for eight weeks from mid February 2018. Afterward, the work of grading would go to Greg Fisher, who had been involved in creating a monitoring LUT before the start of production proper. “He has an amazing CV,” Lavelle says. “He lived in Denmark for ages and did that TV show Borgen , which I love... he did Bohemian Rhapsody , Tomb Raider , Spider-Man: Homecoming , Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation , World War Z , The Imitation Game . A broad palette, and a real purist of how you expose your negative and encouraging me to go back to my light meter on set and trust that more.” The first three days grading were occupied by something Lavelle describes as a “find-the-look process which was really helpful. We signed off the look before they locked picture and we could provide LUTs to VFX so they knew what they were working to.” After that, the grading time per episode was “a few days”. At the time of writing, the first episodes of Curfew are being broadcast, Lavelle has already finished a subsequent production, World on Fire , and is about to embark on Lenny Abrahamson’s screen adaptation of the Sally Rooney novel Normal People , intended for BBC 3. “He’s one of my favourite filmmakers,” Lavelle says, “and I couldn’t believe I’d had a call from him.” Meanwhile, there’ll be plenty of creature-dodging, car- chasing action to enjoy as Curfew plays out in its glorious extra-widescreen frame. CURFEW IS CURRENTLY PLAYING ON SKY TELEVISION IN THE UK

“I made this pitch to the team,” Lavelle says, “saying that 2.35:1 is better for the car shape, we’re paying homage to other movies. So 2.35 is absolutely the right format.” Narrowing down that choice to a particular anamorphic set was based on Lavelle’s experience: “I was starting to explore all the vintage stuff on my shortform jobs,” she says. “We tested the Kowas, the Todd-AOs, Cineovision and rehoused Lomos – and the Elite Anamorphics, the new Russian lenses. We also looked at a Master Anamorphic, which Colm had used on Krypton . On the lens test, I wanted something he knew.” The Todd-AO lenses were “Full of character – so many aberrations. I found them quite warm; they were really, really bold wide open.” ON ANAMORPHIC

How do you show speed in cars without anything outside to showmovement?

38 DEF I N I T ION | APR I L 20 1 9

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