ALL I S TRUE | DRAMA
The lenses we found to achieve this was the Panavision PVintage legacy glass...
DEF: What brief did you get from the director and what kind of aesthetic ZN: Ken has a genuine love for all aspects of the craft of filmmaking and the process. As an example, he was keen to use techniques such as glass paintings and day-for-night for the exteriors. He also loves a big wide shot with the artists carefully placed in the frame as the story unfolds. There is a starkness in the narrative and this was reflected in the boldness of the wide framing and the lighting. were you aiming for? DEF: Tell us about your lighting design. With a non-electric light narrative, did you plan for a minimum of light? How did you rate your sensor accordingly and what supplemental lighting did you use? as they never stop changing, especially when you have 50 or so burning at a time. To begin with they’re kind of reticent, then they get going and burn brighter. Then the wax melts and they become dimmer, so you tip out the wax. But then you suddenly have a long wick that burns with twice the brightness. Ultimately, it’s a very different quality of light that illuminates faces in a quixotic way. Wide shots are trickier and we would hide candle troughs where we could and then it became partly about not having too many and embracing the darkness. This does require a certain amount of fortitude when calculating the exposure, that and a good DIT. It’s also very tough on the focus puller. We always rated the camera at 1600 for the night interiors. DEF: Tell me about any filtering you used. How did you shoot the lead actors and how did you achieve the look? ZN: For the night interiors, we used candles only. Candles are interesting DEF: The film feels like a celebration of Shakespeare wrapped in deep respect, was this part of the design you put forward? ZN: Ken has a deep affinity for Shakespeare, but also love and respect for his fellow actors, in particular Dame Judi Dench, which I hope we were able to reflect in our approach to the cinematography. ALL IS TRUE WAS RELEASED IN FEBRUARY IN THE UK AND COMES OUT IN MAY IN THE US ZN: A lot of the look came from the lenses and occasionally we would augment this with very subtle Black Glimmer glass diffusion filters.
Primes. They’re incredibly consistent, sharp and contrasty, arguably a bit boring, and I’ve always softened them with light diffusion filters of one kind or another. In this situation, I was looking for something a little less predictable but, more importantly, glass that reacted to the light in an interesting and natural way. It was also very important to be sympathetic to the actors and the prosthetics, as well as to enhance the period quality of the sets, their textures and surfaces. The lenses we found to achieve this were the Panavision PVintage lenses that are made up from rehoused legacy glass. The 14mm and the 17mm were extremely popular.
APR I L 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 59
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