PRODUCTION ALL OF US STRANGERS
as he was as a little boy in his pyjamas, when the police lights arrived to tell him that his parents had died. That was an example of us wanting to do something quite special in a very, very tight space.” LIGHTS, CAMERA… From the get-go, Haigh and Ramsay both agreed that their decisions needed to be ’conscious but subtle‘. This subtlety manifested itself largely through lighting and camera movement. “In terms of separating the two worlds, we needed to think about it technically,” Ramsay explains. “I wanted to use a more analogue palette whenever [Adam] returns to his parents and goes into his past. That meant practical lighting, tungsten and incandescent elements – and steering away from LED or HMI.” Conversely, Adam’s apartment embraced a more digital palette. “Instead of having a big green screen wrapping around the set, we opted to include a 120ft LED wall. We projected the exact views from his apartment and we were able to use our digital lighting palette to colour-match the backgrounds.” Ramsay notes the irony in using virtual production for portraying ‘real life’ and practical filmmaking for the more surreal scenes. To further delineate between storylines, Ramsay alternated between handheld and static. Adam’s apartment acts as a ‘cage’, Ramsay says, “where
ONE OF OUR key visual anchors WAS nostalgia and longing ”
wanted to represent that by shooting on 35mm film.” This choice presented a few unexpected obstacles. First, Ramsay dealt with the uncertainty of working with film – or without a monitor. “In the last ten or 15 years, digital dailies have been almost immediate. You can see if you make any mistakes,” he explains. “On film, you do not immediately know what you’re doing because it’s analogue. You only find out 16, 17 hours later at 3am when you get your reports back. That’s an added level of stress that I hadn’t experienced in a long time.” Another challenge was fitting a film camera into tight spaces. Haigh decided to shoot the family scenes in his own childhood home: “There’s a catharsis for him in that, and there’s a method that you get from being in that space,” comments Ramsay. “As a cinematographer shooting on 35mm, my physical footprint was probably triple that of when I shoot on a smaller digital package. Shooting in a British home with small windows, low roofs and nowhere
to hide lights – it makes your life quite difficult,” he admits. “But you trust your director, and you’re there to serve the ultimate goal, which is the feeling of the movie. When I knew that he was serious about that, we just had to figure out a way to do it.” Ramsay brought his own references to help establish the film’s tone: notably Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away . “It was a combination of the stark reality of one and the mystery of the other. That was more of like, ‘What’s the feeling that I want to create with this film?’” Ramsay also cites photography, paintings, poetry and music as inspirations: “Anything that gives me the right feeling that I’m trying to obtain for the movie holistically, but also scene to scene.” The result is a film which, both visually and narratively, feels incredibly intimate. “One example of that is the scene with the three of them in bed,” begins Ramsay. “The camera explores the scene in an uncut, five-minute take." Then, the frame widens to reveal Adam alone, “exactly
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