PRODUCTION PRISCILLA
FOR THE Graceland and US scenes, THE TEAM WORKED WITH real visual references OF ELVIS AND PRISCILLA”
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moment. I tried to connect with the emotion from the script, the director, the actors. That relationship you build together on-set, I tried to translate that with light and framing. Cailee (Priscilla) is in every shot, so we had to be careful how we conveyed this and that we didn’t shoot the same way when she was 14 as when she was at Graceland. We knew the moment of the kiss was very important and we had to be careful emotionally with the camera and light. We needed to be almost as shy as the character.” With just six weeks to capture everything, timing was a big challenge for Le Sourd, who says he’s most proud of the last scene he shot, which takes place in Elvis’ bedroom. “I wanted to utilise the lighting and framing to illustrate how their love was dying: the idea was to bring in pulsing light from outside, like the blood leaving him, but I didn’t know immediately how to do this,” he explains. “The scene is very important and emotional, with these two characters (and actors) leaving us. I remember Cailee didn’t want to leave the set. She wanted to do the last scene – the last track down the corridor – over and over. She didn’t want to leave Graceland. That was very emotional for her and for all of us. You could see the sacrifice and the work she did for six weeks.” CHANGING PALETTES Van Der Cruyssen explains how the aesthetic of the film is broken up into the German look – a soft, grey palette to reflect Priscilla’s adolescent boredom – and the more colourful look belonging to the US and Graceland. These evolve as the film progresses, becoming more saturated toward the end of the sixties and seventies (set in LA and Las Vegas respectively) before returning to a more
DREAM ROLE Sofia Coppola’s film had a profound effect on leading lady Cailee Spaeny
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