DRAMA | SCHOOL’ S OUT FOREVER
Hole describes himself as “usually a very tungsten guy”, but for this he used Litemats and Source Fours. “I don’t think we got the HMI off the truck. We did use Asteras and a lot of tubes.” Hole credits the Litemats with effectiveness beyond what their modest power consumption might suggest. “They’re amazing. I remember when I first got them out in daylight, I thought, ‘I’m not sure how this is going to light up a whole landscape’. We got them up on a crane and I was absolutely shocked.” The Litemats became Hole’s go-to tool for various situations: “We had two eight-by-eights we were using – even for day interiors I was using them up against windows, because we had to hide a lot of the exteriors. We had to white out windows,” he says. The result was “an even soft look that flowed through the whole thing. It saved so much time.” SONY VENICE School’s Out Forever was shot on the Sony Venice with Panavision’s Panaspeed lenses, a new option for full-frame cameras. The resulting combination of fast lenses and a camera capable of a usable 3200 ISO sensitivity was, Hole admits, occasionally a life- (or at least time-) saver. “We had the 3200 option, which we didn’t use much, but if it was a shot that we had to pick up and we didn’t have time to bring in a light, we’d use it. I found it matched in the end. You didn’t want to go and switch over to the high ISO but if you had to, it was such a great option,” he says.
modifying a head. We needed a crane for loads of different times. The schedule kept changing and we ended up with one we weren’t a fan of, but we had a crane we could carry around with us the whole time with our Movi Pro on the end. We ended up swinging that around a lot. On a budget like this, a lot of the prep time was having to construct and work out really cheap and flexible grippage that we could carry with us the whole film.” With the entire Panaspeed range opening up to an f/1.4, and the Venice’s full- frame sensor, Hole is also keen to credit first assistant cameraman Alasdair Baines for his expertise in keeping low-light scenes sharp. “Ali was great – just in terms of builds. We had a few set-ups. We had the Movi that we used as a remote head, so we needed a small build for that. We needed a studio build, our usual dolly build, then we had our handheld mode, which was the break-off body, and then our normal handheld mode. When you take the sensor off, you have to leave the sensor for half an hour to cool down – that’s the advice from Panavision. Ali had to plan
With the combination of a fast camera and fast lenses, Hole could rely on only very small amounts of light. “We did use helium balloons. We had an interior hall, like a grand hall, and we ended up flying a balloon at the top of there. We had to give it a nice moonlit atmosphere from the top – it was like a 1K-output LED helium balloon. I ran most of the LEDs at about 20%. I think we ran our moon at about 15%.” “My grip was really good, because he also had to work on a tight budget,” Hole recalls. “We ended up at Panavision, The combination of fast lenses and a 3200 ISOwas, at times, a life- and timesaver
IMAGES Production shots from the movie and the youngest member of the crew
34 DEF I N I T ION | DECEMBER 20 1 9
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