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PHANTOM THREAD LIGHTING
LOW LIGHT THREADS We talked with Mike Bauman, lighting cameraman and guru for Phantom Thread about seeking a lo-fi and low-contrast light design WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL PICTURES FOCUS FEATURES
affer, lighting cameraman and lighting innovator Mike Bauman had worked as gaffer with director and cinematographer Paul Thomas Anderson on his previous two movies, The Master and Inherent Vice . For Phantom Thread , the director was intrigued by a number of British-inspired habits like the UK system of using an operator and a lighting cameraman, and also by the craft of director Stanley Kubrick’s films especially Barry Lyndon . “That was the film where Stanley used all these super-fast lenses and Paul was looking at it for inspiration of where to take this film,” says Mike. “We did a music video for Radiohead probably eight months before and followed that up with another music video and a short film, using techniques that we wanted to eventually use for the film. That’s how we started moving towards what we wanted. “Other preparation included a lot of testing, at least six tests which were pretty extensive and especially involving a lot of texture; he wanted the film to have a lot of texture to it. This was a big thing for him, he talked about how beautiful The Crown from Netflix looked but he talked about how it wasn’t the direction he wanted to go for the film. He wanted it much more lo-fi, so to speak, so we experimented and that’s the way we started pushing the movie. So we started testing a lot of smoke and low-con filter ideas, we spoke with Dan Sasaki at Panavision about his bespoke collection of lenses that Paul had been putting together with Dan for a while. We tested that kind of stuff for another way to get texture and stuff into it.”
PREPARATION INCLUDED A LOT OF TESTING, AT LEAST SIX TESTS WHICH WERE PRETTY EXTENSIVE
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