M yself and the director, Allan Coward Robert Ford (shot by Roger Deakins), The Best Intentions (shot by Jörgen Persson) and Fanny and Alexander (shot by Sven Nykvist). As we spent time looking at locations and getting to know each other’s tastes, the visual style of the film began to form in my mind’s eye. I was inspired daily by the locations we found and as prep continued, I started seeing designs from [production designer] Gillian Devenney with a beautifully delicate colour palette. These were complemented by the costumes from Hazel Webb Crozier. Between us, we came up with the visual style. I wanted a naturalistic style of photography that still had a very cinematic quality to it; what I’d call hyper-naturalism. I was keen to stay true to the idea that, without electricity or gas light, the interiors were sometimes quite dark, even during the day, so I worked towards a single-source lighting approach for day interior work and used candles and oil lamp for night interiors. As it was a tight schedule, I had to work fast. Usually I prefer to adopt a ‘light the room not the shot’ approach, by which I mean I’ll usually have the set lit for at least 180 degrees with close-ups needing little to no additional lighting. This keeps everything moving quickly on set, which helps the actors immensely and I find it gives a more naturalistic-looking image. HMI For day interiors, I used large HMI sources outside windows, usually 18K ARRIMAXs and ARRI M90s, and pushed them through several layers of day-grey muslin. This became a large soft source, cut naturally by the size of the building windows. I’d then mix in a smaller, punchier source, like an M18 at full spot, and let that splash in through part of the window, usually to bounce off the floor. By keeping the harder source cut off above the actors shoulders, I got a nice mix of hard and soft light. This kept the texture of the light interesting, especially as an actor in a pale dress would pass through the hard light and momentarily bounce it around the room, changing the character of the shadows. Night interiors presented a different challenge. Some of our locations had heavy restrictions in terms of what kind of rigging I could use. In one of our primary locations, I wasn’t allowed rig to any roof or wall, nor was I allowed to use naked flames Cubitt, referenced several films throughout prep, including The Assassination of Jesse James by the
RIGHT For day interiors, Stephen used large HMI sources outside windows, pushed through muslin.
Night interiors were a challenge. In one of our primary locations, I wasn’t allowed rig to any roof or wall
JANUARY 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 25
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