DEFINITION January 2019

SHOOT STORY | THE FAVOUR I TE

“I’ve been talking to the guy from Kodak and he said that five years ago there were maybe 13 commercials shot on film,” explains Robbie. “It’s two or three hundred this year. [The revival] is director led. Yorgos solely wants to shoot on film for as long as he can get it. I’m happy if a director is driving to shoot on film, and I will be until they stop making it. Kodak has re-issued reversal. They’ve also re-released Ektachrome, which gives you the contrast, as does 16mm. Now, it’d be great if FujiFilm started making film again.” FILM STOCKS

It was interesting working with Yorgos and he’s very unconventional. He’s camera-savvy and knows exactly what the camera can do

said that they didn’t do a heck of a lot to it in post. The nice thing about shooting on film is that you don’t tend to do a lot of colour correction, because [it looks good] as it comes out of the tin.” Rob himself, based at Goldcrest, graded in Resolve on a Barco DP4K-P projector. With Robbie unable to attend the three- week grade due to a scheduling conflict, Rob worked with director Lanthimos. He’s immediately enthusiastic about the production: “It was lovely to work on

They’re all wise to film shoots being disruptive and causing potential damage – the old adage is not to let a film shoot in your house, which is fair enough.” The filmmakers would take full advantage of the ability to (carefully) use candles, and the wide-angle approach was, Robbie feels, ‘very unique’. He says: “You got to see every inch of the house. The location had very big windows in all the rooms so they had this lovely natural daylight coming in, and these lovely dark walls and textured tapestries that took the light really well.” It’s easy to see all of these choices as a determinedly traditional approach, especially given Lanthimos’ attitude to lighting. “He didn’t want to use any lights,” Robbie explains. “He would only use lights if he had to compromise his approach. Luckily, when we were filming, the weather was quite sunny and we didn’t end up using lights very much. [The film] is very naturally lit. I learnt a lot working with him. I would maybe have used a bit of something here and there, and his mindset is not to use lights at all because as soon as you do, you have to do corrections to fit it all in later on. That was a mantra, and it paid off.” Limiting artificial lighting means limiting complexity, and Robbie says that Lanthimos’ approach to directing his cast, in particular blocking, took full advantage of the resulting flexibility. “He didn’t make them stand anywhere – he let them do what they wanted to do. It was interesting working with him and he’s very unconventional. He’s camera-savvy and knows exactly what the camera can do, but he wouldn’t impose that on his actors. There was never ‘stand here, do this, don’t move there’. Some actors like to do as many takes as they can and feel you can bring something to each take, but we didn’t do excessive amounts of coverage. He was very Shooting film naturally implies overnight processing and a return to viewing dailies. Initially, Robbie saw a quick telecine of the material, which later would be re-scanned on Arriscan at Goldcrest for the final version of the film, though that quickly changed to viewing the actual 2K scans. “I don’t think they scanned it again for the grade. Rob Pizzey did the final grade – he frugal with how he shot it.” FILM TURNAROUND

RIGHT Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone converse with the 1st Baron Masham, played by Joe Alwyn.

36 DEF I N I T ION | JANUARY 20 1 9

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