PRODUCTION ETERNITY
Weimar Germany: Now Nazi free!’). “Each stand in The Junction has its own gag,” says O’Brien. “There’s the man-free world, queer world, space world and those little visual gags appear throughout the film.” O’Brien was excited to play with the artificial nature of The Junction. “It was important to keep that air of artificiality in there,” he says. “It is all this kind of enhanced supermarket lighting. The ceiling was packed with ARRI SkyPanels, and below that we had a layer of silk. It was a vast set and a huge space to fill – like a football stadium. A lot of calculation and preparation went into getting that right, but once we were up and running it was a simple approach. Then when we went out to our different eternities, we decided to keep it much more stylised and naturalistic.” Production designer Zazu Myers had already begun work on the design of The Junction by the time O’Brien came
on board the project. “I didn’t change that much,” he says. “We had many conversations about where to put the stairs and whether we should have a lift and so on, but really the big, broad strokes were already in place. It wasn’t exactly as I had imagined, but I can’t imagine it any other way now, which shows how good the design is.” O’Brien and Freyne toyed with the idea of the opening sequence being in black & white. “Our initial idea for life before death was to make it quite different. In the end this came down to a combination of using Ultra Prime lenses and a very different style in the grade. We decided against black & white for those scenes as we felt it might put people off.” Production had settled on another colourist, but a meeting had already been scheduled with David Tomiak. “It would have been rude not to turn up,” admits O’Brien. “With no expectations
IT FELT LIKE hanging out with friends, ALMOST LIKE playing with Lego AS A LITTLE KID”
56
DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
Powered by FlippingBook