PRODUCTION RIPLEY
should it feel? How should the people feel watching it?” Production took the team across Rome, Venice, Naples, Capri and the Amalfi Coast, and they had their work cut out not just in ensuring a pitch-perfect period aesthetic, but in giving these idyllic settings a sinister edge befitting the story. They were helped on both counts by the fact that principal photography took place in 2021 – mid-pandemic – which left them with deserted, tourist- free streets to play with. The flip side of this timing was the restrictions put on filming, which caused severe delays to production; though Elswit ended up seeing this as a blessing since it gave them more time to scout and plan. “I took hundreds and hundreds of stills and printed them in black & white, and I started considering what monochrome does – which is all about texture, quality of light and the tonal structure of an image. It’s very different from working in colour, and I needed that because I hadn’t done anything in black & white for a long time.” Elswit began to think about lighting in a new way, considering how it could SHADOW PLAY In Ripley, the way someone is lit says a lot about their character, from total shadow to direct sunlight and all in between
illuminate character dynamics: “There’s a general cliche about tonal structure and pictorial style – in painting, anyway – that light presents the idea of wisdom, understanding and enlightenment. If you are painting someone in open and direct sunlight, you’re making an emotional statement about your sense of who they are. And that carries over into monochrome more than in colour.” In Ripley , light reveals truths about the characters and their inner worlds – Dickie can often be seen in half- light, while Marge “is open and honest – fully exposed. And there’s Tom, sitting in shadow,” he explains. Taking a heavily stylised approach inspired by film noir, Elswit embraced the interplay of black & white highlights and shadows. “It makes you feel a certain way about what you’re looking at,” he muses. “It is a builder of tension; a creator of anxiety; and it just doesn’t happen the same way in colour. “We have big LED units now that are very soft and broad and can recreate the feeling of day interior light. But with this series, we wanted hard light – something that didn’t look that real, the way films were lit 60, 70 years ago,” he adds. “When you look at people’s faces, there’s a more distinct nose shadow; there’s a fall-off; there’s a design of the lighting on someone’s face that takes
advantage of the difference between a very strong highlight and shadows. So we exaggerated that; we didn’t try to create a realistic look.” While he relied heavily on LED panels and praises their versatility – particularly when it comes to adjusting the colour temperature to create realistic lighting in both natural and staged settings – Elswit also utilised traditional tungsten lighting on Ripley , for a unique contrast which lends itself well to black & white. Lamenting the disappearance of older lighting technologies like carbon arcs, which were adept at simulating sunlight, nowadays, he often combines LED panels with older fixtures like fresnel lenses to achieve desired effects, occasionally deploying HMIs for outdoor scenes. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Shot on an ARRI ALEXA LF and ALEXA Mini LF, lenses were supplied by Panavision, and Elswit had the firm’s VP of optical engineering on speed dial to ensure he got exactly the right glass for the job. “Dan Sasaki is a lens genius – he’s built lenses for me forever,” he gushes. “You can make a perfect lens now, for any format, which has no chromatic aberrations, almost no vignetting; that doesn’t have the kind of quirky qualities we became accustomed to. Lenses are
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