SHOOT STORY | VAN I TY FA I R
It’s a youthful piece and the flare might represent the feeling when you’re on the cusp of adulthood
we would hold a frame and action would come and go within it, you wouldn’t pan and develop it but just hold it static.” PRIMO LENSES AND RED CAMERA Director James Strong used these tableaus in the edit but he was also on the hunt for more natural accidents he could point up and develop, like lens flare for instance. He would use the flare as a kind of expression of youth says Ed. “It’s a very youthful piece and the flare might represent the feeling when you’re on the cusp of adulthood when you feel indestructible. We saw this as quite feminine with the light coming in to the camera. We were using Primo lenses from Panavision which I love with the RED camera. They have a feeling of vintage glass as they’re softer on the edges but they’re rich with a rich contrast and fidelity but they do fall off on the sides slightly. “We did a lot of camera testing, we tested everything back in the summer before we shot. We chose a format that was the first idea we had which was to shoot on a very resolved camera, more
like a Polanski shot we’d be on her shoulder and go with her into a scene or a room.” Over the course of the seven episodes you will find that Becky’s look gets rosier, the long lenses she might have been shot with at the start change to shorter focal lengths as her arc improves. The set of rules included the lenses – which is where most rules start – and these are religiously adhered to. “Again with Becky we would shoot just below the eyeline. If it was a situation where she was isolated and she was using it for the next part of her journey, she also may be a bit less beautiful. But we would be bang on the eyeline in the traditional and classically strong way when she was more confident. Then we would have a little zoom, we would always have a zoom in her single shot, always have a little push in, every time.” Group shots were also set up as more of a tableau, as Ed says ironically like an Annie Leibowitz Vanity Fair magazine shoot. “There would be movement but we tried to compose a scene with staging that allowed a tableau at some point to be used in the cut. They seem to have made it through with that graphic tableau feeling and those shots are usually square on and navel height. So
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