PRODUCTION JOKER: FOLIE Á DEUX
IT’S kind of like jazz , HAVING THE CAMERA AND THE ACTORS working together ”
“A soft blue light then reveals the Joker smoking, marking the first time we see him in full makeup. As they join each other and begin to dance, warmer lights seep in and, finally, the Arkham sign appears in a new colour palette while everything else fades away. This is the only light they’re bathed in as the music takes a darker, foreboding turn. So we’re really utilising the lighting to tell the story.” Helping him achieve the vision were Creamsource Vortex lights, which Sher describes as ‘incredible’. “They have a lot of power, and they can represent sunlight or we can put diffusion in front of them. They’re infinitely adjustable colour-wise,” he explains. This flexibility allowed them to swiftly adapt the lighting to suit a given mood or scene. Having everything on dimmers was especially useful for precise control. “We needed to be able to alter everything remotely, like bringing the lights up from nothing or changing between colours on the fly.” He also points to the scene ‘The Joker is me’, in which Joaquin Phoenix sits on a stool in a courtroom, singing into a microphone. “We had to find five or six spotlights that could be operated remotely because we couldn’t pre- programme where the actors were going to move. They were going to turn and move wherever they felt like, so we needed remote-controlled, hidden spotlights ready to follow them.” ALL THAT JAZZ This approach ensured the lighting could respond to spontaneity in the actors’ performances, and it was a method the team used throughout; balancing careful planning with fluidity on-set. “It’s a really wonderful combination of pre-thought and big-picture ideas. We were constantly thinking about how to create an environment conducive to our philosophy of giving actors total freedom.
“In order to give them that kind of freedom, we incorporated environmental lighting into the strategy. We’d plan an idea of how the lighting might work, but then wait for the actors to define what they’d do on that first take,” elaborates Sher. “Whether it was a dialogue-driven scene or a fantasy moment, we let them drive the action.” The DOP encouraged his team to be present and lose themselves in the action, ready to be guided by what was playing out. “It’s kind of like jazz, having the camera and the actors working together,” Sher explains. “I could say: in the next take we want to be here, and when they dip that Arkham sign could come on. So let’s make sure we’re in a nice wide space at this position in the set to be able to capture that, because now I’ve seen it once, we can look for those discoveries and opportunities to visualise what everyone will see on screen. This then allows us to be artful and precise in our
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