PRODUCTION. BLONDE
“It also has the unique virtue of capturing infrared light. There’s a sequence in the film where Norma wakes up in the middle of the night and men have invaded her house. That was all captured in infrared and, in actuality, the set was completely pitch black. Ana’s eyes are black with completely dilated pupils, so you get this ghostly expression, and the veins in her skin are visible. “There wasn’t time in the schedule to fulfil all the ideas I had, but the camera itself was a real source of inspiration. “The decision to use the Venice came from a need to be adaptive and react quickly to things on the set,” says Irvin, moving onto his second tool. “Working through intuition is actually based around sensory response, so I picked the camera that could help support that. “When I was testing, I was mostly indifferent to image quality. The question for me was, what’s it like working with the tool? There was a moment where we were shooting our stand-in in the production office. I had my apprentice operating the Venice and my focus puller on another camera. I was staging scenes in the beautiful light we had and the Sony Venice was capturing everything at the moment of inspiration. It was primarily, I sensed, because of the internal ND
NATURAL BEAUTY Many scenes relied almost entirely upon available lighting,or were lit to allow for maximum possible freedom of movement
human touch. And that, to me, is best articulated as something that’s less than perfect. I had a meeting with Dan Sasaki at Panavision, and when I walked into his back room, I saw he had grease from his fingernails to his elbows. I knew he had what I was looking for. “I trusted Dan with some requests that were outside the norm. He had put together a few H Series lenses, which weren’t widely available at the time. We also used the PVintage, because they’re an eclectic mix, with a nice lack of continuity between each. Some had full-frame coverage and others didn’t, so much of the film is actually a Super 35 extraction of a full-frame recording. The still image recreations all stayed true to what would have been likely in the era, however – a 50mm lens on a 35mm frame. “The one other artistic sentiment I wanted to create in the film was a sensation of fragility. That meant using a particular depth-of-field. You can see in various close-ups of Marilyn that the fall- off is really strong. It looked as though the image was falling apart. I also wanted
structure. You can operate without a matte box. While my focus puller was changing filters to maintain a consistent aperture, my apprentice was shooting.” When it came to lenses, perhaps the greatest degree of personal preference and specific visual intention came into play. “I looked at some lenses with full-frame coverage and disliked the contemporary options,” Irvin states. “I feel connected to an optic that has a
“Working intuitively is based on sensory response, so I picked the camera that could support that”
POINT AND SHOOT For colour sequences, the Sony Venice was chosen not for its famously gorgeous image, but its internal ND filter system, which let Irvin adapt to changing light with minimal disruption
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