SHOOT STORY | MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
frequent collaborator, Mathieson. “He used more low lighting, especially for interiors, to help create a realistic feel, and the smoke just helps in the same way. It can be a bit tricky in the grade to maintain consistency with the smoke and atmosphere but all that really helps evoke the mood of the times.” The film was shot in some beautiful exteriors and inside large, stately homes in Scotland and in England and Ensby worked with the filmmakers to fine-tune subtle differences between the feel of these two countries. “England was more opulent and warmer,” he explains, “while Scotland was a bit colder. This is reflected in the colour palette of the sets and costumes and we Ensby worked with the filmmakers to fine- tune subtle differences between the feel of the two countries
the beam stand out but we’re not trying to make the room too smoky. “You then have the fire light, a lot of old style space lights in the ceiling. These are not the modern LED style, but with a little bit of blue on to make the castle seem slightly damp, green and wet. Also Maxi lights which are old rock ’n’ roll lights which were aircraft landing lights from the second world war. The lighting was very traditional, nothing too outrageous but then again it’s a period film so didn’t really need the modern ‘fancy’ LED lights. But also I find them quite abrupt and hard on faces even though some of them were soft. The light is very specular and travels in very straight lines and you’re forever softening it. I find tungsten just wraps around people more and it’s softer and kinder; we had some very good looking girls and boys in this film and so it was nice The filmmakers of Focus Features’ Mary Queen of Scots strove to bring a fresh kind of look to the period drama. Its story, the bloody rivalry between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart, has been filmed before but director Josie Rourke and cinematographer John Mathieson BSC set out to steer it away from a more staid approach associated with old-school television and to be more contemporary and cinematic. Colourist Paul Ensby of Company 3, London describes Mathieson’s use of wider lenses and longer takes than audiences might expect and a significant amount of atmosphere, captured in-camera with smoke on set, that he feels help give this telling of the historical drama a unique feel. “John doesn’t particularly like what you think of as a ‘clean’ image,” says Ensby of to make them look great.” DIGITAL FINISHING
RIGHT Director Jose Rourke with Margot Robbie as Elizabeth I and Joe Alwyn as Robert Dudley.
LOCATIONS John was happy with the number of lights he had but thought some bigger locations would have helped. “DOPs are always going to say that but these two women made countries go to war over them, so how big do you want to go? David Lean? Yes, Please! But the film didn’t have that lilt on it, it wasn’t that way. But we did blast those small castle windows like hell. Shooting digitally, you have to always be aware of where the sun is, you don’t want any clipping so you have to build out from the ‘burn out’ really. So I did let the windows burn but I didn’t want to use green screen outside because of the risk of fizzy, out-of-focus burnt-out green screen in the background. A lot of the windows were very small and narrow and you get people with hair walking in front of them; this camera was also such a large format that the focus was quite narrow so the background goes out of focus quite quickly. Also a lot of these windows have the leaded diamond cut panes, so when that goes out of focus the keys fizz like hell. “Luckily I had great scenic painters and I think it’s amazing what they do, they were painting Scottish landscapes and Caledonian forests. Using those meant I didn’t have to worry about keying the green screen, I could let exteriors burn. It also saves a ton of money on CG. You make sure you have heavy skies on these backgrounds, then I can control how much light comes through by lighting the background and piercing into the rooms with Molebeams, which are very much old-style movie search lights. So you get a strong shaft of light, you put a bit of smoke in which of course makes
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