THE INVITE PRODUCTION
something. He points to one sequence as an example of the framing difficulties. “After Seth falls and hurts his back, they’re all positioned in the living room; he’s sitting on the ground, Olivia’s on the couch, Edward’s behind the couch and Penélope’s on the chair. I was figuring out the camera heights and the angles for the scene. Seth then eventually sits behind Olivia when Penélope’s giving them the big monologue. It was really tough to figure out how to shoot them so that we could connect and distance them all in certain ways.” Shooting in one location opened up a lot of opportunity, and allowed the cast and crew to focus on crafting the story. Being in one space also meant Newport- Berra could come up with a lighting plan that worked for the whole film. Initially, the plan was to shoot with lots of practicals and let it play out naturally. “A lot of Woody Allen films feel that way, for example,” he adds. “In Husbands and Wives , there’s a bunch of people in an
and we weren’t getting that nuance of their performance.” The crew ultimately wanted more volume to the lighting, so to combat the issue they constructed thin-profile soft boxes on the ceilings. Although they were on a stage, they wanted a ceiling to be able to shoot at a low angle. ”We had a capped ceiling with practicals, then built soft boxes that could be easily moved in and out of the ceiling. These created a soft fill and a base layer of light for the apartment, bringing out the texture of the set decoration and giving more shape to the actors’ faces. From there, we added floor-based lighting for each shot using Astera Titan Tubes fitted with Lightsock Dooplo diffusion sleeves.” Newport-Berra is grateful for the group of people he had around him, and credits gaffer Len Levine, key grip Adam Kolegas, camera operator Mark Goellnicht, first AC Lucas Deans and second AC Robbie Julian for bringing their own expertise to the project. He also enjoyed working with a cast that brought so much to their characters. “They are all accomplished in their own right, so they know how blocking and staging works in mise-en-scène,” he says. “Seth was also given a chance to do something he doesn’t normally do – and it’s one of his best performances. They all dipped into each other’s genres and played in each other’s worlds. It became this beautiful collage of performances that’s very funny, but also dramatic and heartfelt.”
apartment with the lights on; they each move in and out of the shadows and it feels natural. We shot some tests using that same method but didn’t love the way it looked. It forced the actors to be in certain places because of the shadows
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DEFINITIONMAGS
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