PRODUCTION I LOVE BOOSTERS
China, “Boots wanted to do a simple split screen,” says Braier. “We had a hula hoop, so the actors could actually jump through something. We wanted to do as much in camera as possible.” The LaKeith Stanfield scenes – his character is referred to as the Pinky Ring Guy – were all handled in camera too. Whenever he’s on screen, he stares into the lens, and the picture pulsates while the background blurs and falls away. “We called it the ‘love lens’,” Braier says – whenever Corvette sees him, the world warps. “We had to find a way to do something that didn’t mean bringing in a whole rig. We needed something versatile, so that we could have it in five minutes instead of spending half an hour setting up an effect.” The solution combined someone physically moving the lens, to mimic a beating heart, with a beauty light rigged onto the camera. “As LaKeith drags Corvette into this state, we’re upping the light and at the same time closing the iris. The lighting stays constant, but the quality changes, and the background gets darker,” Braier says. This balancing act required three people – someone moving the lens, someone adjusting the light and someone closing the iris – to sync perfectly. “It was a lot of coordination to get it right,” she admits. “It was very stressful – but it was fun.” I Love Boosters is scheduled to premiere on 30 October in the UK
OUT OF THIS WORLD The film plays with vibrant colours and costumes that defy the limits of reality
we had exterior night shoots. He took different pieces from different lenses – old lenses from the forties and fifties that were on the shelves, accumulating dust. We created an amazing set.” CHEAP TRICKS The stop-motion scene, which lasts for several minutes, was shot in a day and a half. “For ten pages, that was nothing,” insists Braier. “It’s a big scene in a big space, with a lot of people. It was quite challenging for me because I normally like to light for the space so that I don’t have to relight, which allows the director to have more time with the actors.” In this particular scene, however, it starts out dark and indistinguishable and gets brighter about 30 seconds later. “I had to figure out how to play on the edge of seeing and not seeing,” she reflects. Braier filmed the scene – where
several characters are revealed to be wearing skin suits over their skeletons – chronologically, as this helped her block each camera movement. “We were shooting towards our girls, who were delivering their lines,” says Braier. “Then, we would shoot the reverse, towards the skinless people. We would shoot it with stand-ins, just to frame it, and then take them out and shoot it empty.” The stop motion was added months after the principal photography. “The people that did it were on-set, taking measurements so they could reproduce the lighting, the lenses, the angles,” Braier explains. “They did an amazing job.” Lower budgets often force creativity and necessitate the use of practical tricks. So, when the characters jump through the teleportation device, which transports them between the San Francisco Bay Area and urban
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