DRAMA | FOR YOUR CONS I DERAT ION
BLACKKKLANSMAN BEST MOTION PICTURE OF THE YEAR
VERY FEW AMERICAN FILMS were invited to the 2018 Cannes Festival. Spike Lee’s latest, BlacKkKlansman , was the powerful exception that sent shockwaves through the audience. Lee’s first Cannes experience was in 1986, when he won the Prix de Jeunesse for She’s Gotta Have it . His 1989 Do the Right Thing was nominated for the Palme d’Or, but was displaced by Steven Soderbergh’s debut, Sex, Lies, and Videotape . Chayse Irvin was chosen as the cinematographer. He explains: “I’m very attached to European cinema and have done more European projects than American. BlacKkKlansman was my first American studio film. It was very American and much bigger than the European films I usually shoot. “Spike said he shoots two cameras all the time and that was new for me,” continues Irvin. “I always work two cameras, but never simultaneously. I overlap them so we keep shooting, keep moving forward and don’t waste time. I talk to the operators on coms, whisper to them if they have to adjust the composition. I had no rapport with these New York camera operators. I never worked with them before, so I was a bit apprehensive and I always operate the camera myself. “The decision to shoot on 35mm film happened in the process of testing. Panavision has a plethora of different options,” he says, “so I tested the Alexa XT, an Alexa Mini, Red, the Dragon, Arricam LT and Panavision’s XL2. I tested anamorphic and spherical lenses. Panavision had some vintage Ultra Speeds from the ’70s. We tested different film stocks and I experimented with pre-flashing the negative and looked at the images in the DI suite. “The final package was four cameras: two Panavision Millennium XL2 cameras from Panavision NY, my own Arricam LT and an Aaton Penelope that was shipped
Spike said he shoots two cameras all the time, and that was new for me
in from Sweden. Nothing can rival the Penelope for handholding inside cars, because it’s so compact and well-designed. Panavision NY adapted my own Arricam LT so I could shoot both Panavision and Zeiss lenses, and we used the older lenses that were challenging for the assistants. “In pre-production, I was testing different formats,” Irvin explains, “but I hadn’t really thought shooting on film was feasible. Then all this serendipity happened. The cameras were right, the lenses looked right, Kodak Lab had just opened in New York and they loved and wanted to support the project. It was one of their first productions and they did a fantastic job.”
IMAGES Stills and behind the scenes shots from the already award- winning BlacKkKlansman
16 DEF I N I T ION | MARCH 20 1 9
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