DRAMA | FOR YOUR CONS I DERAT ION
COLD WAR BEST ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY
“ON COLD WAR , we prepped from June 2016 to January 2017. We found references in many different places,” explains Łukasz Żal, cinematographer for the Polish-language film. “We looked at a lot of still photography by artists, such as Ralph Gibson and Helmut Newton. We also watched films by Godard and Tarkovsky and reviewed film archives of Paris and jazz photography from the ’60s and ’70s. We listened to musicians, such as Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, and spent a long time watching the Mazowsze folk group. We then began to film their concerts and, later, the rehearsals with Joanna Kulig, who played Zula, looking for formal solutions. “We created storyboards using photos and then began to catalogue the stills by the different locations for each scene. These storyboards started to represent what we wanted to capture in the frames when we finally went to shoot it. “Early on,” recalls Żal, “we chose the 4:3 aspect ratio. At the beginning of the film in Poland, the frame is fairly static and we use wide shots and fixed prime lenses. When we meet Zula, we introduce movement, energy, singing and dancing, which motivates the camera to follow her. We get closer to our two protagonists and focus on their relationship. Using different lenses, they become distanced or separated from the background, which is now blurry or soft focus because of the shallow depth-of-field. It was funny – the producers complained that it ‘cost so much to film in Paris and we don’t see anything!’ “We wanted to keep the look for this film as simple as possible,” he explains. “The camera is used as a function and it moves when it needs to move. We felt the light design should come from the actual location. For instance, when we were in Poland during the winter, it had a bleached,
grey look and when we were in Paris in the summer, we used the sun, because we wanted a high contrast look. We went to Paris with the gaffer and the production designers, and made detailed sketches of which street lamps we’d use and which ones we wouldn’t by turning them off. “I’ve always used a lot of backlight, side light, rim light, but this is the first film in my career where I have used a beauty light, like Helmut Newton, where you put a front light directly on the actor close to camera. We were lighting the scene with one source. Most days, I watched rushes alone while Paweł [Pawlikowski, the director] was sending me his newest version of the cut and inviting me into the editing room.” Knowing it would be too expensive and impractical to shoot on film, Żal did camera tests with two cameras side by side: a 35mm film camera and an Alexa with the same lenses. “We did the camera tests using the actors in their costumes and make up, using different types of lighting. We learned we saw different shades of grey and black that almost blended, so we knew we needed to select costumes with bright yellows, dark greens and strong hues of purple, because those colours registered better. We were constantly looking for a contrast in production design, costume and lighting.
“Many people respond to the final scene of the film. It looks great now, but it was a bit crazy to film. I had no lighting and it was dark. I pushed it up to ISO 1600, so it was underexposed and we needed to remove the noise. Paweł knew we were highly underexposed, but he asked, ‘Łukasz, can we do one more?’ As it was the last shot, I said ‘OK, but please do it quickly’. I was stressed beyond belief, because we were losing what little light we did have. In the end, when it became pitch black, we had managed to get something out of it.”
At the beginning of the film in Poland, the frame is fairly static and we use wide shots and fixed prime lenses
RIGHT Cinematographer Łukasz Żal with director Paweł Pawlikowski on the set of Cold War, nominated for an Academy Award
22 DEF I N I T ION | MARCH 20 1 9
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