DEFINITION June 2018

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SHOOT STORY YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE

We had to go with what was there and then build on that. It was really a case of finding a location and seeing if it worked. For instance, there was an office location on the second floor of this building and we knew that we wouldn’t be able to light through the windows, so it became a scheduling issue more than anything else – could we guarantee we would be able to shoot the scene during certain hours of the day and not get stuffed by the sun going down, things like that. So it was all kind of pragmatic, but there were happy accidents along the way – there’s a scene in a spa, and when we first went to look at it we knew we needed a single light bulb (in the script it described a single light bulb dissolving through to a midday sun

in plain sight, looking completely anonymous and blending in with his surroundings. “When you’re filming someone walking along the street they’re obviously the focus of the shot and there is no real way of making them blend in with their surroundings, and I guess an equivalent of that is to keep them in shadow. One of the really liberating things was having a lead actor who doesn’t really have any vanity. There was never a question of presenting him in his best light, he simply didn’t care. A lot of the time Lynne encouraged the fact that his face would be in shadow, it would help the story as you wouldn’t know what was going on with the guy.” HAPPY ‘LOCATION’ ACCIDENTS The film was around 90% location shooting; the only builds had to do with tax relief. “They were a couple of builds, which was one way of accessing the tax break money that New York offers if you occupy stage space for two days out of your production. As it happened there were a couple of scenes that it made sense to build rather than to look for a location. “A fair portion of the film is night exterior and that look was further dictated by what resources we had.

IT WAS ALL KIND OF PRAGMATIC, BUT THERE WERE HAPPY ACCIDENTS ALONG THE WAY

in another location). When we got there it was indeed a single light bulb, but it was one of those super blue energy-saving light bulbs. We liked the fact that a sauna or spa was a very intense, cold blue colour; we liked the fact that it was not what you’d expect. When we shot there we just added blue lighting, which was fun to do.” Night scenes in a 24-hour city like New York are always going to be difficult to shoot with the high ambient light spillage, but then perhaps useful to avoid noise from pushing the sensor. “I never went above 1280 ISO but that was really just to get a healthier stop. I had no desire to shoot anamorphic to really test the mettle of the focus department. If I gave them a 2.8/4 split at night, that seemed a better bet than shooting wide open. A lot of the lenses we were using just wouldn’t perform at below 2.8 anyway. “It was an alphabet soup of lens choices. Panavision Anamorphic

ABOVE Judith Roberts shares a scene with her screen son Joe (Phoenix).

BELOW Night shoots took

advantage of New York’s potentially tricky ambient light.

DEFINITION JUNE 2018

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