This miniseries became a huge task for cinematographers Alik Sakharov, Maco Ponecorvo and Martin Kenzie. The major pressure was to make everything look realistic. Which is exactly what shut the show down after the first three episodes. They were “Too Pristine” according to HBO standards. Therefore the problem fell to the cinematographers.
One issue that was dealt with rather well would be the backgrounds, extras and scenery. In order to fix this, first they had to make it look old, used and decayed. They examined old ruins in rome to find out how to make the textures look and feel like Rome. They actually shot many outdoor scenes right on the hillsides of rome and its neighboring cities. In order to make the extras and scenery fit into the setting, they keep most of the inside shots of a building out of focus. In other words, the focused the camera on who ever was speaking and fading everything in the background as to make it feel and seem not important. They used one big light directly over the buildings to help bring color to the faces and little lights positioned in windows to give off the effect of sunlight penetrating the windows.
Something else they needed to distinguish was the differences between the rich and the poor. In order to due this they used a mixture of lighting and costume effects. If they were shooting in a poor area, they used very few lights and mostly candles with dirty clothing and unclean buildings. This helped to make the feeling of “dirt poor” become reality. In order to bring the rich to light, they used extravagantly bright colors and mostly daylight shots with clean buildings. They used bright lights as well to make the effect of being rich and almost godly come to life. Something that you can grasp.
They also used cranes to help with the shooting of battles. Take the battle in the opening scene. The cinematographer wanted to throw the audience into the mix right away and therefore used cameramen to shoot most of it. This way the viewer was right in the mix. He focused two cameras on fictional characters to bring out the importance of each. His many goal was the reality of it. He even went so far as to tell the cameramen that it didn't matter if they were catching each other in the shots, they would edited them out later.
Another effect that the cinematographer used to his advantage would be smoke and dust. He used these to element not only to help keep everything looking realistic, but to also help direct the focus of the camera from one to another. During the Senate shots, he lets the smoke from the candles give a shadow on some characters, while others on in direct sunlight the entire time. This hints on the importance of certain characters. Take for example Caesar. He was usually shot in with a mixture of bright light and smoke. His day shots were usually very bright it the focus always on him. The smoke and dust also helped to make other scenes look like it actually happened and was real. The fight scene used allot of dust to make it seem like the soldiers were truly fighting and smoke was used regularly in buildings of concern.
All in all, the mixture of lighting, smoke, dust and perfect costuming made this miniseries a great hit. All elements played off of each other rather well. The show went from being “too pristine” to actually fitting into its time period.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Bad Religion - Article Review
This article was written around the movie “Frailty” and the lighting difficulties that entailed it. Veteran cinematographer Bill Butler, ASC, talks to writer Jay Holben about four scenes that lighting became an important part of the script. First, before we tell why they were difficult to light, let me give you some back ground information. Butler shot the majority of the film in these three scenes and used as little light as possible throughout the entire movie. He wanted the movie to start out bright and cheering so that the children still held their innocence. Yet as the movie got darker, so did the children.
The first scene that became difficult to light was the tool shed, where the first few killings took place. As the father takes the first “demon” (a waitress) into the tool shed, you see a silhouette of him against a foggy background. Then you see him disappear into the blackness of the tool shed carrying the “demon”. Butler put no light into this scene, he left actor (Bill Paxton, who plays the father of two kids) completely black and refused to show the audience any more than he had to. He’s says that this became his “Modus Operandi”. He uses as little light as possible on different areas of the set. When a group of actors walk onto the set he usually uses a single light source.
The next scene was the home-made cellar. You see Paxton digging the cellar at night using only a lantern for his light source, However, this was not enough light when Butler began to move the camera and take different shots. There they took down a dirt wall and backed off a 10k and threw it through 4 sheets of tough frost spaced evenly away from the set. This gave the illusion of a lantern lighting the cellar and also gave Butler the full head to toe lighting he needed for many of his shots.
The last scene, the family rose garden, turns from a happy bright garden to a dark and grim graveyard. In the opening scenes of the movie, the audience watches two children run through the garden with plenty of sunlight and just a good feeling of happiness. Yet, as the story gets gruesome, so does this garden. The next time the audience gets a glimpse of it, the father is burying his first “demon” in the middle of the night while his kids watch him. The father is completely covered in black dirt with blood stain on his shirt. It just totally ruins the gardens innocence for the audience for the rest of the movie.
Now most of this movie is done in flashbacks. Fenton (One of the children and now around the age of 25) retells his gruesome family story to an FBI agent, promising to take the agent to where all the bodies are buried. The last scene that Butler talks about takes place in the agent’s cop-car, on the way to the garden. It’s in the middle of the night, of course, during a rainstorm and all you can see is Fenton’s face with the shadow of the grill between the seats across his face. The rest of the car is pitch-black except for the driver, who is illuminated only by passing streetlights. This scene was shot on stage using many different techniques. The first technique was to tie four lamps to a rotating fan and put it beside the car, giving the impression of the car passing streetlights. The next was to blow a fan at the car, so as to make the rain go horizontally, to make it seem like the car was moving forward. One of the final techniques was to put two penlights on the sides of on end of a board and have an extra dressed in all black walk from left to right behind the car. This gave off the illusion of them going down a road that was not perfectly straight and that there were other cars behind them, off in the distance.
These four scenes, bringing the entire movie together, gave Butler the exact lighting he was looking for. For mostly using only one or two light sources and shooting mostly at night, the film gave off that gritty and gruesome effect that he was looking for all along.
The first scene that became difficult to light was the tool shed, where the first few killings took place. As the father takes the first “demon” (a waitress) into the tool shed, you see a silhouette of him against a foggy background. Then you see him disappear into the blackness of the tool shed carrying the “demon”. Butler put no light into this scene, he left actor (Bill Paxton, who plays the father of two kids) completely black and refused to show the audience any more than he had to. He’s says that this became his “Modus Operandi”. He uses as little light as possible on different areas of the set. When a group of actors walk onto the set he usually uses a single light source.
The next scene was the home-made cellar. You see Paxton digging the cellar at night using only a lantern for his light source, However, this was not enough light when Butler began to move the camera and take different shots. There they took down a dirt wall and backed off a 10k and threw it through 4 sheets of tough frost spaced evenly away from the set. This gave the illusion of a lantern lighting the cellar and also gave Butler the full head to toe lighting he needed for many of his shots.
The last scene, the family rose garden, turns from a happy bright garden to a dark and grim graveyard. In the opening scenes of the movie, the audience watches two children run through the garden with plenty of sunlight and just a good feeling of happiness. Yet, as the story gets gruesome, so does this garden. The next time the audience gets a glimpse of it, the father is burying his first “demon” in the middle of the night while his kids watch him. The father is completely covered in black dirt with blood stain on his shirt. It just totally ruins the gardens innocence for the audience for the rest of the movie.
Now most of this movie is done in flashbacks. Fenton (One of the children and now around the age of 25) retells his gruesome family story to an FBI agent, promising to take the agent to where all the bodies are buried. The last scene that Butler talks about takes place in the agent’s cop-car, on the way to the garden. It’s in the middle of the night, of course, during a rainstorm and all you can see is Fenton’s face with the shadow of the grill between the seats across his face. The rest of the car is pitch-black except for the driver, who is illuminated only by passing streetlights. This scene was shot on stage using many different techniques. The first technique was to tie four lamps to a rotating fan and put it beside the car, giving the impression of the car passing streetlights. The next was to blow a fan at the car, so as to make the rain go horizontally, to make it seem like the car was moving forward. One of the final techniques was to put two penlights on the sides of on end of a board and have an extra dressed in all black walk from left to right behind the car. This gave off the illusion of them going down a road that was not perfectly straight and that there were other cars behind them, off in the distance.
These four scenes, bringing the entire movie together, gave Butler the exact lighting he was looking for. For mostly using only one or two light sources and shooting mostly at night, the film gave off that gritty and gruesome effect that he was looking for all along.
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