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Much of Lady in the Water was shot with the new Fuji Eterna 400T 8583, while the apartment interiors were shot with Kodak Vision2 Expression 500T 5229. “Some people complain about Fuji having green blacks and magenta highlights,” notes Fontenay, “but the bottom line is that most people don’t know how to use it.” He explains that the characteristic cyan and greenish twilight hues of Lady were heightened by the Fuji negative, and pull-processing by one stop added a “patina” to the blacks. (Doyle also overexposed the Fuji negative by one stop.) “Most of the time, an image is about what’s in the blacks and what’s not in the blacks, what you see and what you get, what you think you see and what, in fact, you don’t see,” says Fontenay. “There is an organic look that comes from working with chemicals. With chemistry, there is always a small uncertainty you can’t explain. You get things you don’t expect. You start sort of knowing where you want to go; you let the light, the stock and the processing do their stuff; and you end up with a je ne sais quoi in the blacks. It’s not obvious, but it creates a mood.”For Doyle, Fontenay’s presence in the lab was essential to maintaining creative control of the image. “Technicolor welcomed Olivier as my representative, which is fantastic and quite unusual. Our great fear as cinematographers is losing control. You don’t want someone else appropriating your work. I think this is one small step in the right direction: having a representative who is a real collaborator. Olivier is my eyes on the details, my hand on the nuances some call grading/timing points. It’s not your work unless the engagement is at all levels: preproduction, production and post. The point of a cinematographer like me working on a film is that my aesthetic is different and personal enough so that it does add a certain quality to the film. If we disregard that imperative, then the film is not the film we intended to make. If we’re any good at what we do, you can’t fix it in post.”Looking back at his work with Shyamalan, Doyle says shooting Lady “was a very spiritual experience. Night’s rhythm is very different from mine. I had to calm down a lot. I had to temper myself. Night and I have very different processes. The attitude between us was: he who dares, wins. We both tried something we hadn’t done before. For my part, I had to be more objective about what I bring to the table. I had to be who I am, as crazy as that is, but also be responsible for my excesses. By the end of the film, Night was able to be looser and say, ‘Let’s see how it goes tomorrow.’ That was a major achievement.”For Doyle, filmmaking is all about personal relationships. “It’s based on trust — the relationships between the cinematographer and the director, the cinematographer and the actor, the audience and the image, are all based on trust. In other words, why would you go somewhere with me if I don’t hold your hand? We could go into a love story or we might go into a really hellish world. You don’t want to go into a real horror film unless someone’s holding your hand.”Doyle adds that he takes great pleasure in meeting colleagues. “When I meet cinematographers, there is this incredible complicity. As different as we all are, we’re all taking the same journey. We’re not alone, and reinforcing that is one of the functions of American Cinematographer. Sometimes I see a film and say, ‘Ah!’ but actually meeting cinematographers is more resonant. When you meet an artist, you know you’re in good company. The encounter is what’s important. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet wonderful people who happen to also be cinematographers.”Doyle muses that being a foreigner has a lot to do with his role as cinematographer. “I’ve been a foreigner for three-quarters of my life, and cinematography is about looking at things with different eyes. As Tarkovsky said, cinematography is painting with light. The difference between a painting and a photograph is resonance; [a photograph] goes beyond the surface of things. Why does a good pop song work? It says something you always knew but didn’t know how to say. Good cinematography is taking something obvious and expressing it more poetically to give resonance to an idea. True filmmaking is making the familiar unfamiliar, giving it the light, angle or implications it deserves.”
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TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
1.85:1 35mm Arricam Studio, Lite; Arri 435 Cooke S4 primes;
Angenieux Optimo 17-80mm,
24-290mm zoom lenses
Fuji Eterna 400T 8583;
Kodak Vision2 Expression
500T 5229
Printed on Kodak Vision 2383 |
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