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To lend subliminal menace and a sense of foreboding to the film’s treacherous situations, the filmmakers borrowed a visual trope from the work of ASC members Lee Garmes and L.W. O'Connell in the 1932 gangster classic Scarface, incorporating X-shaped patterns into the lighting, architecture and set design. These crosses, which the crew dubbed the “X motif,” appear whenever a character is in mortal danger. Citing an example, Ballhaus says, “At Logan Airport in Boston, there are these wonderful bridges from one terminal to another, and they have these beautiful X-shaped crosspieces. We have a really intense scene there when one of our main characters is moving down a walkway and passing all of the X shapes. When you see the X, you know it means trouble!” Day elaborates, “Sometimes we’d just throw some light on a wall that the grips would then cut into an X-shaped shadow, sometimes we used a Source Four Leko and actually cut a pattern to create a thin X of light, and sometimes we did it with a gobo on the camera that would create an X pattern. The X motif was something everyone worked really hard to achieve. We even had grips and electricians saying, ‘Hey, we could put an X here!’ Michael was always very excited if someone found another place to put an X. He and Marty did it partially as a homage to the great noir films, and also to create a sense of imminent doom.” The film’s close-up work involved a variety of techniques. Although Ballhaus felt comfortable using harder-edged lighting on the male actors, he treated Farmiga more kindly. According to Day, this usually meant aiming a Fresnel through Lee 216 or Lee 129, or using 1?8 or 1?4 Schneider Classic Soft diffusion on the lens. (These filters were occasionally applied to shots of Nicholson as well.) In other situations, he says, “we used a variety of units, depending on the situation. Sometimes it was just a Kino Flo, or we might go really hard with a Source Four and cut it right in on a character. Michael’s always big on getting some light in the actors’ eyes, so we often had a small Dedolight by the camera that we’d shutter right in to create a ping in the eyes. When you’re creating a contrasty look and keeping things on the dark side, you still want to see a sparkle in the actor’s dark-side eye. At other times, we might use a Fresnel with little or no diffusion. In terms of lighting, Michael generally likes to work from a motivated standpoint, but sometimes he’ll get impressionistic if it fits the story.” Speaking to this point, Ballhaus notes that he occasionally took certain characters all the way into silhouette. This technique proved useful for an early scene involving Costello that takes place 12 years before the main period of the story. “He’s in a garage, discussing the differences between gangsters and policemen with some little kids, one of whom is Colin. Because Costello is supposed to be younger, we tried to keep Nicholson in the dark or backlight him. You can still see the outline of his face, though; he doesn’t just become a black blob.” A longtime user of Arri cameras, Ballhaus employed Arricam Studios as his main units, and he used an Arri 435 for high-speed shots and an Arri 235 for handheld work. A-camera operator Andrew Rowlands, SOC handled the Steadicam work, including an early shot that simulates Costello’s POV as he walks into a coffee shop before shifting to an over-the-shoulder angle. “We didn’t do anything on this movie that was as elaborate as our big Steadicam shot into the Copacabana in GoodFellas, but Costello’s POV shot looks really great,” Ballhaus enthuses. He also cites B-camera operator and second-unit director of photography Tom Lappin, who supervised a number of nighttime scenes and car sequences, for excellent work. The Departed was filmed in Super 35mm 2.35:1, which Scorsese and Ballhaus use to protect their compositions during the inevitable reframing for television broadcast. “By framing everything in 4-perf with a common topline, you don’t destroy the whole composition of the image,” he explains, pointing out that the digital intermediate (DI) has eliminated the optical step in post that used to compromise Super 35’s image quality. At press time, Ballhaus was preparing to finish The Departed with a DI — his first — at Technicolor Digital Intermediates with colorist Stephen Nakamura. (HD dailies for the production were handled by Sam Daly at Technicolor New York.) In a break from his usual preference, Ballhaus employed some very wide-angle lenses on the show. “Normally, I’m not crazy about using extreme wide-angle lenses, but on this movie we used 18mm or even 14mm lenses for certain shots,” he reveals. “We always wanted the images to have some edge, and the wider perspectives helped make the movie look different than a typical, clean, nice-looking picture. We didn’t just use those lenses for standard wide shots, either; we sometimes used them for close-ups to show the room behind a character. We used them in Costello’s apartment a few times, and also during the big, climactic chase sequence, which involves a rooftop and an elevator. Our most common range on the show was about 24mm, whereas normally I like to be more at 32mm. With the bad guys, I used shorter lenses a lot — they’re criminals, after all, so it’s okay for them to look bad!” Ballhaus used two sets of Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses on The Departed, along with one set of the new T1.3 Master Primes and one set of Variable Primes. He also employed Angenieux 17-80mm and 24-290mm Optimo zooms, with which he performed the “snap zooms” that have become a Scorsese trademark. Using one of his favorite tools, the Panther dolly, he executed a number of whip-pans, as well as a few of his signature circular dolly moves. However, he notes that many of the snap zooms and the longer dolly moves had to be trimmed from the movie to save screen time. “The cutting style that Marty and [editor] Thelma Schoonmaker used on this picture is very fast and very dynamic. The story moves so quickly that don’t feel the true length of the movie when you’re watching it — when it’s over, you think it was only an hour rather than 21?2 hours.” After a long pause, he laughs and admits, “Naturally, like any cinematographer would be, I’m disappointed that some of the great moves we achieved didn’t make it into the film. The fast editing style is right for the movie, so I’m not complaining, but when you’ve done some nice moves and they don’t make the cut, you feel a little bit sad!”
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TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Super 35mm 2.35:1 Arricam Studio: Arri 435 235 Arri/Zeiss Master Primes:
Zeiss Variable Primes,
Ultra Primes
Angenieux zoon lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5218,
200T 5217,
Expression 500T 5229 Digital Intermediate |
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