British Cinematographer issue 51 - Imago

British Cinematographer
Covering International Cinematography
www.britishcinematographer.co.uk
Issue 051 ––– May 2012 32
Camera Creative
–––Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC
Dark Shadows
Vampires... Delbonnel’s main
concern during the shoot on Dark
Shadows was how to shape the
light on set using ambient lights
and minimal direct beams.
It was a Sunday afternoon, not so
long ago, and Ron Prince caught up
with Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC over
Skype, to discover more about his
cinematography work on Tim Burton’s
‘gonzo’ fantasy Dark Shadows. At the
time, Delbonnel was in New York, and
had just completed a fortnight of
nights on Inside Llewyn Davis, the next
feature from Joel and Ethan Coen.
33
Dark Shadows, a Zanuck Company/Warner Bros.
production, is based on the gothic soap opera of the
same name, transmitted on the ABC television network
between 1966 and 1971. The original TV series is regarded
as a camp classic, distinguished by melodramatic
performances, atmospheric interiors, memorable
storylines, dramatic plot twists, an adventurous musical
score, and an epic cosmos of characters and heroic
adventures. It became hugely popular when 200-year
old vampire, Barnabas Collins, appeared a year into its
run. Dark Shadows also featured werewolves, zombies,
man-made monsters, witches, warlocks time travel and a
parallel universe.
Tim Burton’s new $100m film is based on a screenplay
by Seth Grahame-Smith, and stars Johnny Depp as
Barnabas Collins, with Michelle Pfeiffer as his reclusive,
matriarchal cousin Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, and Eva
Green as Angelique Bouchard, a vengeful witch who
plots a vendetta against Barnabas and his family.
The responsibility of bringing the story to life on the
big screen, and delivering a fresh but distinctive look
that typifies each movie on the Burton canon, fell to
Delbonnel, whose big screen credits include Jean-Pierre
Jeunet’s Amelie (2001) and A Very Long Engagement
(2004), plus Across The Universe (2007), Harry Potter And
The Half-Blood Prince (2009) and Faust (2011). Amongst
his many gongs, Delbonnel has been Oscar nominated
three times – for Amelie, A Very Long Engagement
and Harry Potter – with notable wins including the ASC
Award for outstanding achievement for A Very Long
Engagement, and the Silver Frog at Camerimage
for Across The Universe. Dark Shadows is his first
collaboration with Burton.
How did you get involved with the production of
Dark Shadows?
It’s great story. I was in Uruguay shooting a commercial
and had two calls within the space of a couple of
hours. One was from Richard Zanuck, offering me Dark
Shadows, the other from Roman Polanski, who asked if
I available to replace Pawel Edelman on Carnage, as
Pawel had to attend to some urgent family matters. Two
very interesting directors, and two completely different
sorts of movies, both on the same day. It was quite
a shock. It quickly transpired that Pawel was able to
continue on Carnage, and so I went for Dark Shadows. I
had met Tim only once before, at the world premiere of
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince in London. He told
me then that he really liked what I’d done, and I assume
that was the reason for the call.
What appealed to you about Dark Shadows?
The chance to work with Tim Burton. Who could possibly
turn down the chance to work on one of his movies
– he’s a genius. I had never heard of Dark Shadows
before, although I learned it was a famous gothic soap
opera, broadcast on weekdays in the US, and they
made over 1,200 episodes. But it never made its way
across the ocean to Europe. Johnny Depp and Tim
Burton were kids when it was on TV, and they’d run home
from school to watch the show. I believe Johnny wanted
to be Barnabas Collins.
British Cinematographer
Covering International Cinematography
www.britishcinematographer.co.uk
Issue 051 ––– May 2012
What research did you do, and which creative
references did you look at?
I tried to watch some original episodes of Dark Shadows,
but it did my head in. Whilst I got a sense of the engaging,
creepy mood Tim wanted, they were shot in B&W, and
are not interesting at all visually-speaking, especially in
terms of the lighting. So I decided not to proceed any
further. I read the script and found the same kind of
poetry that are in all of Tim Burton’s movies. They are all
character-driven too. When I started thinking about it,
especially horror aspect, I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s
Vertigo (1958, DP Robert Burks) again. Kim Novak is like
a ghost character in that film. I thought it would be
interesting to get this kind of Hollywood feeling, overlit
faces, on top of a kind of strange B-movie strange color
palette, and go towards the old Technicolor 2-strip look,
which gave balanced, muted colours on flesh tones, but
very strong reds. I looked too at movies from the early
1970s, by cinematographers like Vilmos Zsigmond, to see
how they created flares and the look that some of the
crappy lenses produced back then. I also had an eye
on the self-portraits of Francis Bacon, the distorted faces
against flat orange, black and red backgrounds. Even
though the sets on Dark Shadows were far from being flat,
it was a starting point to show to Tim.
What was Tim Burton’s reaction when you first discussed
the look of Dark Shadows?
He kind of liked it, but he has his own world of imagination.
He’s not very specific, it’s more about a creating a mood,
and he wanted creepiness from the first frame to the very
last frame – a crisp, colourful but twisted look, to make
the audience feel unsure and unsafe about the place,
somewhere “in-between”, but totally artificial. We didn’t
refer to any of his other films, they are done and in the
past. This was something new and different, and that
made it even more interesting for me.
How much time did you have for prep/pre-production,
and what were the working hours?
The overall prep time was six months. I originally had
two months of pre-production, but this turned into three
months as Rick Heinrichs, the production designer,
needed more time to deliver the production. So
principal photography was pushed back. We started
in May 2011 and wrapped on 4th October. The shoot,
including second unit, was 18 weeks. We worked
regular hours, five days a week. As 95% of the movie
was shot on stages, I would go in most Saturdays to see
how the sets we evolving.
S h a d o w
P l a y
Tell us your reasoning behind your choice of equipment?
During my first meeting with Tim we discussed film vs
digital, and it took is about two minutes to choose
film. We quickly arrived at shooting Super 1.85:1 too.
After that, I was responsible for the entire selection of
equipment. We used ARRI cameras, Cooke S4 lenses,
Chapman dollies and a 50ft SuperTechnoCrane, all
supplied via Panavision. I went with just one stock, Kodak
Vision 3 5219 500ASA. It’s a fantastic grainless medium,
with good latitude. I’m not sure why people choose
different film stocks these days, as you can stop down
enough in bright conditions or open up when it’s darker.
Panalux supplied the lighting gear.
Tell us about your crew?
I love working with English crews, and my crew on Dark
Shadows were fantastic. I never had a concern during
the entire shoot. My gaffer was Chuck Finch, who I first
worked with on Across The Universe in Liverpool, and
then again with on Harry Potter. The key grip was Steve
Ellingworth, who I also worked with on Potter. The camera
operator, Des Wheelen, who has worked on several of
Tim Burton’s movies, is the best I’ve ever worked with.
Julian Bucknall, the 1st AC, and Steadicam/B-cam
operator Peter Cavaciuti did a great job too.
Tell us about you approach to the lighting?
On most of the other films I’ve lit, I’ve been able to shape
the light in any way I liked. But on Dark Shadows, my
main concern throughout the production was that, as
Barnabas Collins is a vampire, he cannot walk in direct
sunlight. Tim didn’t want to set the movie entirely at
night, and had sequences written into the script where
Barnabas walks around the house during daylight hours,
but through the shadows and shade of course. So I had
to create fill and ambient lighting set-ups that would
pick up details of the set, like the dark wooden paneling
on the three massive interiors sets we had, but with very
few direct beams. I knew I could push the stock, and
that would also help get around the need to have a
massive amount of lighting. It was pretty intense and
quite complicated, as ambient lighting is kind of dull,
and shaping the light to make the set look alive and not
like a soap opera, can be a bit tricky. So I worked with all
sorts of combinations soft, indirect and bounce lighting.
We used Dinos and 20K fresnels, which we diffused a lot
with large cloths, and lots of spacelights. We did have
some fun with sharp 20K beams, which the actors could
see and knew to walk around them.
Was the camera generally on a dolly,
handheld or on a Steadicam?
We moved the camera either on the dolly or on the
crane. We used crane for practicality, rather than for the
movement. The main set in the hallway of the manor
house was huge, and on travelling shots it just meant we
could go faster.
Did you shoot at practical locations, on sets, or both?
The vast majority of the movie was shot on sets at
Pinewood, where we built the interiors of the manor
house. We also used the water tank at Pinewood for
the harbour scene. It’s one of the biggest and most
impressive sets I’ve ever seen, about 400 yards wide. We
had fishing boats on the water and a couple of streets,
complete with canneries, to look like Maine. I used a
massive amount of lighting for those scenes – several
Wendy lights, six soft boxes with 12 space lights in each,
and eight cranes to suspend them all – and I’m sure
they hate me because of the large electricity bill. For
the exteriors of the manor house, Rick Heinrichs built the
ground floor at Bourne Woods, near Farnham. We also
used some of the nearby woods for the forest scenes –
it’s the same place that John Mathieson shot on Robin
Hood. We used Beckenham Place Park, in Kent, for a
couple of scenes in a mental institution. The main forest
scenes and the MacDonald construction site were shot
in Crowthorne, Wokingham.
What part does risk-taking play in your work, if any?
Always. The risk is that I never try to do the same thing
twice. Amelie, Potter, Faust, Dark Shadows, the new
Coen Bothers’ film – they are all different from one
another. I could rely on something, a technique, I know,
but that’s not my way of thinking. How can I make the
next movie different? That’s the risk!
How did you work with Tim Burton on set?
Generally, at the start of the day, Tim would talk to the
actors on set about what he was expecting. Then we
would clear the set completely, and Tim, myself and Des
Wheelan would block the first three or four shots scene.
We sort of storyboarded on the spot, on the day. Tim
would then go back to his trailer and we’d call him when
we were ready to go. During filming Tim would be either
with me, or the actors. We would review takes on monitors
in the video village, which in this case was a black tent,
with just Tim, me and Katterli Frauenfelder the first AD.
The final results look visually arresting, but there’s only so
much you can achieve on set. How did you arrive at this
distinctive look?
I worked very closely with the DI Peter Doyle, the DI
grader in pre-production, during production on the
dailies. He’s a genius too, and my left arm. He graded
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince and Faust for
me, and is also now grading the Coen’s Inside Llewyn
Davis. We discussed references, talked a lot about
the artistic aspects rather than the technical, and
locked the look on Dark Shadows at an early stage.
In pre-production on Dark Shadows, Peter created
LUT software that could take what I had shot on set,
and move the pictures a long way towards emulating
the Technicolor 2-strip process. With this, it’s as though
you are emphasising certain colours in a desaturated
work. You get pure and strong red, green and blue
colours, but everything else is muted and desturated,
particularly the skin tones. For example, you see Eve
Green (Angelique) in a shiny, shock-red dress, but her
skin is very pale, and there’s still detail of things like the
brown wooden panelling in the background.
The overall look is attractive and fits the set and the
story, I hope. I think the most interesting thing with Peter,
is that we don’t do any windows anymore. We used the
DI as we would use a lab process. We changed some
of the curves of the neg, we changed some midtone
colours without touching the others. But what you see
on screen is the light I did on set. Typically, I would grade
the HD dailies with Peter at Technicolor at Pinewood,
between six and seven every morning, and then go
to the set. Tim would then watch the dailies alone with
Chris Lebenzon, the editor. He likes to keep the editing a
very private process. After the shoot, Peter has worked
closely with Tim on the grade, and I have held a number
of remote, projected grading sessions with Peter – with
me in New York, and him at Technicolor in Soho. Peter is
coming to Technicolor New York, and we’ll complete the
final grade for Tim.
Were there any happy accidents, unexpected things
that worked out well?
Yes. There’s a scene early in the movie when Barnabas
steps out of his coffin after 200 years, and walks through
the forest at night to the manor house. Although I had
Wendy lights, they didn’t really penetrate the foliage.
When I checked my light meter it didn’t move, and
thought “My God, I’m fucked!”. As we were shooting
in June, I worked with the remains of the daylight, and
crossed my fingers. But the results look beautiful. You
can barely see anything, there are no highlights, just the
shapes of the trees and the actor moving through the
trees. It’s really spooky and eerie, and exactly the result I
wanted. It was definitely a happy accident.