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We shot most of the picture on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, using Vision2 200T 5217 for day scenes. I was impressed with 5219 because it transitioned neatly to a nice, tight black that worked very well with the lighting style for The Wolfman. It’s my new favorite stock, and it reminds me of the first 160T 5293 stock that came out years ago and was discontinued after a very short run. Many people might expect a film like The Wolfman to have a widescreen aspect ratio, but we shot it in Super 1.85:1. To me, 1.85 was appropriate because much of what is haunting Lawrence comes from above — the moon, the upper floors of Talbot Hall — and Rick had designed many of the sets with this vertical character. Framing for 1.85 was a nod to the style of the classic The Wolf Man (1941), and it also appeared to be the optimum choice for our storytelling. We worked with a crew of wonderful English collaborators. A-camera operator Des Whelan is an old friend who, fortunately, was available to join us on the show. Pete Cavaciuti operated the B camera, and Julian Bucknall and Craig Bloor were on focus. It’s not easy to go to a foreign country and work with people who are new to you, but this crew put a lot of themselves into this project, and they will always have my respect and gratitude. Key grip Gary Hymns worked proficiently with the 30' Technocrane, from which we shot nearly everything. Joe prefers to work from the Technocrane because it’s flexible and fits perfectly into his directing style. He and I seem to understand that piece of equipment and have a way of finding expression while designing with it, whether on location or in a tight set. Panavision U.K. provided our camera gear, two Panaflex Millennium XLs and Primo prime and zoom lenses. Joe prefers to use the 4:1 zoom whenever possible so he can make small adjustments between takes as the scene evolves. This is the third film I’ve done with him, and I always try to give him space to create; I’ll always lay a little extra dance floor or make sure there is an extra foot or two to adjust, or place the Technocrane arm so he can move in tighter or extend more laterally as he sees fit. I’ll always make an effort to light a bit deeper and wider than we discussed as well, so that Joe can take the actors further without feeling the burden of waiting for technical adjustments. I always want the set to be a creative place for him, never a technical toy store. Although The Wolfman is set in 1891, at the beginning of the electricity age, we decided that incandescent lighting would be present in the city, and candlelight would predominate in the countryside. Joe, Rick and I often discussed how this would serve as a visual representation of Lawrence’s journey into the past. I was in a quandary as to how to shoot many of our candlelit scenes. We had planned a number of shots in which Benicio would walk the length of a long, dark hallway with a solitary candle illuminating the space. Because I’m not fond of shooting at a T1.3, I decided to look at options for believably electrifying some candles. I am not accustomed to pushing film, but one day in our first week, I found myself in a situation where Joe needed one more setup at magic hour and we were out of light. We were losing the location the next day, so I force-processed the 5219 by 1 stop and rated it at ASA 800. To my surprise, the film pushed beautifully; there was only a slight increase in grain and no real contrast issues under our lighting conditions. The printer lights showed we were getting a true ASA-800 rating from the process at Deluxe Laboratories in London. With that, I believed we had discovered how to shoot our candlelit scenes. We shot a test and achieved our best look using double-wicked candles shot wide open on Primo prime lenses at T1.9 on our pushed 5219. It was such a simple solution that I might not have explored it so soon if I hadn’t had to push that one, post-magic-hour shot. I’m fortunate that I was in an environment that allowed for creative solutions to emerge and was collaborating with a crew that could back up these ideas with a mastery of their craft. A central scene in the film takes place in an operating-room theater, where doctors who are trying to convince Lawrence that his afflictions are delusional are suddenly proved wrong when the full moon appears. The scene is sourced with gaslight, which has a natural falloff and an oddly discomforting appearance. To help establish an eerie presence in our mental-institution scenes, we referenced Thomas Eakins’ painting The Agnew Clinic, which depicts a Victorian Era medical procedure using a lone, monochromatic gaslight source. The painting has a central subject under a full light that falls off quickly, rendering the audience members part of the glazed shadows. I emulated that type of light with two 8'x16' light boxes fitted with Light Control Grid. We suspended them from chain motors so we could remotely adjust the light level and angle as the scene unfolded. The set was built with a vertical aesthetic, which aided in re-creating the feel of the Eakins painting. While scouting for a location for our climactic night pursuit through the woods, I found myself standing alone in Bourne Wood on a Sunday afternoon. Forests are always a bit of a challenge for cinematographers, because it’s difficult to light a thick forest without making it look like you’re using an array of movie lights. This particular forest had an extraordinary sculptural appearance, and I thought these forms could look particularly haunting at night. I found a spot of high ground where the forest floor descended and formed a small hill. I thought about using the low area as a light well; I believed I could underlight the entire forest with 20Ks placed there. This would be a new, exciting way to light night. The sequence could be built upon images of foreground forms moving before dramatic, tangled backgrounds. This lighting scheme allowed us to look up without limits and create a sense of scale for our characters within their surroundings. The final look is indeed an artificially lit forest, but I believe this type of aggressive source incorporated within the storytelling will engage the audience in an exciting way. With so many components coming together to form an overall look, I wanted to have one consistent element that could be integrated throughout the film and anchor all our visual ideas. I wanted the highlights to have a pearlescent, glowing look, and the coexisting blacks to be rich, having an ominous effect on values that adjoined them in the frame. Using sample images and Photoshop, I devised a look called The Black Layer Luminance technique. I showed my technique to colorist Jill Bogdanowicz at Technicolor along with the steps needed to accomplish the effect in Photoshop. Jill translated that into something she could implement in the digital-intermediate bay. She is quite a genius. She takes a luminance key off the lower blacks and subtly defocuses them, and then she punches through those areas with silvery highlights and comes very close to what I did in my samples. We are combining that with a certain amount of desturation, and the total look gives a sense of richness with the heightened impression of anguish I was hoping to achieve. In discussing the cinematography on a project of this size and scale, one can spend hours discussing how many 20Ks were lined up in a given place, or the technical intricacies of shooting a complex sequence. A cinematographer can also speak in artistic terms, discussing the intensity a composition might bring to a screen moment, or the storytelling attributes found in the color spectrum. Ultimately, though, the cinematographer is just one of the people involved in the creation of a film. Certain moments in a script will evoke different emotions in me than they would in anybody else. Everyone involved with a film brings to it his or her own, unique history, and everyone’s passion must coalesce into a finished work. This, to me, is the great intangible of filmmaking: what happens when specific people come together to tell a specific story.
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