"We tested a number of different Kodak and Fuji stocks," he continues. "Our lab was Deluxe, so we tested their various silver-retention processes, like CCE and ACE. We also sent a roll to Technicolor to test ENR. Through all of that, we found that we were able to capture an interesting look by shooting with Fuji. Janusz and I had both experimented with Fuji in the past, but neither of us had shot a studio film with Fuji stock. By using Fuji with the CCE process at Deluxe, we were able to get a very interesting, specific, gritty and desaturated look. When we put the Fuji film through the CCE process for the first time, we definitely got a different look than we did by putting the Kodak stocks through the same process. The look of the Fuji instantly seemed to fit Lost Souls much better. It had to do with Fuji’s interpretation of various colors. There was a little bit of shifting going on in underexposure that we found particularly interesting. When we got into the grittier, underexposed range, the film got very greenish and almost dirty-looking. Kodak stocks create a very good reproduction of reality, but on this film we didn’t necessarily want to see Kodak’s version of reality in front of us. We wanted a gritty, grainy look."
Based on his tests, Fiore selected Fuji’s Super F 8551 250 ASA tungsten stock for daylight interiors and exteriors, using only half daylight correction on the lens in the form of 81EF filters. For darker daylight scenes and nighttime sequences, he employed Fuji’s Super F 500 ASA 8571. Both stocks were pulled one stop in the processing, effectively reducing them to ASAs of 125 and 250, respectively. "CCE is a very drastic process that puts a lot of contrast into the image," Fiore notes. "It’s much more intense than ENR, and it really drops off the blacks. Even though we always had a Panaflasher attached to the camera, flashing the film wasn’t something that I was really interested in, but Janusz was into it. I believe in affecting the film more in the mid-range of the contrast, so we pull-processed every single roll. By pulling, you affect the mid-range of the film stock rather than the toe of the curve, which is what flashing does. We used flashing for specific scenes where we felt there was a lot of contrast perhaps only around three percent."
Fiore and Kaminski shot Lost Souls in Super 35, using Panavision Platinums as their A- and B-cameras. The production also utilized a Millennium Panaflex specially modified with a mistimed shutter as the project’s dedicated "streaker" camera. "Lost Souls was set to be a Super 35 film, but we still did some tests with anamorphic," says Fiore. "Ultimately, we settled on Super 35 because a lot of the film took place in small locations and cars. Tiny locations are difficult to work when you’re using anamorphic equipment. It would have been tough to get the type of light level that we needed."
Kaminski submits, "I wanted to work with a wider aspect ratio because I felt the story really allowed for it. Also, I wanted to come onto the screen with a bigger picture for my directorial debut. Super 35 is a beautiful format when you have two people talking in medium shots. We didn’t use long lenses very much. This was very much a wider-angle film 27mm, 21mm. I tried to stay close to the actors, but not enough to create distortion in the images."
Adds Fiore, "We chose Primo lenses because we were considering the optical step that we were eventually going to go through. Primo lenses aren’t something that Janusz or I normally use. We usually use Z-series lenses because they have a slightly softer look. Additionally, most of the film was shot with a Dior stocking stretched on 4" by 5" frames in front of the lenses. We found that the nets added a bit of a painterly quality to the images. The lines aren’t so sharp, and the image diffuses in a sense that the overall picture has an almost ’brushwork’ feel. It makes the highlights really glow and takes the edge off the sharpness of the Primos. We also tried to stay within the T2.8 to T4.0 range for most of the film because we knew we were going to end up doing an optical [blowup to an anamorphic release print], and we didn’t want anything to fall off."
The production began with several weeks of location photography in and around New York City. "I wanted the film to capture some of that specific New York style," says Kaminski. "When you look at films photographed in New York, such as Midnight Cowboy, The Panic in Needle Park [both shot by Adam Holender, ASC] and The French Connection [Owen Roizman, ASC], they feel very real, and they’re very much handheld. You can’t really control the environment, and things just happen that you may not like, such as people looking into the lens or a car passing in front of the camera things that are unpredictable and add a tremendous sense of reality. I wanted to make this film feel real, so the idea of using a lot of handheld cameras seemed very appropriate and gave the film more urgency. The movie takes place in the fall and winter, and that automatically dictates a certain light quality. Everything is fairly played-down in terms of the rainy, overcast feel. It’s a bit gritty without being overly stylized. I wanted the film to be very pale white and pale blue, without too much color, and I didn’t want any hard light. I wanted soft light, but with some mood and contrast in the faces. There is very little direct sunlight in the movie."
"We were resisting hard, contrasty sources," Fiore details. "Instead, we often worked with big soft sources that we underexposed, rather than putting hard light on people’s faces. Also, one rule of thumb we had was to never add backlight. We felt that was too glamorous a look for this film. Instead of adding a little kicker, if there was a dark side to a character’s face, we’d offset that with a bright background and play off of the chiaroscuro, rather than adding anything to the scene that would make it feel like a ’movie shot.’ In the day scenes, the faces were generally a stop brighter than our shooting stop, while the fill side was two or more stops under. We wanted to feel the brightness of the daylight on the faces. On most of the day work, we used a lot of negative fill, rather than creating our own source and backlight. We simply hung huge 50’ by 50’ blacks from Condors."
Once the New York scenes were completed, the remainder of the shoot took place in Los Angeles, where production designer Garreth Stover (Instinct, Phenomenon) had constructed several key sets on stages at Sony Pictures in Culver City, California. "Most of the interiors were lit with tungsten lamps," Fiore explains. "We were mainly working with big, soft sources including several Dinos bounced off muslin to create a big wall of light. Obviously, as the source gets bigger, it gets even softer. A lot of our lighting instruments consisted of either homemade fixtures or a standard Mole-Richardson 9-light. We brought things back to more basic traditional units, and made our own softboxes. We deliberately stayed away from Xenon lights and the "shafts of light" look, which we felt had been overdone. Also, we always put practicals on the sets as much as possible and tried to include them in the frame. We worked a lot with the art department in that regard. Even on the night exteriors, we’d have them install a lamppost and other practical lights outside to create a motivation in the frame, rather than just adding light to the scene."
A key set seen at the beginning of the film is a mental ward where Father Lareaux and Larkin encounter deranged psychopath Henry Birdson. "Birdson is actually a mathematician who’s been possessed by the devil," Fiore explains. "The mental ward was another instance where we really stayed away from the typical Gothic shafts of light coming through the windows. In the halls, the crew built in some overhead practical fluorescents to give us a bit of source lighting, but we didn’t really use those to key the actors. Instead, we decided to primarily use the windows to light the actors."
Gaffer David Devlin elaborates: "To create a claustrophobic feel, Mauro really wanted to feel the source coming from the outside world, while keeping the interior kind of dead. We put different lights outside the windows to achieve different things. First, we had a line of coop lights that were aimed straight down to create a skylight feel through the windows. Next, we wanted to feel the high, hot sun of New York not necessarily beams shooting in through the windows like you find on the West Coast, but rather little pieces of light, as if the sun was just barely breaking through over a branch and was high and raking. For that effect, we used T5 beam projectors. The T5’s beam is similar to that of a Xenon, but it doesn’t have a cold center. The actual signature of the beam is the magnified coils of the unit’s 5K bulb. If you were shooting the light into a white cyc, you could see the actual hot spot of the lamp coils. That’s always interesting from a lighting perspective, because if you were to use a Leko to create a perfectly even wash of light, you’d then probably want to break that light up a bit to make it more interesting and give it dimension and texture. The T5s look great right out of the box. They’re not as bright as Xenons, but they’re bright enough and they’re tungsten, so you don’t have to fight the color temperature.
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