American Cinematographer - January 2007 - 39

Navarro lines
up a shot of
Ofelia and her

ailing mother
(Ariadna Gil).

ently garbled translation of the
English command "push in."
Navarro explains, "I first used the
puchi on DeviVs Backbone and
immediately fell in love with it. It's a
crane that's handled
by one operator
and gives you the ability to move the
camera very freely. It's
very versatile.

create

You

times

can

rest

it somewhere, under¬

sling it, or sling it over your arm; you
can
lay track and move it; you can
start very low and go
up to the height
of a person. It's one of the most bril¬
liant pieces of equipment I've
encountered. I actually purchased
one and
brought it to Los Angeles."
Usually equipped with one of the
Variable Primes, the puchi was often
operated by Navarro; it was occa¬
sionally used side by side with a
Steadicam operated by Jaromir
Sedina,

another

of

Navarro's

frequent collaborators.

corner

Navarro defines the

picture's
style as "searching." From the
earliest scene, as it follows the flight
of a mysterious insect that catches
camera

is

looking and revealing things to you
and teaching you, rather than simply
presenting things to you," he says.

elaborate setups. The

moves

finds

and

of the set, and it

every

was a

very

complicated lighting proposition
each time. It was also very difficult
for the focus puller, and thank God I
had

a

fantastic one, Juan Leiva." To
fluid transitions

-

or some¬

just to enhance the constant
prowling of the camera - the film¬
makers used elements in the frame
to

motivate

wipes. "The camera
black flag
shot, and

would go by a tree, or by a
that we would put in the

boom, we were in another shot," says
Navarro.

The

cinematographer used

three Kodak film stocks

on

the

exposed 5217 by 3-4 stops to film
these scenes, which take place at a
point in the story "where the worlds
are
crossing each other," he notes.
"You feel in

a

naturalistic environ¬

of the

night, but with certain
ingredients that only the sunlight
gives you. We were basically collect¬
ing light with boards and silver
ment

reflectors,

so

the greens

that when the

sun

hit

in the forest, they would

pop."
The extremes of color

are

easy

enough to spot in Pans Labyrinth.
When Vidal's men greet dinner party
guests at the mill during an evening
rainstorm, the Steel Blue gel Navarro
uses lends the
images a forbidding,

picture: Vision 250D 5246, Vision2

almost monochromatic sheen. "It's

500T 5218, and Vision2 200T 5217.

blue that has

The latter emulsion

was

used for

interiors and exteriors that

occupied
ground, either those
with a particularly blue palette or
those that required day-for-night
photography. The filmmakers shot
day for night for sequences that take
place in the forest at night; this was
necessitated by the scope of the shots
and the difficulty of lighting the
a

camera

Ofelia's attention, "the

"We had very
camera

visual middle

location after dark. Navarro under¬

a

bit of green to

it, so it
has a silvery look," he says. "I dislike
the traditional candy-blue nights.
This steely blue is colder and doesn't
feel so foreign." At the other extreme,
sequences where Ofelia undergoes
her trials in the fairy-tale world, such
as one

a

where she

from the

must

snatch

a

knife

dining hall of the faceless

Pale Man, have uniform warmth.

"Sometimes the color

lights and sometimes it

on

the

was on

the

was

American

Cinematographer 39
American Cinematographer - January 2007

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