American Cinematographer - January 2008 - 66

Very Close Shaves work, Burton avoided storyboarding, an experience Wolski found liberating. “There was some previsualization for some effects shots, but Tim was not very strictly attached to it,” says the cinematographer. “Everything came out of rehearsals. When you see real elements, when you see what actors actually do, you come up with much more interesting shots. If you completely design the film ahead of time, it takes away the element of surprise.” Of course, the benefits of storyboards and previz have a lot to do with the scope of the project at hand. “Sweeney Todd was very manageable in that respect,” says Wolski. “We could constantly see the whole canvas, and we could step back and change something easily. It wasn’t the kind of situation where if we missed a shot we needed, six months later we couldn’t go back.” The filmmakers’ improvisational method never prevented them from moving the camera in grand musical fashion. “The movement comes from the drama of the film,” says Wolski. “When you’re building up a scene, you can be very static and very cerebral. But when the songs get more dramatic, when the actors start moving, it can be fantastic to handhold [the camera].” Dollies and Steadicam were also employed throughout the shoot, as were cranes. “Because it’s a musical, we have a lot of old-fashioned crane shots where you pull back from a face all the way to a big, high shot of London or a street,” says Wolski. “You have time to do that when the actors are singing.” To achieve these shots, Flemming’s grip department used SuperTechno 30 and SuperTechno 50 cranes, and they also carried two dollies, a Fisher 10 and a Chapman Super Peewee III. “Sometimes we used dolly track and sometimes we used dance floor,” says Flemming. “It depended on the shot. In the pie shop and the barbershop, we tended Above: Wolski (in striped hat) stands next to the camera, ready to be wowed by the tonsorial talents of street barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli. Wolski frequently used bounce cards for fill. Below: An Ultrabounce provides illumination while Burton prepares Depp for one of the film’s crane moves. “We built the cottage, a piece of the church, and the cabin on the beach,” says Ferretti. “The rest was greenscreen. We did this because it’s a fantasy, a dream, whereas [other settings] are more realistic.” Two of the production’s stages were completely dedicated to greenscreen work. Higgins notes that on those stages, “the sets were on a small rostrum so we could have [Kino Flo] Image 80s above and below the set [to light the greenscreen].” Working with a tungsten-balanced lighting package throughout the shoot, Higgins fitted the Image 80s with tungsten-balanced tubes. “On each stage, there were about 200 space lights wired in the two- and threebulb configuration, with silks under them,” he continues. “We had Dinos rigged in the corners of the stages, all to dimmers, so we could always have a nice backlight wherever we went. We also had a couple of scissor lifts with lighting units on them that we could quickly deploy as necessary.” Despite the picture’s CG 66 January 2008

American Cinematographer - January 2008

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