American Cinematographer - January 2016 - 32

Egyedi guided
Erdély as the
cinematographer
closely followed
Röhrig during the
carefully
choreographed
shoot.

had two to three lights [with] a mixture of
orange and red gels."
The third floor, where the
Sonderkommandos lived, was lit with
candles and a few bare 60- and 100-watt
bulbs. "I tried to keep all the light pretty
much white," reports Erdély. "The most
important thing was to avoid any flattering light. This film could not be pretty."
Nemes spent the better part of a
year choreographing and mapping Saul's
every move on his iPad, creating a floor
plan with a circle representing Saul and a
triangle indicating the camera. "László
wanted a feeling of chaos and unpredictability," says Erdély, "but to achieve
that, we had to lock down every detail.
Each shot required an enormous amount
of concentration from everybody. It was
very rewarding, but also physically taxing.
László and I went to a personal trainer for
months in order to get into the best possible shape."
The physical demands on Erdély
were especially onerous, with the camera
sitting on his shoulder at least eight hours
a day. The lens always remained at Saul's
eye level, whether he was on his knees
scrubbing the floor, bending over to drag
a corpse, or simply moving from room to
room. Sometimes Saul would be walking
forward, only to abruptly reverse step. "I
knew from blocking and rehearsals that
Géza would take 15 steps before turning
32

January 2016

on the 16th, so I counted my steps," says
Erdély. The cinematographer was never
actually tethered to the actor; instead, a
grip - László Egyedi - was assigned to
help guide him, which was especially
important when Erdély was walking
backwards across a floor littered with
corpses.
"Géza understood that if he
didn't stop where he was supposed to, or
if he made a sharp turn unexpectedly, the
shot would be ruined," says Erdély.
Toward the end of the 28-day
shoot, Erdély tripped and badly sprained
his ankle, and two other operators filled
in for the final few days. György Réder
shot the last two scenes of the film, while
Zoltán Lovasi shot the nighttime
sequence of Jews being shot and thrown
into open pits.
As the latter scene depicts, prisoners are marched into the woods, where
three pits have been dug, and Saul joins
the line, searching for a rabbi to bury his
son. Chaos erupts when the inmates
arrive at the pits, where they are pushed
in and fired upon. This especially long
scene consists of multiple shots. To light
the sequence, "a very old, period 10K
tungsten Fresnel light," Erdély describes,
was placed atop a military truck parked
on the path, which appears on screen as
a giant searchlight. Electricians, dressed
as prisoners and placed among the
American Cinematographer

extras, held flashlights to provide additional illumination.
Two more pits lie beyond the first,
with huge flames leaping out of them and
silhouetting much of the action. The
flames were produced by "a custom-made
system," Erdély says, "[fueled by] a combination of gas and petrol, [and] provided by
our special-effects team - Gyula Krasnyánszky and Barna Princz." Truck headlights on the far side of the pits offered
additional light, as did small spotlights
held by individual Nazi soldiers as they
watched the slaughter.
Day exteriors relied exclusively on
natural light. "László really understands
light and was willing to sacrifice certain
things in order to get the best light for the
scene," Erdély attests. At one point Saul is
outside the compound when a commotion suddenly allows him to veer off and
jump into the back of a pickup truck that
is transporting inmates to a work area. The
actor jumped easily onto the tailgate -
but Erdély, with the heavy camera on his
shoulder, had to move quickly to keep up.
A small dolly, with a short platform on it,
was placed next to the truck for Erdély to
step onto, and crewmembers Egyedi and
János Csikesz guided him onto the truck
bed and secured him to a railing before
the vehicle departed. The entire scene was
done in one continuous shot.
Only one cinematic reference was

American Cinematographer - January 2016

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