American Cinematographer - July 2007 - 20

Above: Young Timmy Robinson discovers that the place where he buried an intrusive neighbor has been discovered. Right: Fido twirls Mrs. Robinson around the living room. walks, and bond after the zombie protects Timmy from the town bullies. Helen, meanwhile, finds a degree of companionship in Fido that her intimacy-phobic, golf-addicted husband doesn’t offer. All goes well until Fido’s collar malfunctions one day in the park and he kills the neighborhood crank, Mrs. Henderson. Returning at night to bury the evidence, Timmy encounters the old lady, now an unfettered zombie, and has to decapitate her with his shovel. Neighbor Mr. Bottoms (Henry Czerny), head of security at zombiecontrol agency ZomCon, suspects something is amiss at the Robinson household and soon uncovers the truth, threatening to destroy the happiness the family has found with Fido. With a laugh, Kiesser says Currie’s script “intrigued me. On the page, it’s a graphic, traditional zombie movie, and I wondered how that would work on the screen. But what got me was the level of humor and the subtle social commentary and political satire. That suggested there was more going on in the writer’s head than was necessarily on the page. So I was looking forward to the interview.” For his part, Currie thought Kiesser would be “perfect” for the project. “There’s a real diversity to Jan’s work,” says the director. “He’s worked a lot with Alan Rudolph, he was 2nd-unit director of photography on Kundun, he was a camera operator for Vilmos Zsigmond [ASC] for five years, and he also shot Fright Night.” When they met to discuss Fido, he continues, “Jan had a strong understanding of what I wanted to achieve. He knew the style intimately and completely got what I was going for.” What Currie wanted was a Technicolor look reminiscent of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas. Kiesser recalls, “Andrew had specific film references, format ideas, and postproductionpipeline ideas that informed the overall look of Fido. When I saw all that, I realized he had developed his visual concept very thoroughly.” Currie showed Kiesser an 11"x17" stylebook with full-color illustrations of key images. He also put together a DVD presentation that included orchestralmusic samples, zombie images and film clips; this was initially used as a sales tool when Currie was pitching the project, but it later became a touchstone for the creative departments. Sirk’s films, such as Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life, were key references. “Those films have a very beautiful, idealized visual palette,” says Kiesser. “Everything looks very perfect and in its place, but when you get to know the characters, you realize that the order disguises a tremendous amount of dysfunction. And that’s pretty much the world Andrew wanted to expose.” The director adds, “I wanted the world [of Fido] to have a very stylized and glossy surface, and make it very lush and beautiful, because I wanted to contrast that with what’s rotting in the neighborhood, so to speak.” At the outset, Currie budgeted for a 2K transfer and digital intermedi- 20 July 2007

American Cinematographer - July 2007

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