American Cinematographer - July 2007 - 26

Above: The elderly Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) shares her reminiscences with one of her daughters (Natasha Richardson). Below: Young Ann escapes the wedding festivities with Harris (Patrick Wilson). through the windows, providing strong backlight for the actors and an overall glossiness to the scenes. It isn’t surprising to learn that two quintessentially American artists, Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper, served as visual references for Evening. Hopper’s use of color and his passion for sunlight are evident in the film’s flashback sequences, while Wyeth’s signature white, gray and wheat tones dominate the present-day scenes. “Hopper is one of my favorite painters, and I always had him in my mind for this film,” says Koltai. “When I saw the house that had been selected for the mansion, I couldn’t believe it — it was exactly what I had envisioned.” Koltai also had a very specific image in mind for Ann as she lies in bed, drifting toward death. “I always pictured the room as a boat that’s drifting away from this life. There would be two big windows, one on either side of the bed, and billowing curtains that would look like two sails. Our wonderful production designer, Caroline Hanania, found me a Wyeth painting that showed a perfect relation of curtains to windows. As Ann dies, the curtains are blowing, just like the sails of a boat.” In addition to contrasting color palettes, Koltai wanted past and present differentiated by camera movement. The camera is largely stationary in the present, as Ann nears death, whereas lively tracking shots bring vitality to the past. According to Pados, Koltai organized the shooting schedule around the sun. “Lajos has a fantastic eye and knows what moment to shoot. He planned each day so we could always shoot in backlight. We filmed interiors when the sun was high in the sky, and knocked off outdoor shots in the late afternoon, with its beautiful sunset glow. If you plan well, you only need a little fill. For that we used 12-by-12 white silks.” To give the film a sense of intimacy, Pados, who does his own operating, stuck primarily with 21mm and 27mm Primo prime lenses. “This is a very emotional story, and we always wanted to feel close to the characters in both the past and present. Lajos loves faces, but he didn’t want long lenses on close-ups; he wanted to feel we were right there with the characters. He prefers primes for that reason.” The cinematographer kept 1⁄4 Tiffen Black Pro-Mist on the lens the entire time. The camera package, rented from Panavision New York, also included 4:1 (17.5-75mm) and 11:1 (24275mm) Primo zooms and two Panaflex Platinums. Pados notes that using both cameras simultaneously was rare. Koltai and Pados hoped to shoot anamorphic, as they’d done on Fateless, but the studio objected, so they shot 3perf Super 35mm instead. Pados shot the picture on three Kodak Vision2 stocks: 500T 5218, 250D 5205 and 50D 5201. Footage was processed at Technicolor New York, and the final color timing was accomplished with a digital intermediate (DI) at Modern VideoFilm, where the filmmakers worked with colorist Joe Finley. The entire film was shot on location, and in the mansion the crew was not allowed to place anything on the walls or hang anything from the ceilings. 26 July 2007

American Cinematographer - July 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 2007