American Cinematographer - September 2008 - 26

Right: Romania stood in for Afghanistan during the 80day production, which also shot in London. Filming in Super 16mm, Willoughby used seven emulsions to distinguish the project’s various locales. Below left: Though changing weather conditions made shooting inside this Romanian warehouse a challenge, the filmmakers nevertheless managed to capture explosive visuals. Below right: After years off the grid, exintelligence agent David Russell (Robert Carlyle) resurfaces to keep an eye on the Ezards. tions should also be given distinct looks. “I shot all of the street exteriors in London at T4 and made them very stark and contrasty,” he says. “I used a gel called Oklahoma Yellow for night scenes lit by streetlamps because I wanted to give them a Dickensian feel, even though the film is set in the future. For the refugee camp in Afghanistan — scenes we shot in Romania — I used chocolate filters with Kodak stock and completely desaturated the images in post to make the lush, green terrain look arid.” To realize all of these contrasting looks, Willoughby used seven different Super 16mm emulsions over the course of the shoot. For day exteriors, he used Fuji Super F-64D 8622 and Kodak Vision2 50D 7201, while other scenes were shot on Fuji Eterna 250D 8663 and 500T 8673, as well as Kodak Vision2 250D 7205, 200T 7217 and 500T 7218. “It drove the Romanian camera loaders absolutely mad, but it worked,” says the cinematographer. “I’m a bit old-fashioned in my approach to photography; I like to originate as much in camera as possible. Once you’ve used Antique Suede filters, for example, you can never get back a completely clean look, no matter what you do in post, so it’s a way to protect what you had in mind. In television, you don’t really have any rights after the shoot ends. The more you do in camera, the more you’re safeguarding your ideas.” With HD transmissions on the rise, broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic are becoming increasingly reluctant to accept Super 16-originated material because of the noise it can pick up during MPEG-2 encoding. Nevertheless, on this occasion, neither the BBC in England nor PBS in the States objected. “Iain preferred shooting on film, as did I,” says Willoughby. “We didn’t seem to have to fight for it. That said, I have slightly changed the way I shoot Super 16 over the last couple of years; I find myself using more exposure than I used to on set just to get as much density and resolution out of the negative as possible, because everything is now delivered on HD.” A major advantage of choosing Super 16 was the lightweight equipment. “My previous experiences with HD have always been good,” notes MacDonald, “but I do feel HD can sometimes slow you down a bit.” Willoughby chose Arri 16SR-3 cameras and used a mix of Zeiss Standard Speed and Super Speed primes. “We were carrying a Steadicam on the project, so we were shooting with two cameras most of the time,” he says. “John Hembrough operated the Steadicam and I operated the other camera, often handheld. In certain situations where we were running out of time, we both went handheld because it’s so flexible and quick. In general, I would shoot the master, often on a 10mm or 16mm, and we’d plant John in a corner somewhere on a longer lens, telling him to grab what he could when I wasn’t in frame.” By injecting the multi-camera coverage with a nervous tension achieved by shooting from the hip, Willoughby reflected the theme of surveillance. “There are times when you want to be with the actors in their space, so you’re on wider lenses and you’re closer to them,” he says. “At other times you want to give the appearance that everyone is under surveillance all the 26 September 2008

American Cinematographer - September 2008

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