American Cinematographer - December 2007 - 33

U pon returning home to Edinburgh from a four-month stint shooting in Africa, cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, BSC took his wife to see Atonement, his most recent feature, which had just opened in the United Kingdom. Midway through the movie, a shot revealed part of a beach expanse dotted with soldiers, and viewers seated in front of the McGarveys whispered, “Here it is! Here’s the Steadicam shot!” What followed was a 5-minute, 20-second uninterrupted take that, according to A-camera/Steadicam operator Peter Robertson, employed the full breadth of his “20 years of operating experience. And in the end, I knew it was probably the best shot I’d ever done.” Based on the novel by Ian McEwan, Atonement presents three periods in the life of Briony Tallis (portrayed at age 13 by Saoirse Ronan, at age 18 by Romola Garai, and as an older woman by Vanessa Redgrave) as she struggles to resolve her conflicted relationships with her older sister, Cecilia (Keira Knightley), and Cecilia’s love interest, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy). The film was actually a reunion for McGarvey and director Joe Wright, who initially met at Oil Factory, a music-video production company. Later, after Wright finished art school in the mid-1990s, he hired McGarvey to shoot his short film The End. Wright describes McGarvey’s involvement in Atonement as “a dream come true, really. His enthusiasm and dedication were the same as on the short film, except [on Atonement] I got to spend more time with him.” Expounding on this sentiment, McGarvey says, “I had about six weeks of preproduction, and crucial to that was a two-week period when Joe and I just locked ourselves away in his house and pored over the script and worked out how to photograph the film.” The environment was one of “creative friendship,” as the cinematographer puts it, and this spirit was extended outward as other crewmembers, notably production designer Sarah Greenwood, entered the discussion. “There was no demarcation as such,” recalls Greenwood. “You’d put an idea on the table, somebody would top it and then you’d top it back. Things just got better; it was a very enthusiastic upping of the ante.” For the first section of the film, set in 1935, the filmmakers sought to evoke the hottest day of the summer while introducing the Tallis family and its sizable estate. “We wanted to get a sense of the heat as well as the insouciance that a lot of the people in the aristocracy and in Britain in general felt about the war,” says McGarvey. “There was no sense of the horror brewing in Europe.” Set in and around the Tallis Opposite: Cecelia Tallis (Keira Knightley) welcomes the advances of her love interest, Robbie Turner (James McAvoy), in the study of her family’s home. This page: Longtime passions spontaneously erupt, but the couple’s lovemaking is interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Cecelia’s younger sister, Briony (Saoirse Ronan, left) who misinterprets the situation. Photos courtesy of Focus Features. American Cinematographer 33
American Cinematographer - December 2007

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