American Cinematographer - December 2011 - 22

As the enormous planet Melancholia approaches Earth, Justine, Claire and their respective husbands, Michael (Alexander Skarsgård, left) and John (Kiefer Sutherland), keep their eyes trained on the sky.

by Platige Image and Kingz Entertainment in Poland, Pixomondo in Germany and Filmgate in Sweden.) Lighting instruments also had to be eliminated in post. “You need an extreme amount of light to shoot at 1,000 fps, and the lights often had to be so close to the actors, either in front of or behind them, that the sources would inevitably be in the frame,” says the cinematographer. “We would have them a few meters away from the actors, pointing straight at their heads.” The lights for this work were primarily 6K HMI ArriSuns with special high-speed ballasts, “because although the normal ones are flicker-free, when you get to 1,000 fps, they’re not!” says Claro. Most of Melancholia was not so styl22 December 2011

istically controlled. With the exception of the Phantom sequences and several aerial shots, the film features mostly handheld camerawork. “Lars wanted a kind of documentary-style camera that followed the actors,” says Claro. He notes that the director did lay down one Dogme-style ground rule: no piece of furniture or prop could be moved by anyone on the crew once its location was set. “That gave a kind of truthfulness to the moment, because the camera can’t be in the perfect spot every time,” says Claro. Continuity between takes was devalued, as Claro was not permitted to repeat camera moves. “Sometimes Lars would notice that I was trying to refine a pan, for instance, and he’d say, ‘Don’t do that — I
American Cinematographer

don’t want the perfect timing.’ He wants the cameraman to be spontaneous like he wants the actors to be spontaneous; he wants the camera to react to what’s going on, like in a documentary. “We never did traditional coverage,” he continues. “The script supervisor might say, ‘We don’t have a shot of [the actor saying] that line,’ and Lars would say, ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll just hear it.’” Claro shot the bulk of Melancholia with an Arri Alexa. Most of his previous features (Reconstruction, Everything Will Be Fine, Limbo) were 16mm or 35mm shoots, but, he notes, “Lars was not open to shooting on film — he didn’t want the limitation of the length of the rolls. We shot ProRes 4444 and recorded everything to onboard Codex recorders. That way we could actually shoot for 90 minutes without stopping. We never did — we never shot anything longer than 10 minutes — but I think the idea that we could was important to Lars.” Like most of the film, the wedding reception was shot with Angenieux’s PLmount 28-76mm T2.6 Optimo zoom lens. “There was a lot of zooming — not for effect, but just for panning around to follow the action,” says Claro. “It’s an extra tool, and it enables you to work really quickly.” Arri/Zeiss Master Primes were used for the Phantom material and night scenes for which “some of the lighting setups were so big that we needed 2 more stops,” he adds. A distinguishing feature of Melancholia’s first half, “Justine,” is the romantic lighting style. Claro recalls, “Lars was quite clear about that from the start. He said, ‘Danielle Steel,’ like everything should be a little over-the-top in happiness. But, of course, what’s going on is not very happy.” (The restless camerawork helps clue the viewer into that contradiction.) In interiors, most of which were shot onstage at Trollhättan Filmstudio in Sweden, the golden color scheme was achieved with the use of practicals that are visible on camera. “We put up a lot of lights in the studio, but we ended up never turning them on because the Alexa is so sensitive,” says Claro. “We lit everything with practicals.” For the location night exteriors, he used sodium-vapor lights. “They’re very economical. We had to light up the golf

American Cinematographer - December 2011

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