American Cinematographer - January 2001 - 81
restored
but
-
been better for
nothing could have
lighting its massive
hall from the outside.
Luck
also
screenplay), is artistic repression:
"Does political oppression actually
breed rather than stifle
favored
Rogier
Staffers, the 38-year-old Dutch cine¬
matographer whom Kaufman
tapped to be director of photogra¬
phy. "For me, [working with
Kaufman] was a very frightening
provocative
art?" the playwright asks. "What
happens when we silence our
extremists? What happens when we
give them voice?"
Quills is set. The filmmakers pored
of material detailing the
period's architecture and insane
asylums, and they also examined
French paintings of the era. On a
over reams
table
was a
Vso scale model of the
entire Charenton set, then under
idea," Staffers admits. "He has
worked with
[ASC members] Caleb
Deschanel, Michael Chapman, Sven
Nyquist, Philippe Rousselot - all of
these famous people - and I had
done
'real' film!"
one
However, that film, Karakter,
an
Academy Award for Best
Foreign Film in 1997. By that point
in his career, Staffers had graduated
won
from the Amsterdam Film School,
shot a Student Academy Award¬
winning short, and shot 21 episodes
of a popular L.A. Law-type TV
series,
well
as
as a
Dutch version of
Heimat. Karakter, his first 35mm
feature,
directed by his filmvan Diem, and it
was
school friend Mike
demonstrated that Staffers
possessed
cinematogra¬
pher infused the Dickensian story
with dramatic pools of light that
a
distinctive talent. The
infiltrated
a
world of bleak darkness,
and contrary to convention, the
period film made liberal use of a
Steadicam
to
throw audiences into
the midst of class
father-son
upheavals and
confrontations.
"In
Holland, people said, 'You used
Steadicam
on a
period movie? Why
would you do that?'" Staffers recalls.
Kaufman got it, though. "I was
highly impressed by the lighting
[and] the kind of constant
the director says, adding
motion,"
that he
sought just such a style for Quills. "I
was
looking for someone who could
create a period look, yet move the
camera in a
way that had a contem¬
porary vitality," he notes, adding that
Doug Wright's Obie-winning play,
on which the film is based, is
"really
meant to
be
a
tale for
our
time." The
story's underlying theme, according
to Wright (who also wrote the
Kaufman
was
also
aware
of
another
parallel. He began working
during Kenneth Starr's
investigation of President Clinton,
and thus wanted its underlying
themes of moral hypocrisy to
resonate. "[Kaufman] wanted that
link to modern times," says Staffers.
"He didn't want [Quills] to become a
beautiful, crafted period movie."
After two meetings, Kaufman
on
the film
and Staffers shook hands
on a
collab¬
oration, and the cinematographer
soon
was
set off for England, where Quills
deep in preproduction. By the
time he arrived at Pinewood
where 90 percent
of the film
shot, historical research
underway.
Studios,
was
was
well
Production designer
Martin Childs (Shakespeare in Love)
had unearthed the blueprints for
Charenton Asylum, where the
marquis was confined and most of
construction. "The model had
tiny
little windows about the size of
Opposite
page:
Fascinated by the
a
Marquis de Sade
thumbnail," Childs recalls. "Rogier
and I spent a bit of time pointing
[flashlights] into those windows to
and his perverse
see
how the corridors and cells would
Staffers says his previous expe¬
riences in Holland helped him make
the most of such
preproduction
"[Given those] low budgets
[the lack of] shooting time, I'm
exercises.
used
planning everything
out," he says. Kaufman, for one,
greatly appreciated that trait: "We
were right on schedule and under
budget," the director recalls of the 61day shoot. "A lot of that was due to
Rogier being very well prepared. He
thinks in advance, plans things out
now
covert
literary
courier Madeleine
(Kate Winslet)
work."
and
prose,
chambermaid and
to
and makes his
own
takes pen to
paper under the
watchful eye of
Abbe de Coulmier
(Joaquin Phoenix),
enlightened
priest who runs
the
Charenton
Asylum. This page:
The incorrigible
marquis (Geoffrey
Rush), unbowed
by the authorities'
attempts to
silence him, stirs
trouble by
provoking and
manipulating his
up
fellow inmates.
little charts."
The Charenton model allowed
Staffers
to
troubleshoot. Childs had
American
Cinematographer 79
American Cinematographer - January 2001
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