American Cinematographer - September 2004 - 32

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Camera operator Gordon Hayman has his hands ready on the wheels while Garfath
(middle) and director Mike Hodges (far right) observe the rehearsal.

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liantly. There

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from video, and the color balance didn't

being out of focus did
funny things to the colors, but it didn't
detract at all from the look. Not only did
the backgrounds look convincing, but
our approach gave Mike what he
wanted, which was a feeling of being
seem

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to matter;

cocooned in the

car.

He didn't want to

hear

anything going on outside,
but you can't just have black velvet
outside the windows or people won't
believe you're actually on the road! We
shot everything quite close, so your
interest is focused on what's happening
in the car. At any rate, if the audience is
looking at the background plates, you've
see or

lost them."
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Apart from the car scenes and
that required the crew to

sequence
a

hotel-room set in Wales, I'll

Sleep When I'm Dead was shot entirely
location. Garfath reports that Davey's
tiny flat and bathroom - where the
character soaks in a tub and eventually
slits his throat
were particularly
challenging to shoot. "The bathroom
was about 8 feet by 6 feet," he says. "I
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lit it with Kino Flos

suspended from the
ceiling and some HMIs placed outside.
After Davey's gotten into the bath,
there's a passing of time, so I tried to use
three or four different lighting styles to
go from dawn right through until night
the following day. The HMIs were uncor¬
rected for the day scenes, and for the
night scenes I warmed them up with
CTO to create the feeling that the light
sources were actually streetlamps
outside the window."

Overall, the filmmakers deter¬
mined that the less visual artifice

they

used, the better. For example, diffusion

completely eschewed. "I did think
using diffusion on Charlotte
Rampling, but it would have stood out,"
says Garfath. "Trying to give one person

was

about

a

cosmetic look would have been wrong

for the context of the whole film."
The

principle applied to
night exteriors, which, like Rampling, are
just naturally compelling. Garfath
same

observes, "I feel I've succeeded if
doesn't look lit

a

film

especially a film like
this, in which people sometimes appear
out of the

and

-

darkness,

or come

around

a

suddenly lit by street¬
lights. That's what we were going for,
because that's what any city is like at
night."

corner

are

5^
American Cinematographer - September 2004

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - September 2004
