American Cinematographer - December 2004 - 44

A Darker Side of Fantasy
Count Olaf
confronts his
young charges.
Cinematographer

Emmanuel

Lubezki, ASC,
AMC notes that
the tale's

melancholy tone
dictated the
visual

approach:

"We tried to

this
lot of

convey

[tone] in

a

including
subjective

ways,
a

very

use

camera,

of the

which

always conveys
the children's
state of mind.

While the
characters
around the
children

are

very

funny, they're
also somewhat
scary, so
tone

[the
is]

a

balance of

comedy and
tragedy."

lighting in Sleepy Hollow
soft, and I could often

was very

use

just

a

single source, but on this film I
explored some scenes with very hard
light or mixed textures of light. To
achieve the proper effect, I had to use
many fixtures."
A key component of Snicket is
the air of melancholy that hangs over
the otherwise comedic proceedings.
"That was very important, because
the basis of the story is that these
children have lost their parents and
are seeking someone to look over
them, which is incredibly sad," says
Lubezki. "It's a quality that makes the
books very different tonally from
other books for children; they have a
full range of emotions. We tried to
convey this in a lot of ways, including
through a very subjective use of the
camera, which always conveys the
children's

state

of mind. While the

characters around the children

are

funny, they're also somewhat
[the tone is] a balance of
comedy and tragedy. There is dark¬
ness, but I tried to find light as well,

very

scary, so

as

40 December 2004

in flashbacks where the children

invent all of these

amazing devices.

To suggest their spirit and creativity,
I lit those scenes to be brighter and
warmer.

We'll

see

how

those

play in the finished film."
Though there are plenty of
exceptions within his filmography,
Lubezki's consistent use of extremely
soft, often completely unmotivated
lighting has become one trademark
of his style; to add just the right glow
to a scene, he occasionally allows illu¬
mination to appear almost from

contrasts

nowhere. "Yeah, that's true," he
admits. "At the

beginning of this
working to create what
I call 'secret lighting' - you don't
really know where it's coming from.
It's something I've been working on
for a long time, so I get nervous
when I put a hard source through a
movie, I

was

window with

some

smoke and get a

shaft of

light. I get nervous when I
revealing the sources, which I
feel reveals the cinematography to
the audience. I can't hide my work
from other directors of photography,

start

but I don't want the audience to

completely figure it out. Fortunately,

because Snicket is not realistic, I

could work this way more easily. I
to find the balance between

wanted

naturalism

and

became

directional, and I think

lighting that's
completely insane. Toward the end of
production, though, my lighting
more

that's because I wanted to
ment
-

and make

experi¬
things look different

I didn't want to let the film look

like

something I'd done before. Also,
always
help you create the style of the
movie; it's not the lighting style, but
the 'final' style."
While giving AC a tour of the
Snicket sets at Downey Studios,
Lubezki noted that his plan to use
EFilm's digital-intermediate (DI)
process helped him simplify his
lighting and saved the production
significant amounts of time. "What
I've found with the digital process is
that if the lighting is bad, you can't fix
it, but if the lighting is good, you can
the limitations of the sets will

enhance it and work with it. Part of
this involves

cutting the light, and

what I like about the DI process is
that if the light is coming from the
American Cinematographer - December 2004

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