American Cinematographer - December 2004 - 86

Man of a Thousand Faces
of the actor's

in relation to the midtones,

next

and using

practical and other light

sources

in shot."

The

style changes again when
begins work on The
Millionairess with Sophia Loren
(portrayed by Sonia Aquino) and
Sellers

starts to see

star.

himself more

as a

movie

He falls hard for Loren and

makes plans to spend more time with
her, imagining that she feels the same
Sellers takes
snaps of
his equally

famous wife,
actress

Britt

Ekland (Charlize

Theron). Levy
notes that

the

approach to this
sequence was a
conscious

homage to

a
memorable

scene

in Blow-

Up (1966),
Michelangelo
Antonioni's
existential

critique of
Swinging
London.

Levy took extra care to main¬
tain the illusion of Wolford's work. "I

edges," he
ers were

"Backlight and kick¬
problematic because they

London apartment so he can be
closer to the object of his affections.

where the

Despite the fact that the Sellers' feel¬
ings for Loren are unrequited, the
filmmakers wanted to give these

says.

seam

makeup ended and Geoffrey's skin
began. I've shot a lot of monster
films, and the rule of thumb in a
monster

film is don't show the
-

keep it in the shadows.

But in this case,

the 'monster'

the star, and we

needed to

see

was

his

and his reactions at all times.
one reason why I used diffu¬
sion throughout, usually a Vs to V2
Pro-Mist, depending on the focal
length and amount of backlight,

eyes

That's

V2 Soft F/X

close-ups.
close-ups of the entire
cast that way so that Geoffrey's shots
and

a

V\

or

on

I treated all

wouldn't stand out. The diffusion

helped soften some of Geoffrey's
huge prosthetic pieces, and it also
helped give a lot of the picture a
period look. There are certain areas
of makeup that you just have to
hide, like where the prosthetic joins
the mouth or the eyes. If you point a
raw

Primo lens at that, it's a dead

giveaway."
The

portrayal of Sellers' rise to

stardom in the 1950s is somewhat

attenuated, with brief reenactments
82 December 2004

The husband and father of two

light that could show

could show the

monster

way.

goes so far as to move his family from
their country estate to an expensive

avoided hard

also do a

from Katharine Hepburn: 'If
you want to see the girl next door, go

more

some

you hard shadows, you can
lot of hard cutting.

early comedies (I'm
Alright Jack) intercut with moments
of success, as reflected by his new
country villa and sports car. At this
point, Levy began moving away from
the stifling gloom to a warmer, lighter
look, which he achieved "principally
by lighting gels to lower the color
temperature, lightening the shadows

scenes a

theatrical look. "We used

lot of old-fashioned, hard

a

Fresnel

Levy. "When I started
how you lit.
I learned that technique when I was a
younger man, and it was very nice to
go back to that kind of lighting."
Although lighting with large,
soft sources is now a popular
approach, Levy says he often finds

lighting,"

says

in the business, that was

that type of
"Sometimes

lighting less rewarding.
using big, soft light is
more like illuminating a scene than
lighting," he maintains. "It doesn't get
to the full potential of what lighting
is. For the scenes involving Sellers and
Loren, we used a lot of studio lights
-IKs, 2Ks and 5Ks
them

to

-

and focused

highlight exactly what

wanted the audience to

see.

we
It's like

lighting for black-and-white: if you
people to look at something,
you boost it up by half a stop or so,
because the brain will automatically
make the eye see something brighter
first. And because hard lighting gives
want

"You get a more theatrical
look when you light that way, but
I'm comfortable with that. I think

lighting should be more than just
naturalistic. There's

a

wonderful

quote

door.' I feel the same about cine¬

matography. When you watch a film,
you want a heightened experience.
You want it to be better than
worse

to

than life, but you

be the

same as

life

or

don't want it

life."

Levy also used hard sources in
scenes from the classic
Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove, in

recreating

which Sellers

plays three characters.
Nobody who has seen Stanley
Kubrick's timeless comedy is likely to
forget its look; the sets designed by
Ken Adam and the stark black-and-

white

cinematography by Gilbert
Taylor, BSC play as much of a role in
the film as the story or characters,
and Levy knew that his emulation
would have to pass muster with film
buffs. Although some of his
crewmembers had worked

on

Dr.

Strangelove and recalled many details
of the shoot, Levy's goal was to
suggest Taylor's work rather than
meticulously copy it. He lit the
famous War Room set with

a

30'-

wide

ring of custom-made fluorescents fitted with 50-percent daylight
tubes and 50-percent tungsten tubes;
the rig was suspended low over the
set to function as a giant practical,
illuminating the actors. And even
though he knew the film would
finish with a digital intermediate
(DI), which enables filmmakers to
transform color

images into black-

and-white, he shot the Strangelove
sequences on black-and-white stock,
Eastman Plus-X 5222. "You get that
fantastic richness," he says, "ft

has the
depth in the blacks and the silvery
highlights that I don't think you can
really get any other way."
However, Levy did use the DI
to

enhance

some

of these

re-
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