Cinematographer Brian Tufano, BSC collaborates with first time director, Stephen Daldry to create a charming tale of a boyhood dream come true.
A boy who aspires to dance ballet doesn’t emerge from a mining town in northern England every day, and cinematographer Brian Tufano, BSC says that this was one reason he was instantly charmed by the story of Billy Elliot. "It’s a very off-the-wall subject," Tufano offers, "and I liked the writing very much."
No stranger to off-the-wall subjects, Tufano brought visual panache to the low-budget hits Trainspotting (see AC August ’96) and Shallow Grave, and his feature credits also include Dreamscape, The Lords of Discipline and Quadrophenia. He says Billy Elliot offered him a chance to do two things that have become almost second nature: collaborate with a first-time film director (in this case, veteran theater director Stephen Daldry), and create first-rate production value with a very small budget. "Our biggest challenges were time and money, which is always true of smaller films," he notes.
Although Billy Elliot tells an intimate story, it is set against the backdrop of the coal-miners’ strike of 1984 the longest national strike in the history of the British working class. Billy (Jamie Bell) lives with his widower father (Gary Lewis) and cranky older brother (Jamie Draven), both of whom work in the mines, and the film toes a difficult line by tempering Billy’s increasing passion for dance with the growing tension and violence created by the strike.
Tufano says he was chiefly concerned with how to present the film’s dance numbers so that they would appear organic to their settings. "We wanted a documentary-style realism; the dancing had to grow out of the environment," the cinematographer says. "The hope was that the dance numbers wouldn’t look out of place. They had to appear as if they were part of what was going on in Billy’s mind." He adds with a laugh that the film’s tight shooting schedule helped him accomplish this: "It was all done very quickly, so the numbers have a roughness to them that makes them fit in and flow with the rest of the material."
The youth center where Billy first witnesses a ballet class while he is failing miserably at boxing was intended to stand in sharp contrast to the cramped areas in which the rest of his life unfolds. "We framed scenes set in Billy’s home and neighborhood very tightly, because we wanted to suggest he was trapped in his environment," Tufano explains. "Stephen [Daldry] wanted the scenes set in the youth center to have a lighter quality, a kind of heightened realism, because dance is how Billy escapes his environment and enters a world of his own." Although the filmmakers initially planned to build a set for the youth-center interior, they found a suitable location northwest of London. "It was a Victorian school or institution, and interestingly enough, we found a plaque on one of the walls which said that Charlie Chaplin had been a pupil or resident there," the cinematographer says. "We filmed in the room that had been the gymnasium."
One key dance sequence in that location was shot especially quickly far more quickly, in fact, than the filmmakers had intended. It is the only scene in the film in which Billy dances with his instructor (Julie Walters), who has offered to help him secretly prepare to audition for the Royal Ballet School in London. According to Tufano, the scene was originally set at night, with moonlight streaming in the windows of the old gymnasium and silhouetting the actors. "[Choreographer] Peter Darling, Jamie and Julie spent about three weeks rehearsing the scene," he recalls. "I watched the rehearsals and we developed a shot list and planned the lighting. We were due to spend a Saturday shooting the scene, and we arrived early that day to rig it. We used 20’-by-20’ black drapes to tent the end of the gymnasium where the windows were, and we’d planned to create strong, heightened moonlight with two 12K HMIs mounted outside on extremely high stands the terrain was rugged, and there was actually a sort of moat around the building, so everything was on high stands and 6- to 8-foot parallels.
"Suddenly, just as we were ready to shoot, there was a freak, hurricane-like windstorm that blew the black drapes and the 12Ks into the football field next to our building! By the time we rescued all of the equipment, we had less than an hour to relight and shoot the scene." The cinematographer turned to the lights he had rigged for late-afternoon scenes at that location a platform that ran the length of the building and held five 12K HMIs, which had been protected from the windstorm because it was tucked under the tents. "That rig was still intact, and we had about 15 minutes to relight the place, so I had my crew re-cable those 12Ks, and we literally shot the scene in less than 30 minutes," Tufano says with a touch of amazement. "We’d planned some slow-motion sequences and other things you have no idea! but it became a matter of just getting enough light to shoot the scene."
Tufano used an Arriflex BL-4s as his A-camera and an Aaton 35-III as his B-camera, along with Zeiss lenses his standard package, he says. "The compactness and versatility of it really suits the way I work," he notes.
The cinematographer admits that zooms are not his favorite lenses, but he used one to photograph a critical moment for Billy’s father. Determined to give his youngest son a chance to escape their town and pursue his dream, he decides to cross the picket lines and go back to the mine. "I wanted a high angle, and we didn’t have a crane, so I just used a Ladderpod and put a zoom on the camera the zoom lens does have its place and its moments," he says. "We see Billy’s father walk toward the coach that will take him to the mine, and we see the turmoil going on inside him. Then, just for a moment, he turns away and looks out, and he sees the sea, because the town is right there on the shore. That moment conveys the narrative visually [showing us] that his mind is beginning to open."
Tufano primarily used Kodak Vision 200T 5274 and Vision 500T 5279 on the production, but he needed the extra speed of Vision 800T 5289 for the film’s final sequence, which is set several years later and shows Billy’s father and brother arriving in London to see Billy’s starring performance in Swan Lake. "By that time, our budget was just about gone, so we shot those scenes with virtually no added lights and we had one night to do it," Tufano recalls. "The scenes set within the London Underground were shot with available light, and I used a couple of 500-watt floodlights and two large Mag-Lite flashlights to illuminate the exterior of the theater as they arrived there."
Tufano followed Billy Elliot with Late Night Shopping, another venture with a first-time film director, Saul Metzstein. "Saul started as a production runner on Shallow Grave he picked me up at the airport!" he notes with a laugh. "I enjoy working with new directors. Their enthusiasm is refreshing, and it really fires me up."