"Sometimes, though, as a member of the audience, you start to become so alarmed by all of the smog filling the screen, beyond all logical motivation, that you have the impulse to call the local fire brigade! A medium or long telephoto lens applied to a smoggy, backlit set is a very easy and superficial recipe, and like other superficial things in life, it has been quite successful for many years. But for me and for some of my revered idols— such as the photographers Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and Henry Cartier-Bresson, or the great cinematographers G. R. Aldo and Gianni Di Venanzo that's not pure photography or cinematography. When cinematographers work that way, they're often just doing things easily out of necessity; I myself have occasionally been forced for various reasons to fall back on these techniques, with very little enthusiasm. Some cameramen like that style, but I prefer to build the image in front of the camera while keeping the lens very sharp.
"Julie and I didn't speak about this subject specifically, but after several weeks of dailies work with timer Stefano Giovannini at Cinecitta, we discovered that our main goal was sharpness. I personally believe that photography is about sharpness. Ansel Adams felt that the difference between painting and photography is that in a painting, you see less than the eye can see [in reality]. But in photography—with a good lens, good film, good paper and good development—you will see more than you did when you took the picture in the first place. You will discover something new every time you look at it.
"At the start of all my films, I search to change the style of the lighting, but I never change my attitude toward sharpness and contrast. I try to do things in a more classical way, and Titus was perfect for that. We wanted to show all of the great details in the costumes and the production design. That doesn't mean that I used a lot of units to light everything up—the entire frame might be dark except for one significant detail, but that detail is so sharp that you can imagine the rest of the costume or setting around it."
In order to attain both the desired sharpness and good depth of field, Tovoli generally kept his aperture between T2.8 (for night scenes) and T3.5 (for day scenes). The picture was photographed in the Super 35 format with Arriflex cameras rented from Technovision in Rome. "In my opinion, Technovision makes the best anamorphic lens in the world, but on Titus we knew we would have a lot of visual effects, so we thought it would be better to shoot in Super 35 with Zeiss lenses," he says. "We used an Arri 535 as our A-camera and a BL as the B-camera, shooting predominantly with unfiltered prime lenses—we didn't even carry a filter case on this picture. If we wanted to use diffusion, I just applied it to the lights. In general, we used wider lenses ranging from 14mm up, but I used a 100mm for close-ups. I tried to avoid using zoom lenses, and in fact there are only two zoom moves in the film—both at the end of the story."
Tovoli employed Kodak's 500 ASA EXR 5298 film stock on nearly the entire picture, with a few notable exceptions. "I used Kodak's 250 ASA 5297 for the forest scenes," he details. "I also used Eastman's Vision 800T ASA 5289 stock for the scene in which Tamora's sons are dancing to rock music in the palace. I had enough light for that sequence, but I thought it required a more modern feel. It played more like a music video, and the 800T stock's grain has a more contemporary look. I lit the scene mainly with Kino Flos, but I also used a big, dimmer-controlled 20K for backlight through the bars on the palace windows. I dimmed it down about 30 percent below its full power to create a bit of a glow. Within the room, I set up a lot of Kino Flos, and I even placed some on a boom so I could follow the boys as they were moving around. It wasn't a realistic situation, so we felt free to take those kinds of liberties in the lighting. We always kept the concept of natural light and motivated sources in mind, but on a film like Titus, you can often put the light wherever you want. When the actors are playing the scene in a very extreme or stylized way, the lighting doesn't always have to be realistic."
Given an array of beautiful structures and sets to photograph, Tovoli sought to make the film's architectural flourishes an integral part of its narrative flow. "For the sequence in which Saturninus is crowned emperor on the exterior steps of the palace, we used a lot of low, wide angles to emphasize the grandeur of the moment, and to build images that would work with the lines of the architecture. For those reasons, I forgot about using a level camera. We wanted to enhance the power of the building, and Julie placed the actors in positions that would highlight the architecture."
Likewise, several lavish scenes set within the palace afforded Tovoli the opportunity to display Dante Ferretti's spectacular design work, which showcased an ornate swimming pool. "In that situation, I went with what the production design proposed to me," the cinematographer says. "The palace interior was built at Cinecitta, and I went there to look at it. Dante had put a mosaic in the pool, and some nice erotic drawings on the wall, and I wanted to make sure that the audience could see them.
"Once I looked at the palace interior on stage, we built a large structure on which I could place big, directional lights. I used 10Ks set well back to illuminate each of the round erotic paintings on the walls, letting each of them fall off a bit into shadow. Then I thought about how to bring out the mosaic in the pool. Before we added water to the pool, I began thinking about how we could build lights under the surface of the water and incorporate them into the design of the set. When we filled the pool with water, though, we discovered that the water was a bit dirty, so we drained the pool again and factored that knowledge into our approach. I asked the people who were working on that part of the set to research real pool lights, and they found some that were strong enough to cut through the water and become a significant element in the overall design.
"I also decided to put a little backlight on each of the set's columns to separate them a bit from the walls. There was a dome in the roof, so we used four 20Ks to create a shaft of light from above. Once I did that, though, I felt that the drawings were lit a bit too prominently, so I took those lights down a bit on the dimmer. That's the best moment for a cinematographer— when you can play with the lights a bit, adding here and subtracting there. At that point in the process, I decided to add a 1/4 CTO to enhance the warmth of the walls. For the big party sequence in the palace, I switched to full CTO to make things really warm and red, as if these people were going to keep reveling all night long. There was also a big translucent wall at the back, so I added some fire effects behind it to add some depth to the background."
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