Tovoli faced an even greater challenge toward the end of the shoot, when the production traveled to Pula, Croatia, to capture footage at a crumbling coliseum. These scenes—which showed Titus and his soldiers returning from battle, and Lucius deciding the fate of Aaron's baby son— would eventually bookend the film. "Julie's original idea was to shoot at the real Coliseum in Rome, but the city said no," the cinematographer reveals. "Instead, we went to Pula, which was formerly a region of Italy. The Romans built another coliseum there, and it's almost as big as the one in Rome. We initially were going to shoot those scenes in the daytime, but the sun didn't really work with the clay on the soldiers' armor. It was too realistic, so we decided to shoot them at night instead.
"Shooting at night involved a lot of prep, and it was very cold at our location because we were there in the middle of winter. We sent a crew of grips and electricians ahead to the location for several weeks to rig the structure with big lights. When we flew to Pula from Cinecitta, we had to go into a holding pattern, and the gaffer suddenly switched everything on. It was a really magnificent sight from the air, one that the ancient Romans never had a chance to enjoy!
"We lit the first sequence in the coliseum entirely with Maxi-Brutes," he details. "My first plan was to use a total of 2,000 kilowatts, but the producers came to me and said, 'We like what you're doing, but we've spent almost all of the money, so could you rethink things a little bit?' I cut 400 kilowatts from my lighting package, for a total of 1,600. It was just barely enough to do the scene. All of the remaining Maxi-Brutes were set up on big towers around the structure, and they were wired to a dimmer board. When we cut into close-ups, I had small amounts of supplemental lighting. For example, there's one shot of Titus's grandson near a fire, so we created that type of illumination with firebars. In order to cast shadows of the flames, we placed a Fresnel light behind the firebar, removing the Fresnel [lens] from the fixture so that the shadows of the flames would be a bit sharper.
"At the end of the film, the story goes back to the coliseum, and we had to create a fake sunrise. We shot that sequence against a bluescreen backing so the effect could later be added digitally in post."
Digital technology was also used to create a series of surrealistic interludes that Taymor dubbed "Penny Arcade Nightmares." In both the play and film versions of Titus, these sequences are used to delve into the interior landscapes of the characters' minds. For the motion picture, Tovoli photographed various live-action elements that would later be digitally composited by Kyle Cooper of the Los Angeles-based visual design company Imaginary Forces, who has lent his skills to a number of striking title sequences, including the eye-catching opening of David Fincher's Seven. "We shot all of the Penny Arcade Nightmares at the same time, using greenscreen backings," Tovoli relates. "I accentuated the colors a bit, knowing that they would be desaturated later in post. In terms of the lighting, I knew I would have to do something a bit more extreme, so I made the lights a bit brighter, and really highlighted the actors' faces and eyes. That way, I knew that even after the colors were washed-out and changed in post, each specific image within the combination of elements would remain sharp and strong.
"I really liked the way those sequences turned out—they were a pure form of art that combined photography and modern digital techniques, and they brought a very expressionistic style to the film."
For the tale's climactic banquet sequence, in which the seemingly mad Titus invites his enemies to a home-cooked dinner with a rather gruesome denouement, Taymor and Tovoli took advantage of another bit of modern technology, utilizing the Time-Slice camera-array system to "freeze" the scene's key moment. The system (which consisted of 120 lenses in a long, curved, self-contained housing) was provided by the London company Mad Cow, which also provided technicians to help operate the equipment. "We were initially going to do that scene at a real location, but once the people from Mad Cow explained what they were going to do, I realized that the ceiling was too low," Tovoli says. "The scene required a lot of light the exposure level needed to be at T8 or T11 instead of a T2.8—so we had to build a set at Cinecitta. There were a lot of takes where we would see the full scene, however, so I had no place to hide lights. Instead, I put the lights up on overhead catwalks. I was using a series of 5K Fresnels aimed through diffusion; I prepared for one day, and then we shot on another day."
For all of the film's extravagant touches, Tovoli says that one of his favorite scenes was among the simplest in terms of the lighting scheme. Toward the end of the story, a despondent Titus sits alone in his bathtub, scribbling nonsensical drawings on scraps of paper. "I like the look of that scene very much," the cinematographer relates. "The place where we shot it was very small, so we placed the camera outside the door and used a very wide-angle lens—at least an 18mm. I didn't have much room for lights, so I placed a tower outside the room, and aimed an 18K HMI through the small window in the shot. I also added a small, warm, slightly diffused 1K Fresnel light on the right-hand side of the room for Anthony Hopkins' face, along with a bit of smoke to enhance the look of the steam from the bath. I also bounced another small 1K to add a bit of warmth to the wall. It was a simple but elegant look, a bit like a painting."
The cinematographer is quick to add that he rarely draws direct inspiration from specific paintings, and maintains that while painting is often cited as an influence on photography, the reverse statement is also true. "I don't like when I go to a movie and the director has told the cinematographer to take a great deal of inspiration from a painting—to reproduce on the screen what has already been done on the canvas in a magnificent way," he says. "In that type of situation, when you talk about your work, you find yourself saying things like 'On this film I was inspired by Caravaggio.' Personally, I feel embarrassed and totally ridiculous saying things like that, because after all, Caravaggio is Caravaggio!
"I feel that film is a fantastic art form on its own, with its own strong rules and traditions. In fact, in this century, painting has also been greatly influenced by photography. Many modern painters work from photography; they take a picture, project it, and then re-create and transform it on a canvas. In that way, photography has become a tool for painters. Photography has its own laws and aesthetics that make it different from painting, but it's just as important as an art form. I search to obey, as completely as I can, the specific grammar of this specific visual language."