Hoffman also perceived an interesting contrast between the lovers’ gradual shedding of inhibitions and the Victorian era’s restrictive social mores. "The play is really about the breakdown of conditioning and conditioned responses," he offers. "I very much liked the idea of these Victorian costumes being destroyed. All of the high necklines, long sleeves and corsets could come off in the forest as a visual complement to the idea of the breakdown of conditioning. The choice of the time period had a certain amount to do with that.
"Also, when I lived in Italy, I always watched these groups of older men who inhabit the little towns. They’ve grown up together and had certain dreams, most of which haven’t come true. They’re very much bonded to one another, even though they argue and fight—all the time. The bond between them is so deep that it’s beyond ever needing to pay a compliment to each other or express affection. When I’d see a group of five guys sitting around a well in a Tuscan square, I could immediately identify them with the struggling local actors in the play."
The filmmakers’ main challenge was to marry the light, comedic elements of the script with the nocturnal Magic Forest setting, where the various pairs of lovers find themselves at the mercy of mischievous fairies. "The biggest single decision we faced was, ’Do we shoot this on location or in a studio?’" Stapleton recalls. "After trekking around a lot of woodlands in Tuscany, we realized that it was more a practical decision than an artistic one—spending 40 nights in the woods doing Shakespeare just wasn’t feasible. It would have been freezing cold and we’d never have gotten the conditions we needed. We also realized that real woods presented a tremendous control problem in terms of lighting. We didn’t want to have dark, blue moonlight throughout an hour-and-a-half-long comedy. Therefore, the issue became how to design lighting that wouldn’t have the look of a Disney film. We still needed to see the characters, though, because it’s a comedy and the audience has to feel that the woodland is enchanted."
Retreating to the legendary Cinecitta Studios in Rome, where Federico Fellini directed some of his most dazzling works, Stapleton and Hoffman went about creating their own Magic Forest. "One of the first things we discovered was that Lucianna Arrighi, our production designer, couldn’t afford to build the woodland from scratch," Stapleton says. "Instead, Luciana had real trees brought into Soundstage 5. It’s cheaper to do it that way, but it’s also a nightmare, because the leaves can fall off or change from being glossy, watery things to dead, horrid, crispy things. After looking at tests, we decided to paint all of our branches, leaves and trees. The trunks of the trees in particular were very dull and boring in tests. The green and brown colors of trees in woodlands really absorb light, so they tend to look dead on film. I think just about every cinematographer has been caught shooting dead forest at night. It’s a very tricky photographic thing, because when you look at it by eye, you think, ’That looks all bright and nice!’ Then you photograph it, and it barely shows up on film."
Stapleton was also inspired by some of the simple, homespun effects in director Max Reinhardt’s 1935 film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (photographed by Hal Mohr, ASC). "One of the reasons Michael wanted to make this film was that he didn’t think any of the previous movie versions of the play were any good," he states. "But I thought the 1935 film was kind of interesting from a photographic standpoint. An operator friend of mine, Chris Lombardi, faxed me a magazine article in which Hal Mohr talked quite extensively about tricks they had used in the film. They put sparkles and diamonds all over the leaves and trunks to make them look as if they had some life. I showed the article to Lucianna, and we ended up using little sequins and reflective materials for highlights on our leaves and trunks. Photographically it’s very subtle but quite effective; the audience is not going to come out of the theater saying, ’Gosh, what were they doing with those trees?’ The highlights we added made the light and environment much more substantial and magical, which is what you’re trying to do with A Midsummer Night’s Dream."
The huge set was split into two entirely different segments— the kingdom of Oberon (Rupert Everett), a great valley where former Etruscan temples and tombs are overgrown with roots and greenery, and the feminine world of Titania (Michelle Pfeiffer), Queen of the Fairies, a more densely wooded classical temple. Hoffman and Stapleton decided to further delineate the two worlds by designing completely different lighting schemes for each. "In broad strokes, we decided that we’d give the female world of Titania a warmer look," Stapleton details. "The background trees and darkness would tend to be on the cooler side, but the faces of the characters in the foreground would stay warm. I used either a 1/4 or 1/2 CTO on the foreground lights in Titania’s world, in contrast to the clean blue backlights with no gels. For the male world, however, we went with an overall cooler feeling—a more blue look, although we never went to actual blue. There, we used either a 1/4 CTO on the foreground lights or nothing at all, depending on the scene. We opted for what I call a kind of permanent twilight, so it never really felt dark. It was extremely important to us that the audience would never have to screw their eyes up to peer into the screen, because it’s so counter to comedy to do that. Since the movie takes place over one night, we also decided that the weather should change quite a bit. I used varying degrees of smoke and atmosphere; some sections of the wood would be clear and others not as much, so that we’d have some texture and variation in this one woodland setting."
Still, Hoffman knew there was something missing when he studied Stapleton’s tests. "I knew that the forest was supposed to feel artificial," he says. "The lighting concept was intentionally very artificial, with these very warm golden night exteriors, so I wasn’t bothered by that. And then Oliver figured it out. He said, ’Nothing’s moving.’ And that was a major, major [discovery]. How are we going to make the forest move, yet not ruin the dialogue?"
[ continued on page 3 ]