How does Jean-Jacques differ from other directors you've worked with?
Being a good photographer, Jean-Jacques has an amazing visual sense. He also has a lot of taste about pictorial culture from all periods — 12th Century Italian to modern times. And even in his private life, he's very good with framing and is very sensitive to light. When surveying a set or location, he looks at it with its actual light; for him, a set and its lighting are always intertwined.
How does that affect what you attempt to do with your camera?
Jean-Jacques is very demanding, but also very indulgent. I have done some shots with Jean-Jacques that I would never shoot with other directors. I would say to them, "It is not possible." But with Jean-Jacques, I know I can take greater risks.
Very often in this movie, for example, I had to change stops when we were doing pans from exteriors to interiors, or interior to interior within the same shot. Due to the brightness outside, and the small size of the set, I couldn't bring in enough light to balance the interior and the exterior. So I sometimes had to make a change of up to three stops, which is quite a lot. With another filmmaker, I wouldn't take that kind of risk: either the director would blame me if the shot didn't turn out right, or he would use the shot in the final cut — even if it was a bad one — so long as he was pleased with the acting. And that would be upsetting because I wouldn't be with him in the cutting room to tell him not to use it! With Jean-Jacques, I don't have to worry: if the shot is bad, he will see that it is bad and won't use it. And he won't blame me because he will know that he pushed me.
Did shooting in Argentina make any difference in your efforts to re-create Tibet?
Not when you start building sets that are really replicas of what you have seen in Tibet, and add 75 real monks coming from Dharamsala, India. Then with 75 other Tibetans from all over the world, and authentic costumes, [the look] all comes together. You are in Argentina but actually you have the Tibetan point-of-view. So what you photograph is Tibet.
How did you prepare for this film?
I always try to get as much information about the period [of a picture] in order to recreate an accurate atmosphere. For this film, I read over many photographic books of Tibet. I also read a few books to get a better knowledge of Tibetan culture, Tibetan history, and Buddhism. I also looked over thousands of very beautiful photographs that Jean-Jacques took.
I saw some of those — he took pictures of everything from yak herders to the Potala! Someone said he took 17,000?
For weeks in Tibet, Jean-Jacques took thousands of photographs with a Leica, shooting under any conditions! He would shoot in a very dark room with only butter lamps burning, use a very wide lens at full aperture, and expose for a half-second. There was almost no light in the room, but he had an amazing photograph because he exposed at full aperture for half-a-second.
You also spent a week of traveling in Tibet?
Jean-Jacques thought it would be a good idea if I went to Tibet to see the light, so I spent about five days traveling with a guide to Lhasa, Shigatse, and Gyangtse. I kept a very strong memory of what I saw there: the light, all the interiors, the richness of all those places full of dust — because nothing has moved in that country for years — and grease — due to all the butter lamps!
So your approach to the film was shaped by the need to capture the texture and feel of a culture lit by butter lamps.
Jean-Jacques was expecting me to execute realistic and naturalistic lighting. Through low-key images, he wanted to convey lots of mystery in the frame, but the light in the temples was to appear exactly as it did in real life.
How did you achieve that effect on the set?
For interiors, I tried to work with high contrasts because this is the type of natural lighting you find inside Tibetan houses. Most of the time, I underrated my 500 ASA stock — Kodak Vision 5279 — since I was dealing with a very high contrast and didn't want milky shadows. I rated the film at a 320 ASA, and then printed it in the high 30s. That should result in very rich shadows when we go to a dupe for a final release
Tell me a little bit about the equipment you used.
We used two Platinum Panaflex and one Panaflex lightweight for the Steadicam. Although we were often working in very difficult conditions — strong wind, thick dust, heat, or cold — we didn't have any problems with those cameras. And during five months of filming, we did not get a single scratch on the negative!
Our set of Primo lenses included 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm, 180mm, and an 11-to-1 zoom; we mostly used the 40mm and 180 mm. Of course, we used all the other lenses but Jean-Jacques likes to shoot wide establishing shots that display the entire the set, and then go in very close on people. When shooting the outstanding exterior landscapes, Jean-Jacques always had the temptation to use a 40mm, or sometimes a 35mm, in order to go very wide with small characters.
Jean-Jacques tends to favor what he calls "my short lens" and wide-angle shots, doesn't he?
Yes. [Laughs.] I think Jean-Jacques shot 20 to 30 percent of this movie with the 35mm, 40mm, and 50mm [in anamorphic].
With Jean-Jacques, I know that there will always be a shot when we frame the entire set from one corner, usually with a 40mm or 50mm. [Laughs.] So I come prepared to light through the windows as much as I can! On this shoot, it was pretty easy because all of the sets were supposed to be dark and lit either by shafts of light coming through the windows, or by the glow of numerous butter lamps. Of course, when using such a wide-angle lens with low camera placement, you can forget about back-lighting the set because most of the time the low ceilings were in the frame. I helped overcome this thanks to a few soffits put in by the production designer.
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