What film stock did you choose?
I used Kodak 5245 for all exteriors and CGI shots [less than one percent of the film]. On overcast days when the light level was too low, I used Vision 5297 — I avoided using this stock with CGI-related shots due to its older grain structure [which makes compositing more difficult]. For stage interiors and night exteriors I used Kodak 5279.
One thing that really stood out in the footage I've seen is the beauty of these Tibetan costumes. You have really captured their incredible richness.
Usually, I shoot with back-lighting, but I couldn't [on Seven Years] because I would have lost the nice colors of the beautiful costumes. So I did what I once never said I would do: I shot [outside] with three-quarter front-light! Those costumes are not only colorful, they are made with such rich and shiny materials that it would be a pity not to light them.
On interiors, I didn't try to front-light [the actors] but I always tried to place a bit of light — beams or streaks — on the costumes. Sunlight falling on a deep red, bright yellow, or dark yellow costume made with silk brocade and other shiny materials looks very good on-screen.
One recurrent motif in this film is that of discovery: Harrer, for example, discovers Tibet, then Buddhism, and finally himself. And in a few places you seemed to convey that with a subjective camera position that put the audience in Harrer's eyes. I am thinking of that scene where he first meets the Dalai Lama.
Yes, I wanted the audience to share what Brad [as Harrer] feels when he first discovers the Dalai Lama. When entering this big room, he sees someone sitting on the throne but can't quite make him out too clearly. The smoke and incense clears as Brad gradually walks closer, revealing the Dalai Lama — a little boy — sitting on a throne.
We actually started wide as if it were Brad's point-of-view entering the room, and then just followed him up to the throne: we used a 40mm, which remained sharply in focus throughout the scene. At first, the Dalai Lama was framed far away, making him very small; I left him dimly lit by the window behind him as if he was hiding in the shadows. As the camera moved towards him, he became clearer -- even though he was still somewhat shadowed; I used this to try and make him somewhat mysterious.
How did your shooting go in Canada? You were based near Mt. Waddington, a two-and-half hour flight from Vancouver, and a four-hour drive from any place!
We were all expecting -40°C temperatures, but the lowest temperature was -12°C; most of the time it didn't reach freezing and there were never any major camera problems. Lightingwise, we tried to shoot as much as possible on the northern-exposed slopes to take advantage of the shade for as long as possible. Since we were often shooting in locations where we couldn't sling in electronic equipment, I didn't use much artificial light. For safety reasons, we also had to lighten helicopter loads as much as possible, and because we used the helicopter to create strong wind which generated the feeling that the action was occurring in a storm — putting out lights and screens was out of the question. Fortunately, most of these scenes did not require much light for my required look.
One of the amazing shots of the film is when Harrer and Aufschnaiter are climbing Nanga Parbat, Aufschnaiter slips, slides out of control down an icy slope, then goes over a cliff only to be caught by his rope and left dangling in mid-air with this spectacular landscape in the background. Tell me a bit about that.
Actually, we shot that scene in three different locations [around Mt. Waddington] because we couldn't find one location which allowed us to capture all the different points of view. All the shots looking down at Aufschnaiter as he slides down the slope were shot in an astounding, but very scary landscape — at the bottom was a real cliff with a drop of some 900 feet. At the top of the slope, we were standing on a very small platform which was iced over. The security crew was nervous and insisted that we all be roped in.
For the shots looking up, we cheated and went to another location at the bottom of a huge cliff along a frozen lake. In both situations, Brad and David were very courageous. They had trained for the climbing scenes for two weeks in the Dolomites before the filming started, and did their own stunts. When Aufschnaiter [Thewlis] slips and falls off the cliff, David really falls for 30 meters before being caught by his rope.
We used two cameras — a wide angle and a zoom — back on the other camera. A-camera operator Martin Kenzie did a perfect synchronized zoom-back starting close on Aufschnaiter, and then zooming very rapidly while Aufschnaiter falls to reveal a small character in a huge, frightening and hostile landscape. Fortunately for the story, the weather was very cloudy and dark, meaning that I had to use the Vision 500T. Even with such a fast stock, we shot wide open with the 11-to-1 zoom; it worked out nicely, even though this lens is not the best in terms of focus when doing a shot like this against sky.
The scene where Harrer learns from one of the ministers [Kungo Tsarong, played by the Japanese actor, Mako] that the invading Chinese have destroyed the Dalai Lama's village is an amazing piece of work: it takes place in a long, dark corridor; beginning with both actors in darkness; and ending with Harrer literally standing in the light when the point of the scene is made.
When we started blocking that scene, I had no idea how to light the shot. There were four archways along one side of the corridor, and I knew that I could put a light behind each. But I also knew that was not enough for people walking and talking in a 60- to 80-foot corridor. [Laughs.] We were shooting with a Steadicam and the ceiling, both walls and, of course, the ground were in frame; there were also some columns we had to avoid. At first I said, "This is going to be a problem to light this shot properly." But then I saw the possibility of putting two lights behind each archway: one was a clear 10K, acting like strong sunlight, coming through the door as the sunlight does in Tibet. For a diffused source coming from another direction, I used 5Ks with 216 diffusion. To create fill light for the entire length of the corridor, I put some big lights at far end [at the head of the corridor] with a quite a throw [of illumination]. At the beginning of the shot, Brad and Mako were in black against a very bright background; I played with that by creating a bit of mystery for your eye to focus on. First, you heard their voices and then looked down the corridor too see them in silhouette. The fill light increased as they moved towards camera, becoming even greater as they passed light coming through each archway. By the time they reached the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the camera to say their lines, Brad and Mako were properly lit. Of course, I used a tiny bit of smoke [in the corridor] in order to maintain the film's natural look.
