For night scenes on Great Pulteney Street, Quinn tried an old lighting technique that was new to him. “I like the way the cinematographers working in the Forties and Fifties made light appear soft by using hard light spread over a large area,” he says. “They didn’t have the stop to be able to bounce a light very often, and at night they needed to get a stop of T5.6 or T8, so they had to use direct and hard light. And they learned how to make this look natural. I’m just starting to understand how to do it.”

In a scene where George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) is on the street, counting his money after getting fleeced, Quinn decided to forgo directional sources and diffusion. “That never looks real to me on night exteriors,” he says. Instead, he wanted the light to appear as though it was coming from many directions. To that end, his crew positioned six Nine-light Mini-Brutes across the street, spacing them every 10' over a 60-foot distance. “We then cut them up with blades to project some shadows. But because each unit has multiple bulbs, it sends nine different shadows. When a horse or carriage passes through, the overall effect feels soft, but you still see the shape projected on the building behind. But it doesn’t feel like a hard shadow; it’s an ethereal shape.”

For Quinn, Vanity Fair’s greatest challenge was the race against time. This sometimes meant a last-minute change in shot design, and it certainly complicated the film’s most difficult scene, an elegant ball that reveals many dramatic details and features 300 extras, an orchestra and night lighting. With only two days to light the sequence, Quinn and his crew wired about 60 paper lanterns to dimmers and bounced two dozen 2K Blondes gelled with varying shades of chocolate and amber for ambient lighting; they used 8'x8' and 12'x12' frames of 1⁄2 Soft Frost to soften the light for close-ups, and used the Rifa light as fill.

As the clock ticked, however, Nair became increasingly discontented with an important piece of action: George Osborne’s adulterous flirtation with Becky as they dance. “That sequence was feeling too stiff,” says Quinn. “Mira was feeling frustrated because the camera was on a dolly, and the shot didn’t feel intimate enough. She said, ‘What can you do?’” Quinn shouldered the camera and did a handheld take, and focus puller David Couzens had to follow his lead on the fly. “We were shooting at a T2.5, and David handled it effortlessly,” says the cinematographer. Though the energy was right, Quinn was worried the shot would stick out as being too rough. “But when I see it cut into the movie, it looks fine,” he says. “In fact, it gives the scene a little more intimacy. That taught me to be a little braver about mixing dolly shots with handheld shots. If the energy’s there with the acting, it works.”

Camera movement was typically accomplished with a dolly or a Steadicam, and a Super Technocrane was employed for a few key shots. “I’m a little reticent to put cameras on cranes unless there’s a really good reason to do it,” says Quinn. “One crane shot I like is a move at the beginning of the film. We start outside a school, pushing in on the backs of young Becky and two school matrons rushing her up the steps, through the main doorway and into the school hall. The matrons speak for a moment and then exit frame, leaving Becky alone in the austere room as the camera ascends. We made use of the full range of the Super Techno’s telescoping ability to make the shot work.”

Another crane shot illustrates the harsh dynamics of social snobbery at a party thrown by Lord Steyne. Dubbed the “Crimson Petal” sequence, after a song Becky sings before the hostile crowd, the scene starts with the camera high and wide, showing Becky enter the drawing room. Clusters of ladies turn heel when she approaches, leaving her alone in the center of the room. The shot provides “an overview of the shunning,” says Quinn. “We’re watching through the crystal of the chandelier while Becky is shunned once, and then she moves to another group of women and they slide away from her, and at that point the camera descends out of the chandelier. I felt it was a nicely motivated move. As Becky pauses and is feeling a bit defeated, the camera makes a subtle move to her. We want her to succeed, and the camera mimics that feeling. It’s a very simple move, and it precipitates the next cut, which sees Becky gather her resolve and persevere.”

The filmmakers planned another crane shot to show Becky’s triumph after her singing moves the matrons to tears, but there wasn’t time to execute it — preparing the period hairdos and costumes wound up taking six of the eight allotted hours. So again, Quinn took the camera in hand. As Nair recalls, “I wanted to film the song in a way that showed Becky getting more and more involved until she begins to almost weep inside herself. She transcends herself, and I really wanted Declan to shoot that moment because I knew he would understand it. I wanted him to go for her heaving bosom and the details in her dress, yet not lose her eyes at the most important moments of the song.”

Quinn and Klemens Becker, the A-camera/Steadicam operator, had an arrangement in such situations. If Quinn was asked to operate, he would do a first take and Becker would watch the monitor. Then Becker would jump back in and repeat and refine the shot. “Mira wants you to discover something in the framing,” says Quinn.

“I enjoyed the camera crew a lot,” he adds. “Klemens added good-humored leadership and always kept the camera crew smiling. And [B-camera operator] Jay J. Odedra was always discovering new images for us.”

After five films, it’s safe to say that Nair’s trust in Quinn is complete. “Mira’s level of trust in me is high when it comes to lighting choices and camera movement,” Quinn acknowledges, “but she’s also able to communicate quite clearly what she wants. She does that for the crew and cast at the beginning of every scene, which helps a lot. Our relationship gets better each time we work together.”

TECHNICAL SPECS Super 35mm 2.35:1 Arricam ST, LT; Arri 435 Cooke and Angenieux lenses Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 Printed on Kodak Vision 2383