{"id":6238,"date":"2015-05-23T11:27:15","date_gmt":"2015-05-23T11:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/?p=6238"},"modified":"2017-11-25T14:24:39","modified_gmt":"2017-11-25T14:24:39","slug":"chronic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/?p=6238","title":{"rendered":"chronic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yves Cape, AFC, SBC, became known as a cinematographer by filming Humanit\u00e9, directed by Bruno Dumont. He then continued to work with the director all the way through Outside Satan. He has also worked with Claire Denis, Martin Provost, C\u00e9dric Khan, Guillaume Nicloux, and designed the lighting on Patrice Ch\u00e9reau\u2019s latest film, Persecution.<\/p>\n

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Mexican director Michel Franco\u2019s film Lucia won the \u201cA Certain Regard\u201d award at Cannes in 2012. Tim Roth, the president of the jury for that parallel selection at Cannes, described the film as a powerful masterpiece. It was meant to be between the director and Tim Roth. Three years later, Michel Franco returns to Cannes, this time in the official selection, with his 4th film, Chronic, whose starring role is played by none other than\u2026 Tim Roth.<\/p>\n

Tim Roth plays a male nurse who assists terminally ill patients. The man inevitably gets involved in each of his patients\u2019 lives, creating emotional ties with them. These intimate relationships inspire him to rekindle his relationship with his estranged family.
\nStarring Tim Roth, Robin Bartlett, Sarah Sutherland, David Dastmalchian.<\/p>\n

Did you meet Michel Franco at Cannes, like you met Tim Roth?<\/p>\n

Yves Cape: [Laughter] No, not at all. He phoned me directly to propose I work with him on Chronic. He had liked my work on Bruno Dumont\u2019s films and on Claire Denis\u2019 White Material. I had really enjoyed After Lucia, a magnificent film with a very original staging. It was filmed with a Canon 5D, and the camera never pans or tilts.<\/p>\n

He wanted to repeat those choices on Chronic ?<\/p>\n

YC: We did allow ourselves some pans, tilts, the use of a Steadicam, and even dollies! But the editing is very simple, each shot is a scene.<\/p>\n

But they\u2019re still not master shots\u2026<\/p>\n

YC: No, the idea was to take our time and find the right shot, the one that would best tell the scene, and we only changed shots when absolutely necessary.<\/p>\n

The film editor was always present on set. Can you explain how Michael Franco shoots and edits the film at the same time?<\/p>\n

YC: Before beginning shooting, the assembly board was covered in black squares each bearing the number of a scene and its description. As shooting went forward, the editor, who was never far from the set, would insert the shots that we had just filmed instead of the black squares on his assembly board. The equipment was very simple: a MacBook, an enhanced speaker, and a hard drive.
\nMichel would travel between the editing room and the set and would sometimes decide to reshoot a scene, change the screenplay, or the assembly order of the scenes, or delete or add a scene because in the end he already had what he wanted in the scene we\u2019d just shot. He would react directly to what he had seen in the editing room.<\/p>\n

How did you manage the dailies?<\/p>\n

YC: We did a double recording so that we wouldn\u2019t have to wait for the machines to process the images. One of them was recorded in QuickTime Low Res, on a Pix240 recorder attached to the main camera. As soon as we\u2019d filmed the scene, the memory card would go straight to the editor. The other recording was recorded directly by the camera, and so when the \u201cbackup\u201d was ready, the dailies were colour timed on set by the DIT. As time went by, those dailies would replace the editors\u2019 QuickTime by a simple match.<\/p>\n

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It must have been unsettling to manage the changes in scenes or shots to be filmed\u2026 Did the shooting schedule change a lot?<\/p>\n

YC: At the end of our two weeks of preparation, Michel asked me what I thought the biggest risk was on our project. I told him that it was that we wouldn\u2019t follow the screenplay, because it was magnificent both in terms of its subject but also in terms of the way the film was orchestrated. After a day\u2019s work, Michel would change everything! The orchestration, the narration, everything was radically changed!
\nI was, of course, very unsettled. I was afraid: did we have the distance we needed to make all of those changes? But Michel\u2019s quick-wittedness, creativity, and the full trust he had in me ended up putting my mind at ease and it was the first time that I had been put at the heart of the creative process to that extent. I became a member of what I call the \u201cMexican Lab\u201d, the group composed of Michel and his producer, Gabriel Ripstein, who would constantly question the order of the scenes. So, in the end, it became really exciting!
\nWe shot five days a week, Saturdays were our day off and on Sundays I would go to his house and we\u2019d spend the day together. He would show me the storyboard, we\u2019d talk it over, and he\u2019d make his changes, and in function of that, we\u2019d readjust the week\u2019s shooting schedule. Michel isn\u2019t afraid of dailies, he isn\u2019t afraid of showing a bit of the unedited film to other people, he\u2019d invite people over on the weekends and ask for their opinion.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve written, in an article for the SBC, that, as far as possible, you strived for absolute naturalism. What did you mean?<\/p>\n

YC: Two years ago, on Wild Life, a film shot with \u201cno lighting\u201d, I was in a car with C\u00e9dric Khan and he told me the dailies he\u2019d seen the previous day were magnificent. He went on, \u201cdoes it piss you off that it looks so good and that you had nothing to do with it?\u201d Personally, I believe that mastering the sun, and by that I mean the sunlight, is also a way of designing a movie\u2019s lighting.
\nNow that my trust in digital cinematography is a bit more solid, I realize that I can really do very minimal lighting and get the result that I\u2019m looking for.
\nFor Chronic, a very realistic style of lighting was needed. With today\u2019s technological advances, I could have just filmed without adding any lighting, both during the day and at night. The question was: doe we like it? And do we think that it\u2019s appropriate for the scene?
\nIf yes, great! Action! If not, rather than add spots, I prefer to play with what I have already, meaning sunlight, the lamps being used as props, black or white sheets, diffusers on the windows, and as a last resort, very uncomplicated lighting. That, of course, only works if the director agrees to play along with me, and the shooting schedule and the cutting have to follow, but the advantage is the freedom and the flexibility the director gains for his staging.<\/p>\n

But you still used some spots?<\/p>\n

YC: I usually work with Lucioles for the nighttime shots, and production had rented some from TSF. They don\u2019t exist in the US, they\u2019re too small for them [laughter]. I thought I\u2019d use them for the indoors-nighttime shots, and I ended up not using them. However, I did use LiteGear LEDs. They\u2019re manufactured by a company founded by gaffers who have been making LEDs for many years now. They\u2019ve released a product called LiteMate, made with LEDs. It\u2019s about as powerful as a Kino Flo, but it\u2019s much lighter and much less bulky. You can put it on a tripod; you can put it on a window using Velcro or gaffers\u2019 tape. My gaffer was well supplied with LiteGear LEDs and created bicoloured panels (5,500 \/ 3,200 K) identical to the LiteMate series of panels, and, at my request, garlands made of bicoloured LEDs.<\/p>\n

\"chronic_photog9\" \"chronic_photog8\" \"chronic_photog7\" \"chronic_photog6\" \"chronic_photog5\" \"chronic_photog4\" \"chronic_photog3\" \"chronic_photog2\" \"chronic_photog1\"\"Chronic<\/p>\n

(Interview conducted by Brigitte Barbier for the AFC, translated from French by Alex Raiffe)<\/p>\n

Crew
\nFocus-puller: Tyler Harrison
\nKey Grip: Tony Schrader
\nGaffer: Gregory Lefevre
\nSteadicam Operators: Matthew Pearce and Justin Browne
\nDIT: Ryland Jones<\/p>\n

Equipment
\nCamera equipment: Otto Nemenz Los Angeles (Red Epic Dragon in 1.85 \u2013 4K RDC 4:1 and Leica Summilux lenses)
\nGrip: Chapman and Cinelease
\nPostproduction: M141 in Paris
\nColour Timing: Richard Deusy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yves Cape, AFC, SBC, became known as a cinematographer by filming Humanit\u00e9, directed by Bruno Dumont. He then continued to work with the director all the way through Outside Satan. He has also worked with Claire Denis, Martin Provost, C\u00e9dric Khan, Guillaume Nicloux, and designed the lighting on Patrice Ch\u00e9reau\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":6255,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[325,326,50],"class_list":["post-6238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-productions","tag-chronic","tag-michel-franco","tag-yves-cape"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6238"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6238\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6253,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6238\/revisions\/6253"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sbcine.be\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}