| |
by Anthony Vagnoni |
|
 |
Milka, the European chocolate brand, has for years billed its products as “Zart & Dunkel,” loosely translated as ‘dark and smooth.’ In a spot from Ogilvy & Mather/Frankfurt titled “Darkness,” the assignment for director Matthias Bierer of Neue Sentimental Film and director of photography Tony Mitchell was to translate that claim into visuals. More to the point, he had to do it via a script that called for most of the action to take place in the dark.
In the opening frames of this spot, we see a woman who’s supposed to be lit only with moonlight coming in through a cabin window. As she and her male companion banter in a suggestive way, audience expectations start to build. What is it they’re talking about? Love? Sex? Even better—it’s chocolate. “What I see here—and what I don’t see—is making this really interesting,” the director says. The challenge, of course, was in making what you don’t see visible.
As the couple’s repartee plays out—seems they’re talking about the Milka bar, which is almost gone—the man lights a match, providing a gentle pocket of illumination, just enough to throw a little light on the situation, not to mention the set. When this match fires up, the director adds, the brief called for audiences to instantly recognize the traditional Milka surroundings: the rustic pine cabin, the Alpine setting, the moonlight streaming in.
As he approached this job, Bierer says he found a sweet irony: “I mean, talking with a cinematographer about lighting a film set where you can’t see anything, that’s a really funny situation.”
So the challenge was to bring out the richness of the set, the product and the setting, and do it with as little light as possible—and, on top of that, to make the light look natural. To make sure they could pull this off, Bierer adds, everything was very precisely planned and tested beforehand. “We needed to make sure that it was working visually,” he explains. “We needed to be very subtle in our lighting, yet we couldn’t leave these visual cues and details out.”
Bierer admits to being a little concerned about this, but he and Mitchell have collaborated for years, and he trusts this relationship will work towards finding solutions. “We know we have a vision, we know what we want, we know how to make this great,” he says. One element that immediately came into play was the film stock—Kodak VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219—which would have to be perfectly matched to the lighting demands. Here the task was handed over to the Director of Photography.
|
 |
“I love it when the phone rings and it is Matthias asking me to come out and play,” says Mitchell. “I know that, no matter what the project is, in the end it will be interesting and a challenge.” The team carefully went over the set sketches, the props and the wardrobe choices, to make sure they weren’t getting themselves into trouble with their color pallet in what was going to be essentially a very dark environment, Mitchell turned to the key task: making the light look like it came from a match being lit.
“I talked with my gaffer, Jan Zscheile, about how to achieve the look without being so obvious about how we did it,” Mitchell explains. “The first thing we talked about of course was the use of a flicker generator with multiple small sources dimmed down to the right color temperature and output. In the end we did in fact use three very small bulbs on a flicker generator dimmed down and taped that to the palm of the man’s hand.” This would generate the primary light source when he lit the match.
But this proved problematic, Mitchell says. In the close-up shot, the light appeared harsh. They turned to their lighting supplier, who it seems had in his possession an old Fresnel lens—a Big-Eye 10K—turned out to be just what was needed.
“We mounted it on two low grip stands, and on another grip stand behind it we fixed a small square of plywood holding 12 candles,” says Mitchell. “By moving the candles away from the lens, we were able to flood the candlelight out to take advantage of their soft, flickering fire light. It was interesting to see everybody, including the agency and client, standing around watching us put this little low-tech lighting setup together. When all the candles were lit, you could have heard a pin drop in that studio.”
Bierer, who says he doesn’t understand—nor wants to understand—the mechanics behind how VISION3Film works, nonetheless says it was a big part of the solution on this job, since it enabled Mitchell’s candlelit approach to succeed. “It’s not low-tech at all, it’s actually the highest tech you can imagine,” he says. With VISION3, “now I can start shooting films the way I want to,” by which he means the way he envisions them, unencumbered by issues of low light or difficult set-ups.
For Bierer, the stock allows him, as a director, to choose as much or as little as he wants to reveal to his audiences. “And you can do this very precisely,” he adds. “It offers me the freedom to judge the look for myself. Once you’ve worked with it a couple of times—which I’ve done from then on—you can see how easy it is to use every detail there is on the set. That’s what I really love about it. I’m sitting in the chair again, in the front seat. Tony had the courage to use this, and in the process we created an atmosphere that is almost natural.”
|
 |
The edit was pretty straightforward, according to freelance editor Katherin Schmoll, who edited the spot at Optix in Hamburg, the German branch of the Toronto-based post production company. “What struck me about the job was the look, considering that the whole spot takes place in the dark,” says the editor. “Everything looked great. I was very impressed.”
She wasn’t the only one. One thing that struck Mitchell was that, during the transfer and color correction—which he supervised with Bierer—the agency art director broke into spontaneous applause at one point in the color correction suite. “He was that impressed with the quality of the picture, with the look,” says the cinematographer.
|
 |
| |
Mitchell’s choice, Kodak’s VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219/7219, represents the latest advancement in film stock development. It builds on the capabilities of VISION2 Films, such as its outstanding overall look and image structure, with a host of added improvements. The entire line of VISION3 Films provide advantages from capture through post, providing users with greater control and flexibility at every phase of the filmmaking process, in both digital and traditional workflows.
“I’m not sure who at Kodak is responsible for the advances in the technology that VISION3 Film represents,” says Mitchell appreciatively, “but I’m sure they know how the industry feels about what they’ve done for us and our craft. In a business dominated by buzz words and catchphrases, HD has become just that—high definition. If you want real HD, then you work with VISION3 Film. The results are breathtaking.”
VISION3 Film’s advanced Dye Layering Technology (DLT) delivers reduced grain in shadows and higher signal-to-noise ratios when scanning low-light scenes. Mitchell says it literally “lets you see into the black, without having to compromise your highlights. You get both ends of it. I’m an intuitive cameraman, not a mathematician, but that’s what I love about VISION3 Film. I lit this Milka set with very little light, but was never worried about not being able to see things. I knew I could rely on the stock to capture all of the details.”
Kodak’s VISION3 family of film stocks allows the director and cinematographer’s collaboration to continually evolve, while delivering consistently reliable results.
Agency credits on the job go to Ogilvy & Mather Creative Directors Lars Huvart and Gerd Neumann and Producers Michael Heinemeyer and Claudia Schmidt. Additional production credits go to assistant cameraman Martin Bethge and Neue Sentimental Films producer Meike Varga.
|
|
|
