Mike Figgis - Digital Film Making

I found Mike Figgis's book 'Digital Film-Making' an insightful text that helped me in preparing for the role of the director. I referred to the book throughout the production as it gave useful information that covered various aspects of film making, Mike Figgis often spoke about his experiences in both directing and cinematography also touching upon lighting, which was a something that I felt was a significant aspect to this film.

Mike Figgis shared my view in regard to lighting, or not lighting, he described the attitude toward lighting as being outdated due to the advancement in digital cameras and film stocks today being extremely light sensitive and capable of low light, in which I completely agree. Figgis (2007:67) states that “you’ve now got these amazing cameras that are incredibly light-tolerant — lightweight, beautiful pictoral quality, depth of field, the whole thing — but they continue to light as if it was 35mm”and humorously discussing it stating “Never use direct light — not unless the script says that someone’s being tortured with a bare bulb in their face” Figgis (2007:73). With this notion of films today being over lit I followed through with the concept of using completely natural light throughout the film, being partial to the use of a reflector. I came to this conclusion of shooting in available light for both the reason of aesthetics, and the scheduling of the film, I felt that we didn't have the time available to spend on lighting a scene because of a strict shooting calendar. I understand that my previous film had been heavily lit though we were shooting with a camera with very poor low light capabilities also I wanted the film to have a certain aesthetic which required navy lighting. I spoke to Tom Newsham the DP for this film about my idea of shooting without lamps, we discussed whether this would be practical and as we are both competent and familiar with the specification of the Sony F55 camera we quickly came to the conclusion that this would be easily achievable with what we had available. To further my understanding of this methodology I researched current films that had practised this approach to their cinematography and found that large productions such as Stanley Kubricks ‘Barry Lyndon’ which makes use of a very high speed f/0.7 Zeiss lens used by NASA and current films such as Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree of LIFE’ displaying that choice of equipment allows freedom of using only natural light.

I made it clear to the actors that I wouldn't be scheduling rehearsals for the scenes prior to filming, I took this idea from both DP/30 'Youtube' interviews with directors and actors also from reading Mike Figgis's 'Digital Film-Making' text. I found an interesting chapter on working with actors, and as I'm very inexperienced director I referred to the book heavily for advice. Mike Figgis spoke about how he understands rehearsals and why he chooses not to do them, I admired this viewpoint and felt that the method of refusing rehearsals would benefit my actors performances. I felt that because I was working with high caliber actors this notion wouldn't be of concern on their part, I'd had previous experience working with my supporting actor Francesca De Sica and knew that she would be comfortable doing the scenes for the first time on set. Mike Figgis's reason for shooting spontainiously is as follows, Figgis (2007:105) “they’ll impersonate the rehearsal because they already did something interesting”. I found that this was sound advice drawing a parallel to this in my previous film 'Still In The Night' where I strived to replicate Francesca's casting call video line delivery, however this proved to be unsuccessful, her performance became unnatural and forced. As well as not doing rehearsals I decided to give very simple direction to avoid complicating the scene I aimed for natural movement allowing the actors freedom within their performance, I've found that from watching interviews with actors many mention shooting being over controlled and as an actor they feel wasted on the character they are playing. From time to time myself and the actors would diverge from the script using it as a basis from which they can expand, and as the film went on it has changed a lot since its original conception however as an indie film maker this is something I've come to expect, once on set camera angels change, locations change, and each person brings something to the film which more often than not results in something greater than originally imagined.