Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
72 DGA QUARTERLY DGA: So how much freedom do the actors have on your sets? Can they improvise on the spot or do they have to hit their marks? LAWRENCE: They have a little bit of freedom, mainly before we start blocking and rehearsing, and Dave also has some free- dom, which is part of what makes it feel naturalistic. But they are planned shots. We don't just send him in, saying "Grab what you can." On Sparrow, I'd say we did the opposite, and we'd have natu- ralistic lighting, but the framing was very di erent. Everything was on dollies and photographed in a much more formal way, and we'd shoot much wider and hold on things a lot longer. DGA: What was the toughest scene to shoot in Sparrow? WILLEMS: There were a few. One was the opening ballet. We shot at a working opera house in Budapest, so we could only get in at 11 p.m., start pre-lighting at 2 a.m., and start shooting at 6 a.m. And shooting at the airport was very hard, and then we shot nine days and nights at this apartment on the sixth fl oor of a derelict building. So you're deal- ing with a lot of logistics and language barriers with the locals. LAWRENCE: And in terms of tone and our aesthetic approach, I saw it very di erently from The Hunger Games. I tend to think in images, so I imagined a very di erent photography and bold color palette for Sparrow, something more classical, with more symme- try, and a bit more graphic. Hold on shots a lot longer. WILLEMS: You don't want to get stuck in one thing. Some people want to shoot every movie handheld—that's their style. And you see lighting where it's always the same. But my approach is always to be as honest as possible, and to try and make whatever world we're creating feel as real and authentic as I can. It's not glossy and fancy with showy lighting. It's always grounded in reality. DGA: It's interesting that you shot some of Catching Fire on IMAX, but instead of typically using it for wide landscapes, you went for a lot of close-ups. WILLEMS: Yeah, and people were like, "You can't do that!" Why not do it? Some of the nicest shots we got were those IMAX close- ups, where you see every little drop of sweat. DGA: You shot your fi rst Hunger Games movie on fi lm, and then WILLEMS: For Sparrow, [production designer] Maria [Djurkovic] had an album of over 1,500 images we could look at, and I remem- ber on [the Fox TV series] Touch we looked at a lot of stills as it was set in a lot of di erent locations—Iraq, Tokyo—so I made a sort of visual library of how I saw things. LAWRENCE: For The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, we watched Vietnam fi lms like Platoon and Apocalypse Now and they were a big inspiration for us as I saw Catching Fire as a war fi lm. I loved how sweaty everyone was in those Vietnam fi lms, so I made everyone sweaty in the arena, to give that sense of tropical heat. But we usu- ally look at stills mainly, and Jo scouts a lot with me too, and we take a lot of location pictures, and even early on we talk about how we'll shoot scenes, and possible blocking. DGA: Do you storyboard? LAWRENCE: Not usually, but on Hunger Games I'd storyboard and [previsualize] the big complicated VFX sequences, mostly as people need some sort of reference point when you have a big pro- duction meeting on how you're technically going to do it. That way you can show them and inch through it. WILLEMS: It's like chewing a big elephant. You have to take a little piece at a time, or you'll never get through it. DGA: The Hunger Games made great use of both real environments and stage work. LAWRENCE: Almost all the interiors were sets—and pretty mas- sive ones, like the Control Room. WILLEMS: I think the key to our look is that we both like some- thing that looks naturalistic and real and authentic, and we both always go after that. DGA: Is it fair to say that despite all the complexity and many mov- ing parts of those fi lms, you both took a very unfussy, un-showy ap- proach? LAWRENCE: Yes, I call it "faux-naturalism." It was all handheld with Steadicam, and we have this great operator, Dave Thompson, who's a key part of the team as he's done a bunch of movies with Jo, and he did I Am Legend with me, and funnily enough, he's also done movies with Jennifer, as he works with David O. Russell. CONTINUED ON PAGE 75 PHOTOS: PHOTOFEST "I think our digital work has a very cinematic look, partly because of the way Jo lights it." —FRANCIS LAWRENCE The Hunger Games: Catching Fire The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2