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Festival de Cannes / Festival de Cannes 2019 / Les entretiens au
Festival de Cannes / Anaesthetized by colour

Anaesthetized by colour
Dharius Khondji, AFC, ASC discusses his
work on Nicolas Winding Refn’s film "Too Old
To Die Young"
[ English ] [ français ] Partager  Tweeter  Linked  Réagir 
par Darius Khondji - 24 mai 2019

Held up by
the night
shooting of
Thom
Yorke’s new
music
video,
Darius
Khondji,
AFC, ASC,
was only able to make a quick round-trip to Cannes this year.
Too late, in any case, to be able to attend the screening at the
Grand Théâtre Lumière of a part of the series "Too Old To Die
Young", which he and Diego Garcia shot for Nicolas Winding
Refn. He was, however, able to find some time to speak with
us, by phone, about this shoot in Los Angeles… (FR)

How did you end up working on Nicolas Winding Refn’s new

project ?
Darius Khondji : I met Nicolas Winding Refn at Cannes two
years ago at a luncheon organized by Kodak. We immediately
began talking about our iPhones, which means that we got
along super well ! A few weeks later, he called me to offer me
the project of a mini-series that he was creating with Amazon.
He was clear, from the get-go, that this wouldn’t be a series of
small films, but rather a single film lasting about a dozen
hours, with an almost-experimental approach to framing,
lighting, and colour. That’s why he wanted me to be present for
the entire shoot. In the end, because of a few changes in
schedule (another film that I had agreed to shoot earlier), I was
able to perform the first half of the shot (five episodes) and
entrusted the rest of the episodes and the conclusion to Diego
Garcia.
Any references for this film ?
DK : I often say it, but my primary source of inspiration when I
shoot is music. Nicolas Winding Refn is on the same
wavelength. He had me listen to a couple of songs to prepare
for Too Old To Die Young and it’s often on the basis of musical
sensations that we began work on a particular scene. The
other uncommon thing about Nicolas is that he is colour blind.
The idea was to shoot this film for him—and for me—by basing
it on his own vision. I showed him colour photos from the
1970s by Stephen Shore that I like a lot and that seemed to
me to be a good starting point for some sequences… We had
precise discussions about the colours… That’s when I realized
that he couldn’t see blue-greys at all.
Little by little, a palette of primary colours emerged, with red
at the centre as a leitmotiv. They were often counterbalanced
by complementary colours in the same shot. That made me
think of Godard’s films from the 1960s in their use of colour...

Los Angeles is also at the heart of this series…

DK : A place that I discovered to be incredibly rich in visual
material. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, which was partially
shot in the same neighbourhood, was also a reference for the
way it used the locations. Nicolas Winding Refn also adores
the city seen from the inside of cars and this screenplay
wasn’t an exception to the rule… We perfected a strategy
shared by image and director so that we could make shooting
those scenes as light as possible and not have to rely on
Hollywood’s heavy artillery. In order to do that, we decided to
have the actors really drive the cars, and to shoot with a
shoulder-carried Arri Alexa Mini that was specially mounted so
it wouldn’t move around too much, and to light with a
structure installed on the roof of the car composed of eight
Astera tubes around the periphery of the roof, which could be
remote controlled by console.
The main advantage of these lights is that they require hardly
any cabling, and they are independently powered. Especially
when you can control them by WiFi in both colour (RVB) and
intensity. My camera operator was alone in the car with the
actors, and we followed behind in a technical van and
controlled the light and the colours on the monitor in real time.
These shots have a very "New Wave" style because of how free
the camerawork is and how natural the driving is, paired with a
very stylized and finely-tuned image.
The orange lighting of the city at night is quite different from
the sodium effect in Paris, for example…
DK : The tonality of the urban lighting is an orange that tends
towards red. A deformed sodium effect to meet up with the
blood colour that marks the series. To light those nights, I
mainly used Astera tubes, like on the cars, or Digital Sputnik
projectors to make industrial lights, remote controlled, lowered
with a dimmer or very strong in function of the effects… I also
used Arri SkyPanels closer to the actors and a few traditional
HMIs for the day scenes, always copiously diffused through
Magic Frost, which is my favourite diffuser.

There is a visually-striking, almost systematic use of mirrors

or panes of glass in both episodes… sometimes at unexpected
times.
DK : We really liked having characters that could be filmed
through windows or in reflection, in such a way that the
situation can’t be precisely identified. We often asked the set
designers to place mirrors or windowpanes in the sets so that
we could rely on them. Cutting the space up with walls,
creating almost invisible compartments that are only revealed
by their reflections…
What was your camera configuration ?
DK : We shot the entire thing with an Arri Alexa XT 3.4K in
"open gate", along with two Arri Alexa Minis when needed.
Because Nicolas hates the Steadicam, there are only shots
with "traditional" grip equipment on a dolly, sometimes on
tracks. Andy Shuttleworth (Boogie Nights, camera) who was
the cameraman on this series and I really liked how he worked,
since he came from a musical background, too (he’s also a
drummer). We worked a lot in 35mm and 40mm, instead of the
21mm or 18mm that Nicolas used to prefer. Faced with this
unleashing of colours, I wanted the camera to be more sober
and more "Bressonian". In fact, on each film, I need to feel a bit
haunted by someone. To feel with me one or more fathers of
the cinema. On this series, it was Robert Bresson… With the
rather frontal feel of long takes and long focals. I don’t know
who’s going to pick up on it, but there is indeed some Bresson
in there ! And then I must also cite Antonioni for the anti-
dramatic nature of the shots… I thought of them a lot while
shooting this series.
What about your lenses ?
DK : I wanted a certain antique patina in the image to
counterbalance the very contemporary aspect of the sets and
get closer to my "comfort zone" which is shooting on film. I
wanted to bring back a bit of the "Polaroid" look to the Alexa’s
digital image. The Panavision Vintage series was the answer,
with two advantages that seemed unbeatable to me : their
wide aperture and their capacity for close-up focusing. Two
criteria that these lenses met, and I often used them at around
T2 aperture, with the camera set at 1,200 or 1,600, and
sometimes 2,500 ISO. These series of lenses must, in my
opinion, be used within that range of aperture because
otherwise, as soon as you begin to close them above 2.8, they
lose all of their personality and look like any other modern
series of lenses. Between 1.4 and 2.5, these lenses bring a
certain amount of fragility to the image, a vibration in the air
that I like a lot even for contemporary projects.
It’s funny, José Luis Alcane, Almodovar’s cinematographer,
completely disagrees !
DK : In my opinion, there are only a few examples in cinema
where the depth of field is extraordinary… In Welles, Ozu, and a
few other filmmakers, too, but most of the time I think that
films gain in ambience when they have backgrounds that
aren’t completely in focus. That depends entirely on the
filmmaker, and I could imagine myself making a film at
11 aperture tomorrow if I were asked to… Well, I’m not so sure
about that ! Maybe I’d battle with him a bit before being totally
sure of myself !
You see, I think that it’s great that there are so many different
opinions within the world of cinema. Otherwise, we’d all be
making the same image. It’s very exciting for met tos see
things that I don’t know how to do myself…and to exchange
points of view. That’s the proof that cinema is a complex and
living art.
(Interview conducted by François REumont for the AFC, and
translated from French by Alexander Baron-Raiffe)

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