Coward Pre-Production Part 1

After a nice Christmas break with my family back home in Galway I'm back in London with 2 weeks to go before the "Coward" shoot begins.

I've been speaking with the director about this project for about 18 months on and off so we've had quite a while to talk about a visual approach for the story.

We wanted a more classical and painterly approach for this piece rather then the handheld/docu-realism approach thats been popular in more recent War features. We've talked a lot about David Lean's movies and how he used the width and depth of the anamorphic frame to stage scenes, using sustained master shots that develop into tighter coverage and generally minimising close ups. We've also talked about more contempory movies like Snow Falling on Cedars for its colour palette and it's visual treatment of the weather, as thats a key character in our story.

For my own research I've been looking at Robert Richardson's work on Snow Falling on Cedars for its quality of light and the use of contrast within the frame; William Fraker's work on the desert sequence in Close Encounters of the Third Kind; Owen Roizmans lush compositions in Wyatt Earp, and finally John Toll's work on The Thin Red Line and Captain Corelli's Mandolin.

I'm shooting on Fuji Stock using their older Eterna 500T which I intend to PULL process 1 stop to soften the colour palette. We're shooting on Panavision Anamorphic lenses using their older HS series of lenses some of which even date back to David Leans projects. The lenses will be netted with some vintage Dior Black Silk stockings and finally in the DI I'll use a digital ENR process to add density to our blacks and enhance the texture of the film grain a little bit.

My initial camera/grip and lighting package for the shoot.