'The Brutalist' Cinematographer Breaks Down How They Filmed in an Active Mine

Variety

'The Brutalist' DP, Lol Crawely, breaks down how they were able to execute shooting in a real mine using the practical lighting they had on site and improvising shots that weren't in the script.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Lol Crawley. I'm the cinematographer on The Brutalist.

00:18So it's my third collaboration with Brady. Brady asked me to shoot his first feature,

00:23The Childhood of a Leader. After that we shot another movie called Vox Lux and then when we

00:28wrapped on Vox Lux, his wrap gift to me was a book on Brutalist architecture and he said,

00:33this is the next one. It's what we hope for in a collaborator. The next movie began like that.

00:39We've always shot on film. Obviously it's a third film together. We definitely have a shorthand

00:45and a very good way of working. We have a commonality of ideas. Our tastes sort of align.

00:50We looked at a lot of Brutalist architecture and how that had been photographed. And one thing

00:55that came across was obviously photographing any sort of architecture. Generally you tend to

01:00want to have minimal distortion from the lenses, for example. So you may use sort of rectilinear

01:08lenses, which are lenses that correct and mean that you don't get the same sort of distortion

01:13when you shoot with wide angle lenses, things like that. So that kind of, I think, led Brady to the

01:18idea of, well, VistaVision really, which is a large format version, still 35mm stock, but you're

01:25shooting like a stills camera as opposed to pulling the film down vertically in a motion

01:31picture camera. It's actually pulling it horizontally across eight perforations at a time.

01:35So you end up with a bigger format. You're not forced to shoot on wider angle lenses for a wider

01:40field of view. You know, you can get the same field of view on a longer lens, which is obviously

01:45minimizes distortion. That was something that Brady was very keen to do. And also VistaVision

01:51was an early format. Hitchcock used VistaVision. They were cinematic processes that kind of

01:58competed with television or were a way of when television, the advent of television, a way of

02:03sort of drawing audiences back to the cinema, you know, more of a spectacle, you know. Given that

02:08the movie takes place after the Second World War through the 50s, 60s, 70s and ends in 1980,

02:15it seemed an obvious choice to use this format largely for the movie. We also used other formats,

02:20some 16 mil, some standard 35 and some digi beta cam for the end of the movie also. We're going to

02:26talk about the sequence when Laszlo Toth takes Harrison Van Buren, his benefactor, to Italy to

02:34select the marble that they will use within the institute that Laszlo Toth is building for Van

02:40This is magic. Thank you.

02:49Brady and myself have always shot 35 mil, never been in consideration to shoot the film on anything

02:56other than Saudi Lloyd. We had a range of cameras available to us. We had an Arri 235, which is a

03:00small handheld camera, which I used for only one sequence that I remember, which is the beginning

03:06of the movie where Laszlo ascends from the bowels of the ship up into the New York harbour. So I used

03:13that and then a 435, an Arri Cam LT and ST and obviously the VistaVision and the digi beta. And

03:20then we shot on Cooke S4 lenses, which we had shot on previous movies. We keep gravitating back to

03:26them despite how much testing we do. We just really love them. And Leica R lenses that we used on the

03:33VistaVision also. We chose 250 daylight and 500 tungsten stock. So they're balanced for interior

03:40artificial light or exterior daylight. We knew those stocks very well. They're a fantastic

03:45starting point in the sense that all of the other colour work that's done on top of that is either

03:51done through the lighting, through the design, grading of the dailies and then grading of the

03:55final film. I mean, there are certainly sections where, you know, it's motivated by time of day,

04:00it's motivated by tone of the story or tone of the scene. Certainly the first scene of the second

04:05half of the movie when Laszlo greets Elisabeth from the train, there's definitely a warmer,

04:10more optimistic feel to those. Obviously, there's seasonal elements. It takes place over a long

04:15period of time. Generally, I tend to sort of, where possible, lean into, like, for example,

04:20if we're doing day exterior scenes, I don't tend to overly like the day exteriors. For example,

04:27we're filming in autumn and it's supposed to feel like spring or something like this. I'm really

04:30trying to override what the natural light is doing. Generally, I tend to lean into what the

04:34day is doing. Tonally, there's lots of shifts within the movie. The beginning of the introduction

04:40to the quarry is sort of shrouded in mist and mystery as we sort of follow this mysterious

04:45character that takes us to the marble. A lot of the time in a situation like that, it's about taking

04:53light away, you know, so trying to shape it by removing light. Not only is that the way I tend to

04:58work with day exteriors, it was also a very difficult environment to work in. It's quite

05:02a dangerous environment. It's a working mine, so we had to have quite a small footprint,

05:07so we couldn't really bring in generators and things like this. Certainly for the images

05:11where they arrive in daylight, it was just purely available light for that.

05:21That was also something that wasn't necessarily in the script. It was something as we were driving,

05:26as we actually arrived to do the scout, we were like, this is incredible. It's a road cut through

05:31the hillside and it has this kind of vaulted arch-like quality to it. I think we just rigged

05:36it safely, but inside the car, almost like boxes and straps, and we strapped it down and got the

05:42frame and then just drove it through. It's the same with a lot of movies, but specifically like

05:46this with Brady, where we're alive to the moment. You have to be open to things offering themselves

05:50up and just seeing the opportunity, not just visually, but how that visually ties into the

05:55movie. We'd obviously shot the scenes in Budapest and it felt like a great tie

06:00between the two. It felt like it had one camp in the exteriors in Italy and then we were sort of

06:06descending into this catacomb within the mine. There's another sequence of a party scene where

06:12Laszlo has this flirtatious dance with this young Italian lady and is being observed voyeuristically

06:19by Van Buren. That actually all took place in Budapest, where the majority of the film was shot.

06:24It worked seamlessly. It was a catacomb that was a vast storage area underneath part of Budapest

06:30that was available to us. Now, when Judy Becker, the designer, and Brady found this space, they

06:35were like, okay, this is how we want it to feel. Now, obviously, it was a very low light situation.

06:40We knew that it was going to be a handheld scene, so I needed to kind of move the camera in a 360

06:45without seeing artificial lighting. There's a cinematographer who I greatly admire, Harris

06:50who sadly is not with us anymore, but he always had this approach of lighting the space and lighting

06:55the room. And so what I did was there was practical lighting already there and I swapped out just the

07:00bulbs, bare incandescent bulbs, with photo floods. If they weren't photo floods, it was certainly a

07:05brighter just to get a shooting stop. We're shooting on lenses that I think, you know, around

07:11about sort of T2, so wide open. And then I was also push processing the stock, so it's 500T,

07:16shot wide open, wonderful focus pullers, first ACs who are able to kind of keep it all in focus.

07:22Brady and I really like to kind of underexpose the stock where possible, certainly when we're

07:26shooting period work because, you know, the Kodak stocks are fantastic, but they can be a little

07:31clean and potentially with very rich blacks and feel quite a little modern sometimes. So we're

07:36trying to kind of like distress the film a little bit and make it feel more painterly or more

07:41archival in some way. So by underexposing and then push processing, we're actually kind of like

07:46forcing the film to do things it doesn't quite want to do chemically. That was the idea of more

07:51of a sort of impressionistic image, you know. I find if I want to have a little space, if I'm working

07:56handheld, it's a balance between trying to allow the actors to go where they want and then where

08:01they end up going in dark areas for larger amounts of dialogue or whatever it might be. Obviously

08:05these actors are very experienced. I'll gently try to guide and suggest and bring them out of the

08:10shadows for certain moments. Sometimes it's obviously very nice if they go into shadow.

08:13The rehearsal is that sort of negotiation as it were.

08:24It's a really pivotal moment in the movie. It's kind of an example of the most brutal

08:30behavior of one character to another. I also feel that it's a clip that just sort of illustrates

08:36many different things in terms of kind of handheld. It's got a few different looks going on.

08:41It illustrates the VistaVision beautifully and why we use the VistaVision. There's a fabulous

08:47kind of like a very ghastly celebration of these minds in some ways. A lot of the landscape that

08:53just has been carved away. VistaVision was an incredible format for capturing that.

08:57Once you finish shooting the movie, it's a case of then really coming back to the final grade,

09:01which was a couple of weeks, and then worked with Photochem with Andrew Oren, who was amazing,

09:07who basically guided us through and created the 70mm prints for us. They struck a 70mm

09:13print that was in Venice. So I was involved in that as well.

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