'Bugonia' Cinematographer on Shooting VistaVision with the Lenses Used on 'One Battle After Another'

Variety

'Bugonia' Cinematographer Robbie Ryan speaks to his long working relationship with Yorgos Lanthimos, the difficulties of using the cameras utilized for Bugonia and how he Emma Stone and Jessie Plemmons shot the kidnapping scene in the film.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Ravi Ryan and I'm going to take you inside the frame for Begonia.

00:16All the things I tried to forget about how tricky that shoot was,

00:19I have to remember for this interview.

00:22We've been very busy together making quite a few films back-to-back.

00:25Jorgis would give you a hint of what was coming next.

00:28I've got this film that's about bees and it's a science fiction film with a basement.

00:32You get sent a script and I got to read a script and that sort of self-destructs in two days.

00:37So you have to kind of read it and then Jorgis is kind of keen to talk about it.

00:41But like, to be fair, me and Jorgis more often than not talk about technical stuff.

00:46I remember we just were talking about the camera we were going to use

00:49because we were keen to try out this VistaVision camera.

00:52That was an exciting idea about Begonia and that's what we were talking a bit about more than anything.

00:56You know, we were able to have like a four or five week preparation period.

01:00Jorgis's testing process is quite thorough.

01:02He really likes to have a lens able to deal with open aperture,

01:06where it's got a resolution and a sharpness at an open aperture,

01:09which when you do that with older lenses, it gets a little bit softer.

01:12So I kind of always was going through trauma of like, is this lens going to be okay?

01:16You know, it's a larger format, so you would hope it to be a sharper thing.

01:18But because the lenses are a bit older, you know, sharpness isn't necessarily there at a wide open aperture.

01:25You know, we use lenses that were developed by Dan Sasaki.

01:28We dovetailed our shoot just after the Paul Thomas Anderson film.

01:32So Dan Sasaki had been developing lenses with Paul on that one.

01:36And he was able to kind of give us these lenses, which they have the nickname GW lenses.

01:41And I think that's to do with Gordon Willis, but they're also called prototype lenses.

01:45But anyway, they were a large format glass that covered the VistaVision's gait aspect.

01:50We shot the majority of the film on a Wilcam W11 VistaVision camera and a Bowcam VistaVision camera.

01:57That scene is, as is most of the film, is shot on those two cameras.

02:00One is a bigger camera, a little bit more sync friendly, sound sync friendly.

02:05And the other one's a kind of workhorse, noisy tractor of a camera,

02:08but can be used on different camera rigs, whereas the Wilcam 11 is a very heavy camera.

02:13It sits on a dolly and doesn't really like any other kind of format and tripods.

02:17It did have, you know, a stuttering start to the shoot,

02:20and it gave us some very curious technical issues that were sort of new to all of us

02:26because the camera pushes the film horizontally through the gate instead of vertically.

02:31So you get camera jams.

02:34So basically when the camera is pulling the film through the transport system,

02:38sometimes it gets a bit juddery.

02:40So you get this like weird like duck, duck, duck, duck, and the camera has this drag on it,

02:44which is, we ended up using it in the film because it's quite interesting looking.

02:49It's, as always, a happy mistake, but not all the time, please.

02:54Any time I get to work with Yorgos, I'm always like, what's going to happen next?

02:57So I'm like an audience member. I go, oh, we're going that way. I didn't expect that.

03:01If you know Yorgos Lanthimos' film, you will probably kind of recognise,

03:05he loves quite a low angle for most of his shots.

03:09And I've now kind of completely gone that way as well.

03:11And if there's ever a shot which is like normal height, he's like, what's this all about?

03:15This is horrible.

03:16Yorgos's approach to filmmaking, especially with this film,

03:18is if somebody's moving, the camera should be moving.

03:20The timing is very precise.

03:22If so he stops, you should stop at the same time.

03:24And a lot of Begonia is in a basement where there's two people playing mind games on each other, essentially,

03:29and they're not moving very much, so the camera stays quite still in Begonia.

03:33For the kidnapping scene, we had a chance to be a bit more mobile with the camera.

03:41We're talking today about the kidnapping scene in Begonia,

03:43which we shot it literally the first couple of days of the film,

03:47so a daunting start to the shoot because we're filming with these old cameras

03:52that we hadn't really put to the test very much on, you know, location shooting.

03:57They need a lot more care and, you know, attention,

03:59and film shoots are very impatient places.

04:01They don't have that.

04:02And when something breaks down a bit, all eyes are on the camera team,

04:06and it gets nerve-wracking.

04:13Her car is a G-Wagon Mercedes, and we rigged it with cameras on the bonnet.

04:19Usually we don't do that angle so much.

04:21We're always like side angle or back angle,

04:23but the front angle with that windshield is really cool

04:25and there's a lot of lovely reflections.

04:27What's amazing about Jorgos' work is he tends not to want to have film lighting

04:31if he can get away with it.

04:32He's really into naturalistic lighting,

04:34and obviously the whole scene doesn't involve too much lighting

04:36because it's all exterior,

04:37but the car did have a little bit of lighting in the sunshade

04:40because obviously the reflections are quite strong.

04:42It's a dark interior car.

04:44I was a little bit nervous, so I put it light.

04:47He probably would give out to me for putting it light there.

04:49And if you look at it, you do see her tilt her head back,

04:52and there's a little bit of a reflection.

04:53So I feel like I got in trouble there.

04:56But I was nervous that we wouldn't see her otherwise

04:58because all these reflections.

04:59The location we chose, crazily enough, had loads of speed bumps.

05:03Emma's trying a lot of it.

05:04I was like, it was not ideal.

05:06And the camera gave us a bit of a problem there

05:09because the bumps made it shake a bit

05:11and it jammed on us a couple of times.

05:14So that's the start of the problems with the camera.

05:16But I don't want to give out about the camera

05:17because it's great and I love its bits.

05:19And, you know, I would never say bad things.

05:23I just find that shot at the very beginning

05:25when the two guys are in the trees with the Jennifer Aniston masks,

05:29it's just really, really funny.

05:31You just go, this is not going to go well.

05:36We shot in this house called Birdsong in Surrey in England

05:40and it's a lovely architectural designer house, I guess you call it.

05:43But it's very, very photogenic.

05:45Jorgis again is thinking ahead

05:47that most of the film will be in a small environment in a basement

05:50that, like, second guessing,

05:51but I imagine he wanted to try and give a bit of space to the film at the start.

05:55The clumsiness of the attack

05:57and, like, the ineptitude of the attack from Donny and Teddy

06:00over, like, the powerhouse of Michelle Fuller

06:03kind of is funnier from a wider aspect.

06:06You know, you see it happening and you're kind of like,

06:08what is going on?

06:09There is a little bit of it where the camera follows her,

06:11kicking her off her shoes and, like, punching Teddy,

06:15but because Jorgis is so edit adept, he felt it funnier

06:18that it all played out in a wider shot and had the space.

06:21I really enjoy it.

06:29In this kidnapping scene, the camera is sort of quite observational.

06:32It's at a distance, as we've talked about.

06:34For the actors, that meant that Jessie and Emma

06:37had to go through what's happening on screen in real time

06:40and the struggle, the physicality of it,

06:42is how much they're actually having to work at fighting each other.

06:45And, you know, we obviously, in a film environment,

06:48didn't do it just one take.

06:49We did about four or five takes.

06:51The camera takes a long time to reload and relace,

06:54but that time the actors were quite happy with the fact

06:56that it took that long to reload,

06:58so they were able to take a breather.

07:00And the more we did it, the more they got exhausted.

07:02So by the end of that scene,

07:04they really looked like they'd been through a struggle

07:06and I have to admire how they just bring it so well in the film,

07:11from physicality to go to mental mind games

07:14and then back to physicality in the spoiler alert section of the film.

07:19It's great.

07:20You know, this film's about those two guys

07:22and Donny as well, who's hilarious.

07:24He's not very good at the fight either and he falls over,

07:27so he's able to lie down for quite a while.

07:30He got the easy out.

07:31Jessie and Emily had to kind of really go at it.

07:35The swimming pool shot, we had another sequence in the film

07:37that didn't make it in the film, unfortunately,

07:39where in her daily routine she swims like an athlete.

07:43We didn't end up using that,

07:44but we had a crane and the camera set up for that

07:46and as Jorgis is very, you know, quick-minded,

07:50he's thought, well, why don't we try that attack

07:52from inside over the swimming pool?

07:55And it's such a great shot because it's not an expected shot.

08:01The fact that it lingers a little bit longer

08:03as they struggle in the hedgerow is great.

08:06And what I love about this scene is something happens

08:09in the hedgerow that you don't get privy to

08:12and you only get told it at the end of the scene

08:15when she's got a syringe in her leg and she doesn't know that.

08:17We don't know that as an audience.

08:18So I think the clever edit choices in that respect

08:22are really, really what make that so effective.

08:25Because did we shoot a close-up?

08:26I don't think we did shoot a close-up of what you would expect in a film

08:29where you're like, ah, the needle's gone into the leg.

08:31That doesn't happen.

08:32So it's just so of the moment happening as you watch it.

08:36And I think that's really, really a smart move.

08:38With that particular scene, we ended up with two grips

08:40and a scaph tube running around with it.

08:43And also a dolly on a low angle as well.

08:45And a Libra head, like quite a heavy remote head

08:48with the bow cam on it.

08:49When we were tracking back the last shot where Emily

08:51falls flat on her face, basically, we were tracking back

08:54on that scaph tube, Libra head rig.

08:57We'd kind of like run over a blue mat.

09:00And she's like, has to just fall flat on the mat.

09:02They took that out and posted it.

09:04That worked, but it wasn't as funny.

09:06And then the way Jorgis, I think, finally edited it was really funny

09:09where she just falls out of frame and her two feet pop up.

09:12I think that's really funny.

09:14Like, it's a funny scene.

09:24We'll see you next time.

09:25We'll see you next time.

09:26Bye.

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