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The Hollywood Reporter's Patrick Brzeski sat down with Director of Photography Ed Lachman to discuss 'Maria' in a THR Q&A powered by Vision Media.
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00:00Welcome to The Hollywood Reporter Presents. I'm here with Ed Lockman, the truly legendary
00:11cinematographer behind Pablo Lorraine's Maria, which stars Angelina Jolie as the great 20th
00:17century opera diva Maria Callas. Thank you for being with us, Ed. Thank you. To start,
00:24could you take us back to the beginning of the project? You and Pablo had collaborated previously
00:29on the beautiful and devious film El Conde, which earned you an Oscar nomination last year.
00:36What were your first creative conversations with Pablo like for this film? How did you get started
00:42together? Well, creative. He called me and said he got financing to do the Maria Callas, which has
00:55been his pet project for years, that he wanted to do this, because he's a great aficionado about
01:02opera and music. And he always said that if he wasn't a filmmaker, he would have been a musician,
01:09but he wasn't a successful musician. So he ended up being a filmmaker. So originally, I didn't think
01:18actually I was going to work on it. I knew he was going to shoot it in Europe. And there are so many
01:26fine cinematographers in Europe. And he's worked with many wonderful cinematographers and generally
01:35on different projects. But he called me and said that he really wanted to work with me on this. So
01:42I greatly welcomed the opportunity to work with Pablo again. But I had to immerse myself in the
01:51project very quickly. So I knew we were going to shoot primarily in Budapest for Paris. And we did
01:59shoot a week in Paris, and then also on Onassis' yacht in Greece. So when I got to Budapest, I had about a
02:10month of prep, but he had already been laying everything out with a production designer guy.
02:18And so I just immersed myself in all the visual references that they have already, you know,
02:29accumulated, you know. The interesting thing about Maria Callas is there was a wealth of documentation.
02:38She had been photographed in documentaries, her personal help, Ferruccio that you see in the film,
02:51her butler, and even Onassis' shot home movies or Super 8. So that was an element in the film. And
03:02that's, that element was where she was less controlled of what her image was. And she was
03:10photographed by the great fashion photographers and portrait photographers of the time, Cecil Beaton,
03:18Richard Avedon, and Irving Penn. So that was an element. And then the element of her past
03:26was shot in 35 millimeter black and white, which again referenced the time period that she lived in.
03:36And so why not photograph it in the way you would have seen images that time? So it would have been
03:43black and white. And then the 60s and the 70s was in color, 35 millimeter color. And then the projection
03:52of her mind is shot in Super 16. Well, no, 16. The projection of her mind where you see the
04:01documentary film crew is shot in 16 millimeter. And I just happened to have Eitan, LTR. I had two of
04:11them because that's the, I started out in the 70s shooting with my 16 millimeter cameras and I still had
04:19two of them. So those were all the different elements that created the tapestry, the texture
04:25for her world, you know. And I always say the hardest thing about film in, in literature and writing,
04:33you can enter the interior world of the character in a sentence, but it's more complicated to show
04:41where you are, you more description about where you are. In film, in images, it's just the opposite.
04:49In film, you can show place where you are, but it's harder to show what the interior world is,
04:57unless you do voiceover. And so I felt these different textures would allow us to enter where,
05:05how she was thinking by what you're seeing that expresses her being in a way. And the other aspect
05:15that was integral to thinking about how the film would be portrayed about her as this foremost opera
05:25singer was, how it was a heightened reality. She lived in a heightened reality on the stage and off
05:32the stage. And she even said herself, the stage is my mind and the opera is my soul. So she lived in
05:41an opera. So it was a way I thought about with Pablo, how we could put the audience in the auditorium,
05:54the theater of how you would see an opera. And so that there were two factors in how you would express
06:04for a viewer in a film to feel like you were partaking in an opera. And the two aspects of that was,
06:16for me, the way the camera saw her. So the camera has this observational and reflective part where it's
06:24kind of a moving camera in generally in wider lenses in everything from a 24 to a 28, which is like a moving
06:34proscenium. It's a moving stage in a way, which in a performance and the audience would see an opera,
06:44they're seeing a wide shot. They're seeing the proscenium and the stage in a wide shot.
06:49And the other aspect is that it's not representational. Operas aren't seen as representational imagery.
07:00It's seen as a heightened reality, I like to think of it, expressionistic, mannered.
07:10And so then the color, the color palette of the world that we see her in, in her apartment,
07:18in the streets, I wanted to heighten that reality. So we feel that there's an artifice to the world
07:30that she's living in because that's the way she sees herself in that world.
07:35Mm-hmm. You're famously known as a quite subtle master of color, the way you use color to sort of
07:45nudge psychological states out of the viewer. Could you talk a bit about that? There's some...
07:49Yeah, my background is I studied art history and painting. I was going to be a painter one time,
07:55then I realized it was easier to pick up a camera and create images to tell a story than be in an
08:02isolated room. And the other thing is I love the aspect of the collective aspect of
08:08making images with a group of people. So I've always thought of color as a psychological element
08:20rather than just a decorative element. And painters have always known this. You know, back from
08:28Goethe in 1810 wrote a book called Interpretation of Color.
08:36Mm-hmm. And up to the 60s, Joseph Albers wrote a book, Interaction of Color. So painters have always
08:44understood how color affects the viewer. And so I always like to play with like a two palette color,
08:55which one's receding and one's advancing. So warm colors would advance and cool colors would recede.
09:05And they can give you contrast in the way in black and white shadows and highlights can give you contrast.
09:13So let's say like in her apartment, for me, that was a refuge, you know, her nest. And you know,
09:22there's a kind of a warmth in her apartment. But it's invaded by the exterior light, by cooler light. And
09:34I also used green because I imagined when I was living in Paris in the 70s, I remembered how green affected
09:46me because I was near a neon sign where I was staying. And I would see green invade the light. And
09:57generally people think green is not a complementary color for the flesh tone. And so I thought that would
10:05be a nice way to show some conflict in her feelings. And so I play green and cool color against the warm colors.
10:20That's fascinating. I already want to watch the film again. The film also features some really
10:27stunning locations, theaters and historical buildings in Budapest. And of course, La Scala,
10:34the great opera house in Milan. Can you tell us about what it was like to work in those spaces?
10:39Well, we were very lucky. We were very lucky. Budapest has a wealth of wonderful theaters
10:47and that could, you know, replace theaters in Paris. And the architecture is 19th century.
10:59But it was very important for Pablo to shoot in La Scala because it was so essential for her at
11:07different points in her life. And that's the Mecca for opera is La Scala. So
11:16But it was very difficult to get permission. And it was very costly to shoot there. So we were able to
11:27work out four hours. And that four hours meant coming in with a crew. It wasn't four hours of shooting.
11:36So I implemented a way of doing it where I worked with the lighting crew and the lighting director
11:44of La Scala for the stage, because I knew they knew their setup better than anybody. And then I used my
11:53film crew to light the rest of the area of this, you know, where the seats were in the balcony and
12:00the auditorium. And it worked out, you know, I could go in and they run through before what they could do. And
12:10I picked and choose what we needed. And I brought in the one element I did do is I brought in a bigger
12:18spot, HMI spot, because of the long throw in that theater. I was afraid theirs wouldn't
12:26be strong enough. And you've talked a lot before about how some directors are very visual and others
12:34really just aren't. And the cinematographer has to adapt to each scenario.
12:39What's Pablo like? And how would you describe your process?
12:43Well, Pablo's highly visual, you know, I often question, was he a photographer before?
12:53Which I, you know, because he really understood, he understands photography, not just from an aesthetic
13:00point of view, but he understands it from a technical viewpoint. So that I, I like that. I,
13:09you know, I like to work off of somebody that already has visual ideas,
13:14um, because then they get more realized in the editing room, because if you do it on your own,
13:23which is great, if they don't realize there's a rhythm to images, like there's rhythms and music,
13:30and do you compliment that in the editing or not? You know, sometimes you can improve it and sometimes
13:38you can destroy what you, what you, the aesthetics of what, how you're shooting something.
13:45That makes a lot of sense, yeah. And, and he had a lot of moving shots, you know,
13:54the lens is more like a, an element of discovery for the audience about Maria. And so,
14:02um, it was important that he could follow through with that. Hmm. There's moments in the film where
14:11I felt like the camera was slightly voyeuristic, and then there's other moments where it's like
14:17you're seeing her as she sees herself, which is almost the opposite of voyeuristic. Well, like I was
14:22saying, the camera is observational on one level, and it's also, uh, there's a subjective viewpoint to
14:32and also, I thought it was important to put the viewer in her shoes in a way. So, the camera does
14:42have an aspect where you feel like you're in her space because you're moving behind her or with her,
14:53and then there's other times where we discover where she is, like in the bedroom. You know,
14:58we're outside in the hallway and we come through a room and then we pierce into her room. So,
15:05there's a feeling of, uh, observation that way. Interesting. Um, so of course we have to also talk
15:14about your collaboration here with Angelina Jolie. Um, she's a one in a billion screen presence,
15:20but also, uh, an accomplished filmmaker herself. Exactly. What was it like to both collaborate with
15:27her and shoot her? Well, I was, I was, yeah, she, she had opinions, but, but it was, it was, uh,
15:35welcome because, you know, she had the grammar, the visual grammar to understand what we were doing.
15:41So, so there were, there were more discussions than, you know, conflicts about that. But the other
15:49aspect, if I could bring up about, uh, the observational part of the camera, um, was that
15:57it allows the audience to have a sense of discovery about the image of what you're viewing. But also,
16:06uh, I think it's important, um, that there's a mystery. There, you know, we can't really know
16:14who Maria Callas was. And, and, um, Pablo has said this too, that, uh, that it's important that
16:26she doesn't give everything away because we could never really know who Maria Callas, we can't
16:33be presumptuous to think we knew who Maria Callas was, but we can observe her and make,
16:41um, we can take opinions of who we think she is, of how she reacted in such situations. But we don't have
16:51to, um, come away and think we know how she thinks. So I think it was twofold. One, that the way
17:03Angelina Jolie portrayed her, that keeps a mystery of who she is, and also the way the camera observes her.
17:13Like what you were saying, where, where the camera's not always telling you what you should see about her.
17:21Right.
17:23You just see her in the space. You see her in the situation.
17:26Mm-hmm.
17:28Retaining some enigma.
17:32Great. And how about the experience on your end of filming the actual opera singing sequences that
17:38Angelina did? What was that like?
17:40Well, that was, that was somewhat inspirational, but you have to understand she had an ear, it's
17:48called an ear wick. She had a, like, a hearing aid in her ear listening to Maria Callas sing.
17:56Okay.
17:57So we didn't necessarily hear what she was hearing.
18:02Oh, wow.
18:03You know, later I knew the arias that we were going to hear. I knew the music that we were going to hear.
18:11Sometimes we did it to play back, so we would all be in the same rhythm of the image.
18:17I see.
18:19I can imagine there's a lot of trust building there and vulnerability, an actress singing Maria Callas.
18:26Yeah, well, you know, Pablo's discussed this, how they implement, you know, maybe sometimes it's
18:33one percent of her voice or five percent of her voice. There's Maria Callas, and then there was
18:40another singer that could merge the two when she wasn't singing up to what she wanted to sing.
18:48Mm-hmm. I see.
18:51And do you have a personal favorite shot in the film? Do you think of projects that way? Do
18:56think shots stick with you in that way? Well, situation, like, obviously to shoot in La Scala was
19:08because we had to do it so quickly. That has a special part. There's a part in the film where
19:16you're trying to show something about her psychology and her emotions that are breaking down,
19:28and I built a rig with a diopter lens that moves, you know, where you see her in the image,
19:37and then it breaks, the image breaks, and there's near far focus.
19:42Yeah. That was interesting because I had built that rig for El Conde.
19:49Oh, really?
19:50And we used it, but we never used it in the film. We were going to use it in the flying sequences.
19:57And so I wanted to use it somewhere in this film, and it worked out where she's kind of having a
20:04mental breakdown, and the image is broken. Okay.
20:10Okay. I'm trying to think if there's any other place that the images were.
20:17I think just the private moments. I think the moments where she's looking in the mirror at herself,
20:24and there's a slow move in. I think those are very effective when she's able to interact with the
20:34camera. That's with herself, I should say. When she's able to interact with herself and the camera's
20:41observing her, I always find that the most compelling. Yeah. It is sort of the essence of the film in a way.
20:47And this is also the final film in Pablo's trilogy of movies about female icons of the 20th century.
20:59And you came on board as, I think, the third cinematographer in that broader project.
21:03Was maintaining any sense of continuity within the trilogy?
21:08I think each one is its own language. You know, I think what he said about the three women, I mean,
21:17the difference is she's an artist, and we're seeing something about her process. But in the sense that
21:27the women are not, let's say, feminists in the context of contemporary times, they were strong women,
21:38and women that had to deal with a crucial time in their life that was critical and demanding of them.
21:53And so that aspect is that there's a sign of a sisterhood between them about what they were able to
22:04express about themselves. The thing that I found so interesting in the research about Maria Callas is
22:13she had this debilitating disease the last 15, 20 years of her life. It was an autoimmune disease that
22:21affected her muscles and her larynx. And I think part of the reason they considered her a diva, because,
22:31you know, she would make demands about when she could sing or not sing, or I think was because of her
22:38physical problem that she couldn't sing to the level that she wanted to. Her strength,
22:47she was abused and exploited from the age of five on by the relationship she had with her mother.
22:56And then the male relationship she had, she never achieved the adoration and love that she had from her
23:05her fans, so to speak, her people that, you know, embraced her. In her male relationship she had a
23:16husband that was her manager and exploited her. And she was with her for nine years. And then she's
23:26involved in a relationship with Aristotle Onassis. And he leaves her in another nine years for Jackie Bouvier
23:36and Onassis. So she never had in her life what she desired. It was like the tragedy. She's really the
23:46sum of the tragedies of her own operas. But she never achieved what she desired. And that's the real
23:55tragedy in her life. What she desired in her personal life. The love and admiration from the people
24:04that would be closest to us. And I think when she lost her voice, she lost the strength to survive.
24:12She heard the stage and the music and what was her armor in a way. That she had that to fall back on or
24:28live through. And when she lost that strength, she lost the real reason to live.
24:37Wow. That's a fascinating summation of the whole story. And a lot of that is communicated implicitly in
24:45the film, which is really interesting. I'd love to hear a little bit about how you shot the finale,
24:52when I think Maria's by the window and she kind of has that last private moment, I guess you could say.
24:58Well, I felt like she's always on the stage. And so we always shot in these, especially her apartment,
25:09in wider shots. So I couldn't really hide lights, you know. So it was naturalistic that the lighting
25:16was from the windows. Even though we were on the sixth floor, I had a crane for each window with a
25:2418K, a large light coming through the window. So in a sense, those windows were like the spotlight in a
25:33stage. And she knew that. And she even said to me, this is the light, you know, for me, you know,
25:42because she was near the spotlight, you know. So I felt like that final moment, it was that she was on
25:53the stage again, that she was able to perform up until her demise. And then the color changes in that
26:03too. It's interesting because it's late day, I made it late day. You cut outside, but then when you cut
26:10back in when they run up the steps, Ferruccio and Bruna, I now made it late day, cool blue. So it's not
26:21it's not really a continuum of the same day. But no one worries about that. Because again, I use the
26:28color as a psychological effect of how the situation, you know, that she's feel, yeah, that how you would
26:39feel in that situation. And then so it's cool when they come in, and he goes over to the phone and talks
26:45to the doctor and says she's died. And then when you cut back when the the medics or the, you know,
26:53the ambulance comes, it's warm again. But no one thinks about that. I got to watch it again, again.
27:02Well, you shouldn't. I mean, all those things that you do photographically should affect the audience
27:08emotionally, but not necessarily you have to deal with it as a logical level. She even says that
27:18there isn't logic in opera. What what the logic is, is your emotions. And that's the logic, how how you
27:29communicate a feeling in your audience about what you're expressing.
27:34Mm hmm. Wonderful.
27:39So the film was shot on film. And you're known to be a big proponent of film preservation and classic formats.
27:47It occurred to me that, along with Maria, two of the other big kind of award season films this year,
27:53The Brutalist and Sean Baker's Nora, were also shot in film. And all three of these movies are made by
28:01relatively young directors. It's not like Scorsese champion film. It's a new generation. So
28:08I was just curious what you make of that, if you find it encouraging or how you see the state of
28:12these classic films. Well, I think young people, even my 18 year old daughter,
28:18want to have the experience of film. And I think it makes people better cinematographers or image
28:27makers. Because if you understand the principles of how you create a negative through film,
28:36you'll make you a better digital
28:39interpreter of how you control the negative. And the two factors that I like to,
28:48when people ask me why film over digital, and it's not to say you can't tell stories digitally,
28:55you certainly can. But the elements of film that have a difference than digital is,
29:04is there are three layers in film, RGB, and those are microscopic in their layers, but they're like an
29:13etching. When you expose the film and how the colors react in the negative, you're projecting light
29:24through this piece of celluloid, it gives depth to the image. In digital, it's all pixel fixated on one
29:34plane. Light, dark, and colors. Also, colors don't represent themselves the same way digitally as in film.
29:45I call it kind of a contamination, that film mixes colors differently than digital does.
29:55And that's because of the layers of the film, how they interact with each other.
30:02And so I like to think of film more like oil paint, and digital more like watercolors.
30:10So what happens is, if you have like a cool color from the window, and you have warm colors inside,
30:19the mixture, you get green somewhere in the middle. In digital, you don't. In digital, you get cool,
30:26and you get warm, but you don't get the mixture or the crossover between the different color temperatures.
30:33The other aspect is, when in film, if you have exposure and highlights, it's fine grain. They're small.
30:44In the underexposed areas, it's larger grain. And those things are moving around in the image,
30:53where you're moving the frame over what light is there. And for me, that's more, it's chemical.
31:02It's more the way we live. It's more, I call it anthropomorphic, how it represents us.
31:08In digital, it's electronic. It's not, it doesn't live the same way we live.
31:16Wow, fascinating. Well, I would certainly urge everyone to see Maria, because it's just a
31:23beautiful illustration of everything you just talked about. I was picturing some of the colors and
31:28sequences as you were saying that. In the film, I tried to give the experience
31:35as if you were viewing an opera. In opera, the images aren't necessarily representational. They're
31:44heightened reality. And so that's what I felt we should do as a film, is create a heightened reality,
31:54because she really lived her life like she was living in the operas that she
32:00sang and partake in. Got it. So like the film is an opera itself more than a biopic?
32:07Yeah, I always felt like the film was an opera in itself. And that Pablo interwove operas
32:21about her without specifically giving you subtitles what the operas were saying.
32:28Mm-hmm.
32:28But giving you the texture and the emotion of the music and the voice in itself. And so I tried to
32:36implement that by creating this heightened reality the way images are represented in an opera,
32:46other than what you would experience in life. If we were making a film about her life and trying to
32:53represent it in a representational context.
32:58Mm-hmm. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Ed.
33:02Of course.
33:02We've covered a lot of ground and it was a true pleasure.
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