Le Saux says he also played a lot with filtration to enhance different looks in the movie, variously combining ¼ and 1/8 Tiffen Soft FX and Tiffen Classic Soft diffusion (with NDs outside), plus the occasional Chocolate or Tobacco-colored filter.
For scenes taking place during earlier time periods in the script, Le Saux wanted to encourage a sense of pastel colors, subdue the contrast and reveal shadow details, appropriate to the film’s retrospective mood. This saw him frequently flash the negative – a technique pioneered by such legendary cinematographers as Freddie Young OBE BSC and Vilmos Zsigmond HSC ASC. For this he deployed an ARRI Varicon at different intensities with a 1/2 CTB gel filter, sometimes with an 1/8 SFX or CS diffusion filter in addition. To further cultivate the effect of flashing via the Varicon, the footage was push-processed by one stop at the lab.
The camera negative was developed at Kodak Film Lab in New York, HD scanned at Deluxe, before being sent to Harbor Picture Company for dailies work.
“Our goal was to shoot with as shallow depth-of-field as possible and to make the images look true to the actual era with a dark and smokey patina. The use of filtration, the Varicon in front of the lens, and allowing natural flares to inhabit the image, was purposefully intended given the on-screen result texture and authenticity appropriate to the time period.”
Le Saux also used camera movement to further delineate the two different time periods in the story – favoring lively and energetic framing on the dolly and Steadicam for the girls’ childhood scenes, and more a classical, composed and sometime static camera for their adulthoods.
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