records deep blacks, true colours and a wide tonal range. Rajeev shot day exteriors on Eastman EXR 100T (5248), using an 81 EF filter to half-correct and retain the cool blue of winter. Daylight-balanced 250D (5246) Vision stock was selected for day interiors, while he exploited Vision 500T (5279) on most night interiors and exteriors. Since shooting, the cinematographer did extensive tests with different materials to search for the right thickness and translucency. “It’s the same as using a cheap filter on the lens and we realized that any distortion or loss of focus would be magnified when the lab optically ‘squeezed’ the images into the 2.40 aspect ratio. In addition to selecting the right plastic, it was important for us to record a strong negative with properly focused images. We were shooting through filters at least 90 percent of the time.
While shooting forest scenes with the lead actor, Rajeev employed what he calls a Nine-light sandwich. “Others might call it a book light, but in any case, we were bouncing a Nine-light Maxi Brute off a piece of bead board, then letting the light pass through a diffusion frame usually fitted with either 216 or light grid. The resulting soft light striking He had a very beautiful quality, plus some serious pounding of foot-candles. This soft light had enough to punch through Shabana’s hair, and I could control the amount of light just by clicking off various globes. But it also required a lot of flagging and took up much space.” On other occasions, Rajeev illuminated the Forest by directing the light from more extreme angles. “I came in much lower and more frontal with his key than I would have normally, but the approach succeeded in letting her hair fall naturally, so, while it was tough, it
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