Hi, Jules O’Loughlin here. The Director of Photography on Lucky Country. The following is an interview Nicola Daley did with me about the cinematography on Lucky Country. It was published in Australian Cinematographer magazine. I hope you find it interesting.
Jules O’Loughlin ACS recently won the 2008 IF award for his Cinematography on ‘September’. Here he tells Nicola Daley a little about his upcoming feature film ‘Lucky Country’.
ND: Tell me a bit about your life before you became a Director of Photography?
JO: I worked in the futures market for about 10 years and during that time I put myself through law school. I thought at the time that maybe one day I might become a lawyer. I spent a lot of my free time rock climbing, mountaineering and traveling but always with a stills camera. The photography was a passion that started at the age of 7 when my parents gave me my first camera. When I got married back in 1996 my wife, Hels, and I went backpacking for two years through South East Asia, Western Asia and the Middle East. It was a fabulous opportunity to immerse myself in my photography. Hels claims that the most romantic time of the day, sunset and magic hour, were usually solitary affairs as I had the viewfinder to my eye.
Photography was something that I really loved and that I was into for many, many years. I became very interested in cinematography in my early 20’s after seeing Jack Cardiff’s work in The Red Shoes. I started reading books about cinematography and cinematographers and became totally engrossed in the craft but all the while I had this career thing going on in the financial markets and I felt reluctant to throw it all away. It was during those two years of travel that I really took stock of my life and realized that a passion was better served as a career rather than a hobby. Living a life of quiet desperation was not an option. I turned my back on the futures market and enrolled in TAFE. I also started shooting films and assisting on others when I could. The following year I gained entry into the national film school, AFTRS.
It was at AFTRS that I met Alister Grierson (directing) and Leesa Kahn (producing) and the three of us worked on a number of short films whilst we were there. I felt lucky at the time to have gained entry into AFTRS but in hindsight I think it was good luck that I went through with these guys. A year after leaving AFTRS we had been green lit on our first feature KOKODA.
The following year, 2006, I shot September with another AFTRS graduate, Peter Carstairs. In Her Skin followed in 2007 and Lucky Country in 2008. The latter two films will be released this year. I guess I’ve been pretty lucky – getting into AFTRS and then shooting KOKODA soon after graduating. KOKODA wasn’t a small film either. Well, smallish budget but it had that iconic subject matter. It got a lot of publicity at the time. I tend to think you make your own luck, however. You have to be open to the opportunities. When the door opens you have to charge for it.
ND: How did you come to work with Kriv Stenders on ‘Lucky Country’?
I had never met Kriv before. I was heading to LA as there were some potential projects happening. Then I got a call to say Kriv Stenders wanted to meet and talk about a project. So I met Kriv the day before I flew out to LA. Kriv told me about a project he was doing which at the time was called Home (Lucky Country) and I was immediately intrigued. I came away thinking this guy is really interesting, he wants to do some really ballsy stuff on this film. He was wanting to push the envelope. So I went to LA and a few days later I got a call saying Kriv wants you to do the film.
ND: And how did you start the visual dialogue with Kriv?
JO: We started talking over the phone and e-mailing – he in Australia and me in the States. I also spent a lot of time putting together a visual pitch document with a lot of references based on his ideas and a lot of my own to get a clearer idea of which direction Kriv wanted to take the film and to start to build a visual road map. So I sent this document over and he wrote back and said I love this stuff and I don’t like that, and to me that was really great. There was stuff that he was willing to explore and some stuff that he was not keen on. That was a good indicator to me that he had a strong voice and whilst he was very collaborative and open to ideas he knew which direction he wanted to take the film.
ND: Tell me a bit about the story of ‘Lucky Country’?
The story is about a young family struggling to survive in an unforgiving country around the time of Federation. The mother dies in childbirth, leaving the father to raise two children out in the middle of nowhere. They are pioneers – they have no idea about surviving in the bush, the father is quite hard on his children, and of course he is getting over the death of his wife. One evening three guys ride to the homestead. They have just returned from the Boer war and one is badly injured and they are looking for lodgings for the night. These three guys end up staying and the story really is about the shift in the family dynamic that follows. It has tragic consequences. A blood bath ensues – very Shakespearean.
ND: What genre is the film and how did you think about that in your planning?
JO: In one sense the film is a Western but it’s also a psychological thriller. Kriv wanted to have a predominantly hand held camera which starts out being very controlled and then ramps up with the drama. He really liked what I had done on ‘September’ – he wanted to bring that style into ‘Lucky Country’.
As far as the genre there was nothing inherent about Westerns that dictated to us how the film should look – for instance Kriv didn’t want to shoot scope – he didn’t want to shoot 2.35 which at first I was not totally convinced of. I tend to think that when it comes to cinema you need a bloody good reason not to shoot scope. 2.35 IS cinema. Kriv wanted Lucky Country to be about the landscape of the face, it is all about people. For that reason he thought 1.85 would be better suited. He didn’t want to make a conventional kind of Western and truth be told after the first initial discussions we never really spoke about ‘Lucky Country’ as a western. It is a psychological drama. Kriv wanted more of a grittier kind of feel, more of a modern naturalistic slant.
The stuff that influenced Kriv on ‘Lucky Country’ were European films and in particular the French film Calvaire and the Soviet era film Come and See – he was interested in exploring unconventional choices that make you sit up and go ‘Wow’!
In the film we utilise shift and tilt lenses and we use them in quite an extreme way. For example, the father in the film (played by Aden Young) gets tetanus from a nail in his hand, and he develops lockjaw. He has these spasms and is wracked by pain. So we used the shift and tilt lenses as an extreme point of view for his pain and suffering but also in a psychological way when he is being terrorised by one of the three visitors.
ND: Tell me about your approach to the lighting?
Working on ‘Kokoda’ and ‘September’ gave me a lot of experience working with exterior light. I have a distaste for hard sunlight on actors faces – you know that hard Aussie light can undo a lot of good work unless it’s controlled but in a fashion that looks naturalistic. We had a lot of exterior work on this picture and in very mixed conditions. At times it was very challenging especially with our small crew.
As far as day interiors were concerned it had to be lit. I was shooting the day interiors on slow stock (50 ASA) and the cabin, which was purpose built for the film, had small windows and very dark walls. The lighting strategy was to light as much as I could from the exterior so I had light coming through windows and doorways and then supplementing if need be from inside.
A lot of the film takes place in the cabin at night. These scenes were shot during the day with windows tented or hard blacked. These night interiors were lit by a combination of kino, china balls and firelight depending on whether the characters were using their ‘fat’ lamps or merely the fireplace for illumination. We wanted the interior of the cabin to have a different feel on each night we were there. For the characters the cabin was a pressure cooker and I wanted to reflect that with the lighting.
The cabin was a really small space to work in with only one floating wall. We had six cast in there to cover as well as the crew. The parlour was the main room in the cabin that we shot in and every time we shot in there it was difficult. We called it the ‘parlour from hell’.
The interiors, despite having a naturalistic kind of feel to them, are very expressionistic in the sense there are deep, dark shadows. There had to be a sense of danger in the shadows. The film is a psychological film, it’s a bleak film – it is really a hard core dark film and this was of course reflected in the lighting.
I had this idea of single source lighting coming through windows or being motivated by lamp or candle light. Caravaggio was seminal as well as Edward Hopper but in the end it was probably Hopper meets James Gleeson.
ND: And how about lenses and composition?
JO: I went with Primos which have a slightly softer look then say Ultra Primes, which I had used on KOKODA and September and Cookes, which I had used on In Her Skin. The thing to be careful of with Primos is flare – especially when shooting Super 16. After a few flare issues I had the lenses hard matted which sorted out most of the problems. There is some verticle flaring with some of the exterior shots that we really liked. It gave the shots an ethereal quality. We tended to use longer lenses a lot. We wanted to stack the frame up a little bit more and reduce the depth of field. Once again it’s the story – it was about the faces. It was about concentrating on the characters so we wanted to let the backgrounds drop off.
We also did a bit of speed ramping and we used that to accentuate the spasms that Aden Young’s character experiences with the lockjaw. The speed ramps were also used to underscore the character’s spiritual connection to the land. He has this sixth sense that he could tell when things were about to happen – the land would speak to him. He would stop and listen and as he does so we would ramp the speed of the camera up. The guy is just standing there looking up at the trees and as we slide into slo mo you get this really powerful moment in time. The blink of someone’s eye that happens at 50fps as opposed to 24fps – some of that is really subtle and the audience doesn’t pick up on immediately, but it has a different feel to it.
ND: How did the operating work – did you share with Kriv?
JO: Kriv and I shared the operating on the film. Kriv has a cinematography background and he operates on a lot of his own commercials and has done so on two of his features. It was a discussion we had when we first met and I said no worries. He’s a good operator and very instinctive with the camera.
ND: Did that help you share a common language?
JO: Yes it did. He is very particular about how he likes to frame so it’s one thing to talk about it but when you see it in action the style falls into place very quickly.
ND: What format did you shoot on?
JO: Initially we were talking about shooting HD but I’m not convinced about shooting HD for period films if the film is to be theatrically released. For the small screen, yes not an issue but not for theatrical release. I think the digital format affects the audience as much as colour choice or camera movement and on the big screen digital looks like digital with all of its synthetic characteristics. An audience may not know whether they are watching a movie originated on film or digital but subliminally it will affect their viewing. If you are asking them to go on that journey, in this case Australian bush 1901 and your giving them a modern synthetic image then you’re going to lose some of them at the outset. To pull it off successfully you need almost total control over your lighting and a seemless post path. Zodiac and The Other Boleyn Girl are two that I think have come really close. With ‘Lucky Country’, where we had to shoot very quickly in really tough lighting conditions, digital is not going to cope that well with it in the sense of acquiring a film –like look. I read a quote recently from Lance Accord where he said if you want your movie to look digital then shoot on digital but if you want it to look like film then shoot film. It’s as simple as that. So we had the choice of HD or Super 16 and we opted for the latter. We got a package from Panavision which was an SR3 and an SR2 for backup. A set of Primo 35mm lenses, a set of 35mm shift and tilts and an Angenieux HR 10:1 zoom.
ND: What film stocks did you shoot on?
JO: I was concerned about the grain with Super 16 mm so I used Kodak 200T for night interiors and exteriors and Kodak 50D for day exteriors and day interiors. 50D is great for interiors as long as you can achieve the light levels required. Of course 50D has a really fine grain structure and it has good contrast which is what I like. The thing about Super 16 when going to 35mm is your exposures – they have to be rock solid, if you underexpose you are getting into dicey territory with the neg. If you are OK exposure wise then resolution is the next thing that causes headaches and I think that comes down to lens choice and shot selection. If you want lots of wide shots of fields in overcast conditions i.e. lots of Depth of field in flat lighting, then your images will start to fall apart. The Super 16 blown up just doesn’t handle that kind of stuff well. Treat it well, however, and the results can be stunning.
