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Millimeter Filmmakers extensively manipulated 25th Hour images in-camera, and during the digital-intermediate stage, in order to give NYC a "post-9/11 look" that, according to Spike Lee, makes the city an essential character in the movie. |
Although Edward Norton stars in Spike Lee's new film, The 25
“This film definitely takes place in a post-9/11 New York,” Lee explains. “We shot all over the city, but I often do that. Here, though, the whole point is to make it evident that is a different New York. Things have changed. That was a big part of what we were trying to do with this particular film.”
In the movie, Norton's character — a longtime New York native with a love/hate relationship with the city — has just a single day to set things right in his life before he heads off to prison for several years. The movie includes flashbacks to pre-9/11 New York, but the main action takes place present-day, including scenes shot in a building overlooking Ground Zero. To bring a “different vibe” to the city, as Lee puts it, the team took a specific creative and technical approach.
Subjective ApproachLee's film was one of the first major features to shoot exclusively in New York since 9/11. Because he and Prieto were planning a digital-intermediate master with colorist Steve Bowen at EFILM, Hollywood — Prieto's third consecutive digital master following on the heels of Frida and 8 Mile — they opted for the lightest equipment they could carry during production as the best way to execute their plan for making NYC a character in the movie.
“We opted for the Super 35 format instead of anamorphic because we wanted a guerrilla style with lightweight equipment,” says Prieto. “We knew that with a digital intermediate, we wouldn't need an optical squeeze for an anamorphic release since we could do it digitally. We wanted to give the sense of enhanced perception of the world the main character lives in, as it's his last day on the street before going to jail. We felt that, on a day like this, you might become more aware of your surroundings because you won't see them again for years. Because of that, we wanted a more subjective approach to the camerawork. Also, we decided early on to shoot the movie in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, in order to incorporate more of the New York background into each frame.”
As an example of the specific approach to enhancing NYC, Prieto points to a key scene in which Norton's character looks into the mirror and offers a monologue about his conflicted feelings toward the city. While he speaks, a montage flashes by, constructed specifically to show New York as extreme as the character's views about the metropolis.
“We shot that segment with reversal Kodak 5285 stock, cross-processed,” Prieto explains. “That gave the images an extremely contrasty and saturated look, which matched the character's feelings of disgust and revulsion about the world around him. We also filmed that sequence with a handheld camera with wide-angle lenses, to enhance the uneasy feeling.”
Because the film features New York in the present, past, and in one case, a prospective view of the future, Lee and Prieto also worked on innovative ways to alter the look of the city. Lee, in fact, divided the film into four distinctive visual sections, and then worked with Prieto to stylize each of those sections differently. Those sections: a flashback prologue, the post-9/11 present, the stylized montage that accompanies Norton's monologue, and a sequence dubbed Utopia — a look at the possible future.
“These are different New Yorks,” Lee emphasizes. “Illustrating this was a very innovative process, and for that, I really have to credit Rodrigo. He's as creative a DP as there is working today. I try to provide the creative leadership, but I don't light myself, I don't pick the stocks, so I needed Rodrigo to help tell the story I had envisioned.”
Different New YorksPrieto credits a combination of techniques developed in-camera and during the digital-intermediate phase for making it possible to illustrate these different New Yorks. Generally, the DP says the point was to purposely play with different ideas during production.
“Instead of glass filters on the lens to signal changes in time, we opted to play with different stocks and methods of developing the negative,” Prieto explains. “I basically kept the lens filterless and applied color bias during the digital-intermediate timing of the movie. For the prologue and the Utopia portions, we bleach-bypassed the original camera negative, enhancing contrast, and creating a gritty, dirty look. We used Kodak Vision 800 5289 for the prologue and 5274 [200T] and 5245 [50D] for the Utopia sequence. The present was shot entirely with a 90° shutter to make each frame sharper, since the exposure time is a hundredth of a second, instead of the normal fiftieth of a second. That resulted in less motion blur per frame, enhancing the sense of urgency, of time running out on the character. Some scenes were shot with a 45° angle to take this effect even further. We shot all of the present with 5279, pushed one stop at the lab to add contrast and grain. The flashbacks, meanwhile, were shot at 180° shutter, about normal, on 5279 [500T] and 5246 [250D], with no pushing to subtly convey the idea that things seemed a bit more in control some time back. These scenes were also timed warmer than the cool, unsaturated present.”
Prieto also emphasizes that, throughout the shoot, filmmakers went away from classic film lighting whenever possible. Key dance scenes in a nightclub, for instance, forego “typical dance floor lighting, full of flashing lights of a thousand different colors,” he explains. Instead, “we decided to light the dance floor with one color only, from the floor up. After testing different options, we settled on using blue screen bulbs on KinoFlos, which were laid on the floor, uplighting the dancers. We also added several Lighting Strikes and Dataflash on the floor, lighting up the ambience smoke between the dancers. Blue screen bulbs are devoid of most frequencies that are not pure blue — that result is incredibly saturated.”
 Spike Lee supervises filming of the interrogation scene in 25th Hour. DP Rodrigo Prieto shot the scene overexposed, and then further digitally manipulated it in post, in order to make Edward Norton’s character appear "exposed ... unable to hide anything." |
Likewise, in another key scene in which police interrogate Norton's character, the filmmakers wanted the character to feel exposed and naked, unable to hide anything. “Typically, these type of scenes are lit very moody, with a single top light. Instead, [production designer] James Chinlund built a white set with fluorescent fixtures, which were actually gaps in the ceiling through which I poured bright lights on the set. I overexposed the scene by two stops and went further in the timing stage to the point where you barely see detail in the white brick walls, but you still keep the black suits and hair of the actors. Digital timing allowed me to stretch the limit of overexposure to where it still felt real, and where I was able to keep something in the frame as a black reference, so it didn't feel like a washed-out image.”
Prieto adds that filmmakers put a particular emphasis on making present-day NYC look post-9/11. The approach is to let viewers see the city as if it were still covered with ashes.
“For this, I enhanced the grain and contrast of the 5279 stock by pushing one stop and decreasing color saturation at the digital intermediate timing sessions at EFILM,” says Prieto. “That desaturation would have been difficult to achieve if we wanted to intercut those specific shots with images of normal color saturation — the flashbacks. But because Spike broke the film up into parts, the present was the only part where we wanted the post-9/11 ashes look, and we were able to achieve it in this fashion.”
ChallengesWhile Lee credits Prieto for meeting his specific creative requirements, Prieto returns the compliment, saying that Lee's desire to visually separate the different segments of the movie was a rare approach for a major director. But Lee also pushed the envelope.
“Spike likes to have freedom on set to shoot in every direction, with at least two cameras rolling,” Prieto explains. “Every single scene was therefore covered from at least two opposing angles simultaneously, which was a big challenge for lighting. I worked very close with James Chinlund to incorporate practical lighting sources into the sets to meet this challenge. In the nightclub, for example, all the lighting was built into the set, allowing Spike to shoot with two or three cameras facing practically in any direction, without any major relighting. This gave the actors freedom to overlap dialogue and sometimes improvise without worrying too much about continuity. It wasn't too easy for me, but the actors loved it. I guess my pain was their gain.”
While Lee hopes all this effort and attention to detail will make this gritty, post-9/11 New York resonate with audiences, he can't help but lament that the vibe is different in his beloved city these days, and not just for film crews.
“Shooting in the streets is different now, but so is just walking down the street,” Lee says. “For one thing, you are always looking up at the sky. That's something we never did before. So things are different now, and we try to get that across in this film.”