Blog Cinematographer Vincent Gallot shares his experience on using the Optimo Primes on “The Future Awaits”

The movie is called « The Future Awaits”. This is the true story of a family who cannot, because they had no money, flee in free zone and had to stay in Paris. During two years and a half, the two parents and their two daughters had to stay and hide in a 9m² maid’s room. The main part of the movie is about this enclosure and the way they live, the information they have about what is going on outside and the fact that we begin to learn there are deportees. This is the true story of a woman named Toba Zylbersztejn. Steven Spielberg’s team interviewed her when he made his documentary on the Holocaust’s survivors. Her husband, who is still alive, told the story, via his son, to Nils Tavernier, who made a script out of it.

In his expectations, there is this desire of realism, he always wants something stylish without even creating something technically special. It is all about bringing something more photographic, something which is, for me, anchored in cinema. By this way, he wants to bring the spectator out of what he used to do in documentaries. He has this photographic desire but he wants to stay in a realistic universe. We do not go for impossible lighting. When we did our first movie together, that was the watchword. He wanted me to stylish the image, without doing something artificial. He refuses complex ideas. On the two movie we did together, we searched for a camera-optic couple, where, right away, we can say “there, it work.” Nils really wanted to operate, he needed to be close to his comedians. Therefore, he needed a camera he felt comfortable with. We talked a lot about the format after our first movie together. He was an intern with Doisneau a long time ago. So he has this love for photography with large format (24×36), for photo-report and for things you think to be caught on the spot but are in reality photographs with a bit of work. He was attracted by using the 35 mm, the 50 mm.

So, we exchanged a long time with Nils about making a film with full frame because it brings him closer to something he was sensitive to during his youth. The postulate of the camera did not arise. I wanted to shoot with an Arri LF. He felt comfortable with it so it was very simple for the camera. The optics were something else. We had access to many things including the Optimo Primes. I was excited because since the release of the optics, I never had the opportunity to put my hands on it. For me, the idea of shooting with French optics was brilliant. We put one of my assistant in very basic conditions, on a white background, with a front lighting, with the possibility to light on or off a backlight. I did not want to look at very technics things like precision or sight. I just wanted it to be the most basic possible. I just wanted to look at an image and tell myself: “It is great”. We put straight away the Optimo Primes and right away, I told myself: “damn, it looks great” it actually works. The skin texture immediately seemed more interesting to us, sweeter also. The skin tone seemed more beautiful as well. There was something very sweet, very round, very flexible. And with this Arri LF, I found the contrasts to be slightly softer and this would allow me to preserve a little bit the blacks in the image, because i was going to shoot a very dark movie. Imagine that, as everything happens in a 9m² maid’s room, there was going to be only one light input through a window and a little vasistas above a washbasin. All the day light was going to be constructed around this with moments where severe sunlight will be about to enter in the room. There was going to be very dark areas in broad daylight. In low lights (it is also because of the camera-optics couple), something was happening, a texture that stayed and seemed interesting to me.

On the Angénieux Optimo Primes, there was something round about the way I felt the focus. There was this kind of rather textured white that bring me closer to the idea of white you had in film: I was pleased by having an organic perception of the highlight. The diaphragm also allowed me to shoot without adding lots of light. There were other tests later, I could make candlelight sequences, because there is three or four sequences where there is only candlelight and I found this amazing. The light is amazing. It is also thanks to the camera but these optics are luminous enough. The Optimo Primes also had this ease of use. The focusing is close enough for me to have what I needed in terms of close-up. I don’t think I used windscreens on this film. I did the very big inserts with the 100 mm and it was largely enough. There is also that this is not a movie that goes into over-esthetics, into over-styling. We do not search for effect. It had to remains quite realistic when we got inserts.  But, here you are, the instant rendering convince me straight away. After the test, I immediately said: “there, I want to shoot with that” The focal range was gigantic, form 18 to 200 and I told myself it was largely enough.

I like a lot to manipulate images; I like a lot to play with my tools. So, I do not have a real law about the choice of the camera. Everything depends if I want to shoot for the big screen of for the little one. For me, when you are the director of photography, for having been a long time assistant and having seen it among other directors of photography, you need this little alchemist’s touch, playing with the tools. What I wanted during the tests was to have all at once something obvious in a TV. Afterwards, we made other tests and we look at it on a big screen at the laboratory.

Not at all. Somehow, it is interesting because it makes me want to try again. I was talking with the lens technician from Transpacam. He obviously mentioned the internal filter options and irises that you could change… I told myself: great, I was excited. Then after, frustration. It was not possible with the set they had at Transpa.

I made some research. I wanted a little more sweetness. I didn’t want some halation coming from the calibration, but I wanted this softness of the image. It was also a request from Nils who doesn’t like the too sharp images. It needed a compromise between softness and contrast, between a level of very white white and a level of very black black. But, things must remain soft and a bit satin. I tell myself that with an internal filter in the optic, I could manage to have something like this, another texture type. Actually, I rather smoked the sets. It was a very good idea because it allows to mark the lights. So, the lightings take more volume. As long as you let in rays of sunshine, they materialize in space. And honestly, I think there is a magic in the Optimo Primes which made the compromise between the softness and the focus (that you can still really feel) that is for me, optimal. I totally find what I’m looking for because it is soft and at the same time, the focus is there. I do not ask myself of a little diffraction.

I don’t want to create the Vincent Gallot signature. I want to create the signature of the movie. I feel like I am the result of lots of experience. I have long wanted to be assistant to work with great cinematographers I admire. I was the assistant of Darius Khondji, I worked with Arris Savides, with Philippe Rousselot. The latter said to me: “you should stop being assistant.” I was making something with him and while talking at a moment, he said: “You should stop, you will be DP now.” I just needed someone to tell me. And all the things I have learnt with these people, the things I have seen, now I use them. I have many sentences echoing in my head. I remember Darius who said to me one day: “You know, your job will be to take very strong bias and hold them until the end because it is all that will stay from your work at the end”. And here we are, this sentence resonate in me. So, at one time, when I saw your optics on that LF, I told myself; here is my thing. I’ll take that. And if I can make more things with the IOP, with smoke, with this and that, then, that’s great. But at one time, here, I take choices. I stand by it, then if it has to be improved, I find things to improve, but it is a work in progress.   For example, when we gave each other references with Nils, they blow up very fastly because we end up making an object, not telling ourselves we were going to make that specific movie. At one time, I didn’t understand. He talked to me about the Train from Gragnier-Deferre. He told me: “you will see, it is great.” Then, I watched the movie. I think he wanted to raise my awareness about the fact you can make a good movie with archive images, that it will not seem wrong and that we just have to find things for us. I heard that and I told myself: “Where does he want me to go? I will not make these images. It is not beautiful. It was at the time maybe. Now, maybe we have better things to do.” But, actually no, it was just a reference. In the idea, I really believe in this use of tools and exchange, to move on with the tools then to make something out of it.

There is a thing I did not tell you. There is moments in my backgrounds on the 50 mm, I had the feeling of shooting with anamorphics. I don’t know how to explain this. It is some rising blur, ovoloïd like in anamorphic. But there was this thing in the background. There is two or three shots, especially portraits where it is really strange. There is kind of little deformation, but on the portrait, it’s all encompassing and I’m in love with this effect. I need to put my finger back on it and it just, well, scotched me. It’s just so cinegenic. The same way, we go to the LF because Nils wants to stay away from deformation. It is surprising. This is why he didn’t make his movies in anamorphic, for now at least. Deformations, too much unstructured bokeh, he just doesn’t understand. Personally, I understand very well why we does it. In a matter of pictural research, having ovoloïd bokeh, having background deformations, it bring us closer to the painting, to another graphic culture than the realism culture, than the moving picture one. It is not his thing. And this is true there is something in your optics between the cinegenic compromise where there is something pictural happening and the uprightness.