Persona (WEEK 4)

On week 4, our task was mimicking and replicating a film shot for shot as identically as possible. Bergman's Persona was much harder to replicate than originally first thought, in my role as cinematographer I felt our aim should be not only to try to replicate the shots Bergman uses, but also try and capture the heated emotional tension of the scene. As Gideon would explain to us after the task was over, it's one thing to copy a shot exactly, but another to actually recognize, and retain the same context, and meaning it had in the first place, instead of just being a straight replication with essentially no point.

Our location we used was a seminar room in Penbryn, because it was near, small, and could be easily manipulated in terms of lighting and sound.  My favourite shot of ours, would have to be the overlapping shot from the side, which turned out beautifully, even though our lighting was questionable at times with Andy not really having used them before. The lighting was incredibly dark at times, with only some reflection making it to what the camera saw, but in feedback we were told it made the shots seem quite intimate, emotionally charged, and effective, it just wasn't technically accurate to what Bergman did. In many ways though I think the exercise was not to simply copy, but adapt and evolve, in order to actually learn something an expand our knowledge of staging, lighting, and shot composition.

Our opening mid-shot of Sophie was particularly effective, really capturing the dull, grey, isolated mood of the establishing shot. Our only real worry was the radiator was in shot, but this was impossible to avoid as they were present all over the room, but in retrospect, a simple obstruction would have sufficed. As the piece progressed I found our lighting was far too heavy, and far too direct, giving an incredibly strong contrast when it wasn't necessarily needed. As it progressed the shots were fairly accurate, the one of Jemima slamming her hands against the table really worked, it was a conscious decision to let her keep her bangles on, giving quite a clashy, metallic, sound that was quite forceful, and just interesting to listen to. 

The staging was quite awkward at the very last shot, that includes Sophie in the foreground, while Jemima's behind her out of focus, and Sophie needed to appear in shot, thus wheeling herself in order to not see anyone else on camera, but also not wanting it to be noticeable. This meant this shot took many takes, and even then it was shaky at best. However, overall we were quite happy with our film, perhaps not as a strict mimicry of Bergman's film, but at least as an adaptation, or a concept spawned from the old one. We found we captured the same emotionally charged scene, with different lighting, and massively different pacing constructed in editing to really create tension, suspense. I was particularly happy with Ryan's editing, the girl's acting, and my cinematography.