Just before Christmas, we did the last set up, a 1000fps explosion in Ouarzazate in Morocco.
That ended the shoot of A Thousand Times Good Night, filming in Kabul, Ireland, Kenya and Morocco.
It has been anamazing journey. It is no secret that I have become a big fan of both Juliette Binoche and Nikolaj Coster Waldau.
We decided to shot as much as possible of the film with natural daylight – both XT and INT. It is a good theory – but when y have experienced the short winter days and the strong wind in Ireland – and in Ouarzazate – the practical part of it could have been disaster. But my gaffer Calin Catalin made it possible.
We used a lot of mirrors, bounce cards and bigger 12 and 20´´frames with negative and diffusion to control the light.
It seems to have turned out very nice. The quality of color is of cause amazing – the real thing – the sun…
We mixed this idea of natural daylight source with a new tube light from Softlights. Before we started the show, I asked Henrik at Softlights.com to help me create a light source that could give me a big soft source as soft as a book let light.
But it had to be lightweight, no more than 6-7 kg, have high quality daylight and tungsten light. They made it – and it became my most used artificial light source on this show. …And Juliette allowed us to call the light for SoftBx Juliette.
I must admit – It was scary to try – but when it turned out well, hopefully it will give something visually interesting back to the project.
We used the old Canon K35 lenses from Volker at Vast Valley rental company for most of our Close ups of Juliette. They have a superb fall of quality in the focus – and they helps the Alexa picture to be less “aggressive” and “digital”. Hand held , f stop 1.3 is a nightmare for a normal focus puller. But Daniel – my focus puller is unfortunately not normal in that sense.. He have done the impossible possible.
