How Dante Spinotti Rendered the Story of Pinocchio on Film “There is nothing more beautiful
in the world…It makes you laugh, it makes you cry. It’s a very
mean, generous, magical, universe... It’s about freedom, pain and
a joy so powerful that it restores the souls in every spot on earth.” Imagine that you are in a village in Italy during the late 1880s. A tree stump falls off the back of a wagon as it rides through the village square. The piece of wood seems strangely alive and it causes havoc. A lonely bachelor named Geppetto claims the wood, and shapes it into a living puppet. He yearns for his creation to become a real boy, but the Blue Fairy says that the puppet must first learn to behave. She assigns Jiminy Cricket to guide the puppet on a sometimes perilous and always adventurous journey. The puppet tries to explain his mishaps with a series of white lies. With each lie, his nose grows a little longer, a telltale sign that he is not about to become a real boy anytime soon. The imaginative fable was conceived as a series of short stories written for the children’s magazine Giornale dei bambini in 1881-82 by an Italian journalist under the pseudonym Carlo Collodi. In 1893, he wrote a book called The Adventures of Pinocchio: Story of a Puppet. The book became a favorite with succeeding generations of children around the world. Walt Disney Studios produced Pinocchio in the form of an enduringly popular animated feature in 1940. Pinocchio is coming back to the cinema as a live action feature with Roberto Benigni cast in the leading role. Benigni, who won an Oscar for his work in Life Is Beautiful in 1999, also directed Pinocchio and co-authored the script. He chose Dante Spinotti, ASC, AIC to render the fable into moving images captured on film. It was a homecoming for Spinotti, who was raised in northern Italy. He began his career as an assistant newsreel photographer in Africa, and migrated into shooting TV commercials, news and documentaries. Spinotti earned his first narrative credit in 1981 for La Disubbidienza. His subsequent credits include such acclaimed Hollywood dramas as The Last of the Mohicans, Nell, Heat, L.A. Confidential, The Insider, Wonder Boys and Red Dragon. “Roberto spoke with me about Pinocchio probably about a year before we started shooting,” Spinotti recalls. “He was determined to tell the story the way the book was written. I felt as I re-read the book and later the script that the story is ambiguous in visual terms, because it is a fable set in a real environment. That helped to define the visual language for me as a blend of reality and fantasy. Are we in a real place or a fantasy? We wanted to keep that question on the audience’s mind throughout the movie.” Spinotti recalls that production designer Danilo Donati initially envisioned filming Pinocchio entirely on stages. The cinematographer suggested real backgrounds rather than painted backdrops to amplify the perception of depth. Large green screens were installed on the stages. That made it possible to insert background plates of the real Tuscany sky with flying birds and moving clouds into scenes. Pinocchio is reported to be the biggest production ever made in Italy with a budget of around $45 million. The film is a co-production by several European companies with worldwide distribution outside of Italy handled by Miramax. Complex and sophisticated cinematography was required to create the illusion of a story that takes place on the boundary between fantasy and reality. Pinocchio is the central character in about two-thirds of the scenes. The rest of the cast consists of actors portraying both humans and fantasy characters, including the Blue Fairy, the cat, the fox, and Jiminy Cricket, dressed in costumes that are often augmented by prosthetic features. Spinotti suggested producing Pinocchio in anamorphic format (2.4:1 aspect ratio), because of the scope and beauty of landscapes and the story. Benigni promptly embraced that idea, which was consistent with his own vision for framing the story. “Roberto asked if we could create the illusion of real sunlight and depth of field on the big sets,” Spinotti recalls. “I assured him that we could do it, but it would require a lot of light. We had every lamp on a dimmer controlled from a single console.” That enabled Spinotti to orchestrate angles, directions and even colors of light so he could paint the sets with sunshine to simulate different times of day. He primarily used Kodak Vision 200T film 5274, a relatively grain-free 200-speed emulsion. Spinotti explains that the smooth look and colorful imagery suited the visual language designed for the film, and the visual effects team wanted clean elements for composite shots. “We did makeup and costume testing,” Spinotti says. “The most elaborate costumes belong to the two leading characters, Pinocchio and the Blue Fairy. Roberto decided to do the whole picture without prosthetics. His noses were created in CGI and composited onto his face. Roberto felt that with him being a puppet, he shouldn't be photographed with sharp sidelight or with a lot of shadows. That would have looked too realistic. He wanted Pinocchio to be lit as a more of an abstract character. I decided to add a little fill on the shadow side of his face and sometimes three quarters front light. “I needed some angles on Pinocchio to compensate for his facial features and to maintain the concept of him being a puppet. We used a lot of bounce light and fill from below the lens. I had a chance to use the new Dedolights with the dimmer controls to smooth out Roberto’s facial features in tight close-ups. I remember one shot when Pinocchio appears behind his father for the first time in the little kitchen in Geppetto’s house. We had a very tight close-up of him doing funny things with his face.” Spinotti was working with various Panaflex camera bodies and a complete set of Primo lenses. He also used lightweight E-series lenses for Steadicam and handheld shots, and Primo 11:1 and 5:1 zooms instead of intermediate long lenses to record closer-in shots of faces. Spinotti frequently chose to cover scenes with two cameras, especially when there were interactions between characters. “I felt the language of this story required an agile camera moving with the actor physically and emotionally, but not too extreme,” he says. At first, Benigni voiced some concerns about being photographed with two cameras. He said he didn’t know which camera to play to. “I told him, ‘Roberto, don't worry, just act,’ and he trusted me,” Spinotti recalls. The main stages were constructed in an abandoned chemical factory some 60 miles from Rome. The company also spent about a month shooting in Tuscany, where the architecture is still consistent with the late 1800s, and other practical locations. “The color palette was very painterly,” Spinotti says. “Every part of the film had its own color palette. Pinocchio’s costume was a sort of washed out cream with some red motifs. There were very warm color tones in Geppetto's town, including pinks and light blues.” In one sequence, a dove leads Pinocchio to the ocean, where he looks for Geppetto. A sea monster swallows Pinocchio. The live-action footage was filmed in a tank on a stage. Spinotti and visual effects supervisor Rob Hodgson conducted tests to discover what kind of water movement was needed to support a feeling of reality. The sea monster was a CG creature that was composited into the shot later. The inside of the monster’s stomach, where Pinocchio finds Geppetto, was a deep, dark, red set. “Danilo Donati (who died two weeks before the end of production) was an extraordinary production designer,” says Spinotti. “He designed the film like a painter adding layers to a canvas. He built a 1800s Tuscany town with every stone a replica of reality. All of the houses were movable on wheels. We could turn them around and reconstruct alleys, streets, porticos, squares and fountains. We also shot for a month on location in Tuscany on a huge property that had all the ingredients we needed for Danilo’s vision. The natural Tuscan hills were complimented by trees on tops of hills and roads that looked like they are reaching into infinity. We augmented the illusion with smoke to match a painterly stage look.” Spinotti describes a complex scene where Pinocchio is talking with his best friend, who wants to take him to a place where all the kids go to play. The scene takes place on a farm while twilight turns into night. A carriage comes down a road pulled by 30 mischievous children who have been transformed into donkeys. Spinotti suggested filming the long dialog on a stage, but Benigni preferred to shoot it at an exterior location. It took nine evenings, because there were no overcast days while they were shooting that would have allowed Spinotti to create artificial twilight. “There are a lot of emotional ups and downs, because Pinocchio is trying to be good but he is often tempted to be mischievous,” Spinotti says. “It is a fairytale with layers of humanity from common sense to desperation. There is a scene where the cat and the fox, played by two very successful stage comics, tell Pinocchio that if he puts some gold coins on the ground, the next day it will grow into a tree full of golden coins. Of course, Pinocchio loses the coins he needed to buy a present for Geppetto.” Spinotti describes one set, Pleasure Island, on one of the stages that was approximately 80 by 35 meters. There were some 15 or 20 houses with surfaces made of a highly reflective polished metal. Concerned about seeing lights and cameras on the mirrors, Donati asked Spinotti if he preferred a less reflective surface “I told him we would find a way to make it work,” Spinotti says. “I originally planned to use some bright sky backdrops to create sunlight. Instead, I later had the background painted black, and used 16 hot 28 volt spotlights everywhere and some smoke to create the atmosphere. We never had a problem with seeing the camera or crew reflected in the surfaces, and the mirrors seemed to multiply the number of actors.” Spinotti had 16 Par, 28 volt aircraft landing lights lined up next to each other, originally designed by Vittorio Storaro, ASC. Overall he used some 90 of those units and a large number of space lights. The dimmer board gave him the freedom to make intuitive decisions. Light was also filtered through diffusion and color gels that enabled him to quickly orchestrate changes in moods and environments. “We were also striving for the right angles, so sunlight would be believable,” he says. “We overexposed the film a stop or a stop and a half for perceptual reasons, because that's how sunlight looks. Front light doesn't work when you are imitating the sun.” One snow scene was slated to take place on an overcast day. The mood didn’t seem to work for the movie, so Spinotti instinctively turned the light into sunlight. A chase scene was filmed in a forest not far from Rome. “I wanted the strong moonlight beams of light coming through the trees and cutting through the darkness,” he says. “We had lamps on a number of Condors, including a 50K from Lightning Strikes, simulating moonlight. I used (Kodak Vision 500T film) 5279 on that occasion and for other night exteriors.” In another scene, the Blue Fairy sees Pinocchio hanging from a tree. He is silhouetted by a huge moon behind him. The Blue Fairy looks worried. She loves Pinocchio like a son. The camera comes in to reveal a little tear in her eyes, and the moon and the hanging puppet are reflected in the window glass. Spinotti made countless similar decisions every day on virtually every shot. He appreciated having the opportunity to retell a timeless fable while shooting in his native land with an extraordinary cast and crew. Pinocchio also provided an opportunity for Spinotti to work once again with Carlo LaBella, whom he describes as “one of the best color timers in the world.” They frequently collaborated early in his career. Pinocchio is scheduled to premiere in Italy in the fall with worldwide
release slated for December. Prints for the Italian release will be
recorded on Kodak Vision Premier color print film. “We need to show
audiences all of the brightness and deep blacks, saturation and brilliance
of colors in the costumes and sets to deliver the three-dimensional
feeling that Roberto Benigni and Danilo Donati envisioned,” Spinotti
concludes. |
