Two
Weeks Notice By Bob Fisher • Photos By Ellis Reed
Bullock was the hub that Miss Congeniality revolved around. It was the third consecutive romantic comedy for Kovacs, following in the wake of My Best Friend’s Wedding and Return to Me. Bullocktold Kovacs she was going to produce and star in Two Weeks Notice and she hoped he would shoot it. Lawrence called a few days later. Two Weeks Notice is set in New York City in contemporary times. Bullock plays Lucy Kelson, a legal advisor to George Wade, a real estate mogul played by Hugh Grant. As the story evolves, the audience realizes the seeds of romance between Kelson and Wade are taking root, but the outcome isn’t certain until the final dramatic sequence. Lawrence’s script is designed to play out against the background of an urban Manhattan setting. Bullock convinced Castle Rock to produce the film in the city and surrounding environs, because she believed the ambience was important. Two Weeks Notice was produced entirely at practical locations because Bullock and Lawrence wanted the audience to see the real New York in every scene. “Shooting in New York just a few months after the terrorist attacks was also a tribute to the city and its people,” Kovacs says. “We wanted to make certain the audience knew they were seeing a reflection of life going on in the city.” For Kovacs, the job began with assembling a crew. “I’ve worked in New York on and off for the past 30 years,” Kovacs says. “But most of the crew people I knew were retired or working on other projects. I spoke with colleagues including Roger Deakins (ASC, BSC), who shot A Beautiful Mind in New York.” Deakins introduced Kovacs to gaffer Bill O’Leary and key grip Mitch Lillian, who assembled the electrical and grip crews and also most of the camera crew, including operator Gabor Kover, assistants Eric Swanek, Stan Keitt, Lance Mayer and Michael Cambria, and film loader Craig Burfeindt. The exception was A camera/Steadicam operator Neal Norton, a regular on crews assembled by Kovacs.
“That was just one example of how professional the crew was,” Kovacs says. “It never shows up in a review, but no one makes a movie like this without a terrific crew. City and state agencies, police and the fire department were also very cooperative.” Kovacs had the luxury of six weeks of preproduction planning. He spent much of that time with Lawrence and production designer Peter Larkin probing what was in the director’s mind, including nuances of the characters and their relationship, and how they were affected by other people who touched their lives. Lawrence and Kovacs decided to shoot in the 1.85:1 Academy aspect ratio. They scouted locations and discussed how to dress the sets to provide the background for the story. “Peter (Larkin) has an incredible background in theater as well as film, and New York is his territory,” Kovacs says. “I learned so much from him. He knows the soul of the city and understands the cinematographer’s role and what we need. He provided architecture where I could hide lights and create shadows, and he gave us a working space for the characters, so they could move around the furniture. “If there’s a couch on a set, it’s there because the actors use it. Maybe it separates them at times or forces them to be closer. That helps to make the characters and sets feel three-dimensional. Maybe the audience doesn’t realize it when they’re watching a film, but it’s one of the differences between a scene feeling flat or organic. “It was amazing how quickly Marc caught on,” Kovacs continues. “Three or four weeks into the picture he was very specific about the visual language as if he’d been doing this all of his life. He worked very closely with the actors and knew where, when and how to move them. It was interesting to watch how he was able to combine dialogue with movement, composition and lighting. I’ve worked with many first-time directors, including Peter Bogdanovich and Bob Rafelson, and they all had this ability to make the visual language work for the story.” Kovacs describes Hugh Grant’s character as kind of a playboy with an easy-going attitude. They modeled him after a Cary Grant-type character. Kovacs explains that Wade doesn’t realize he is falling in love with Kelson until later in the story. He describes Bullock’s character as youthful, attractive, strong, likeable and down to earth, and adds that Lawrence wanted her to look glamorous and empathetic. “We want the audience to pull for her every second she’s on the screen,” Kovacs says. “I decided to use a lot of backlight. She has dark hair and we amplified the texture in a flattering way. We also puta little glint in her eyes because that reveals her soul. She has such an incredible light burning inside of her, she lights up every scene herself.” It sounds like an earlier time in Old Hollywood, when master cinematographers were famous for making the Greta Garbos of the world look perpetually glamorous. But Kovacs notes that was a different time. He says that if Kelson seems too beautiful, the audience won’t believe her character. She has to look “realistically beautiful.” Kovacs notes that Bullock was involved in everything from location scouting to supporting his request to invest in film dailies. He wanted Lawrence to see how the light played on Bullock’s hair and the glint in her eyes. A 40-foot-long trailer containing a screening room traveled with the company every day. That made it convenient to see the images playing on a big screen. “It energized the cast and crew,” he says. “Sometimes I’d see an electrician in the trailer, and he’d leave with a smile on his face more determined than ever.” Kovacs has photographed more than his share of dramas and action films, for example, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The King of Marvin Gardens, Little Nikita, etc. He believes that comedies can be more challenging to film than dramas. “In a comedy, physical timing and the undercurrent of emotions are a totally different type of challenge,” he observes. “Many times, characters are speaking between the lines, not exactly meaning what they say. It’s very important for the cinematographer to grasp these shadings, so you can help the director express them visually with lighting, composition and movement. This is a very funny movie, but I treated it visually like it was a drama with low key, source lighting.”
During rehearsals Lawrence broke each scene down into individual shots. He always asked Kovacs where he thought the camera should be positioned, the angle of photography and movement. Grant and Bullock discussed what their characters would do. “We designed the language for Two Weeks Notice one shot at a time,” Kovacs says. He mainly worked with a single Panaflex camera, except in static scenes, for instance, when two characters are sitting at a table engaged in a long conversation. “In those types of situations, Marc and the actors liked working with one camera over a shoulder and another on a single,” Kovacs says, “but if that required compromising lighting or composition, he would usually agree to find another way.” There were no storyboards. They began each morning shooting a new scene with the goal of completing it before the end of the day. It gave them a fresh outlook every day. The day began with Lawrence and Kovacs discussing coverage, usually before anyone else was on the set. They wanted camera movement to feel organic and in concert with the emotional flow. Kovacs’ camera package included two bodies and a set of Primo prime lenses, ranging from 27 to 40 mm, and 50 and 75 mm for close-ups, and a Steadicam. Other than color correction there was no glass on the lens. “I had faith in my Steadicam operator (Norton),” Kovacs says. “He knows how to make it flow as smooth as a tracking shot on a dolly. It saved time building tracks for long walking and talking shots, and you have more flexibility for finding angles.” Most of the time the camera is objective, observing and showing the audience a story about two people who are falling in love. Sometimes it gets very subjective from the point of view of one of the main characters. It shows the audience how they see each other. Kovacs notes that some scenes demanded a feeling of kinetic energy. “Maybe Marc wanted to point something out to the audience, so there is a slow, almost imperceptible movement in, ending in a tight close-up on Sandra’s character,” he says. “Her complexion is flawless, so she didn’t require any softening effect or diffusion. I used Kodak Vision 5279 (500-speed) and Kodak Vision 5246 (250-daylight) films, usually at (stop) T-4 or 2.8. The images are so sharp you can see details in her eyelashes. I know exactly what to expect of these films. The front end lab was Technicolor in New York. “In one scene, we were on the 36th floor and the two main characters are near a window playing chess,” he says. “It was night and you could see the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges in the background through the window, and the cars driving by on the FDR highway. The problem was that the windows on the newer skyscrapers are all smoke glass, so we lost two stops. Marc asked me, ‘What do you think if we start between the two players, see the night scene outside the window, and pull back to reveal them playing chess?’ It was dark, but I figured that if I could see it with my naked eye it would show up on the film. We started pulling back and on each side of the frame a character came into the scene. The next day, everybody came to see dailies to find out how it worked. Everyone was amazed by how much they could see in the darkness.” There was a huge exterior in a park where Kovacs “pushed” the film one stop and set the lens at T-2.8. “When you understand what the lens and film can do, you can rely on your visual memory and make these decisions with confidence,” he explains. “The Primos are very sharp at T-2.8, and the 5279 film has a snap in the blacks while recording details in the highlights.” From January though March, they concentrated on filming interior scenes, ranging from corporate offices and the apartments where the various characters resided. By April, there were no interiors left. The weather turned unexpectedly cold and stormy for four or five days at the end of May with only ten days left to shoot. “We had five inches of snow everywhere, and we had to finish shooting a scene that we started filming as an exterior at an actual country club on Long Island,” Kovacs says. “It was supposed to be a bright and sunny day, but it was raining so we moved inside. We weren’t rigged to light the huge interior, so we improvised. There were big French windows, so we balanced the light to make it look like it was a bright sunny day by dropping the interior light level. It was very tricky, because the exterior light was fluctuating like crazy, and it needed to always be two stops brighter than the interior light level. If it was T-5.6 outside, it had to be T-2.8 inside. The problem was that I wanted to shoot at T-4 because that’s where the lens is the sharpest and the scene calls for crisp depth of field. Everybody was anxious to see dailies. They were amazed. It looks like it was sunny.” Lawrence’s story called for a spectacular New York setting for a dramatic scene at the end of the film. The resolution of the romance plays out at a giant, circus-like celebration with clowns, jugglers, balloons and characters wearing masks. They planned to use 600 extras and VIP guests, including Donald Trump and Gloria Steinem. Lawrence wanted to shoot around the fountain at Lincoln Center, with three recognizable buildings in the background. It would have required an enormous amount of light for the audience to see and recognize the three famous buildings “My gaffer and key grip were very excited, because there were five beautiful arches where we could hide some big units,” Kovacs recalls. “We figured it would take three nights to shoot. That’s when the owners of the three buildings told us they each wanted to charge $50,000 a night for a total of $450,000. We thought that the studio would never go for it, but they surprised us because they felt that background was important to the spirit of this film. Then, two weeks before we were scheduled to start shooting, they demanded artistic control over what the building looked like in the film.” Goodbye Lincoln Center. They had two weeks to find an equally exciting background for the final scene. Someone suggested Fulton’s Landing in Brooklyn, which overlooks the Brooklyn Bridge with the Manhattan skyline in the background. “It was a huge lighting job, but much less costly than renting the Lincoln Center,” Kovacs says. “We had to light the Brooklyn Bridge and record the skyline of Manhattan. Fulton landing was surrounded by water. I wanted to use backlight from the river side so that eliminated the use of Condors or other cranes. My gaffer and key grip said they would figure out a way to give me backlight. They suggested renting a huge barge with a big crane, Condors and a huge 20K on it. Their idea was to use steel rods driven into the bottom of the riverbed as an anchor. They said it would take about 15 minutes to pull up the stakes and move to a new position when we changed camera angles. The New York crews are used to solving big physical problems like that. We also had two huge Musco lights underneath the bridge for a beautiful establishing shot. It was a huge and joyful celebration, which was just the right setting for the scene. There is a very famous restaurant, the River Café, in Fulton Landing. We also shot inside the restaurant and found angles where we saw the Manhattan skyline through the window.” The celebration provided background for a dramatic showdown between Kelson and Wade, which plays out in a complex two-page scene. “I loved the fact that a first-time director had such a great idea for a visually complex scene, and he was able to make it work,” says Kovacs. “It’s a romantic comedy that is character-driven with deep human emotions playing out in a dramatic situation. Every time I think I have done it all, something new and intriguing like this film comes along.” • |
While
Laszlo Kovacs, ASC was filming Miss Congeniality, he noticed that the co-author
of the script, Marc Lawrence, was on the set nearly every morning. Lawrence was
watching how scenes were blocked and asking Kovacs questions about lighting. The
cinematographer was impressed that a wordsmith was interested in learning how
nuances in his visual vocabulary were woven into the fabric of his story. Later,
Sandra Bullock told Kovacs that Lawrence was literally going to school on the
set. He was writing a script for Two Weeks Notice that he hoped would launch
his career as a director. 
Kovacs
notes that shooting in New York City raises unique logistical challenges. He cites
a scene filmed on the 36th floor of an office building. He lit through a window
from a Condor crane that stretched 210 feet high. The sun was going down and temperatures
were dropping below freezing. There was a break, so Kovacs told the gaffer to
bring the crewman down, but the electrician insisted that he didn’t want to slow
things down. He anticipated and was prepared for the cold weather.
Kovacs
says there were some brief discussions about whether or not to show the skyline
with the missing Twin Towers, but everyone quickly agreed the answer was yes.
The overarching visual strategy was to always have the characters in recognizable
New York backgrounds, so the audience never forgets where the story is happening.
Sets ranged from posh country clubs to a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, the home
of Kelson’s parents.