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Headless
Horror
Without a doubt, one can be sure that Sleepy Hollow is certainly not a family-friendly take on the legend of a small town school teacher who charges off on a ride to confront the Headless Horseman. A genteel sensibility would hardly be the gameplan for an adaptation of Washington Irving's "gothic" horror/adventure novella that pairs unorthodox director Tim Burton (Beetlejuice, Batman Returns, Ed Wood) with cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki, ASC whose sumptuous visuals have graced Like Water For Chocolate, The Little Princess, Meet Joe Black, Great Expectations and The Birdcage. "It was a wonderful fantasy with a mixture of horror, romance, drama and humor" says Lubezki of his initial reaction to the screenplay by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven, 8mm)"The minute I sat down to talk to Tim Burton, the story came alive through his eyes. And, when he told me Johnny Depp was going to play the police officer [as opposed to the original story's school teacher] exiled to Sleepy Hollow because of his unorthodox views, that did it for me - Johnny is one of my favorite actors. Now, I saw a lot of potential in Ichabod Crane's world."
"Tim showed me drawings of the characters, and they were wonderful," he continues. "His vision was strong and I knew that I would enjoy re-creating those characters on the screen using unusual angles, dramatic unmotivated lighting, and shadows - even under the eyes! How could I do that in a movie, and not make the actors look bad." At first, the two discussed shooting in the actual area of Sleepy Hollow (in upstate New York's Hudson Valley). However, when Burton surveyed the real location, he quickly realized that certain production aspects could be better handled in a stage situation. Offers Lubezki, "While many of the villages in New York were historically accurate, they didn't serve the emotional and formal side of the story. It is a fantastic tale not a realistic historical reconstruction." Now, a decision had to be made as where exactly to set this mythical world. "The production elected to shoot in England, and that made Tim happy," Lubezki says. "He'd shot Batman there and loved the art department. And, since many of the cast members were from there, it felt like a logical move. Here, he could build the sets and even find some locations that gave him a sense of familiarity. It's kind of ironic - we were going to build a huge exterior inside a soundstage and shoot interiors on real locations. But, that's the best way to make the film work." With that issue settled, the two began to consider scope and visual style. Both wanted the picture to look like an old movie, not with black-and-white type lighting, but by endowing Sleepy Hollow with the feeling of illustrations in an old book. The square Academy format would have been ideal, but that size is rarely distributed or projected anymore. Instead, the duo settled for a straight 1:85 approach, opting to manipulate the picture in other ways. Lubezki then went about performing intensive filmstock tests. Finding a comfort zone for the color palette was of the utmost importance "We wanted a black-and-white, painterly feeling. We did everything from ENR to ACE and bleach-bypass before we settled for the CCE [Color Contrast Enhancement from Deluxe Labs] process, which would enhance blacks and desaturate color to make it more grainy and textured. I know, everyone is doing [such special processes] these days - we're all trying to find a way to be different. Suddenly, different is becoming common. The trick is to use the process to help the visuals not just because playing with film stock is in." For an end result, the cinematographer wanted as little grain as possible. Naturally, he had little inclination to work with fast stocks. "Most of the locations were going to be built on stage, including a huge exterior, so we would have enough light to shoot at F2.5 with 200 ASA, so I chose the Kodak's Vision 200T [5274] for structure."
With a few requisite scenes of blood and gore popping up, Lubezki also had to take care in applying deep red tones. "Tim wanted the blood to be much brighter, almost artificial. So we tested various levels of color, finding that a bright orange read right after the film was processed. This 'fantasy blood' looked very strange on the set, but worked on the screen." An extensive preproduction color and grade session with Ian Robinson at Deluxe Labs in London left Lubezki with a good handle on color tones. "I didn't want to use gels or color filters to determine the look. So in tests, we worked out ways to be able to do neutral skin tones, or go slightly cold, cold, and very cold or several steps to red and yellow as warmer, slightly warm or very warm," details Lubezki. "Instead of a color chart, I would write on the camera report - night exterior, slightly cool - and the timers would know exactly what color to match to and where the color came from." In designing the period production, Rick Heinrichs (Fargo, The Big Lebowski) balanced the main sets' bleakness with bright, richly colored dream sequences. "In the story, we have a flashback to Ichabod's childhood home," notes Lubezki. "We had a great time lighting and shooting this forced perspective house that's surrounded by trees and flowers and is very pink against a blue sky. This was the only time I would be able to do bright photography - the rest of the story is overcast. We used lighting similar to that in the rest of the picture, but just increased the color and made it a little more high key." Burton's target for a "fantasy," gave Lubezki free reign to do what he does best - make "impressionistic" pictures. "We would shoot exteriors against painted backings, the way old movies were done with fake clouds and painted trees. We could add branches to make some shots look scarier and more interesting. It was a combination of real materials with painted backings and very old-fashioned techniques of displaying perspective. This approach created a very theatrical and painterly feeling." But Lubezki truly had to harvest his inspiration to create a false sense of sky in the low ceiling studio. "To achieve this, we pre-rigged the stages with hundreds of space lights set very close to each other [strung from the ceiling]," the cinematographer states. "Individual controls on the dimmer board allowed us to control light. Then, prior to each shot, special effects crews masked the lights with heavy layers of fog and smoke, giving the illusion of mist and sky. "The whole movie was shot with tungsten light and we used big sources from 20Ks or Maxi Brutes, through 20-by-20s or 20-by- 40s diffusion but this became a challenge for position, considering Tim loved the wide angles - sometimes, this made it impossible to hide lights." In line with the director's liking for wide lenses, a somewhat "bent" approach was selected in terms of the optical units fitted onto the Panavision Platinum, Gold and G2 cameras - 17mm, 21mm, 27mm, 35mm were normal while the 40mm became telephoto. "One shot of the Headless Horseman was on a 75mm," Lubezki adds. "We just couldn't get the feeling of him riding through the woods with the wider lenses, so we had to call back to Panavision to get them to send one to us. Overall, Lubezki describes his lighting style on Sleepy Hollow as falling "between naturalism and pictorialism," without fog filters and soft images. "The aim of pictorialism is to create photographs that are similar to paintings and to establish photography as a valid art form. In this case, [the purpose was] to make images that felt like illustrations from an old book, from an old animation, or from Tim's drawings. We were going to enhance the reality and make it more beautiful, but still believable." Unlike "normal" shoots, where cinematographers work extremely hard for "justified" lighting, Lubezki never considered that to be a rule on Sleepy Hollow. "Sure, we tried to make the light as invisible as possible, however this was not an epic or historical reconstruction as in The Crucible [photographed by Guild member Andrew Dunn], a film Tim and I often discussed as being routed in the real world. [On our fantasy], candles might be in the right side of the set, while the light came from the left - we weren't being purists. Sometimes, we even played the effect of candles from another room. We used our light to make it feel like a big and soft source, but the eye won't be able to tell from what." Lubezki hoped to synthesize the light without making it appear too baroque. "There were so many elements in front of the camera, I didn't want the light to be present or distracting. In color films, hard light looks generally very stylized," says the cinematographer, who favored a soft lighting scheme produced by big sources. "Light through 20-by-20 diffusion enhanced or recreated the original sources - moonlight, windows, candles, and so forth. "But everything would be 'slightly off'- the angles would not be right, the sources a little low, and sometimes the firelight flickers and sometimes it doesn't. Usually, I would consider this to be bad lighting, but here it gives a sense of instability and danger. But you are not really aware of it [this foreboding feeling], at least that's what we hoped. "Our biggest problem was matching the light from inside to outside, but the weather helped a lot. England is overcast 90 percent of the time in winter, so it gave us a visual bridge." Although Lubezki could never be accused of being a fan of smoke, he did apply the substance to "facilitate the transition from the real locations to sets, to add texture [pictorialism] to create atmosphere and a false sense of sky. This made it difficult, because I would see the sources with more frequency than I would have liked. Sometimes, a shaft appeared near a window. ILM helped me 'erase' some of these problems especially in two of the biggest lighting set ups -night exteriors - where big moonlight sources would light the smoke too much. The iconic imagery of Sleepy Hollow - shots of the infamous Headless Horseman riding furiously through the night - required an abundance of on-screen energy, and Lubezki exploited lightning effects to lend the scene some added dynamism. "Lightning is a difficult tool to use, because it tends to distract, and can also affect editing. So we had Tim Burton call every lightning strike effect. This made him responsible for the amount, rate, and duration. We would rehearse with [gaffer] John 'Biggles' Higgins, and Tim loved it. He was like Zeus, ruling his kingdom with strikes!" For most of the Headless Horseman shots, a stunt double galloped along with his face encased in a blue sock, as a makeshift bluescreen. "ILM then removed the head for us," contends Lubezki. "Tim was having a great time with these shots. He kept saying, 'Chivo, we are making the most expensive Mexican wrestler B-movie ever.' He loves them! "We didn't light the horseman any differently with or without head," he adds. "We framed for without the head, even though picking a frame with a blue sock was disconcerting. Doing these scenes with multiple cameras became even more of a challenge, although a quite fun one!" To make the Headless Horseman's blitzkrieg pursuits more effective, the production designers devised an elongated set within a warehouse - its dimensions ran 400 feet long by 40 feet wide. "Ideally, we wanted to have a backing on one side of the set, with painted clouds and trees. Then, we added a line of trees along a little road where the characters were going to run or ride down in coaches. We then added another line of trees, to create more of a dynamic." At times, the warehouse's ceiling ran as low as 15 feet so Lubezki hung spacelights at the top -"about 150 feet of lights, four deep. They covered the whole length of the stage and were hooked to dimmers - every six lights were in a block. This way, we could dim them up or down, or shut them off. We could also turn lights on or off, lighting the actors and keeping the distance dark or create depth opposite the actors. Before every take, we added smoke to the top of the stage to cover the lights. Because they were so close to each other, they appeared like a false sky above the road. Ironically, the most intricate lighting job took place within the film's smallest space. "Johnny Depp's room, in the mansion where he is to live while being the new police officer of Sleepy Hollow, is a little attic with wooden beams across the very low ceiling." Fortunately, the set had been fashioned with moveable walls, so Lubezki could maneuver them out to light the set. "That meant often lighting from the camera, which I never do," he expounds. "However, we were using wide angle lenses, as Tim liked, and this was the only way. "The biggest challenge was to make the shots interesting, and not look like news-reporter footage. Fortunately, Tim likes the unconventional, so I could put a six-by-six under the camera and put two 5K lights bounced under it. By coming from weird places, the light really helped the story, and that was the whole point of our choices anyway. Lubezki also savored those special moments that offered the audience a lot of visual information. "The shot where Johnny arrives in Sleepy Hollow for the first time was important, for example. We used a 35-foot crane, and prayed for an overcast look on the English locations. We waited for the best light - and did it with natural light. Of course, there was one shot where the sky was really bright - in England! You could feel the light behind the clouds. I remembered something that we had done in film school. I suggested that we put a clear filter in front of the camera, then literally draw the sky on the filter. But it was a disaster when we saw it in dailies - it looked painted with a Sharpie! Still, it gave the magicians at ILM something to work with. Though the legend of Sleepy Hollow itself may be a highly rehashed horror tale, this outlandish Tim Burton production turned out to be the greatest challenge of Emmanuel Lubezki's career. This terrifying tale proved more of an undertaking than lighting eight football fields for Meet Joe Black, shooting in 120° weather for The Birdcage, and endowing Great Expectations with its massive lighting plans of surrealistic realism. "What was really the most fascinating was creating something to look almost like nothing and film it in that non-traditional, expressionist way that only someone like Tim Burton can evoke," says Lubezki. "For me, being challenged to meet the creativity of a director who is a real author was wonderful. Tim has his own voice, and that is unusual today. Meeting his vision was one of the most interesting and creative things that I've done in a very long time." Email the author with questions/comments |
For
visual viewpoints, Burton and Lubezki discussed Mario Bava's Black
Sunday (1960), Hammer horror films from the Fifties and Sixties, and,
of course, the Disney cartoon itself, which the cinematographer notes
is one of the director's favorites. "In actuality, our Sleepy Hollow
doesn't resemble any of them," continues Lubezki. "What is great is to
try to take something unreal and make it 'real'- or, at least, believable
- to create certain reality with material so completely theatrical. 
As
far as contrast goes, Lubezki's concerns carried through to set design
and wardrobe. "All the departments participated in these tests," he explains.
"We would show what we'd done, and talk about what we saw on screen. Colleen
Atwood [Ed Wood, Little Women, Beloved] came up with a great way
to really define her costumes. Since she had a lot of black wardrobe,
Colleen found the CCE process took away a lot of details in the clothes.
She had to find ways to add texture or use reflective material. On Johnny
Depp's costumes, for example, she added a thin metallic stripe to the
edges of his clothes, so the wardrobe would come alive."