Writer Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation) has decided to take another trip into the human mind. This time, it’s the mind of Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) whose inner thoughts are revealed. Joel is stunned to discover that his long-time girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has undergone a psychiatrist’s (Tom Wilkinson) experimental procedure in which all of her memories of Joel are erased. Frustrated by the idea of still being in love with a woman who doesn’t remember their time together, he decides to undergo the procedure as well. However, once the process starts, he realizes he doesn’t really want to erase Clementine. So, he starts smuggling her away into parts of his memory where she wouldn’t be found, altering other things in his memory as well.

“I’m always looking for scripts that are unusual and this one really fit the bill,” says cinematographer Ellen Kuras, ASC (Analyze That, Summer of Sam, I Shot Andy Warhol, Personal Velocity, Angela, Swoon). “The syntax was different than other movies and I was fascinated with the idea of doing a project that is really all about memories within memories and almost completely within someone’s mind.

“Working with Michel Gondry (who co-wrote the script with Kaufman) would be intriguing. I knew his commercial work, which is extremely technically innovative and visual.

“From the first day, we were on the same page,” Kuras says. “Michel wanted to manipulate the images organically rather than digitally. We discussed every photochemical process and emulsion level as well as in-camera techniques that could fit different story images.

“As I did my research for the project, not only did I have to delve into the various film processes he wanted to use to bring the story to life, I had to familiarize myself with optical illusions as used in magic shows.”

Since Gondry wanted the story to look as realistic as possible––making illusions more naturalistic––Kuras chose to shoot the film straight 35mm. “Michel wanted the whole story to be handheld,” Kuras explains. “Because I wanted to use the first series Zeiss Super speeds, I chose to use the Arricam stripped down to lightweight follow focuses, a single hand grip, etc. We never put on the dovetail (plate or sliding base plate). Our only tripod was the beanie bag used for cradling the camera while we weren’t shooting.

“In fact, the only time I got to use the dolly was the last shot of the movie, which of course, didn’t make it into the cut! Michel was more interested in recalling the Godardian way of moving the camera––wheelchair dollies (a challenge to steady in any format), chair dollies and what we called the iron maiden, a two wheeled monster which enables the operator to be pulled around in handheld mode, while standing up.

“We were constantly trying to maintain physical stability, much less getting the image steady.

“Michel wanted to have a natural look to the film’s lighting,” Kuras explains. “He wanted us to use existing light whenever possible. I had to be very astute in being able to augment the lights in order to get at least a base stop. The streetlights, for example, posed considerable challenges. Being predominantly sodium vapor, we had to match the color temperature of any film lights to sodium.

For stock, Kuras went non-traditional, choosing Fuji Reala. “We began this picture before Kodak’s 5218 came out,” she explains. “When I tested different stocks (Kodak and Fuji), Michel and I both liked the feel of the Fuji, especially in the night exteriors,” she explains.

“Using a daylight based 500 ASA stock at night outside is definitely non-traditional. However, when we timed the negative back photo-chemically to take the yellow out, we found that the stock held up. We had depth in the shadows and the grain held together smoothly.

“However, Reala posed a new set of challenges in the digital realm. What was already yellow became more yellow on film. And, when we went to a digital intermediate to time it back, we had to time it back all the way––taking out 10 to 15 points of yellow to get close to normal.

“Whereas, the photochemical timing process yielded good clean images, timing in the digital medium picked up more digital noise.

“If we had confirmed the digital in the beginning, I might have made a few different choices,” Kuras admits. “I might have reconsidered the Tungsten-based 5279, or certainly the 5218, now.”

However, although Kuras and Gondry wanted to go to a digital intermediate in pre-production, Focus Films did not give the go-ahead on the process until post. Kuras, Gondry, and the production company had to make clear to the studio that it was not about saving images, but about being able to create a singular look for the film.

While in post, Kuras got the final go-ahead to do a digital intermediate. Now, she was able to better match the CGI shots with the original negative. “And,” she adds, “I was also able to have the ability to influence changes within the image.”

She also wanted to use the extensive palette of a DiVinci, which enables the cinematographer to delve into the secondary and primary colors of the shadows, the highlights and the mid tones. Given the parameters of the lighting drawn by Gondry, Kuras also used tools of the digital intermediate to help shape the look of scenes or address problems of grain.

For Kuras, perhaps the most memorable (in her mind) scene in the film is the “chase-scene” when Joel is trying to hide Clementine in the recesses of his mind. “We could do a whole article on just this one complicated sequence,” she laughs. “It is one of the most visual sections of the film.

“Here is where Michel shows his brilliance in the juxtapositions and the visualization of recurring elements used to connect scenes or act as disparate fractions within scenes.

“Given that we are in Joel’s mind, anything can happen, such as when Joel, hiding with Clem in his childhood memory, ducks under water in an over-sized sink only to pop up soaking wet in a car that is in a drive-in movie with Clem at his side. As Clem begins to disappear, or be ‘erased,’ they exit the car, which begins to disintegrate.

“Michel also introduced set pieces of the house on the beach, a fake near-miss accident of a UPS truck that appears earlier in Joel’s travels, and fences (placed in the middle of the set) that disappear as Clem and Joel run from being erased.

“One particular memory that is a visual metaphor for the whole film takes place on the Charles River in Boston, where Clem takes a reluctant Joel out onto a sheet of thick ice,” Kuras recalls.

“At one point, our effects guy proposed we create the ‘ice’ on a controlled location. However, for both Michel and me, Plexi-ice wasn’t going to fly. He wanted to do it on real ice.

“Of course, it was one of the coldest winters in New York history,” she laughs. “So the location scouts found us a frozen lake in Westchester County.”

“We had a little back and forth about lighting shots like this,” she admits candidly. “He didn’t want any lights out on the ice. I knew we had to have lights, at least in the background, to get depth into the shots. No lights equal DARKNESS!

“We compromised,” she smiles. “I got a Condor with a Space Light to provide a base stop. Keeping the light off the ice wasn’t easy, so I suggested we go a step farther in the framing and the composition of the shots with Joel and Clem when they end up making ‘snow angels’ on the cracked ice.

“As I watched the set up, I realized we could really create this metaphor for the relationship by putting the Technocrane on the ice and asking the operator to extend it all the way out, straight down and overhead.

“By back-tilting the camera, it would appear as if they were falling off the ice––i.e. in a world that was upside down they were hanging on the edge, much like their relationship. Because we changed the perspective so, we were able to draw the audience into a world that feels exactly that––upside down.”

All exterior shots were an interesting challenge for Kuras and crew. When they weren’t juggling equipment on ice, they were trying to survive the coldest winter on the East Coast in a long time, fighting winds and trying not to make footprints in the snow. Kuras and Gondry turned the extreme weather to their advantage by using the snow to enhance the poetic visuals at play in the film.

Expanding upon Gondry’s juxtapositions of reality and non-reality in Joel’s mind, Kuras and Gondry staged a live action night scene in a bedroom where the Clementine and Joel characters are in bed. In an instant, the scene transforms into a day scene of a bed plopped in the middle of a snow-covered beach in a snowstorm.

Even though Kuras was shooting out in the open with 45-knot winds and wind chill minus 20 degrees, she worked hard at keeping the shots intimate. This meant using longer lenses and shallow depth of field.

That challenge became even more interesting as scenes became more intimate inside Joel’s apartment. Without the artifice of film lights or film lighting in general, Kuras and her long time gaffer John Nadeau had to craft alternative ways of lighting, not only to create a unique look, but also to get a base stop.

They were often lighting the space in which the actors would move freely. “‘Naturalistic,’ beauty lights and specials for the actors’ faces were nearly impossible in set-ups where almost the entire room was in play,” she says.

These difficult apartment sequences were shot both in a real location in Yonkers and on stage. “Part of the problem, as usual, was in the matching,” she explains. “We shot many elements on the real location, looking outside at moving cars so that we could feel what Joel’s real world was like.

“Then, we moved to the stage set. Dan Leigh, our production designer, created such a perfect match that, many times, I remember opening the door to use the ‘real apartment bathroom’ and finding myself walking out into stage space!” she laughs.

“It was extremely difficult to light these sequences because Michel didn’t want to take the ceilings off.

“Add to that, the walls were slightly off-white so we had to work hard at keeping the light off the walls.

“For the most part, I was able to comply with his request to be simple,” she says. “However, there were times when I would try to bring in a Chimera, to give us a little extra boost and simplify the lighting. Most of the time, however, we used clip lights and practical lamps as lighting sources. We even had a C-stand with three clip lights that we called the mini-Musco.

“At times, our sets looked like a lamp shop with shades that had holes cut in them to let a little extra light into the location! Sometimes, we used refrigerator light bulbs taped to the set dressing, or whatever,” she laughs.

“We really had no choice, but to hide the lights so we could give the sequences enough illumination without seeing the sources because we were often shooting with two handheld cameras opposing each other.”

“This film was a test for the focus pullers,” she says. “At times, I pushed the night scenes in the apartment one stop to give Carlos Guerra and Stanley Fernandez at least a T2 stop on the lens. Their challenge was even more interesting because there were no focus marks on these sets,” she adds. “So marks and real rehearsals were rare.

“Michel didn’t want to break the freedom and dramatic tension of actors, so marks and real rehearsals were rare. Most of the time, the action was covered in a very free style approach, two cameras placed strategically for two angles of moving masters to cover both sides of the action, for the entire scene.”

Drawing upon the freestyle almost documentary feel of the French New Wave filmmakers, Gondry wanted to cover live action sequences in one long take, even at the risk of funky shots. “There were many instances where a single shot would cover the entire scene, followed by longer lens coverage,” she says.

“A-camera would pick up one part of the action and B-camera would simultaneously pick up another part of the action; then A-camera would reposition during the take to pick up another part of the action, followed by the B-camera and so forth.

“At one point, A-Camera operator Chris Norr had to climb over the back seat of a car while rolling.

“Michel wanted us to either move handheld by walking or by using the wheelchair dolly on all shots, much like Godard had done in the sixties for the entire picture. This style affords a certain kind of intimacy, without traditional dollies, track or tripods to occupy the space of the scene.

“Key grip Bob Andres built a special rickshaw dolly, as well as a dolly with coaster wheels that could turn in any direction and an amazing sled dolly that he designed from the kind of sleds found in Norway for many of the difficult shots when we were chasing Clem and Joel on the snow.

“There is a sequence at the end of the movie where Michel wanted to use a wheelchair dolly to move the operator back and forth with the actors in the hallway,” Kuras recalls. “This was not only difficult because the wheels on the wheelchair are not centered for turning forwards and backwards and the caster wheels on the sled were too noisy (the idea being spur of the moment didn’t give the grips a chance to re-design the wheels). Michel was calling out the moves through headsets, which he insisted the operators wear so that he could call the shots out spontaneously.

“The hall was so narrow that there was no place for the assistant to walk or a place to light the two actors. We ended up having the operator shoot handheld sitting in the wheelchair, propped on sandbags, with the assistant pulling focus from the operator’s lap,” she laughs. “John rigged a light on the chair because we couldn’t find a place to put a light in the crowd around the camera.

“At one point, Jim Carrey gamely pitched in and pushed the wheelchair himself, delivering his lines at the same time. That didn’t work because we all cracked up laughing!” Kuras recalls.

For Kuras, the bulk of the challenges were in the transitions and flashbacks of memory sequences. Kuras, Gondry and the production team spent considerable time in pre-production working out how to realize the “erasure” of Clementine at different junctures.

“The transitions required several different camera tricks, allowing us to move from one world to the next,” she recalls.

“Michel and I also explored ideas for characterizing the memory sequences, like using a memory light,” she explains. “We wanted to create the feeling you might get when a car headlight cuts into a dark night––just as you see only what the light illuminates, not the whole image. This way, when we went into the recesses of Joel’s memory, we wanted to see only parts of the image.

“We tested different lights. Attaching the light to the top of the camera had a certain effect. When it was handheld, we could get a different effect.

“We tried various lights, spots, soft spots, rounder lights, mushroom lights and even a car headlight. We thought that a real headlight would work, however, we discovered that it had a different impact beam and was too narrow and horizontal. We tested and ultimately used sodium and mercury vapor lamps, and also used a clip light with a snoot, adding different colored gels depending on the situation.”

The memory light is a significant factor in the chase sequence through a library, on the snow and when they are running away from the movie theater. However, the most pronounced use of the memory light can be seen in a sequence where Joel and Clementine break into a closed house at the beach. “We used it to explore the house, to tilt down to see Joel’s feet in the sand inside the house and to see Clementine’s memories in a kind of tunnel vision.”

Shooting in this closed house was interesting for Kuras and crew. “We were limited in where we could actually put lights to illuminate the area surrounding the house because both cameras were seeing in almost every direction.”

One of the most involved memories that Kuras and crew shot was a sequence where Joel’s memory warps into an image of the two of them “bathing” in a bathroom sink. Another is when Joel’s memories go back to the 1950s or 1960s and he is a small child hiding under the kitchen table.

“Both sequences required oversized and real sets,” Kuras recalls. “One of our biggest challenges was matching the real kitchen with the giant kitchen.

“When we were in the normal kitchen, we needed to use smoke to wash out the blacks. On stage, we wanted to use smoke as well, but I nixed it because the smoke was difficult to contain.

“Besides, we weren’t on a real stage, but in a former Navy Base in Bayonne, New Jersey. It would have taken days to smoke the set, which was already a toxic environment.

For the sink sequence, Gondry sought to show the audience, in a subtle way, that these shots, too, were done live action and not digitally. To do this, the operators shot handheld from the top of a ladder, consciously leaving a little of that “handheld shake” in the operation.

“Shooting from above and looking down off a ladder is probably one of the hardest ways for an operator to work,” says Kuras. “Looking down is not an ideal circumstance, no matter how light the camera is.”

The practical memories took on various absurdist elements, depending on the place they had in Joel’s mind and how hard he was fighting to hold onto them. One of the most interesting is a moment where Gondry wanted to show the disembodiment of the character and how it reflects on the reality of the scene.

“Again, we are in that tiny apartment,” Kuras explains. “At one point, Joel gets up and walks behind a portable television on a stand and we see the middle part of his body in the television frame.”

“This was not blue screen, but a live beat,” she says strongly. “It is ‘rough’ because, again, Michel wanted all the in-camera effects to have an organic feel.

“EFILM was the best post facility to scan, color correct and film out the IR/IN,” she continues. “I had a great experience with them and Deluxe with Personal Velocity.

“Also, because EFILM and Deluxe Film Labs have a close working relationship, the technicians and great coordinators like Mike Kennedy at EFILM and Beverly Wood at Deluxe talk to each other constantly.

“As a cinematographer, communication between the Lab and the D.I. facility is not only key to me, it is critical.

“I might add that the same goes with the EFX house. It only makes sense that the colorist of the D.I. would be in touch with the EFX technician to be aware of what each other is doing. One work affects and influences the other.

“My colorist at EFILM, Mike Eaves, did an amazing job. We both took a journey into this film, trying to discover its true soul through the look and feel of the images. And, isn’t that what it is all about? Finding the soul of the film?”

For Ellen Kuras and team, making Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was a labor, but a labor of love and passion. “I really wanted to do this picture because it is also a truly original story and a very exciting way to step outside of traditional filmmaking.

“I was moved to work with Michel, a true visionary, and for the first time with Anthony Bregman, a producer I’ve known for many years.

“This film is not mainstream. It’s not middle of the road. It’s a completely different story approach and we presented it with very different images and techniques.

“Although we as crew have many frozen memories of this film,” she says, with a smile, “I hope that audiences can allow themselves to delve into the spirit and soul of the story to reflect upon their own lives.” •