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From ‘Dogme’ to Slumdog
It has been a varied and interesting journey for Anthony Dod Mantle, from the minimalist shooting styles of Dogme 95 to an Oscar for cinematography for Slumdog Millionaire
By Nazir Keshvani, 1 March 2009Lensing a multi-award winning film like Slumdog Millionaire, cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, drew on his years of experience as a renegade cinematographer of the Dogme 95 movement, the mid-nineties Danish school of filmmaking which sought to make the filmmaking process more vital by stripping it to its essentials.
Dogme filming guidelines were stringent - only naturally available light and occurring sound were to be used. The films were mostly shot in portable digital formats.
“I wouldn’t hesitate to make a film on digital if I felt it was the correct medium for the story,” Mantle said at the time. “If I find the soul and, at the same time, can combine that with some development in my profession, then that’s what I want to do.”
Mantle has certainly come a long way, winning the Academy Award for Cinematography for his work on Slumdog Millionaire, a film made remarkable for having been shot partly on digital.
The director of photography on Slumdog Millionaire prepared for the shoot by spending months familiarizing himself with the narrow streets and alleyways of Mumbai.
He told Variety the planning proved invaluable once actual shooting started. “This was not a conventional piece of cinematography, not one where I was able to start a shot and complete it and orchestrate it,” he said. “I had to work my pants off shooting in the slums, with the unforeseeable rampant running.”
Because of the need to move fast, Mantle relied on a custom-made handheld digital camera, using the Silicon Imaging SI-2K Mini camera head with a minilens. The camera was attached by cable to a rugged notebook computer in a knapsack. When it threatened to overheat, dry ice was used to cool it down.
“I’ve done some odd things, but this was the oddest,” he said. “It was unknown territory and unknown technology, which was exciting.”
Director Danny Boyle was so taken with the look of the digital footage, he reversed the original intention to use film stock for 75 per cent of the shoot, ultimately ending up with a ratio of 60 per cent digital and 40 per cent shot on film stock using a 30-year-old Arriflex.
Boyle wanted to bring viewers into India in order to convey what it was really like to be there. Many of the boyhood sequences, including an extensive foot chase, were shot in the cramped, twisting alleys of real Mumbai slums.
Speaking to American Cinematographer magazine, Mantle said he needed a digital camera that was small yet with enough latitude to hold highlights to shoot the scenes. He found the answer in the SI-2K Mini, whose imaging block, which houses a 2/3” CMOS image sensor and lens mount, could be separated from the rest of the camera.
In doing so, Mantle could hold and operate the unit with one hand. At the time, the Mini camera and its supporting equipment needed to be customised to meet the demands of the Slumdog shoot.
The Mini’s signal was output direct to disk over a gigabit Ethernet connection to Apple MacBook Pro laptops running under Windows, and recorded using Silicon Imaging’s proprietary software, Silicon DVR. The signal was recorded in Cineform Raw at approximately 4:1 compression.
The laptops had to be packed in dry ice so they wouldn’t fail in India’s intense heat. In fact, once shooting began, the dry ice had to be reloaded hourly. (The production required up to 45 pounds of dry ice daily.)
The recording units consisting of the MacBook, three batteries, the down converter for monitoring on camera, and a small container for dry ice, were packed in extra-slim modified suitcases. When Mantle needed to shoot handheld, the suitcase was slid into a custom-made backpack harness.
The Mini has a universal lens mount that could accommodate a wide variety of lenses, and the film-makers set out with the following: 9.5mm and 12mm Zeiss Distagons, a 5.9mm Angenieux, a 6mm Century, an 8mm Zeiss, a Cooke 9-50mm zoom, a set of Zeiss Planar primes and a 200mm Canon. When longer lenses were necessary, Mantle used Zeiss Ultra Primes and an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm zoom.
About 60 percent of the movie was captured digitally while the rest was shot on film. Arri Media in London supplied the production with an Arricam Lite, an Arricam Studio, an Arri 235, and lenses that included Zeiss Superspeeds, Standard Speeds and Ultra Primes and Angenieux Optimo zooms. The 35mm material was shot on Fujifilm negative, mostly the 500-speed Reala 8592 and Eterna 8573, and to a lesser extent, with F-64D 8522, Eterna 250D 8563, and Fuji’s newest stock, Vivid 160 8543.
The filmmakers had to rely on some unusual methods to shoot in settings like the interior of the heavily guarded Taj Mahal where they were not able to obtain a film permit. Mantle recorded some guerilla style footage with the Canon EOS-1D Mark III, a digital SLR still camera, which is capable of shooting bursts of up to 30 RAW images per second. Boyle was pleased with the dream-like intensity of the results.
Overall, Mantle was pleased with the Mini’s performance, especially its handling of highlights. Taking a chance on a new camera technology for an ambitious feature like this was a brave decision. Judging by the awards garnered by Slumdog Millionaire, it would appear to have paid off. ASIAIMAGE
