EXTRAVAGANZA

By Ron Prince

With his latest film, Babylon, director Damien Chazelle has delivered a bold, intense and often brutallycomedic drama about the rise and fall of different characters during Hollywood’s transition from the silent era to the talkies during the late 1920s. Running at 183-minutes, the Paramount Pictures production was shot entirely on Kodak 35mm film, and saw its DP Linus Sandgren ASC FSF, push the extremes of exposure and processing for an impressively impressionistic visual result..

the filthy reality of poverty amongst locals and big-screen wannabees.

The production united Chazelle and Sandgren for a third time, the pair having previously collaborated together on the hit-musical La La Land (2016), which was nominated for 14 Academy Awards, winning six including Best Director and Best Cinematography, followed by the highly-acclaimed astronaut adventure First Man (2018) – both of which also harnessed Kodak film. Amongst Sandgren’s other distinguished credits are American Hustle (2013, dir. David O Russell), 007 James Bond No Time To Die (2021, dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga) and Don’t Look Up (2021, dir. Adam McKay), all of which he originated on celluloid film too.

“The script for Babylon was long, about 180 pages, and densely-packed with dialogue from margin-tomargin,” Sandgren recalls of his initial reaction to reading Chazelle’s screenplay. “Sometimes the actors’ lines were side-by-side on the page, rather than in sequential order, which automatically gave me a sense of the pace and intensity that Damien wanted in the tempo of the visual storytelling during different parts of the movie.

Damien wanted Babylon to be rebellous… a chaotic circus

included a variety of old-school epics – such as Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1961), Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975) and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) – which each conveying the idea of society in flux. Sandgren also mentions Paul Thomas Anderson’s pornindustry feature, Boogie Nights (1997), for the intriguing, sensitive and romantic portrayal of human characters in depraved situations.

Written and directed by Chazelle, the star-studded ensemble cast features Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo and Li Jun Li, in a fictional interpretation of Hollywood society during the Roaring Twenties – an epic sweep where the hedonism at glitzy, cocaine-fuelled gatherings in magnificent mansions is contrasted against the arid heat of barren desert surroundings and

“When we came to discuss the aesthetic look of the film together, Damien was quite clear that he did not want Babylon to feel like a typical period movie, or to be polished in any way. He wanted the opposite – for it to be quite rebellious, a chaotic circus, where we would explore the grit, the filth, the shitty backside of things that the characters experience, with a camera that would be alive and curious to explore their world, almost a persona in itself running around and observing the action, and connecting with the characters.”

Visual inspirations proffered to Sandgren by Chazelle

“With all of this in mind, I wanted to take an impressionistic approach to Babylon. I wanted it to be visually bold, with more grain, more colour in the sets and costumes, and more contrast in the image, than on any other production I have shot before. Damien agreed, and, we were also of the same mind that Babylon had to be shot 35mm celluloid. He and I both felt it was the most honest way to tell a story like this.”

Babylon was filmed over the course of 74 shooting days, during the summer and early autumnal months of 2021, chiefly at locations around Los Angeles. This included the interior and exterior of the mansion where decadent soirees take place. A number of sets were built on the stages and backlot at Paramount Studios.

For the mainstay of the production, Sandgren went with ARRICAM LT 35mm cameras, fitted with Atlas Orion Anamorphic lenses. The shooting package, provided by Camtech in LA, also included an ARRIFLEX 435 35mm camera plus spherical lenses, framing in 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and capturing on Kodak Eastman Double-X Negative Film 5222 35mm, for the film’s B&W sequences.

“The Orion Anamorphics are robust, highperformance cinema lenses, that are technically great,” says Sandgren. “They’re sharp to the very edges, even on wide-angle primes when I wanted clear definition on large vistas, and they are not as dramatically bendy as other traditional Anamorphics, especially on close-ups. They have good close focus capabilities, and the benefit here was that we could shoot on a 32mm and we could push-in just a couple of feet from a face.

“However, I wanted to imbue the image with a more punky and impressionistic attitude overall. The company founders, Forrest Schultz and Dan Kanes, were willing collaborators and they customised the Orions for me to make the highlights really burn and the flares bloom in the different lighting conditions we were going to create or encounter.”

Sandgren’s 35mm filmstocks-of-choice were Kodak Vision3 50D 5203 for day exteriors, Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 for day interiors and Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for low-light and night-time scenes. The exposed negative was processed at FotoKem Laboratory in Burbank, with 4K scans and dailies overseen by Matt Wallach, at Company3, who also performed the final grade.

Whilst this might sound like regular practice, Sandgren says, “To get to the bold, vivid and gritty looks Damien and I envisioned from the outset, I purposefully broke all the rules as to how you would normally expose and develop celluloid film, and this is certainly something you would not be taught at filmschool.

“In practice, this meant that if it was bright on a day exterior, such as at the opening of the film, I wanted the final image to be super-bright and burnt-out, to really give the impression of the desert as a hot and hostile environment. So we over-exposed the 50D or 250D negatives consistently by four stops to begin to accomplish those looks. When we were shooting a dark scene, on 500T, we often times just used nothing but a few single practicals, which gave a key way below normal, to achieve a similar and appropriate emotional impact.

“But we didn’t stop there, I then push-processed all of the different exposed filmstocks at the lab. This technique involves the negative being in the bath for more time than is normal, which alters the visual characteristics of the film by heightening the colour saturation, increasing the contrast and the grain.

“Although this was pretty extreme practice, it worked incredibly well, and Damien and I were always excited to see the results. The dynamic range from dark to light in some of the shots is right on the limit. You’d be hard pushed to be able to achieve that extreme level of contrast digitally for a satisfying visual result.

“The result was rich and sumptuous colour in the scenes at the crazy parties that looks appropriately decadent and in keeping with the moment. Our darkest and threatening scenes look incredibly gritty and enveloping. With its colour rendition and grain, each filmed frame was real and alive.”

As part of the overall aesthetic and emotional journey through the film, Sandgren employed a range of ways to motivate the camera, including the handheld, veritéstyle he developed for First Man, in combination with super-wide frames, intimate close-ups and tracking shots following specific characters, plus a number of long takes, story grand lobby of the theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, a delicately-restored, 1,600-seat movie palace from the 1920s, originated by Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, near the Fashion District in Downtown LA. book, ‘Hollywood Lighting From The Silent Era To Film Noir’, Sandgren says he also took an impressionistic approach to lighting the sets. often featuring complex camera moves.

“It was a great location, and Damien wanted one continuous shot, starting with a really high-angled view of the scene, before swooping over and directly into the wild party, and then finishing right inside the bell of a trumpet,” says Sandgren. “But, the idea of having a crane boom down and around, perhaps with a Steadicam operator riding on the crane for a takeover, was just not going to work, as the space was so tall, and not big enough for the footprint of the crane base anyway.

One of the most ambitious and spectacular scenes in the film appears during the 32-minute pre-title opening sequence, where Sandgren’s task was to depict the outrageous and hedonistic goings-on at a Hollywood party taking place in the home of movie magnate Don Wallach, complete with a jazz band, hundreds of revellers, heaps of cocaine and an enormous elephant.

This notable scene was filmed in the massive, three-

“So, for the first part of the shot we rigged the film camera on to a straight-line cable cam suspended corner-to-corner above the lobby, so that it could plunge right down into the hundreds of extras we had, and then track along with some of them. Then, using a whip pan to disguise the takeover, we switched to Steadicam, operated by Brian Freesh, to move the camera through the party and up to the band on stage. We spent a long time blocking, choreographing and rehearsing the sequence because there were some very intricate timings to the action. We then filmed the overhead shot and descent into the party on one day, and shot with the Steadicam on following day.”

Sandgren operated A-camera during the production, with Jorge Sánchez working as first AC. Along with Freesh on Steadicam, Davon Slininger SOC operated B-camera and headed the second/splinter unit photography. Anthony Cady led the gripping team.

Working with gaffer Tony Bryan, and taking inspiration from film historian Patrick Keating’s remarkable

“I was curious to research how filmmakers worked back then and to remind myself how cinematographers thought about lighting in particular as the silent era moved into talkies. Our production designer, Florencia Martin, found film cameras to use as props along with period arclight housings that we fitted with HMIs so they actually looked as though they worked on-set. The stageconstructions were only lit with fixtures specifically built to look correct to the period, while real locations were lit more naturalistically, but still with the intention of depicting the sweaty, dirty textures.”

Sandgren concludes, “All-in-all, shooting with the customised Orion Anamorphics, over-exposing the film and push-processing everything at the lab, gave us something different in every shot in this movie. And when we came to do the final grade, it was amazing how much detail still remained in the filmed-image, in the brightest highlights and darkest areas of the image, which brought us even more satisfaction from an artistic standpoint. I doubt whether that would have been the case had this been digital.

“You must always use the right tool for the feeling you want to express. Film feels personal and it taps well into emotions. I know through experience – on productions such as American Hustle and La La Land – that when careful production and costume design combine with the texture and dynamic colour capabilities of film, there is no better way to create that connection to the characters in your story. Film… it’s simply more expressive.”

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