SISTER POWER!

By Darek Kuźma

Cinematographer Ashley Connor and director Nida Manzoor infused Polite Society with their love for martial arts films, genre movies and sisterhood affection.

When your cherished sister is about to make the single greatest mistake of her life, you have to do everything you can to stop her. Even if it means carrying out an audacious plan to breakup her wedding with a man who seems to be Prince Charming. If you are lucky, she might even thank you later.

The thing is, Ria Khan is a middle-class British-Pakistani teenager fixated on becoming a stuntwoman, whereas Salim Shah, her sister Lena’s fiancé, comes from money and is a doctor who is apparently about to save the world. No pressure. As we get swept up in Ria’s impassioned scheming with two street-smart friends, there are signs that suggest Salim might be a master manipulator with nefarious plan. Or is Ria just envious?

Though it may seem to be a young adult comedy with a dash of social satire, Polite Society is in also a hybrid action film/comic book movie that wears its visual references on its sleeve. Or, as Ashley Connor puts it, “a love child of The Matrix , Kill Bill and Bollywood dance numbers.”

Even though the DP’s name has been associated with small indies, such as True Things (2012, dir. Harry Wootliff), Connor instantly felt this production was right up her alley. previously done any slo-mo camera work with actors on wires, they had to be flexible.

“It’s different than most of my previous work, but I like my cinematography to be playful. I’m a black belt in hapkido and I had always wanted to do a martial arts action movie. When Olivier Kaempfer, with whom I’d worked on The Miseducation Of Cameron Post (2018, dir.

“There’s a learning curve to how you photograph these kinds of fight sequences in high frame rate. You have to plan according to how they can be rigged. Luckily, we had a lot of rehearsal time. During prep, using my cell phone, I would film the fight choreographer and the stunt coordinator as they trained our actresses, who looked stunning, but the issue was that we shot in December, from full sunrise to sunset, when the daylight is short at that time of year. This meant I had to put silks against the windows and blow them out to finish the days.

“Also, we had three days to do that scene, but the scare of the Omicron variant reduced our extras from 40 to 12. We managed to do all the wide shots, but on the last day we were trying to put anyone who could pass as a teenager in uniform,” she recalls.

The principal photography on Polite Society started in November 2021 and continued through the Omicron peak until February 2022. Going on this journey, Connor says she wanted to have a tried-and-true camera/lenses combo by her side, and called on ARRI London for support.

Desiree Akhavan) reached-out, I didn’t hesitate.”

It became even more alluring when she realised that the director was a movie aficionado just like herself.

“Nida and I shared a lot of similar reference points, such as growing-up loving movies like The Matrix (1999, DP Bill Pope ASC) and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, DP Peter Pau), the films of Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino,” she enthuses, adding that as neither of them had performed a lot of the stunts themselves, and we then assessed and practiced the best angles and framing for those scenes.”

There were other challenges, too. For example, shooting the showdown between Ria and her high-school nemesis, which was shot in The Royal Masonic School For Girls in London’s Rickmansworth.

“The location has this great round library with tall ceilings and 360-degrees of windows. It

“I always shoot in the ARRI Alexa family when I do digital. I chose the Alexa Mini because I like the workflow and the image that comes out of the camera,” she exclaims. “We wanted to give Ria this big cinematic treatment and to shoot in widescreen. Knowing that there were going to be a lot of VFX and paint-outs, Cooke Anamorphics were a no-brainer. They’re beautiful for closeups, they’re beautiful for wides, and they’re not distractingly Anamorphic. Cinematography today tends to get loud, in the sense that it sometimes needs you to know that it’s there. However, because so much of this movie was going to be loud, I wanted to pull back and make it feel a little more organic.”

The film’s eye-catching action often required quite elaborate camera movement.

“For the most part, I operated A-camera and had the incredible Will Lyte on B-camera/ Steadicam. He uses the Omega AR2 rig and was on the whole shoot, save a short bout of sickness. When Will was not available, Charlie Rizek stepped-in and did great work with the Trinity rig,” Connor reveals.

“I’m not a person who is big on wheels, and I prefer operating traditional heads and handheld. I wanted to be able to go high and low, but without the camera movement being distracting, so it made sense to use rigs like the AR2 or Trinity to present the audience with more visceral fights.”

Connor’s core crew also included focus puller Felix Pickles, 2nd AC Cenay Said and central loader Jessica Saunders.

As Connor enjoys working very close to the actors, the Cooke Anamorphic 32, 40 and 65mm lenses became her workhorses.

“We wanted to really be with Ria and Lena, so I tended to go a bit wider and closer,” she explains. “As a DP, I love making new iconography, and we wanted to pay homage to certain treatments of characters or celebrate famous wire work moves. So, with Ria who wants to be a stuntwoman, we were like, ‘Let’s give her the cowboy shot. Let’s give her the low angle. Let’s give her a power move. Let’s watch her hit the ground.’ Ria learns by trial-and-error and loses a lot of these fights, but because she doesn’t give up, people root for her.”

Although the film has a larger-than-life flavour, with its comic book imagery and film homages, Connor emphasises that under the genre coating and slow-motion action Polite Society is essentially a tale of sisterhood.

“My work lends itself to intimacy and emotional resonance, because if there’s no audience connection to the characters, any film won’t work. Nida has a sister, I have two sisters myself. There was such a hyperbolic relationship present in the narrative on what it is to be a sister, how you fight and love each other, that we knew we had to ground the story a bit. Also, at the end of the day, it wasn’t a Marvel show, so we embraced imperfections and the handmade nature of Ria’s dreams.”

That is why the most important showdown in the film comes when Lena, disappointed with Ria’s intrusions, confronts her in her bedroom. Whereas the Khan House was shot on location in Ealing, the bedroom was a set build.

“No one can hurt you like your own sister, and we wanted this scene to feel even more grounded, extra violent and visceral. It’s the first time you see blood. Nida and I had planned all the fights quite specifically and all of the wire work, except the scene in the library, was rigged on stage,” Connor remembers. “It was tight, just me with a camera on my shoulder, running around the room and doing these moves and they fight, with just enough of moving little pieces of ceiling around to cover it all.”

The film was shot in and around London. Whilst they worked for about half of the 40day shooting schedule at Delta Studios in Walthamstow, the biggest set-pieces were actually built on location, including Trinity Buoy Wharf in East London, plus John F. Kennedy Catholic School and Gaddesden Place, both in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.

The greatest challenge, however, came with transforming Battersea Arts Centre into a wedding venue with lush Pakistani ornamentation.

“We had to build one room on stage to rig one of the fights, the rest was a massive build by our production design team. We stayed there for a whole week, doing the rigging and shooting various scenes, including a Devdas -inspired Bollywood scene where Ria diverts everyone’s attention while her friends infiltrate the venue.”

“The venue had huge flower arrangements everywhere, so it was all about picking rigging points in the ceiling to really highlight them. And with such a huge space we wouldn’t have the time to re-rig once we’ve moved in. Luckily, Noah Furrer, my lighting programmer, does concerts and live shows and was quick and flexible with moving and non-moving lights,” she recalls.

“And, I was glad that my chief lighting technician, Gordon Goodwin, approached the lighting the way I like: big units outside, minimal footprint on the ground and practicals with the production design, so as to have freedom of movement for the actors and the camera. It was really fast and furious, and getting everybody to move at a click was reassuring and impressive, especially as typically I’m very impassioned and running around a lot during takes,” she laughs.

The lighting package, provided by PKE (now a Sunbelt Rentals company), was necessarily varied.

“We used a 10K Molebeam a lot in studio, along with LEDs like ARRI Skypanels, Creamsource Vortexes, Astera Tubes and Litemats to supplement in tight spaces. For exterior and daytime scenes we used the Cinemills 18K Silver Bullet, and a combination of ARRI M90s and M40s, again supplementing the interiors with LEDs. Plus, in the wedding venue, movers like ETC Solaframe 3000 and a lot of Lekos built into the ceiling to pick people out. Sometimes we had to get a coverage on ten characters, quite spread out,” she explains. “I like letting actors move and scenes play out, and because I couldn’t have equipment on the floor all the time, flexibility in lighting the stage and location spaces was the key.”

All-in-all, shooting Polite Society was a very