- I'm Ed Lachman. I'm the cinematographer of Pablo
Larraín's film, "El Conde." (uplifting music) (uplifting music) The original conversations
I had with Pablo was that he had gotten approval
from Netflix South America to shoot the film in
actual black and white. And that made me just start to think about where do we go with what camera? I started to look into the options for the black and white sensor, and he also had made a decision that he wanted to work primarily
on a 15-foot technocrane. On the Ronin head that we had, we had limitations of the weight. Arri only had the XT and
the 65-millimeter sensor available in black and white,
a monochromatic sensor. The problem was that the XT wouldn't meet the restrictions or
the requirements of 4K. The LF would, but they hadn't produced an LF monochromatic camera. And I reached out to a
dear friend in Germany who's a cinematographer himself, and he had a very close
relationship to Arriflex in Germany. He discussed with them the
possibility if they could build a monochromatic camera in the LF format. I didn't think that
they would have the time to put any energy into building
a LF monochromatic sensor, but they were really
interested in doing it, I found out, anyway and
I guess I was the impetus for them to do it. I had also been working on
rehousing Baltar lenses, the actual glass that was made for, they were called rackover cameras. They were non-reflex
cameras in the silent days, and I think the first Baltar
lenses were made in 1938, and they were primarily lenses
used in "Magnificent Ambers." Some of the lenses were
used in "Touch of Evil." Even one of the lenses was
used in "Citizen Kane." I then reached out to Alex Nelson, who runs Zero Optik in LA,
and he put together glass with the Baltar glass that matched, and so I created a set of
lenses called the Ultra Baltar. I now had a monochromatic sensor. I had lenses that were used
in black and white days. I could now use my
black and white filters, Harrison and and Tiffen
filters that I'd used years ago in black and white, and that
changes the contrast level and it changes the
density in certain areas of color that you're playing with, yellows, reds, oranges
against blue in the sky. I could then control the look of the film, which you see in the exterior shots with black and white filters. The most important factor for
me was I had created something for the last 10 years
called the EL Zone system and it's an exposure latitude system. If you put a light meter
and it reads at four, I'd go to the DIT and say, "It's four. What exposure should I put out?" And he would go "five-six or
six-three." I'd go, "What?" Why is there a discrepancy between what my analog meter reads and what the digital world's
interpretation of exposure? If you could figure out what 18% gray was in a sensor, be it Sony,
be it Arri, be it Red, then you could track exposure the way we do in the photochemical world. Then I came up with a
version of false color, but it's not false color
where 18% gray is 18% gray. Not green, like some
manufacturers of that. That was a godsend. I felt like I was Ansel Adams in cinema. I could always hold
detail in the highlights and detail in the shadow,
and by doing that, I created an extended mid-range. And when people talked to me
about the photographic quality of this film, that's what
people, I think, respond to is that the mid-range of the
film has this extended range that you see the information. (woman speaking Spanish) (dramatic music) This was after she had made love and she was bitten by Pinochet, which is also kind of a statement between what the relationship
was between the church and the the state at that time. Ultimately, she was corrupted by it. We're experiencing her exultation and freedom in learning how to fly. (uplifting music) Pablo Larraín had seen
a group out of Columbia. They were aerial and circus performers and they had done some
commercials on wire. His idea was if we could
actually do it on location, where we were in Patagonia with wire. It was primarily with a wider
focal length at 24 or 28, even at 21, because we wanted the spatial relationship of where she was. (uplifting music) She's not just against the sky, let's show where the ranch is, so you believe you're
seeing something for real and not manufactured in a post situation. Paula, who plays the nun, studied ballet and she was very much into doing
the stunts herself on wire. (uplifting music) And the way we actually did that was off a 90 foot crane
and she was hung with wire and then we had a grip in a seat near her, in front of her on other wires,
and he was holding a Ronin and it was a remote head
and then the operator was operating from the ground. So this gave this incredible freedom, but also metaphorically, it
was about her freedom visually, and this was really Pablo's idea of how we could actually shoot it live. (uplifting music) I think it creates an authenticity that people believe what's happening and it emotionally
connects you to her spirit. (uplifting music) Pablo likes to be in the
moment with finding the shot. He definitely has it in his
head what he wants to do, but then on the set, he's very
free to just let it happen and discover it in the
image, and that's the way I like to work best with a director is that you go in with a plan, but then you're open to what's
happening in front of you. (uplifting music) All the exteriors in the
ranch were with natural light. The interiors were shot two months before we actually were on location in Patagonia to shoot the exteriors. I was very concerned 'cause
I've seen it numbers of times that the exterior light doesn't
match the interior light and all that everybody could tell me is the light could change in 10 minutes, from clouds to sunlight. I made a decision
primarily out of necessity that they didn't give me
enough room to place lights out the windows where you paper the window and then you hit the window with the light and you have this soft light, but I didn't wanna make
a totally soft light. I didn't want it to end up
looking like a commercial. So what I realized and
never thought of doing is I would tear holes in the paper. It was 1008 tracing paper I still like, and I would change that from day to day. And then obviously,
overhead I had a muslin and lit the muslin from up above with whatever lights I could find there. So there was this ambient level to just raise the exposure level in the room. (uplifting music) Pinochet, in the film, is not
a traditional romantic idea of a vampire, but literally
how he took the blood out of every institution, out
of the political, the social, the economic institutions
for his own greed. What Pablo was saying is that
justice is a collective desire and that the people of
Chile never had the chance for any retribution. Pinochet lived to the ripe old age of 91, free of his crimes, and so in a way he lives on in the memory
of Chileans as a vampire because it's forever, their
pain and suffering is forever. (dramatic music)
