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“Transitioning From Digital Back to Film”: DP Ed Lachman on Maria
Angelina Jolie and Pablo Larraín on the set of Maria For years the object of cult devotion, Maria Callas went from a dazzling career as a soprano to international celebrity, a figure of relentless scrutiny even after she lapsed into silence.
Maria continues director Pablo Larraín’s fascination with larger-than-life figures like Jacqueline Onassis (Jackie) and Princess Diana (Spencer). Here, Angelina Jolie takes on the role of Callas, seen over several years of her life in Europe and the United States. Larraín’s kaleidoscopic approach jumps among timelines and locations, assembling a character from moments large and small.
Although we see glimpses of Callas’s successes on stage, Steven Knight’s screenplay primarily takes place after her voice failed. Fittingly, the movie becomes a study of her face in close-up: anxious, elated, furious, haughty, optimistic, drugged—moods captured by Jolie’s performance and director of photography Ed Lachman’s lighting.
Lachman received an Oscar nomination for his collaboration with Larraín in last year’s El Conde. Maria marks a return to film after working with digital cameras, like a monochromatic Arri, on his recent projects. Shooting took place in Budapest, Paris, Greece and the revered Teatro alla Scala.
He spoke with Filmmaker at this year’s EnergaCAMERIMAGE, where he received the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Filmmaker: Tell us how who Maria Callas was for you.
Lachman: Maria has the aesthetics and themes of an opera, many of which are about betrayal, unrequited love and loss. Callas was betrayed and manipulated in her closest relationships. Her mother exploited her from the age of five. Giovanni Meneghini, her husband and manager, extorted from her. Aristotle Onassis, her great love, left her after nine years for Jackie Kennedy. Callas was trapped by what she desired most—true affection. In her personal life, she could never obtain the adoration and love she got from her fans in public. She lived her life in the heightened reality of an opera, and her life became the sum of these tragedies. I believe when she lost her voice to a debilitating disease, she lost her strength to survive.
Filmmaker: How did you prepare visually for this project?
Ed Lachman: The biggest shift for me was transitioning from digital back to film. When people ask the major difference between film and digital, I say there are two. One is the random grain structure that changes in each frame, like breathing. It’s more like the way we exist, chemically. It’s not binary. Digital “noise” in a pixel-fixated flat electronic chip doesn’t have random grain structure of film. It doesn’t have RGB color layers that display depth between each other like an etching when a negative is developed.
The second aspect is that colors render differently in digital than film. Film responds to the color spectrum in a different way. Let’s say you’ve balanced your set at 3200 Kelvin. You’ve created a warm color temperature for your interior, and you have daylight coming in the window that would render cool [blue]. The way these colors mix is totally different on film. In the digital world, the warm color would remain warm and the cool, cool. The colors don’t contaminate or mix to create depth the way they do in film.
With oil paint, as with film, if you mix yellow and blue, you get a green hue. In digital, that yellow and blue would stay separate, without merging into a third color.
Filmmaker: Why was it important to return to film for Maria?
Lachman: When I’m working on stories set in different time periods when film was prevalent, I like to use film to reference the way you would have seen images in those periods.We used several film stocks and aspect ratios. There’s black-and-white 35mm, which represents Callas’s past. There’s Super 16 used by the documentary crew that she imagines is recording her life. 35mm color represents her present, the 1960s and 70s. We used Super 8 for home movies of her private moments.
As an audience member, you view opera from an observational and reflective viewpoint. We use the camera as a moving proscenium to mirror that viewpoint. Callas said that the stage was her mind and opera her soul. We wanted to embrace the heightened sense of reality she lived in with a camera that moves behind her or independently of her. We used smoke to provide texture and depth, and wider lenses (21mm to 28mm) to envelop the audience in the world she’s trying to navigate.
Filmmaker: Did you have specific visual references?
Lachman: I looked to directors who used complex characters to explore women’s challenges and aspirations in society. Max Ophüls, Douglas Sirk, Luchino Visconti—directors who used the camera in an intricate choreography to create visual elegance and richness. I also looked at artists like the Spanish painter Antoni Taulé, who captures the psychological moods of his subjects through light, color, and space.
Filmmaker: How do you work with Larraín? Is there a storyboard or shot list?
Lachman: He likes working in the moment, the way I do. It’s a process of discovering the visual language we will use. He knows the story he wants to tell. We work it out on the day. Using the crane gives us great flexibility in finding our shots.
Filmmaker: There’s a scene where Callas is singing the mad scene from Donizetti’s Anna Bolena at Teatro alla Scala. How did you put that together?
Lachman: We’re on the stage, so we get that coverage. Then we’re in the audience, get that coverage. Then we go upstairs to the balcony and get that coverage.
Filmmaker: You’re making it sound too easy. Tell us what was involved in actually shooting at La Scala.
Lachman: We only had four hours to prep, light and wrap. To be efficient, we had marks for where to place our lights when they allowed us in. I lit it in 45 minutes using the lighting crew and board operator from La Scala for the stage, and my crew for the auditorium. More than ever, we worked on our instincts and used our creative Steadicam operator, Diego Miranda, hoping we would have enough coverage.
Filmmaker: Can you tell how it’s going to cut together while you’re shooting?
Lachman: Yes and no. Pablo doesn’t shoot standard closeup/medium/long shots. He lets the action and scene play. Almost like Altman, whom I’ve had the good fortune to work with. Pablo knows if he has enough coverage, he can work with it in the editing room.
Filmmaker: How do you find a pace for the cameras if you’re not sure how the scene will be edited?
Lachman: The music has a rhythm. I like to say images have a rhythm, too. Pablo also has the ability to develop a rhythm in what we’re shooting.
Filmmaker: Once you’ve pre-lit a set, won’t you have to tweak the lights during rehearsal?
Lachman: Most of the time, I don’t have that luxury. I like to approach lighting through the environment, then let the characters fall into the light rather than lighting them specifically in every location or situation. I mean, there are no rules. The only rules are there are no rules. I’m more and more into this idea of lighting the space and allowing the action to happen in the space knowing that there’s an exposure latitude in the space, that I’ll have information. It’s taken years to simplify my process because at first you’re always worrying, “Am I going have an image?”
I know what I said earlier about film versus digital, but maybe the biggest difference is that with film, you had to prefigure your images, prefigure what exactly was going to end up on a piece of celluloid. With digital you have the advantage of knowing that what you’re seeing on your monitor will be close to your final result. So, when I went back to film for Maria, I had to return to prefiguring what the image would be. When I was younger, I always figured out my way to do it. Now, over time, I’m better able to listen to the director, try to understand what his or her needs are. A good question to ask is, “What do you want to achieve with this scene? What do you want to achieve with this image?” I hope I’m open enough to listen and try to understand what they’re communicating to you. The director has to respect you, but you have to respect the director as well. You have to find a common language, or else it becomes a difficult process.
Filmmaker: Do you find more pressure working on film than digital?
Lachman: I don’t think things have changed in the sense of how we tell our stories. I don’t care if it’s film or digital, or if you shoot with an iPhone. The point is understanding what the story is that you’re telling, and finding the visual language to execute that story. Immerse yourself in visual representation, galleries, museums, watch films, ask yourself, “What is it that I respond to? What is it that I’m moved about in what I’m seeing?” That will help you start to create your own vision.
