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“A Continuous Swing Between Memories and the Present.”: DP Clarissa Cappellani on Brides

Two teenage girls of Middle East/North African descent smile while looking out the window of a red car.Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar in Brides. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

In Brides, UK teenagers Doe and Muna (Ebada Hassan and Safiyya Ingar) take an ill-advised trip to Syria to escape the constant feeling of being othered that follows them at home. The film, the debut feature by Young Vic Theatre artistic director Nadia Fall, examines teenage girlhood through a distinct sociopolitical lens.

The film was shot in three different locations, meaning the production had new crews every two weeks. Director of photography Clarissa Cappellani (Misericordia, Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams) discusses working through those challenges and the films and photographs that she and Fall used as references.

See all responses to our annual Sundance cinematographer interviews here.

Filmmaker: How and why did you wind up being the cinematographer of your film? What were the factors and attributes that led to your being hired for this job?

Cappellani: The Italian co-producer of Brides, Marica Stocchi, mentioned me to the director, Nadia Fall, and the producer, Nicky Bentham, because of my experience with directors coming from theatre. Since our first interview, Nadia and I shared a similar language, the same love for dramaturgy and for this script in particular.

Filmmaker: What were your artistic goals on this film, and how did you realize them? How did you want your cinematography to enhance the film’s storytelling and treatment of its characters?

Cappellani: Nadia and I started to read the script together, going deeply into each emotional passage in lines and actions, clarifying the emotional temperature to reach in every scene. It’s been a wonderful job, and I wanted the camera to make the same complex journey, close to the young characters. We found that using handheld would have helped, but it was not only a question of the camera “breathing” few inches from faces. It’s been [about] finding a sweetness in the gaze, an empathetic closeness, while never losing the context they live in: the UK suburbs, with their harshness that can suddenly become so poignant thanks to the amazing sunlight and landscapes of Wales.

The first image of the movie is a swing, and I find it so right because it’s what audience should feel: the constant swing between fragilities and boldness, doubts and stubbornness, the emotional swing everybody lives during adolescence. The storytelling itself is a continuous swing between memories and the present.

Brides is also a runaway movie. There are a lot of locations spreading in three nations, so Nadia and I wanted rhythm, and we worked a lot with detailed storyboards. An easy example to explain what cinematography did is to focus on the many car scenes. For each of them, Nadia and I pointed a specific emotional temperature and proposed a different approach: the first one is a romantic memory, and we wanted it to be intimate, so it’s been shot inside the car, from the backseat, camera on a slider with slightly tight lenses. For the arriving in Istanbul, we were searching for joy and wondering, so the camera has been hooked up outside the car, keeping a wide shot to always catch parts of the city and framing the girls with the head out of the window. I won’t go further to not spoil the movie, but we changed always the technique of shooting and the position of the girls in order to enhance the storytelling and the relationship changes between the two characters.

Filmmaker: Were there any specific influences on your cinematography, whether they were other films, or visual art, of photography, or something else?

Cappellani: Nadia pointed out three movies she loved and that were good paths to follow. Thelma & Louise for the intimate relation in an epic storytelling; Mustang for the tenderness of the look; Moonlight for the general bold style that, in some occasions, we needed to reach. I couldn’t be happier for such great references. I brought just one movie: Manchester by the Sea, for the devastating idea of treating memories and present with the same look.

I also showed to Nadia some photos of Camilo Leon-Quijano, anthropologist and photographer. He published a reportage of girls playing rugby in Sarcelles, a banlieue 15 km north of Paris. He had this simple idea that stuck me: usually girls are not tall, he explains in his book, but he wanted them to be heroines, so he framed from below. Nadia liked his photos, so we always shot our protagonists from a slightly low angle.

Filmmaker: What were the biggest challenges posed by production to those goals?

Cappellani: Maybe while shooting I would have said that changing nations and crews every two weeks was tough, but looking back, it’s been a fantastic period and, given the complexity of the story, as an indie movie, we did whatever we wanted, and every crew bent over backward to get the result.

Filmmaker: What camera did you shoot on? Why did you choose the camera that you did? What lenses did you use?

Cappellani: My choice was Arri Alexa Mini because of the sensor, latitude and color space technology, and also for the ergonomic style. I like to shoot handheld, and I wanted Nadia to feel free of keeping long shots. I was looking for softness and texture in the look and, at the same time, for a little bit of contrast. Very soon we decided for Canon FD lenses. They also can cover the Large Format sensor, and that was a big plus, giving me the possibility to use largely 35mm lens and never isolate too much the characters from locations and landscapes.

I want to thank Leon Willis, my precious first CA, the only member of my department following the whole production.

Filmmaker: Describe your approach to lighting.

Cappellani: Generally speaking, there was a naturalist approach to lighting; however, Nadia and I like colors and movements in lights, so quite often I used what we could call an expressionist light, playing with elements of production design or even with makeup elements. Nadia comes from theatre, so I tried whenever I could to give her the freedom to move 360 degrees, also because I like to move handheld around spaces, finding angles of shooting and exploring relations in space.

For the many external scenes, we used natural light, and we were blessed by the beautiful light of November and December. First AD Sarah Davies and all the production teams always helped me to shoot in the right time of the day.

Filmmaker: What was the most difficult scene to realize and why? And how did you do it?

Cappellani: Maybe the most difficult scene would have been the fighting scene at school, but we arrived so prepared with storyboard and choreography that even when it rained all day, we did it exactly how we thought of it. Days later, we woke up in Istanbul with a government alert text in our mobile saying, more or less: “Flood. Don’t go outside.” It was the running market scene day. It’s been hard but also funny.

Also, the police chasing scene in the Turkish bus station is unforgettable. We did an articulated storyboard, and we had few hours to complete it. We shot everything literally running ourselves among extras and dozens of passing people.

Filmmaker: Finally, describe the finishing of the film. How much of your look was “baked in” versus realized in the DI?

Cappellani: We shot raw, using a LUT from Arri for dailies. Lenses full of character such as the Canon FD have got already a strong look; of course, being vintage lenses, there are chromatic differences in each lens, and the first step of the grading was to level them. We wanted the look to be natural because a dramatic reality is crucial in the story. We kept a little nuance of pink and lilac as a mark of the young age of the girls but also because it can swing suddenly to an unsettling violet.

TECH BOX

Film Title: Brides

Camera: Arri Alexa Mini Large Format

Lenses: Canon FD

Lighting: Aputure, Arri, Astera, Creamsource

Processing: DaVinci Resolve, DCI P3

Color Grading: Ercole Cosmi at LightCut, Rome

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