She passes it to her right and picks up another one. We pull back to show that she is on a beautiful beach. The camera then follows the bottle she put down as another girl picks it up and applies a label to the licked neck, then puts it in the last open spot of a 6 pack. A third girl gets up and carries the 6 pack off while we see the beer company logo written in sand on her bottom. This is apparently how they bottle beer in Brazil.
MSM: What gear did you use?
AU: We used an ARRIFLEX 235 that we rented from ARRI CSC, who were great, by the way. The 235 is economical, small and rugged - good for the rigors of shooting on a beach. The 235 viewfinder is great, and it makes a huge difference when operating. The camera is also well sealed - i.e. the run button didn't fill up with sand which was everywhere! We used Cooke Speed Panchros (Series 2/3), Canon 50-300 and Zeiss Ultra Primes. I wasn't trying to necessarily match the look from shot to shot, sometimes flare was desirable, sometimes not. The 14mm Ultra Prime was great as a relatively flat, wide lens that I could pretty well point right toward the sun without flare. Also very lightweight, which was great for handheld shooting and picking up the camera and running to a fresh patch of beach.
MSM: What part was the most fun?
AU: The beach!
MSM: What was the most challenging?
AU: The beach! We were shooting on an island with no cars and had to take a ferry with all of the gear and then carry it to the shooting location on the other side of the island. It was a 2.5 hour trip from Manhattan which knocked 5 hours off of our 12 hour day. Then the actors missed the ferry and that lost us another 3 hours.
MSM: How did you then get it done?
AU: Moving fast and improvising. We had no way to shoot all that we wanted, so we decided to try to cover ourselves with a single shot incorporating all of the action. I found some driftwood 2x4's which I used for dolly track and had a very low rolling rocker plate (with rollerblade wheels) for a dolly. Film making is an art of compromises and uncertainty.The great thing about the 235 is that it just does what you need it to do, it isn't overly complex, it's raw and compact. It's an affordable, rugged little camera that just gets the job done. The ARRIFLEX 2C is one of the greatest cameras ever, and I love it for tough run and gun shooting, but the viewfinder optics make it almost unusable. Naturally I was thrilled when I first saw the 235.
MSM: What look were you after?
AU: I always loved the early Pirelli calendars from the late 1960's and early 1970's as well as location fashion photography from that era. This was a wonderful opportunity to explore that style which is very contrary to what is popular today. The blacks are sometimes totally washed out and hazy but they still feel dense, the whole image feels thick. It's very sensual. I used a light colored net to lift the blacks, a polarizer to saturate the sea and sky and an Antique Suede filter to enhance the rich skin tones of the talent. I'll do the final transfer from a print in order to get that heavy image that transferring from a print gives you.
MSM: Thank you, Anders.
Marc Shipman-Mueller
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