With or Without You behind the scenes interview
With or Without You behind the scenes interview
With the Adelaide Film Festival just around the corner it’s a great time to talk about With or Without You after its world premiere at the Adelaide Film Festival last year. So I thought I’d share an interview I recently had with Daniel Phillips about the filming of With or Without You and some of the challenges around the project.
Dan: What was the overall visual style you were aiming for With or Without You?
Michael: The visual style of With or Without You was something that was naturalistic and real. Organic for lack of a better word, but something that felt verité. We didn't want it to feel overly contrived, but also, we wanted to have these moments of naturalistic beauty. And so, it was just kind of walking that line between grit and realism while still having some emotions and keystone visuals.
Dan: What are some of the influences on With or Without You?
Michael: One of the big visual influences for this film was a movie called American Honey with Charlotte Buff that had this kind of captivating, handheld, intimate camera, but also found beauty in the light and in moments that were not classically beautiful. And that was one of the key visual references that Kelly (Kelly Schilling), the director, and I really loved. And that informed how we moved the camera and the lenses we used and how close we were to the characters and how reactive the camera was, and all those choices were based around that film.
Dan: What were the largest challenges for this project?
Michael: The largest challenge for this film was the number of locations. This film was a 25-day shoot, and we ended up shooting in 28 different locations, which meant that most of the days we had a location move. In the middle of the day, we had to bump into a location that was often challenging to get to, like a cherry field in the middle of the South Australian Adelaide Hills, and then we would set up, shoot a scene, and then pack down and move to another location.
Michael: So just the endurance for the team to be able to move in and out, keeping the crew nimble, working out of lighting vans and camera vans rather than trucks, it was a challenge for sure. But something that we used to give the film a great visual breadth of flavour and kind of large visual variety.
Dan: Were there any particular tools that were invaluable during the filming of With or Without You?
Michael: So this film was all handheld, so a tool that I used in particular is called the easy rig, which takes the camera weight off of your shoulder and allows you to kind of move more freely and hold it in positions that maybe you wouldn't be able to hold for the duration of a shoot day. That with the handlebars and my key grip to help take the weight and carry the camera when I'm not shooting was just invaluable to allow my body to survive the 25 days of handheld shooting.
Dan: What was the most difficult shot on With or Without You?
Michael: There's a scene set at night towards the start of the film where the characters are in a caravan in the middle of a field and they're having a chat and then someone rocks up and Molotov cocktails the caravan and the caravan goes up in flames. Just achieving that whole sequence was quite a challenge, making sure that it was safe. We were inside the caravan and then we'd have a fake Molotov cocktail come in, which you can't do for real, obviously, because you'd be trapped in a burning caravan.
Michael: So just breaking down that scene and finding the key shots of cocktail coming through the window, fire hitting the ground, which is fake, cutting to outside, fake fire in the windows, characters crawl out and then finally setting the caravan on fire and shooting the scenes around the exterior of the caravan when it's fully on fire. The caravan only burned for about 15 minutes once it went up and we had four or five shots that we wanted to get in that window. So, once it was going, it was just a matter of running around and sprinting to each frame that we'd predetermined and making sure we got it before the fire went out.
Dan: What was it like working with Martha Dusseldorp?
Michael: Working with Martha and the cast on With or Without You was a great experience. They were really great experienced actors but were also just down for the challenge of running around between different locations, landing in a new spot and setting up and kind of keeping it nimble and a small footprint. So, working with them was great and we couldn't have achieved it with anyone else.
END
Through the lens of a cinematographer.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse behind-the-scenes, showing the thought processes that go into the visual style for a movie like With or Without You. This film production had some unique challenges that pushed me and the crew, but the end product was well worth it. Stay tuned for more interviews on other recent productions I have worked on, coming out soon!