Interview : Edward Lachman on Crafting Carol

Ed Lachman has just won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for his velvety cinematography of Carol. Between color correcting his next film and doing press for Carol, he describes his days as “Fast and Furious outside.” He took time to talk to me about crafting the film and working with Todd Haynes.

Awards Daily: Oh my goodness your day sounds great but chaotic. I wanted to congratulate you on the winning the New York Film Critics Award.

Ed Lachman: I know, that’s so wonderful. I’m so pleased and so happy. I just came from Poland and won the Golden Frog (Camerimage Film Festival). I also got a nomination for an Independent Spirit Award, so things are going swimmingly well.

On Working with Todd Haynes and their collaborative vision

“It grew out of ideas that we had when working on Mildred Pierce. This one came out of Patricia Highsmith’s book The Price of Salt. Our approach was to look and later incorporate the subjective viewpoint of what first love is and what the feeling is of falling in love. Be it two women, a heterosexual relationship, we are all looking for signs and meanings in every gesture. Todd likes to think of it as the crime was love, and the crime was hidden, it was also the coming of age story about Therese becoming aware of herself. She’s formulating herself as a photographer and also that she has this attraction towards Carol, this older, elegant woman.

What’s wonderful about working with Todd is the way he is able to reference language, not necessarily film language, but ideas. The idea here was not to reference film language of film noir or melodrama, but to look at the time through the social and political period, a time after World War II where there was great uncertainty that the Soviets were taking over the Eastern Bloc, McCarthyism was becoming a big factor and this hidden relationship mirrored the political and social times, and they were like criminals in their love for each other.

On The Use of Photography

We looked at female photographers like Esther Lovett and Ruth Orkin which worked in very well when they change Therese’s character from a set designer to a photographer. We can see the evolution of her world through her photography. In the beginning she photographs herself, urban landscape and shadows. As the world opens up, she’s able to photograph Carol and that was a great visual metaphor for the storytelling. The color references in the film for me was Ektachrome film and we revisited Saul Leiter, a street photographer who dealt with the street through artistic means where he shot through glass, windows and the elements.

We shot on film, and referenced grain structure because I wanted to reference the idea of how we saw a period in the past through a photograph. The grain structure has this anthropomorphic feeling, that it lives from frame to frame, and there’s an emotion to the film.

On the color palette differences between Far From Heaven and Carol

The color palette is much different in the early 50’s than the late 50’s. With the latter, the colors are far more saturated and bold. The colors we referenced in the early 50’s and late 40’s are more muted and monochromatic. The color is grayish. It’s interesting to look at color patches and reels and discover that colors were seen differently in different times. The greens, yellows and reds all look different.

On experimenting with compositions.

I like to think of compositions as the architecture of the space that creates the frame. The architecture of the frame can imprison the character and make a statement of their own emotions. I never feel like we’re in a close-up medium-long-shot world. I’m always looking with Todd for framing that incorporates the emotion of the scene in that space.

Where you put the camera in its height in relation to space is about point of view. To me, the camera is about where you’re telling the story, about who’s point of view, and how you see stuff. Do you see it from Carol’s point of view or Therese’s? We’re playing with how a frame affects the emotions of the character. I’m trying to make adjustments of the camera with their own movement and flow.

What’s so great about Rooney and Cate is they create form and shape in the frame. So much of that is about how one can capture their movement. I like to think of the camera as a dance partner to the actor.

On using Super 16

We wanted to capture the feeling of a different time period. You feel there’s something underlying and subjugating the image. The fine grain and highlights are constantly moving from frame to frame, and the grain becomes almost another skin for the characters. This is something that lacks when shooting in digital.

Film is a chemical process and digital is an electronic process, and the chemical one is closer to the human condition than electronic.

On lighting strategies

My philosophy of lighting is we weren’t using theatrical lighting like studio or stage lighting. We were lighting the spaces. It was important for me to use naturalistic lighting.

In Far From Heaven, I had to make the Universal back lot look theatrical, there was an artifice to it. In this, I was on real location creating naturalism. Cincinnati was so wonderful and was so caught up in that period that we didn’t have to create something that wasn’t there.

Photo Credit : WILSON WEB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4z7Px68ywk