Danny Cohen on the Cinematography of "The King's Speech"

Danny Cohen on the Cinematography of “The King’s Speech”

Posted on February 18, 2011 in Cinematography | 1 Comment

The King’s Speech Cinematographer Danny Cohen BSC (also cinematographer for HBO’s John Adams) discusses how he managed 35mm film and the right lenses to create a unique look.

…Basically, Tom’s [the director] starting point was that this is a historical drama. By and large, all British historical dramas have the same look: you have faces set against out-of-focus backgrounds. What Tom was trying to do was to open that up, so we used very-wide-angle [ARRI] Master Prime lenses and consequently could get much closer to the actors’ faces. We were literally putting cameras one or two feet away from each of their faces. A lot of interesting things happen when you put the camera so close to the actor. For one, you get nice big portraits, which you wouldn’t get with long lenses that are much farther away. But you also get so much more of the background that you instantly see where the person is. It’s not just out-of-focus mush; it contextualizes where the person is in the room, or in those larger scenes, for example in the Abbey before his coronation. That’s where the reality comes in—you’re putting them in a real location that’s an equally important part of the scene.

— Studio Daily | Read The Full Article