The Circuit

by Maria Alvarez Rilla and John Hopewell
Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón and Brazilian cinematographer Affonso Beato gave a workshop about film lighting at San Sebastián on Wednesday.

They stood on the landing of the town's vast Tabacalera, its former colonial tobacco factory (think "Carmen"). Sitting on the broad staircase sweeping up front of them were a score of DPs and a hundred other film students. The new digital Genesis camera stood like an impatient train at the end of a 12-foot stretch of rails.

This was the first workshop organized at the festival by Panavision and EPC in Spain, the brain child of Panavision France president Alain Coiffier, who's always thinking up something.

Cuarón has directed "Y tu mama tambien," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," and "Children of Men." Beatto lensed "All Aboout My Mother," "The Queen" and "Love in the Time of Cholera." They begin to speak, explaining the workshop. Two great practitioners of the art speak with passion and knowledge about the craft they care for.

Film festivals throw up these moments of privilege. Equipo Variety recorded a few exchanges:

Alfonso Cuarón : Many film schools have been creating new generations which turn out more commercial directors, advertising directors, than filmmakers. Film schools focus on a technical level and not on conceptual elements. A workship like this, where we're working on light as a conceptual element...

He's interrupted by journalist Benjamin B, and starts joking on his hip-hop name.

Affonso Beato: Setting [the camera] without a concept is like putting things back to front. Because you don't just put a camera in a room and then shoot a photo, you need a concept. And the concept affects the camera position, but also the takes. Without a concept, all basic principles are useless.

Soon, Cuarón and Beato jump into practical details. An actor and actress and called up from the crowd, go to their marks, and descend the wide, Gothic-like staircase where the scene's been set. Cuarón and Beato pass the camera to DP students, who shoot back-to-back takes with different lights, changing filters, mixing windows and spotlights as light sources.

On three monitors spread through two large rooms, students watch as the same scene changes from day to apparent-night, from a flattering warm orange-y tones to a graphic, dark-blue-tinted scene, take after take.

Over each take, Alfonso and Affonso discuss - and sometimes discover - effects, detailing framing, composition, a take's elements, its expressive force.

Beato explains one take, addressing the actors:

Beato: Can you stay on your marks and look at each other please? The light coming from this side; the other side is a little darker. If the light came from the other side, the shot would be totally flat.

Beato jokes in a lively mix of Brazilian, Portuñol, English, as Cuarón and he bark out instructions and ask for silence from the crew and students.

Beato: I don't want to seem authoritarian, maybe we're a bit pushy, but directors are pushy, you know, that's the reason why you become a director, to organize.

 Beato lights the actress using a natural source, a window, behind her, and a light set up in front.

Cuarón: You did that fantastically, Affonso. She has behind her a light source that's the window. But she still displays the bright side of her face against some dark shadow behind her, and the dark side of her face is against the bright window, creating dark silhouetting ... With cinematographers like you, masters that you are, in every single bit of the shoot there's something going on.

Beato: He's a nice guy, actually, he's my agent!

Editor's note: The Variety España team is on the ground in Spain, bringing regular dispatches throughout the San Sebastian Film Festival.