Matias Boucard Balances Verticality with Hawk65s
As a French cinematographer, Matias Boucard, AFC felt a special obligation on his most recent assignment, a prestigious feature film that tells the story of Gustave Eiffel and the iconic wrought-iron tower that bears his name. In the mid-1880s, Eiffel expressed no interest in designing the Parisian monument, preferring to focus on Le Metro. But four weeks before the design contest ended, he changed his mind. Eiffel tells the story of why – and it has to do with a mysterious woman from his past.
Boucard’s thought process centered on telling the story of the construction of a vertical edifice within a horizontal frame. After extensive testing, he resolved this seeming contradiction by choosing to combine the Arri Alexa 65 large format camera with 1.3x Hawk65 Anamorphic lenses.
It’s quite difficult to frame the Eiffel Tower, obviously because it’s very tall, and in the middle of many smaller buildings,” says Boucard. “You have to get quite far back to get the whole tower in your frame, which in standard 2x anamorphic leaves so much room on the sides. With the 1.3x Hawk65s, I had more possibilities with the vertical angle.”
In his tests, Boucard found that the 40mm Hawk65 and the Alexa 65 produced a frame roughly equivalent to that of an 18mm spherical lens in Super 35 format. “That’s a completely different perspective,” he says. “With the 40mm, I can bring the Tower much closer to the character, and the Tower is still massive. It was important to me that the character feel small compared to the Tower. The 18mm left the Tower too far away, and the wide-angle look tended to distort its distinctive curvature, which felt disrespectful.”
Contrasting the story of the Tower itself is the love story between Eiffel, played by Roman Duris, and the woman who is his muse, played by Emma Mackey. For B-camera, Boucard used a combination of Alexa Mini LF and longer Hawk 2x V‑Series lenses to deliver additional anamorphic flavor in certain situations, with no matching issues. Examples include two intimate dinner scenes.
“To portray their connection and chemistry, I tried as much as possible to go with the 60mm Hawk65, which I fell in love with,” says Boucard. “It has something special. I was going close with a clean frame, so you can feel their proximity and sense their breath. And sometimes for coverage, or for his point of view, I’d shoot from twelve feet back with a very long V‑Series on the Alexa Mini LF, in order to show how focused he is on her.”
Boucard generally avoided shorter focal lengths for several reasons. “You won’t see many wide angle lenses,” he says. “The medium format with the 1.3x squeeze looks flatter, with less distortion. That brings you into a different world, which is what you need in a period movie. It’s like an actual painting, where the artist can cheat perspective while staying neutral and flat. And I still had the option of going wide angle or long lens within that.”
Despite tending towards longer lenses, Boucard found that the bigger format did not prevent a more improvisational approach when director Martin Bourboulon asked for it.
“We had eight lenses, which is quite a complete set,” he says. “The Hawk65s were also a great choice for this project because we could feel free and not too heavy. The director wanted the best look, but he also didn’t want to make any concessions when it came to his mis en scene. I was able to handhold, and he loved doing long Steadicam sequences. The 40mm was very convenient because I was able to do a full body shot at less than four meters, and still do a closeup with the same lens. Moving with the Steadicam, you don’t feel like you’re running, and you don’t feel the camera too much. The depth of field meant I could keep the audience focused on what I want them to see. And when you go from full body to closeup, you don’t feel the distortion. If we had been on the 18mm with spherical Super 35, it would feel like two different worlds – you sense the distance more, and everything changes.”
Boucard’s approach to lighting almost completely avoided LED in favor of large tungsten units whenever possible, on interiors and exteriors. “I felt that since it was a period movie, we should light the old-fashioned way,” he says. “I prefer the spectrum of tungsten, and I like playing with quarter blue and half-blue. I tried to maintain a natural look without being completely realistic. I wanted something that looks real, but sophisticated, with a point of view.
“With the 1.3x Hawk65s and the Alexa 65, it was like mixing paint without too much intention,” he says. “I don’t like to see the intention of the cinematographer when I see the movie. But at the same time, I like to feel the passion and emotion of the cinematographer. I don’t want to see how technically proficient or perfect they are. I don’t want to see the mind. I want to see the heart. So that was my thinking here.”
Eiffel, the year’s biggest-budget film production in France, was produced over the course of 52 shooting days spread over two stints. The Alexa 65 cameras were provided by Arri Rental Munich. Vantage Paris provided key support along with the Hawk65 1.3x Anamorphics. Alexander Bscheidl, Managing Director of Vantage Paris, says that it was a great honor to be involved in this prestige project.
“Every Parisian takes great pride in the Eiffel Tower, the symbol of Paris and one of the most important monuments in the world,” says Bscheidl. “It means so much to all of us at Vantage Paris to have had the privilege of supporting this huge movie. It was definitely a labor of love, which is appropriate given the story! Matias Boucard was already one of the most sought-after directors of photography in France, and this project will only burnish his reputation further.”
Camera Crew
Director of Photography – Matias Boucard, AFC
Camera Operator – Olivier Rostan
Operator/Steadicam – Aymeric Colas
A Cam First AC – Francois Vigon, Fabrice Bismuth
A Camera Clapper/Loader – Damien Conti
B Camera First AC – Lara Perrotte
B Camera 2nd AC – Haruyo Yokota
Third AC – Sarah Okendo
Watch the official trailer here.
images: Vantage Film/Matias Boucard, AFC/ © VVZ Production Pathé Films
