One Thousand Ropes

Cinematographer Leon Narbey shares some moments and insights from the set of One Thousand Ropes, due to be released in New Zealand next month.

On my initial reading of One Thousand Ropes I saw the film as being almost black and white, dark, brooding, observant and close. It had many dark night scenes needing ‘just seen’ details to pop and stitch together feelings that could hook us into the characters.

Finding the main character’s home location was our biggest quest in pre-production. Maea’s home was the core of the script and I needed to lock onto something tangible, to dream it through, to try and see it as Tusi had written and imagined it. Enclosures, windows and doors set a stage and become markers that define a character’s pathway. I had been musing over Edward Hopper’s paintings and observed how Hopper framed his lonely figures within and beside openings; doorways, windows and pillars, architectural frames that add to his compositions in a structural way. I somehow felt this could help us as we were dealing with a claustrophobic inner world without seeing scenic vistas of a tropical paradise.

Six years earlier on Tusi’s film The Orator/O le Tulafale we arrived at an understanding of spatial selection, a positioning that felt empathetic towards the main character, the dwarf Saili (Fa’afiaula Sanote). The lens height rarely went above his eye-level. We never looked down on him. It was a specific character-code I had never encountered on a film before. It gave Saili a strength and a mirror to his world.

With this film we had yet to find Maea’s spatial code. Tusi saw him in an inner city low rent housing complex. It had to feel urban, concrete and surrounded in asphalt yet surviving amongst this was an old fruiting lemon tree.

Peter Tonks (location manager) had been working for some months with Tusi and Catherine Fitzgerald (producer) and at times our emails were clogged with his suggested potential locations. Wellington City Council were very supportive and offered some of the abandoned flats from the Arlington block (designed by Ian Athfield in the 1970’s).

These concrete block units were about to be demolished in a few months’ time and both power and plumbing had already been disconnected. We latched onto two flats and integrated them visually and shot them as one. The below street-level space now added weight to Tusi’s writing and supported Maea’s cell-like trapped state. Shayne Radford (production designer) cut a window sized opening from the kitchen to the living room giving a spatial flow to the enclosure, an architectural feature we often filmed.

Usually our framing hinged on being square to the wall surfaces and trying to find positions that the characters would occupy from their own habit and particular time of day. I was reminded of how Tusi had aligned people to the layout of a fale meeting house in Samoa (The Orator). Everyone had their particular place beside a particular pole facing this person etc.; and in some ways a similar thing happened here. Maea sat here and the women lay down there. Accepting our 1.85 ratio as a more ‘interior’ feel we steered away from Hopper’s angled viewpoints but embraced his use of architectural framing devices.

Tusi liked dark tones and colour as an expressive language. He loves the work of Caravaggio and would offer a photocopy of ‘Judith Beheading Holofernes’ as reference on the day before a particular scene was to be shot. I would look in amazement knowing our walls were a light cream, and thinking how can we possibly attain Caravaggio’s contrast without painting everything burnt umber, closing all the windows and having just one diffuse window up and to the side. But my silly protests were inconsequential, these references helped and did work for me.

Sometimes it would be the quality of light and how the wrinkles glowed with the old lady’s face upper right in ‘Supper at Emmaus’ 1606. With the ava (cava drinking) garage scene we had pre-production time to get things just right as Tusi wanted a Caravaggio-like quality having referenced both Shayne and myself with ‘The Calling of St Matthew’. Shayne had the walls painted and aged in turquoise (the carpet colour in Maea’s home, and a colour I just love against Pacifica skin tones) and later when we shot it, Byron Sparrow (gaffer) filtered the light with added straw and amber.

Our schedule began with an intensive week at Dorothy’s Bakery in Lower Hutt. A real bakery that was in business limbo, but it had all the needed props; heavy proofing ovens and mixers. Shayne had only to select what we needed as the long narrow space was cluttered with all manner of things. The noisy bus-linked road was solved by Ken Saville (sound mixer) screwing layers of thick acrylic sheets onto windows while allowing our lights to penetrate the gloom from the pavement. Byron Sparrow and his team erected black tents down the service alley allowing the scenes to transition from 4am night to morning sunrise.

The shoot was a tight 25-day experience in hot, small confined spaces where temperatures soared as the drama unfolded and thankfully Peter Cunningham (1st AC) kept his cool and mastered the focus at wide apertures while gentle velvet movements came from Melissa Ririnui (grip). Yet, above all, there is a stillness to the film which I enjoy deeply and credit must go to Annie Collins (editor) for finding and maintaining the story thread throughout.

In post-production we were in some ways blessed to have a series of short grades towards the end of the film’s completion. As NZFC required preview copies we strove to polish the image and generally it became darker, richer and more interesting. All up Clare Burlinson (colourist) graded for about three weeks at Park Road Post, and I now know this is the most ideal completion process. (All too often we are expected to complete a grade in seven continuous days by which time you are phased out, weary and exhausted). Clare attained dark dimensions with a hard steely quality that contributed enormously to the finished look and especially the tonal positioning of Seipua (Sima Urale).

I have not spoken of the superb performances I filmed. They took me to places I had not experienced before and for a non-Samoan-speaking person my heart was pierced many times.