Kasper Tuxen, DFF, explains the technical choices for "The Apprentice", by Ali Abbasi

Shooting on a budget

Filmed during the winter of 2023/2024 in the Toronto area (to mimic New York), The Apprentice claims to be a biopic unlike any other.
Kasper Tuxen explains : "You know, there are so many biopics made in cinema... we wanted to offer something off the beaten track. A film that wasn’t glamorous, really raw... almost punk. We knew we wouldn’t have 100 million dollars to make it. So, we had to seize the opportunity to produce it, even on a really tight budget. In that context, you have to rack your brain to find a directing concept as natural as the story... and at the same time cheap.
Ali and I met at Danish film school. We weren’t in the same year, but a few years apart. That’s really where we both learnt how to shoot with very little. We both like to work very quickly, with small crews and without a lot of equipment...

At the heart of this process, Ali immediately agreed that the archives would serve as our guiding thread to tell the story. We made our selection well before we started filming, so that we knew exactly what we were aiming for visually in the film. Our idea was to blend these images from the past with our contemporary adaptations in a very natural, invisible way. As the story takes place over a period of around twenty years, between the 70s and the 80s, we found ourselves confronted to this pivotal period when analogue video gradually replaced 16mm for shooting news and live coverage. And that was very tangible, because from the early 80s onwards, it became downright impossible to find the slightest archive shot on film... So, we had to deal with that, and decide on a moment in the film when we would switch from that film look to a more analogue video look. The scene we chose was his first major interview shot at his home, where he confides in the journalist, jokingly telling him that he might run for office at the White House during the next election. For us, it was the ideal transition point to move away from the film look and dive into the second part of the film, which is entirely processed with this analogue video look".

Impossible to shoot in analog video

Regarding the technical choices used to achieve this change in the visuals of the film, the cinematographer replies : "We did a lot of tests, using 16mm first -negative and reversal film-... then analogue video cameras from that period. Intuitively, working with the real tools of the time - if we could still find them - was by far the most logical... But we progressively found ourselves confronted with the very low definition of the few still preserved cameras from that time. While 16mm was of course not a problem, filming Master elements in 625-line put us in a very uncomfortable position when it came to delivering a copy of the film that could be used with current standards. We therefore used this series of tests to develop a workflow with colour timer Tyler Roth (Company3), who had already done the colour-grading of the David Bowie documentary Moonage Daydream. A film that was full of very different archival footage, also spanning those years. We shot everything on an Alexa 35, equipped with 16mm lenses (and reducing the effective size of the sensor) and then applied two very different LUTs, one for 16mm and one for analogue video.”

To capture the spirit of the archives, the cinematographer also admits to having favoured the zoom lens, which remains the reference tool for news journalists... "We mostly used the Canon 8-64mm lens for much of the film. After a while, I have to admit that I couldn’t part with it ! It was such a feeling of freedom ... at times I felt transported as if I were in cinéma-vérité. I’d never felt so free on a shoot as I did on this one. In terms of lighting, it was the same : I only really lit when there was no way around it. Or for example when the context of the scene justified it, such as the in-situ TV interviews ; the characters are lit by a minette light attached above the camera. Apart from these specific scenes, the film is entirely shot in natural light. I never worried about complicated lighting set-ups... we simply adapted to each location, certainly favouring certain angles... but the job was mainly to respond on camera to the actors’ suggestions and their interpretation of the scene. For me, the best moment of the shoot - I mean, the moment when I really realised what total freedom we had - was the day when the assistant director came to ask me what we were going to do... and I told him I didn’t know ! It’s a real pleasure to be able to embark on a project with so much confidence and not have to worry every night about the lighting setup for the next day !”

Fiction in more intimate scenes

While the film constantly moves back and forth between these period images associated with Donald Trump’s public moments, another narrative branch of the film focuses on lesser-known things, falling de facto into the realm of fictional adaptation (the very essence of the biopic) rather than into historical documentary. The central focus of this plot being the complex relationship between the young real estate tycoon with limitless ambition, and his lawyer, who gradually becomes his mentor.

Kasper Tuxen explains : "It’s true that for these more secret scenes, which were not covered by the media at the time, we opted for a slightly more classic, fictional filming approach. In the sequence, for example, where Roy Cohn invites Donald Trump into his house and shows him around the secret basement full of various recording devices, but also in the Bar sequence, with Fred Jr, his alcoholic brother, we shot with fixed 16mm lenses, a Zeiss GO series, giving a much more classic feel with the shot-reverse shots ; much less of a documentary feel. You’ll notice that most of these scenes are dialogue moments, between two characters. In other words, very different from scenes where people walk through the frame, while you follow your protagonist, which is much easier to capture in documentary style, with the unique zoom perspective and the immediacy of the action.
Imagine for a moment filming these more intimate dialogue sequences in real time ; during the editing process you would find yourself with a simple master shot of the action in a more or less wide angle... and then a few small cutaway shots, moving hands or listening shots that you might have gathered here and there after the take. Obviously very different from what happens with fiction, especially when shooting with one camera. And, as you rightly pointed out, the end of the film is de facto filmed in wide shots, with more importance given to the context, like the birthday dinner with Roy. The few scenes at Mar A Lago, too... but that’s related to the fact that the Trump character himself starts his journey in rather small places, progressively evolving towards greater, more impressive landscapes or ascending with increasingly spectacular views."

In terms of format, Kasper Tuxen and Ali Abbasi naturally chose the TV 3/2 format, 16mm and then analogue video. "We’re in this format, but we also tried to frame the shots as much as possible in the 70s style. When framing, the space left above the heads is actually crucial ! I think you can almost guess what year a film was shot just by looking at the space above the actors ! When you see, for example, all those films where the forehead is cut off at the top of the frame... that’s when time travel begins !
Jokes aside, when we looked at the images from that period, we realised that most of the time people are framed right in the centre, with the viewfinder crosshair almost aligned with their eyes. There’s an extremely demonstrative aspect to these images, as if we simply wanted to point the camera, almost like a gun, at the subject.”

Snow on Toronto

When asked about the number of shooting days and the production context, the cinematographer explains : "Given that we had about fifteen million dollars to make the film, time was of the essence. The film had to be shot in just 30 days, with the challenge of following the script to create a 2.5-hour film. Admittedly, the film was shortened in the editing process, but we really had a lot of things to film. And I’m not even talking about all the make-up and prosthetic work that was done on Sebastian Sam to manage his physical evolution over these 20 years. All this while shooting in the middle of winter, three weeks before and then three weeks after Christmas 2023, in Toronto.
As we still wanted to have a few exterior shots with leaves on the trees, and not be confined to winter on screen, we decided while we were in pre-production, during the fall, to shoot a few hasty shots. The car sequence when he drives to his parents’ house after collecting the money at Trump Village, we shot at that time for example, without Sebastian even being in Toronto yet. The image of his face in the rear-view mirror was added later in post-production. The other consequence of shooting a film like this in winter in Canada is the arrival of snow, which can have very annoying repercussions. Among the unpleasant surprises, I remember this night sequence on location where we had created a replica of a street in New York with a lot of vintage cars. The sequence was taking place just outside the bar, and snow started to fall in big flakes. Our two actors spent their time between takes cleaning the windscreen of the car.”

Understanding the characters

Regarding the context in which the film will be released, and the very nature of filming such an unlikeable main character, Kasper Tuxen explains : "It’s true that there’s a political agenda at stake. Even if the film is unlikely to influence the outcome of the upcoming election, we inevitably asked ourselves the question, when we were filming a sequence, whether we may have made him too likeable in the end... Be that as it may, I was carried away by Sebastian’s performance throughout the shoot. I find that he brings to the screen a Donald Trump who is sometimes funny and deeply human, which inevitably helps the cinematographer that I am to film him. I’ll tell you, at times I thought of the Anakin Skywalker character in the Star Wars saga, before he became Darth Vader. That epilogue with the plastic surgery was, for me, his final transformation. And even though most of the time I approach each project with my own empathy for the characters, I have to confess that yes, even with him, there were times when I understood him. After all, this is the story of a young man who wants to assert himself in relation to his father... and who perhaps makes a pact with the devil to do so ? The cost of all this is his relationships with those closest to him, his wife, his brother, his parents. So yes, even if your protagonist is a bastard, I think you still have to like him or understand him a little in order to film him well. Just as every actor has to understand the flaws or gifts of the character he impersonates".

(Interview by François Reumont and translated from french by Chloé Finch for the AFC)