The Alexa : Snow Queen

A scene was chosen from one of Stephen Frears’ most underrated films (the modern Western The Hi Lo Country, released in 1998) in order to provide material for the presentation : a scene in a snowstorm in which three cowboys become trapped and suffer a serious accident on horseback.
“I remember,” he explains, “we were shooting the film in New Mexico. It was so hot you could die ! It wasn’t wintertime at all, and yet we had to recreate this scene in studio with a set that was hardly bigger than the one I’m working with today !”

Indeed, set up in the gymnasium of Bydgoszcz University, a little piece of snowy countryside was recreated with a well, a few stakes, and a backdrop of a landscape. On the ground, a few kilos of polystyrene snow completed the illusion.

Equipped with two Arri Alexa cameras (one with a 4/3 sensor with scope lens and the other in 16/9 with spherical lens), the reenactment was entrusted to two volunteer members of the audience, while Oliver Stapleton shared with the rest of the audience his memories from working on this project, and a rather nostalgic vision of cinema.
Amongst the subjects discussed were the great films that influenced him, of which the most central were the image created by Vittorio Storaro on The Conformist, Apocalypse Now, and One From The Heart. This was the occasion to recall how rich the 1970s were in photographic innovations, and how the instantaneity of digital cinematography has, in his opinion, caused studios and producers to lose a sense of audacity.

This workshop was also the occasion for the Bavarian firm to show off its new range of Skypanel LED spots, with which the daylight ambience was created through an immense vellum suspended on the ceiling. Other similar ambiences were used on stands to light the actors’ faces. “I think,” said Oliver Stapleton, “that LED spots are really the spotlights of the future. The fact that you can choose the colour temperature very rapidly, their low consumption of electricity, and the little amount of heat they give off, are huge advantages when working in studio. Of course, the chromatic quality of LED lighting remains problematic, but I think that manufacturers have made huge progresses in that area and I think that they can now be perfectly used alongside tungsten bulbs or daylight.”

This master class was attentively followed by an audience that filled the entire room for over two hours.

Written by François Reumont for the AFC, and translated from French by Alex Raiffe.