CAMERA TESTS

Last week we shot some camera tests. We did experiments with everything, the type of lighting, the negative, the emulsion, how colors react to the lenses chosen by Rodrigo Prieto, the wigs, the materials, the wardrobe that has been already chosen, the actors’ skin, etc.
The camera tests arouse the same excitement in me as if we were shooting. In fact, it is a shoot, where the set is absurd and free. If I want to see how the color red works, I put something that color in front of the camera, a vase with fruit, a tool box, a piece of material, a bit of furniture. I enjoy this kind of set and I’m tempted by the possibility of using the same criterion, free and abstract, in some film.

Lluis and Tamar in the camera tests. © Pedro Almodóvar.

I take advantage of having the actors in front of the camera in order to talk to them, as I would talk to their characters. At times I make the characters inter-relate as themselves (Something very Pirandello-like, the actors get inside their characters and talk among themselves with the only information to which they have access, that is, what I give them in the script. As well as being fun, it’s a very good exercise for feeling that you are “the other”. It isn’t improvisation, it’s something else.).

For example, the character of Judit (Blanca Portillo) talks with the character who in the script is called Lip Reader (Lola Dueñas, who appears in several sequences). Judit confesses to her:

Judit: “I’m very bossy, and very secretive. I’ve got a huge guilt complex but I’m also endlessly generous, especially with Mateo (Lluis Homar), the protagonist. It’s a mixture of feelings that I think works very well dramatically. What are you like?”
The Lip Reader answers: “I read lips, and I’m very neutral, my sole concern is not to attract attention. I disappear into the chair I’m sitting on.”
Judit: “Do you have any children? I’ve got one, but I’m too embittered to be a good mother.”
Lip Reader: “Why are you so embittered?”
Judit: “I can’t tell you. It’s my secret. No one can talk about it, except me, and only at the end of the film, but first a lot of things have to happen. Are you married?”
Lip Reader: “I don’t know.”
Judit: “Do you have any children?”
Lip Reader: “I don’t know that either. But it’s possible.”
Judit: “Do you really read lips?”
Lip Reader: “Yes. I make a living from it. I read Princess Letizia’s lips when she married Prince Felipe and said that about “it’s all so beautiful”.

Judit: “Was that you?”
Lip Reader: “Yes. They paid me well, really well. So then I thought I could make a living from reading lips.”
Judit: “I find it hard to believe. I know there are new professions now that didn’t exist before, for example, “closet organizer”. I’m very good at organizing closets. But I didn’t know that reading people’s lips was a profession.”
Lip Reader: “There’s a big demand, especially on those trashy gossip tv programs, but I prefer private investigation. I’m not interested in personal promotion. You know that I’m very neutral.”

Perhaps too neutral, thinks Judit, to read others’ lips. Distrustful, she puts her to the test.

Judit: “Let’s see if you can read what I’m saying.”

Judit moves her mouth without making any sound.

Judit: “What did I say?”
Lip Reader: “I change very little with the passing of time. I’m the same as I was twenty years ago, but I’ve got problems with my hair… and my nose isn’t my best ally.”
Judit: “It’s true! That’s exactly what I said.”
Lip Reader: “What does that thing about your nose mean?”
Judit: “Nothing. Ideas of mine. You know, I’m secretive.”

That was one of the exercises we did during the camera tests. And it was a delightful experience.

REFLECTIONS

Part of the game consists of photographing everything. I enjoy photographing the reflections of what is being shot, in the different screens where you can see what the camera is shooting. At times I prefer to photograph the reflections of bodies instead of the real bodies. For example, almost all the photographs of Penélope that have appeared in this blog were taken through different make-up mirrors (or the video monitors, during tests). I’ve even come to think, through pure deformation, that the lines of Penélope’s face are more harmonious when reflected in another surface than if you look straight at them. I hope she isn’t annoyed, I’m more excited by Penélope’s reflection than by Penélope herself. I mean that if I look at Penélope I see my friend, a very pretty girl who is also a very good actress. If I see her reflected, I see the character and her possible appearances, but always as a character.

Penélope reflected. © Pedro Almodóvar.
		Penélope reflected. © Pedro Almodóvar.

Penélope reflected. © Pedro Almodóvar.

In this period when we are testing everything, hair, attitudes, lights, tones of voice, ways of looking, walls, floors, carpets, tables, vases, bedspreads, shoes, houses… all that, I look at it from the other side (of the mirror, and of the camera). I am installed there. The only thing I don’t see from that other side is myself. I see my hands holding a camera or an eye and a bit of hair in the photos in front of the mirror. My place is on the edges, even on the other side.

During shooting, I don’t like looking at myself in mirrors. I guess it’s because I feel like a mirror myself and one mirror facing another only reflects emptiness.

THE BEGINNING. 24.05.08

We arrived in Lanzarote this afternoon. As soon as I set foot on the island I felt calmer, I had the sensation of entering a world where the rhythm was less tense and more natural. I don’t know how I’ll feel the day after tomorrow when we start shooting, perhaps this feeling of harmony is only the calm before the storm.

Now it is the day after tomorrow. And there hasn’t been any storm. I slept better than I usually sleep the night before a shoot. I’ve showered, dressed and had breakfast slowly, which is a real novelty for me, and something I should try to repeat.

I had breakfast alone at the bar by the pool, without the presence of any other hotel guests or companions from the shoot. That pleasant solitude helps me to be more aware of myself.

In the two days we’ve been on Lanzarote, rehearsing and confirming the locations, both Penélope and Lluis Homar have told me they were nervous about the imminent moment of truth. I admit that I’m not, this doesn’t mean confidence in myself or in that everything is going to turn out well. On the contrary, “Broken Embraces” is the greatest cinematic adventure I’ve ever embarked on, and there will be more problems to resolve that in my previous films. But perhaps it’s because of the island’s hypnotic atmosphere that I feel much calmer these days than I did during the last month in Madrid.

Embraces I. © Emilio Pereda y Paola Ardizzoni.

Embraces II. © Emilio Pereda y Paola Ardizzoni.

THE FIRST SHOT

We start to prepare it at midday. It is Monday, May 26th, an ordinary Monday for the rest of humanity, but for me it’s an historic Monday, I’m starting shooting my seventeenth film. Normally I’m not aware of the most important moments in my life (I don’t think anyone is) at the time they are occurring. But today I am aware, I even hear how the machinery of my memory is registering it, as if it were a tinnitus.

When I was crossing La Geria by car and thinking of the moment when we would plant the camera in its black earth (it might seem ridiculous, but because of a work obsession and because Eastwood’s film is very recent, I guess) I remembered the famous photo by Rosenthal with the American soldiers raising the American flag, fluttering photogenically in the wind, on the tragic Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima.

We haven’t had to kill thousands of Japanese soldiers to get this far, but planting a camera in the lunar landscape of La Geria, in order to photograph its dark vineyards, surrounded by stone circles, has got an undoubtedly epic aroma.

While we were looking for the most suitable framing, I told my assistant to take a photo of us to record the moment. The director of photography, Rodrigo Prieto, joked that all that was missing was a flag. He too was thinking of Rosenthal’s photo, and the coincidence amused me. I think it’s a good omen if your director of photography can read your thoughts.

Intense relationship between directors. © Emilio Pereda y Paola Ardizzoni

The mythical photo of the conquest of Iwo Jima was re-shot by the photographer Rosenthal. It’s normal for war photographers to repeat their photos and to have to choreograph them, because when the image really happened, the conditions weren’t good technically. If I were to make a war film, something very unlikely, I’d like it to be about a war photographer and the little scenes he’d have to organize in order to leave a graphic testimony of the horror.

For me, as a director, truth is in representation. I believe in the documentary genre and in naturalism, as narrative styles (in fact I think documentary cinema is living a moment of true splendor) but as a director what interests me is the representation of emotions and of a story full of ups and downs and transmitting it through the actors, the sets, the music, the light, the floors, the walls… without any of these elements necessarily copying reality. Although the story may have its roots in reality, I prefer to represent it and enrich it through artifice. I think that fiction, I’m not the only one who says this, is one of the best vehicles for recounting reality and for provoking the most genuine emotions.

Penélope rehearsing with “her” director. © Emilio Pereda y Paola Ardizzoni

FICTION

When I find myself, as now, immersed in shooting a film, the world, the whole world, disappears. My isolation is total, concentration on the film prevents any other element connecting with my neurons. I barely read the newspaper, I don’t watch television, not even the news. In this apparently endless tunnel, I can only pay attention to one thing, which in turn is a thousand things, that is, I am only aware of what has to do with the shoot. Living inside this strict impermeability, there is only one element that connects me with my previous life: reading novels. It is a habit that, with the years, has become an addiction. I need my daily dose of literary fiction, even if I don’t have any time. In the worst of cases I read at the end of the day, before I go to sleep. And on the worst of days, for at least half an hour.

It doesn’t matter that I’ve been abducted for months by one fiction, my film. I need to be in contact with other fiction that comes from outside, that doesn’t belong to me. Only that kind of fiction oxygenates me.

When I’m filming, I choose light books, the best are books of short stories, brief, intense pieces. If they are long, dense novels, my inability to concentrate can result in me reading the first pages over several weeks, night after night. Before, this used to frustrate me, now I think it’s funny, the fact of reading the same page every night has got something of a ritual and something of a Stephen King character, like the writer Jack Nicholson in “The Shining”, always writing the same words, page after page.

Despite all that I’ve just written, before starting to shoot I got hooked on one of the least suitable novels for my present hopelessly demented situation, “2666” by Roberto Bolaño. It’s a book I always wanted to read but until three weeks ago it hadn’t come into my hands. The book grows and unfolds in an overwhelming, fascinating way over 1,119 pages full of the best literature. I couldn’t have chosen a worse moment to enjoy it, but the truth is that, since I started to read it, I haven’t been able to put it down. To my surprise, “2666” and its titanic, torrential author have become my closest traveling companions.
On this shoot there will be good days and bad days, but when I go back to the hotel or to home, Roberto Bolaño’s novel will always be waiting for me. And that makes me trust in the future.