NAILING VISUAL LANGUAGE

Cinematographer Fyras Slaiman explains how he worked with director-star Zhizi Hao to execute the visual language of bittersweet romance Vocabulary.

Vocabulary, directed by Zhizi Hao, is a story that has been in the works for a few years. The story about a chunky, gay, Asian man learning a new English slang word one hook-up at a time is a coming-of-age story very close to Hao, yet also many immigrants in the UK. Language is a very powerful tool that allows us to exchange and integrate; for example, this piece I am writing is an extension of myself and Hao’s work. Our wish is to be understood and to express a story. Hao and I wanted to connect this tool to two cinematic languages – colours and camera movements.

We were lucky to shoot this on the new Fuji Eterna 55 matched with rehoused Canon FD S.S.C, which allowed us a brand new framing capacity with their sensor. The colours turned out spectacular on this, which clearly helped for the backbone of the story. Trying a new sensor and camera is always exciting.

Counting the days

This story is structured in three different interactions. Day 1, day 69 and day 137. Andi (played by Hao) has been through a lot throughout his first year and learned a lot about himself, expressing doubts and love. It was an obvious choice for us to allow the cinematic language to evolve drastically to travel through the days with Andi.

Day 0 (or 1, depending on where you’re from), we find Andi’s new student room in a very raw setting. Made to look almost like natural light, we wanted it to be rough and a bit confusing. We see bits of his bed but can’t clearly pinpoint the size of his room. In all honesty, this choice helped me and Emanuel, our gaffer, because our only light source was a small window off frame, not allowing us to create proper contrast in this tiny white-walled room. I had an M18 outside the window just hitting some bits of the bed and Andi’s skin, allowing us to create some dynamism in the image. We also had a mirror to move around depending on the frame, and a caligri to soften the skin. This meant the image dynamism ranged from “exposed to overexposed” and we embraced this choice.

Time was also a challenge, even on a short film, as we had another scene to shoot before the bedroom one – near the shortest day of the year. I believe we had less than eight hours of daylight, including a scene with quite a lot of shots and complex intimacy coordination.

The Fuji allowed us to get the two characters in frame and be “close” to the action, adding to the intimacy without lots of optical deformation. This kept it as realistic and raw as possible, which helped immensely considering how small the room was.

Going through the emotions

Day 69 is supposed to be a turning point for our character. He meets Charles, a charming white British man who has… a thing or two for Asia. We wanted to keep it funny but unsettling at certain points, which is a fine line to walk on. We decided to go with a Steadicam, operated by the brilliant Marc Hill, who also understood the story and contributed great ideas. The 180 circular shot from Asia’s map to Hao turning around was what sold us the idea of going with Steadicam. He is about to go from being surprised, to excited, to shocked and full of doubt. We really wanted the scene to be as vibrant and airy as possible while slowly getting tighter and more controlled to mimic Charles’ command of the situation.

We were lucky that day to have very nice golden sun coming through the windows, and all I had to do was to take care of their skin by book lighting them. The room was so big it needed some shapes, so we spent a majority of the time blocking out the top and opposite windows to give it a sense of high sparkles from the golden sun, but contrasting enough to avoid blandness. We are not on day 1 anymore, we want it to look “beautiful and sparkly” because this is how Charles designs it to look (cheeky show-off!).

The bedroom scene was almost entirely shot on Steadicam, and this is the moment that we want to feel unsettled. The deep red of the room is an over-the-top “I really love China” signal from Charles. However, it’s also a theatre – he wants to impress Andi because he clearly has a thing for Asian men. From Andi’s perspective, it’s complete disillusion.

Due to the nature of the shoot, time needed for the intimacy coordination and size of the sensor, we needed a light setup that was very easily moveable.

Emanuel decided to go with an Astera with a caligri on standby, moving around close enough to the skin to keep a higher contrast feeling. We also wanted an eerie golden light coming from outside with an Aputure 600X, making it feel almost claustrophobic.

As the tension rises slowly in the scene and reaches a culmination point, we broke the line with Marc using a Steadicam movement behind Andi, allowing us to restart the tension and leave more space for comedy.

The top shot going from Andi, to the panda poster, back to Andi, to him receiving head was Hao’s idea, and was done entirely handheld made easier thanks to the… Easyrig.

From this shot, we transition from a CU of Andi in the culmination of his doubts, to a personification of him becoming the panda. The scene where Andi turns into a panda was entirely lit by the colourful practicals created by the brilliant Hui Zhang and street lights. I wanted the sign to be to be as strong as possible, and the Fuji’s dual ISO came in handy.

The reason behind wanting the sign to be the main light was to play with horror elements and absurdism, we found it quite interesting to have this traumatic experience be so colourful. We were lucky to not be under any street lamp which allowed us to create natural contrast, even if in an ideal world I would have turned off most of the streetlights.

We did have an Astera with a light sock following Andi for the walk to soften the shdows. This scene was the last one we shot, which felt quite cathartic for Hao being able to express every release of emotion in this costume, which is a very poetic way to end this shoot.

Keeping calm

Moving day 137, with Sam and Andi, was shot entirely on sticks. The reasoning behind this was the calmness we wanted to portray, and letting them evolve naturally, creating a sense of true chemistry as the dialogue is quite long, as if we were in a real date with them.

This location has so many practicals and fun lights that all I had to do to find a good base was to choose what to keep on or off. The only challenge was the fact that it was supposed to be a night scene, shot during the day, with huge windows behind Andi, so I took most of the pre-light time to block out the windows. The shallow depth of field created by the sensor’s size helped a lot as we don’t really see anything in the back.

For the scene, I really wanted to separate Andi and Sam with colours before allowing them to mix for the final kiss scene, as if they were “testing” each other before trusting each other – especially Andi, after everything he went through. For Sam’s close-up, I turned off everything that had any colour other than tungsten, while giving him a very soft cyan backlight to balance the frame and recall with Andi’s CU, which had all the practicals turned on.

Because this is the only “proper” date Andi is having during this story, we lit them as soft as possible; we wanted it to feel comforting. I had an Astera raised between them in a light sock, with a muslin attached to it dropped loose, and an extra 250 frame really close to their faces. This triple diffusion completed by an extra source for the eye-light really gave us the perfect lighting for this scene considering how small the shooting space was.

For the kissing, I allowed this moment to be played in a dark area next to the restaurant, while booming a strong backlight out of the restaurant’s window with a 600C (either for creative purposes, or the fact that we did not have a permit and couldn’t have a light stand outside, I’ll let you decide). I wanted it to be lit with the cliché “high contrast with strong backlight, strong flair, strong bokeh” romantic moment. Sometimes, clichés are clichés because they work. Andi believes in love again!

We were lucky to have very colourful bokehs coming from the restaurant’s lights and cars, which accentuated their worlds colliding and mixing.

Ending with the phone scene, we went for a very simple setup : Believe in the strength of phone lights and the look of practicals. We wanted it to feel like a cocoon, to show the full evolution of Andi’s room. It started with very bland white walls, horrible lighting, to this cute comforting nest. Andi is fully happy and the future looks bright (we can only hope!).

Shooting this film was as much a learning experience due to the new gear as it was a great collaboration – every step felt like a coming together of the right people, surprises and passion, all in service of a story Hao had been carrying for a few years. I can’t wait for people to see it.