The past is rarely black-and-white.
But inBelfast, it is.
“We decided on it together in a way,” Zambarloukous tells EW.
Rob Youngson/Focus Features
He was like, ‘I’ve been thinking the same things too.'"
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Why was it important to Branagh to shoot this in black and white?
HARIS ZAMBARLOUKOUS:We were both thinking in similar ways.
‘Belfast’ written and directed by Kenneth Branagh.Rob Youngson/Focus Features
We make a run at minimize movement.
It’s less descriptive than color.
You don’t get as much information, but you gain something else.
A scene from the Kenneth Branagh film ‘Belfast’.Focus Features
We certainly wanted to be a slightly more glossy black and white.
It had to be really clear.
I don’t think a 10-year-old child sees things grainy.
They have quite a clean view of the world.
So that was one thing we wanted to do.
In terms of the technical aspect of it, it was definitely large format, very clean photography.
You feel every freckle and every detail.
Ken calls it forensic photography, and that’s a very good word for it.
So, we stayed within naturalism, but we wanted to add something magical in that too.
It’s very well cataloged that this is inspired by Ken’s childhood.
I didn’t look at photographs, but we literally walked the streets.
We walked; we cycled; we went to Belfast; we stood where he would stand.
We really took that in, and it was a moving experience.
It’s not your typical location scouting.
This was our eighth film.
You mentioned this glossy effect, and that really felt like Old Hollywood to me.
A lot of the film shows us how Buddy processes things through cinema.
So was that also intentional and part of why you chose that look?
We’ve had to do a more classic Hollywood look on some of our films.
It really was naturalistic lighting.
It is not a usual approach.
You would usually say, “Let’s place them where we want to.
And then let’s use artificial lighting to create the tone and the contrast.”
Old Hollywood films were lit with artificial light.
What we wanted to do is try and recreate that look using naturalistic lighting and available light.
At times, the film can feel almost like a news reel in the market riot, for example.
And then other times, it’s much more romantic and nostalgic.
Were there certain things you were doing to help us distinguish those moments?
The biggest thing that we did was be really still in those key dramatic moments, the emotional moments.
You let shots go longer, let natural light play a part.
And we would keep long shots and slightly wider shots.
We felt that by doing that, we earned the kinetic shots, the riots, et cetera.
You really mourn the losses.
Once that mourning has really taken place, you’ve got to have a kinetic dance.
Did you shoot on black and white film stock or convert it in post?
We did shoot digitally, and it’s our first digital film.
This makes it much quicker.
And we had limited resources, limited time.
You also have these moments that are these bursts of color.
Were those something Ken had in the script?
And how did you decide where to place those and what you wanted them to signify?
Those were completely Ken’s ideas.
Was that something that you wanted throughout, or how did you decide where to utilize it?
That was certainly something we thought about from early on and we wanted to use wider lenses closer.
But we could have not done that if it wasn’t for Jim Clay’s [production] design.
Jim Clay built sets designed for us to do that, where we could stack things up.
The way that Jim’s sets were made, he would allow that.
It reminds me a lot of Gregg Toland’s work.
Was that a touchstone?
You don’t need to go too far in your lenses either.
There’s a clarity to it and there’s a silence to it.
It’s also a way to not do too much.
You’re forcing where and how people look.
We found a minimalism and a clarity, but at the same time, we allowed things to happen.
There’s quite a few films that I’ve loved that play with the frame.
And I wouldn’t just call it depth of field.
It’s a depth of field in both the blocking and the production design.
Westerns andHigh NoonandShane, and those sorts of films come into the action a lot.
Were you using any of those as an influence?
All the films you see in the film were references.
A Belfast street, a terrace street, is quite similar to a Western street.
It was easily juxtaposed, but those streets are very much like that.
They had an end to them and they were terraced and quite symmetrical.
This year has a really astonishing number of films in black and white.
There’sBelfastandThe Tragedy of MacbethandPassingandC’mon C’monand probably more I’m not naming.
Why do you think it’s so popular it right now?
It’s finally getting the regard it should have.
Portrait is always best in black and white.
Motion pictures always had the option once color was introduced.
The filmmaker chose and slowly, that seemed to go away.
I wouldn’t say that they look in any way similar.
They look as different as the many color films that were made this year.
Two filmmakers could make the same script in black and white and it would come out so different.
I was grateful for this opportunity to shoot something with a majority of it being in black and white.
You take that opportunity and make the most of it.
And you never know what the next project will be.
