 Tamás Sas 56 KByte |
Sas Tamás - cinematographer. He has worked in at least 300 productions so far.
In addition to feature films, these of course include commercials, television films as well as documentaries. He worked with Attila Janish (Shadow on the Snow), Can Togay (The Holiday-Maker), Ildikó Szabó (Child-Murders), Pál Sándor (City on Fire), Bence Gyöngyössy (Gypsy Law), Ildikó Enyedi (Tamás and Juli). He has recently completed his film entitled Espresso. The screen-play was written with the assistance of Gábor Németh, the producer was Péter Barbalics from Magic Média. The cast: Gábor Máté, Miklós Benedek, László Szacsvay, Kati Lázár, Karina Kecskés, Andrea Fullajtár, Andrea Söptei. Tamás Sas, in addition to having been the director of the film, in his capacity as director of photography also invented something new. |
It was now, at the last screening, that the film was shown in its entirety, where one could see not only the result of the editing but also proof of whether the idea on which the whole was built up would work out or not.
Have you not tried it before?
This is not something you can try out...
Not even in a short film?
In a short film, yes, but of course the real issue was whether it worked for a feature film or not. The idea is basically that the camera does not move. The takes are continuous, in their own time, i.e. there is neither time-plays nor editing within takes. Now it seems that the doubts - formed not by myself but others - were ungrounded. I do not think the audience wants to see the takes in a film, and editing is again something they don’t really care for, apart from in video-clips, where editing is the main point. Thus, it is not really the images, but their variety which is of importance. In a feature film, the audience barely perceives whether the film has been edited or not. It is as if what I have long suspected, - i.e. that Eizenstein was not right, after all, - would be proved here, i.e. that montage is not necessarily the essence of film. It is certainly not exclusively so.
The first version of Espresso was two and a half hours long, which of course is very long, the present version is 110 minutes. Only a couple of tiny changes had to be made compared to the screen-play, and beginnings and ends of some takes had to be cut off. We certainly planned to do editing only at these bits. The takes do not always start from zero point and end at zero point, as we have shot them, and in a structure of this kind it would be logical not to cut into the take at one particular point always. Sometimes the take already goes on at that time and at other times the characters still linger on.
Why would a director of photography want to point to a single spot, move the camera there and leave it there for good? Why did you, as a cinematographer, agree to this solution?
I have not agreed to it, I have invented it.
There were a few attempts before you...
It is the first of its kind in a feature film. There were American experimental films, Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol made films of this kind, but those were films that were rather trying for the patience of the audience. Hitchcock had a film, The Rope which was just a single take, yet the camera was moving there. In the history of film, ours is the first film where there is just one take, the camera is stuck at one particular place, and there is no editing within the scenes.
But why would a cinematographer want to drill down a camera into the ground? Because as a director, you have at least one thing less to think about?
God forbid, it is not at all that. I had two reasons. One is that an inconceivable number of pictures are made every day as well as shown on television channels. Within a single work, there are countless pictures, and the majority of those are simply wasted. I do not like the term but I do believe that there is visual pollution in our world today. Pictures are being produced in superfluous numbers. In my view, it is not the variety of the image but its permanence that delights. Nothing justifies, nor is it genetically programmed, that variety is necessarily delightful. Why would the picture always need to be different? I simply do not see the point there. The belief that only variety can make something interesting is the result of a very superfluous perception and thinking. I do not agree with that. Therefore, we do the radical opposite, and create in a single take the variety that is required for telling a story. The changes were made not within the frame of the picture, nor in the background, but in the foreground.
Any new character was always placed in a new lighting, photographed from a different angle. There are numerous changing elements, yet the background and the focus was always the same. This was one thing. The other is that I wanted to try myself out as a director, without falling back on professional technology - which I more or less possess - , i.e. I decided not to employ the practice of picture-changing and picture-creating, which would serve to cover up certain defects of the director work. The most important for me was whether I was capable of real communication with the actors and whether I could tell a story in a way that would leave the story behind rather than an orgasm of visions.
Having cut off the beginning and the end of the takes, what else is there to do?
A very important task for the director has not yet been completed: the sound. We shall have a lot to do with that. It was originally a sound recording, i.e. there is no post-dubbing, the audience will hear what was said during the shooting. The film will have a sound-world of its own, the audible story of an espresso. Noises, murmurs, the sounds of the coffee-machine, the noises of the street and the sounds of the television set outside the picture. Apart from that, the accompanying music, of course, is of great importance. I approached János Másik with this. I worked in many films where he was composer, wherefore I know and like what he does. If we had not been able to agree with him I could have imagined working with someone else, too, as fortunately there are many excellent composers in Hungary.
Will the edited material change?
Yes, it will. As soon as this version had been completed I knew that we would have to continue working on it. For example, one scene - the room for which I could not yet see during editing - was omitted. Now I know where I am going to put it. This version also included some superfluous frames at ends and beginnings, I will take those out as well, yet I think that the visual material is to 90% completed, i.e. that layer which we shot on the spot.
There is something else, however. The parts that separate the takes, when the vision darkens and than lightens while a new take starts rolling is called diaphragms. In these darkening I would like to have some visual content that is somehow connected to the story, although the frames will not be from the film. This special visual layer would only surface in the diaphragms. It will not go down into black, then, but into some colour, and this colour would then have the picture take shape for one or two seconds. I do not exactly know as yet what the most beautiful, the most precise, the most associative would be.... I have plans.
What decides the closeness vs. the distance of the characters from the camera and the kind of lighting that they receive?
The location of the characters has been determined by the most elementary dramaturgical rules. Those who spoke the more essential lines in a particular take, or played a more important part in the relationship of the characters, were closer to the camera, while those less important were further off. If, in some conflict, one character defeated the other, i.e. their relationship changed during the take, this was also expressed by the changes in their location. Whether they were to appear facing the camera or from the side was also decided well in advance. If what was important in a take was the way a character behaved under the force of circumstances, he was photographed in a total, if the changes in his face were of importance he was again closer to the camera.
Lighting depended in the first place on when the scene took place in reality. The story stretches over a year, seasons change, i.e. there are cooler, colder and harder, as well as softer lights. Lighting was also determined by the kind of whether that we had at that particular point in time, i.e. the time of the shooting. If we had a window to the street and the weather outside was cheerful, cloudy or rainy, the internal lighting had to be adjusted as well.
At the same time, substantiating the atmosphere of a scene with appropriate lighting was of extraordinary importance. There are 38 scenes in the film, which means that we made 38 different lighting.
What is the size of the total in this case?
The film was made with a single wide-angle, 16 mm optics, which means that having somebody seated 1 meter away from the camera produced a close-up called premiere plan, if the person was three meters away, then the picture showed him from top to toe, and if he went to the furthermost spot in the space, i.e. he stood in the street or in front of the shop-window, he showed from top to toe, including his surroundings.
How did you know where to draw the sharpness?
The stop value that we used for the shooting, - which means what size of opening the objective had - determined the sharpness of depth as well. Which means the spectrum where the picture is still sharp between two points, in the direction of an axis, and where it loses its sharpness.
That value has a closest as well as a furthermost point. To some extant one could make everything look sharp at 1-8 meters. Practically speaking, everything was continuously sharp all the time, yet at times I wanted to make the background dim, or sharp, respectively.
Did you ever look into the camera?
Yes, of course. All the time. This was working as a cinematographer, just like at any other times. Apart from a lack of having to track, as the camera was not moving, there was no difference. Creating the picture is the same in every take, in every moment. That was a most important element of the work, like in any other film.
How can one prepare for a situation of this kind?
Getting prepared meant that we have rehearsed the whole film, as if it was a stage performance. We had a reading rehearsal, partial rehearsals, directive rehearsal. We did that because we had no money to rehearse on the spot. I do not think the actors should learn their roles on the spot, and they should certainly not improvise, which I do not think is necessarily bad, it is just impossible in some cases. Some directors work with improvising actors in an improvising way.... This is the Cassavetes-school, which itself certainly created something lasting, but things of this kind do not tend to be a success in general. I find that it is of great importance that the actors should know their roles, as well as each other and everything else in precise terms. One should not need to discuss the basics during rehearsals in front of the camera! E.g. who is who, why he is like that and where he is going. We have worked out what was important in a particular scene as early as that. We have rehearsed for one month. The next step then was to do the camera rehearsal, which means that we have brought in an Hi8 video-camera. The decoration was by then ready. I have identified the location and - in rough terms - the direction of the camera. I have put the camera in place and we rehearsed the whole film again, which in fact was no longer a rehearsal, as we have shot it just as if it was real shooting time. Of course, afterwards we had to rehearse a lot more, because much came to the surface then. The precise movements, the angles that make a film into a film. When we have completed all this, then I edited the Hi8 material, which was when I saw where I have made the mistakes.. e.g. in the relationship of the takes to each other, which cannot be decided in advance on a piece of paper. At that point we had still 4-5 days to shooting.
I have made very detailed descriptions of every movement in each of the takes, where a certain scene is to start and to end, whether people should be coming into the espresso or be seated there already,...i.e. the internal movements of major importance. And shooting started only then.
Two of you wrote the screen-play. What is it like writing a screen-play by two?
First of all, may I pinpoint a basic truth; there is no fiction. At least I think that there are no stories that are made up. Even the most far-fetched science fiction story is not a fiction for me, because every such story is the direct result of human experience. These films, too, are documentaries in a way, because they are sure to have happened once, in one form or another. Human experience equals a particular amount of information.
Everyone works from that material. I say this only because also our film was the product of collective experience and collective memories. That is, everything as well as nothing has been made up in it. Fragments of it, parts of the story had happened to us. With my friend, the author Gábor Németh, we have either experienced these things ourselves, or have heard or read about them. In the sense fiction is usually defined we have not made up anything. I like every genre that is economical. The stricter the constraints, the more intense the content. That is, further and further elements are not brought in an extensive way, but the existing ones are utilised in a more profound and forceful manner. I like this method of creation and thinking - i.e. to think about something within very close constraints, but still in major dimensions. Not extensively, but intensively. By the way, in Eastern philosophy, - which I do not know too well but have read a lot about - this is called the drop in the sea, i.e. that in the tiniest unit some kind of a comprehensive truth of the wholeness of the world can be found and expressed. In order for man to depict the wholeness of the world one does not need to use technology, tools and everything else for enormous amounts of money. But this has been but a note.
The screen-play was born out of a discussion with Gábor. I came up with the idea of making a film in a single position of the camera, at one single spot, at one single table. What story is able to cope with these very severe conditions? It seemed a logical thing to make the story centre around a table in a café.
The spot could have been someplace else, too. A street bench, only then the characters would have been different. In this sense, we enjoyed great freedom shaping the story.
The next step was to think about who would be the regular guests of a café of this kind. The question, of course, is no fiction, because we knew who these people might be...... we went there a lot ourselves. We wanted to multiply ourselves in different ways. We obviously thought of people whom we more or less knew, of whom we could say something in a credible way. We have not attempted to put characters into the story whose occupations, personality or social position we did not know. We decided that three girls should also be going there. That was where they would meet and discuss their things. But what kinds of things? We decided that there should be a chap, having some relationship with the three girls. And we made an elderly lawyer frequent the café, having a secret practice there in the absence of a private office. He would keep his meeting hours at the table, tackling, obviously, cases beyond the law. We also wanted a female GP who has given up her active practice. Kati Lázár plays that role in a most excellent manner. She goes there every day to play cards and dominoes. We wanted to have characters who looked credible in this setting. Then we called them table-companies. The three girls were one table company, the secret lawyer with his clientele the other, and the GP and a young boy the next. These people, at different times of the day, go to the café to read the papers, play games and chat. The next step was to make the table companies meet. We had to make up a story and squeeze people with different age and ambitions in it. Eventually we have identified the motifs and dramaturgical moments that could unite the threads. Then we looked for an unexpected ending that could re-evaluate the entire story and give it a dimension beyond itself.
The screen-play was made in a professional way. Our attitude was not a desire to finally share our sorrows and troubles with the world. Rather, we wanted to make up a story that was in the first place exciting, as well as entertaining. Entertaining in the way an intelligent person can and likes to have a good time. To be straightforward, not by telling stupid jokes, not in a commercial way, but truly intelligently.
Can this mean quibbles?
No, not that...of course, there are quibbles in it, as there are quibbles in live conversations, and there are jokes when people are having fun with each other. What is more, it happens that one person is making fun of the other, but the other does not like it and a conflict arises. But what we were writing is neither tragedy nor comedy, but a story which - while we consider it to be a form of artistic condensation, - depicts everyday phenomena. Relationships continuously change in the story. The young man who got in between the three girls makes a total muddle of their friendship. Quite important things are told about the relationship between man and woman as well. At the same time it is no secret that this is a contemporary story. That the film was made in 1997 is not an accident. We know that changes in the political environment resulted in changes also in people’s personalities. The current Hungarian reality is portrayed - I know that what I have just said is an extremely worn term, but I can’t think of any better - but perhaps today the sentence can be filled with a content different from that of 15 years ago. The lives depicted in the film - although only a single year is portrayed - the personality developments or changes as well as the existential changes are typically true of today, and cannot be confused with the conditions of 15 years ago. Thus the film is the mirror-image of the current reality. And this is of importance.
What should we know of Gábor Németh?
That he is one of my best friends is what is most important to me. I like his way of thinking very much. We have found each other because our methods of approach were similar. Writing this screen-play went entirely smoothly. The first version of 160 minutes was written rather rapidly.
The screen-play was ready in two months. Our method of working was as I have just described.
We made up the stories which he then imbedded into dialogues, i.e. he made the stories take shape in dialogues....because events that are repeated every day cannot take place at a table. Different real actions are tied up with actual changes of location. These we do not see here, like we do in other films, we see only their reflections.
Different people tell the same story in different ways - that goes without saying. I.e. there are some who tell lies and those who do not, but we don’t always know who is telling the truth. I created the steps and the directions of these stories, while Gábor filled them with reality. He created in writing the way these characters talk, the way these things may be expressed. Of course he also invented many of the episodes, but there is, on the other hand, a dialogue that I have written. This was an unbelievably ideal method of working, I hope we shall have the chance to do it many more times again. I think it was the first time that Gábor wrote that number of dialogues. He has a couple of dramas written by himself, but his real strength is the narrative text. Well, there is no kind of narrative here, only dialogues. We have always wanted to recreate the structure of live conversation. Yet as we have looked at the material again it turned out that there is in it - even if we have known it all through that there would be - a level of abstraction. What we had was not natural speech, but a rather restructured, recreated dialogue, which, on the other hand, is closer to the talking film. Yet even so, these dialogues are much closer to real speech than the majority of the dialogues in Hungarian films. This was not meant for criticism of anybody. I think Gábor enjoyed writing dialogues a lot, and what he had written is truly beautiful.
Have you written the roles for actors?
To the most part yes. It was settled from the very first moment that Gábor Máté - who is a very good friend of mine- was going to be the owner of the café. Last year I saw quite a number of theatre performances, in fact I went to see almost everything that I heard anything good of. In the end I realised that the quality I was looking for is especially to be found in the Katona József Theatre. I have been criticise for this quite a few times. But for some reasons those were the actors that I liked, their playing is what is close to me. Miklós Benedek, László Szacsvay, the two students of the Academy, Karina Kecskés and Andrea Fullajtár - who also play there on a regular basis and whom I have seen as third graders in a most excellent performance directed by Gábor Zsámbéki - have all been cast there. The third girl is Andrea Söptei who left the theatre last year, but even she used to play there before. While writing the screen-play, we had a dispute with Gábor regarding the girls’ age. He thought these were women of 30 or more, while I felt they were closer to 20. This is important because a dialogue conveys personality, which is defined by age as well.
Then of course the director’s will was triumphant, and two out of the three girls are twenty-something, while the third, played by Andrea Söptei, is around thirty. But I did not say it then, because one should not say that in good taste to actresses.
Is the film made for the Film Week?
The film is not made for the Film Week, but that’s when we shall present it. The producers were the Magic Media, and according to their agreement it will be first shown on television. If the timing will be managed as we want it, it will be right on the night before the opening of the Film Week.
Why is it an advantage to show it on television first?
For PR considerations. We shall show it at the Week as well, and in a few weeks’ time the movies will start screening it. We shall do everything to have at least 100 000 viewers for this film. I think one could hardly have more with this kind of film. With stupid stuff you can go up to many hundreds of thousands, but not with this kind.
And what if the 100 000 people will not go to see the film?
Well, then....we have made a error somewhere...but I won’t believe that there are not at least 100 000 people in Hungary today who are attracted to see something serious in a movie theatre. Publishing a volume of poems in 500 copies and finding that it was almost too many, publishing a novel in 1000 copies and finding that it was a major number is daily reality in Hungary today. As opposed to this, film has a boom now. I am honestly saying that I am grateful to those directors, Péter Tímár, Róbert Koltai and András Kern - who could achieve larger audience in the recent years. Perhaps they can teach the audience to go back to the movies again.
What else are you doing up until the Film Week? Can one do anything more besides this?
The issue is not whether one can, but whether is necessary. The ideal would be if one could support oneself and one’s family from the income of a feature film - if not for a year, at least until the next possibility. Yet this is romantic fancy. Perhaps also in Europe. Maybe in America it can be done. Here at home, however, one has to do everything else, work for the television, do commercials... My last 10 years were spent by creating a relative material security where I can afford to devote months to things that are not necessarily profitable. Now I am going to work as director of photography in an American film, directed by Andrew Piddington, entitled The Fall. Then I shall work with Ildikó Enyedi.
Why did you feel that the time has now come for you to direct films?
I do not think that directing and photographing a film are separable to the extant most people take it for granted. Even most people within the profession. I think making a film is basically directing it, but only with those colleagues, those directors of photography who do more than technicians would do - unlike in the American film industry, where every single task is individually defined. There, the director of photography meets the screen-play for the first time on the first day of shooting, when he is told exactly what to do, from where to do it and in what size to do it. In European film, directors of photography do truly creative work.
Have you ever worked in an American-type production?
Yes, I have worked in American films, where nobody was interested in the way I look at the world. I was told to photograph a particular object from a particular location, with a particular equipment in a particular way. Under circumstances of this kind one can hardly talk of freedom. That was my experience, there may be other methods of working but I have a strong suspicion that that is what is typical. The reason why I am at a loss forming a specific judgement is that if one can do films in America with this method, and some very good films as well are made there, then there seems to be no very strong need for directors of photography. In this sense, Hungarian cinematographers do something much more than that. This is due to the educational system which teaches this as the natural way of things both to directors and cameramen. I do not wish to fight the existing system, and as for myself I have formulated my own view in a very simply way: I love photographing films with those friends of mine with whom I like or would like to work together and well. This satisfies me entirely. In addition, I would like to create works in which my own thoughts find more direct expression.
If we consider the role of the director of photography as a form of art, then working as a director of photography is applied art... or rather performative art. Yes, this is a more precise definition. While the director is responsible for the basic definition of the spirit of a work of art, the director of photography is the performative artist. He adds his own talent, creativity and what not.....he subordinates himself to the spirit of the work of art and works in its service, in the good sense of course. I think that having directors photograph a few films would be a most useful thing, because they would then realise the technical potentials and limitations.
That is taught at the Academy, is it not?
Yes, it is, but it tends to be forgotten afterwards. Although there are some people, like Ferenc Grunwalsky, who have created good things both as a director and a director of photography. I would like to send a message to my colleagues, especially the directors now, and my message is that they should not think that now I have changed and I am no more willing to condescend to talk to them. What is more, if I have learnt anything as a director of photography from this film, it is knowing even more precisely where and how to help the director.
