Composing The Image

Near the town of Genappe in Belgium on a cold drizzly July morning you will find French-born Director of Photography, Jean-Francois Robin filming the final scene of Dominique Deruddere's Pour le Plaisir.

The autoroute from Brussels to Waterloo has been shut down for the day. A crane offloads a crumbled carcass of red metal, what was once a Ferrari. Bits of glass are scattered on the tarmac while ambulances with their blue revolving lights are also in the frame behind two stretchers shrouded in white sheets.

Pour Le Plaisir tells the tale of a psychiatrist/sex therapist trying to help his Ferrari mechanic who's devastated by his wife's revelation that in their eight years of marriage, she has never been satisfied. What does excite her is the idea that her sexual partner has killed someone: no murder, no orgasm.

The psychiatrist suggests the mechanic play along with this by boasting to his wife of such activity and they then enjoy their most memorable ever night together. However, the next day near the garage, a dead body is found and the mechanic is arrested despite protesting his innocence.

Robin says: "I don't really know how to classify this film: a black comedy, a thriller, a drama? When you read a good script and start visualising how to shoot it, then you want to make the film. This is the third film I've done with Dominique after Suite 16 and Wait Until Spring, Bandini."

Belgian writer/director Deruddere has won international awards for his films and, in 2000, Everybody Famous was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Explains Robin: "Dominique and I have a good relationship, but this film in particular was a pleasure to work on. It was very relaxed and I didn't have any pressure on me. On certain films you feel the pressure of the money, of the stars, or the weight of a heavy production. You can do some very creative and interesting work when conditions are so good; it's a luxury that doesn't happen very often these days. I think it's because of Dominique that everything went so smoothly and that everyone worked in such harmony."

Robin is both prolific and multi-talented. He has photographed more than 60 movies since starting out in the mid 1970's. His best known credits include Betty Blue, IP5, and Roselyne And The Lions for Jean-Jacques Beineix, The Browning Version and Mara with Mike Figgis, Nelly And Monsieur Arnaud and A Few Days With Me for Claude Sautet, Le Bossu with Philippe de Broca, Les Annees Lumieres with Alain Tanner, Rogue Trader for James Dearden and Parking with Jacques Demy, as well as films for Alain Cavalier, Patrice Leconte, John Duigan (The Leading Man) and Coline Serreau.

He's also a self-taught musician who plays the piano, and the author of six books, including three novels, one of which, on Jean Sebastian Bach, has been adapted for the theatre.

"Dominique wanted me to operate too and I enjoy that; actually I prefer it" says Robin. "I believe that the job of constructing the image in terms of the lighting and the composition belong together, they are the integral responsibility of the person composing the image.

"When only one person interacts with the director, a strong, close relationship develops between the two which is beneficial for the film. I don't feel that it slows things down or that time is wasted when I operate and light. The totality of the image, I believe, is my responsibility."

Robin hails originally from a little village in the middle of the Sologne in central France where he says he took photographs as a kid, but wasn't really interested in cinema until later on. He started playing the piano at the age of eight and says he was much more involved with music early on as well as and studying physics at school.

Later, he came to Paris to attend the Louis Lumiere film school after which he worked in television for several years, then as camera assistant on commercials and, finally, on feature films.

"Music has always been very important to me, and my background in music has been very useful in my profession. There is nothing more difficult than to talk about the visuals, l'image, in words. To speak with words about the photography of a film that has not yet been made can be very abstract.

"Or, one has to find more concrete references. Once, I had to show the director Zulawski the colour of my shoelaces in order to describe the tones I had envisioned for his film. With some directors we discuss the film by making references to pieces of music. We cite musical passages to describe the timing of a shot, the rhythm and pacing of a scene.

"With Claude Sautet, we used Bach's piano music. There are scenes that we shot like the movements of a sonata. We would break down the sequence into the different measures of the movement; for instance, the first part we will shoot like the fourth measure, then continue with another part with another measure or musical phrase. Sautet and I sometimes sing passages from Bach's melodies. For me there has always been a strong relationship between music and l'image."

So having photographed so many films, what's the challenge these days?

"On each and every film there's a challenge. After so many movies, you've already photographed everything hundreds of times - a kitchen 200 times, a bedroom 300 times, a stairway 250 times, a bourgeois apartment 400 times.

"The challenge is finding a style that works for that film. You try to find some new way to do something unique for that particular story you are trying to tell. It's the director's film that you have to find a style for. We discuss it thoroughly long before the time to shoot.

"The preparation time and the location scouting are very important in order to get the art direction and the sets right, to determine the colour and texture of the image. All the decisions are made beforehand.

"Working all over Europe, you can't always bring your own people, you have to adapt. But with professional technicians, it doesn't matter if it's London, Paris or Brussels, the tools are the same and the crews works more or less in the same way, so one quickly learns how to work together.

"When you have your own team it goes quicker, you don't have to teach the crew your style of working, but its not always negative, sometimes you learn new ways of working.

I like working in England, the difference is that the hours are much longer, like the American system. Everybody arrives at the same time, even when not everyone is needed for, say, the lighting or the rigging.

"I think our system is a more efficient use of time; we don't have people hanging around for hours with nothing to do. In France and here in Belgium we work seven or eight hours a day, a normal day being noon to 19:30... and we still get the work done.

"I often use Fuji film, and here on Pour Le Plaisir, I am using Fuji Reala 500D. I like to shoot the interiors using HMIs outside, without having to put filters on the camera. It's very practical for me. Also the look is agreeable, pleasing to the eye. I work a lot with Fuji Reala 500D and 500T, and for exteriors, I use the 64D. I like to mix the two stocks, they match well. I used to use the 250D and 250T a lot, and I would push it to get an interesting texture. But now that there's the 500, I tend to use that a lot.

"I used to shoot colour polaroids for each scene. The colours were distorted, but I used them to judge the contrast. The most important thing today is working with the same grader in the lab. After I do the scene, I talk to the grader and I know exactly what he means, we speak exactly the same language and I know what I am going to see.

"The system has deteriorated today. We watch rushes under deplorable conditions: video monitors, on tape cassettes etc. We do not see 35mm on a screen anymore. This is not progress, it's a worse system than before."

Robin reflects, finally, on his two main areas of creativity: "Writing and cinematography are two totally different professions and passions.

"They are interdependent but they are also separate and, for me, don't cross over. When I am a filmmaker, I am that only. When I write, I am only a writer. Every film experience nourishes me with ideas, feeds me new inspiration and perhaps I use them in my writing. I don't let either one interfere with the other."