Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (2)

The Return of Dr. Caligari
June 4, 2007

Cinematographer Christopher Duddy’s work on filmmaker David Lee Fisher’s 2005 English language version of the classic 1919 horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari by Robert Weine

isn’t as much a remake or a re-imagining as much as it is a “re-mix.” Fisher’s 2005 take on the German Expressionistic somnumbulast’s tale adds a fascinating new wrinkle. Original sets from the silent era original film have been (here’s that word again) “re-mixed” as digital backgrounds, integrating the contemporary cast of actors. The process, overseen by Duddy, involved scanning a print of the original film and then taking the images of the sets and locations and having them digitalized and enhanced. Actors were then filmed on a green-screen and composited into the original film’s images in the post-production process. It’s a method that was recently seen to great theatrical success in 300, the major difference between the two being the alotted money and schedule: Caligari was budgeted at $150,000 and Duddy shot it in nine days

“As a cinematographer, you often find yourself thinking “I want to do something that nobody’s ever done before,” Duddy told us in a recent interview. “Well, I got was I wished for.”

Duddy recalls the first day of shooting the cast against a greenscreen in a warehouse as the most challenging.

“Forget the new technology,” he said. “It was just so hot and we were all sweating so much.”

Duddy was quite pleased with the results, both as an artistic endeavor and as a respectful nod to the original Caligari.

“I’m proud of the way that David kept the integrity of the original movie—it will make the purists reasonably happy,’ he said. “Personally, I was completely blown away when I saw it on the screen. I’m really beginning to emnbrace all this new technology!”

 

Posted by Laurence Lerman on June 4, 2007 | Comments (2)