A Movie With NO Crew: The Zone Of Interest

OBJECTIVE FILMMAKING

Most movies embrace all the filmmaking tools they have to influence the audience’s emotions. Whether that is using music to indicate a triumph. Shooting a close up to put the audience in the head of the character. Or removing bright sources of light from the frame to impart a darker mood. 

The Zone of Interest is well, interesting, because it went another route altogether. Director Jonathon Glazer wanted to remove cues that signalled the audience was watching a work of fiction and present the story in the most detached, objective way that he possibly could.

This anti-filmmaking style, that disregarded artificial lighting, fancy camera moves, close ups and even having on set crew members present during shooting, was specifically catered to his vision for telling the story.

“The Zone of Interest is not a story in the sense of a normal film. It’s about a man who has a lovely life with his family. He’s very good at his job. They live in the country with a lovely house with a lovely garden. He also happens to be the commandant of Auschwitz.” - Jonathan Glazer

REFLECTION OF OURSELVES

Part of the creative rationale for presenting the story this way was to neither demonise nor glamorise characters and their actions through the filmmaking language but rather present them with a detached objectivity. 

This placed the ordinary way that we, the audience, live our lives adjacent to the lives of characters in the film that perpetrated heinous crimes. 

It’s easy to demonise, dehumanise and distance ourselves from the bad guys in a movie. It’s far more difficult to wrangle with the idea that atrocities are committed and witnessed by ordinary people that are on some levels a reflection of ourselves - which is the thesis that The Zone of Interest puts forward.  

REALITY TV SETUP

So, how exactly did Jonathan Glazer and his cinematographer Łukasz Żal go about creating this look on a technical level?

“He said we don’t want to make this like a movie set. There was no lighting. There was no film gear on the set. Only, like, cameras.” - Łukasz Żal

Glazer described this style as being like shooting a reality TV show, such as Big Brother, by setting up multiple hidden cameras in a house, then letting the actors roam around and play out scenes as they would - without being limited by blocking, hitting marks or landing in the perfect light. 

Again, the idea being to strip away a traditional cinematic style and instead pursue as pure a feeling of reality as possible. This technique is one that he had already experimented with on his previous movie, Under The Skin, where he placed characters in unscripted situations in a van with hidden cameras to draw out as great a feeling of realism as he could.  

CHOOSING A CAMERA

To be able to set up cameras in this way, but still maintain a high enough level of fidelity and quality to keep the audience immersed, his cinematographer had to take a few factors into consideration when choosing what camera to shoot on.

Firstly, it had to be a production cinema camera with enough dynamic range and colour science to be able to handle shooting in purely natural ambience without balancing the levels with film lighting.

Secondly, he needed to be able to solidly set up a way of getting a live feed from the cameras to a wall of monitors outside the house so that they could watch all the angles of the scenes take place without any interruptions.

And, perhaps most importantly, he needed a camera that had a very small profile, that could be hidden enough to set up multiple angles while being as discreet and invisible to actors as possible.

He landed on the Sony Venice - which has 15 stops of dynamic range and a Rialto system that can separate the lens mount and sensor of the camera through a wired connection tethered to the body that records the data and supplies power.

If we look at some of the behind the scenes photos we can see how little footprint this camera rig has. The Rialto section of the camera with only a lens and a small wireless focus motor could be propped up on apple boxes to be hidden behind a desk, or put on a mini lowboy combo stand where it was held and could be positioned and framed by a small Manfrotto ball head. 

They could also attach the Rialto rig with the ball head to an L-bracket - which could be rigged from a pipe, or even screwed directly into the wall or the ceiling.

This allowed them to set it up in small spaces or even almost flat up against walls, while remaining unseen by the other cameras.

The rest of the components of the rig, such as the body, battery and MDR focus box were wired to the Rialto section and could be hidden away from the camera.

HIDDEN CAMERAS

One of the challenges of shooting scenes without giving actors definite marks or blocking, was knowing where to place the cameras in the best positions that would capture the performances that they wanted.

This meant positioning them so that they would witness everything from an objective viewpoint, which was usually wide and parallel to the action through frontal, side on or top down angles.

These frames were always locked off, except for a few specifically motivated moments of tracking movement, following the motion of characters, which were filmed with a dolly and track.   

As they were shooting scenes with multiple cameras, they had to try their best to hide them so that they wouldn’t be picked up by the other cameras. This was especially challenging as almost all of the angles were long shots photographed with wide angle lenses that had a very wide field of view of the set.

Cameras were sometimes hidden behind furniture, inside part of the production design, by mounting it to the ceiling, or, in some cases where it was impossible to shoot multiple angles without seeing another camera, by doing VFX cleanups in post to digitally remove cameras or gear from shots. 

They could do this, by playing out the scene with the camera in the frame, then removing the camera psychically from the space and shooting a clean plate - which they could then use to remove the camera digitally.

There were also plenty of other moments of really well done VFX, such as adding Auschwitz camp buildings in the background of shots, which, again tried to be as realistic and to draw as little attention to the filmmaking as possible.

This meant assembling a large blue screen wall around the outer perimeter of the property - which could later be keyed out and replaced with CGI buildings. 

NO ON SET CREW

Since they were shooting with a multi cam setup, 360 degrees inside interiors, one way to avoid seeing crew was for there to be no crew on set. But, you may be asking, surely you need a crew next to the actors on set? How do you operate the cameras? How do you pull the focus? How do you transmit a video feed to monitors for viewing?  

Part of Łukasz Żal’s job was creating an onset workflow that allowed shooting to happen almost entirely remotely - without needing any crew to physically be present inside the interior house set while they were rolling.

Normally, film sets use wireless transmitters, like a Terradek, to send a video feed from the camera to a monitor where people can view and assess a live image. However, because they would be working with 10 cameras and because they wanted to place the video village, with a wall of 10 monitors, in a container which sat outside the property, behind the blue screen, and have an uninterrupted feed at all times, the decision was made to hardwire all the cameras.

This involved tethering the cameras to the monitors with cables. Kind of like using an ethernet cable to connect to the internet rather than wifi, this method provides more consistency than transmission.

SET UP

Rather than the traditional method of having the actors block the scene on set with crew watching, have the crew tweak the cameras and lights, then play out the scene with full on set crew and cast, they employed a different method.

Basically the film crew would be separated from the actors at almost all times. The DP would prep for each day by assembling a floor plan for each scene with estimated positions for up to 10 cameras. His team of grips and ACs would then place the various cameras in their assigned positions, with their chosen lenses.

Żal and Glazer would assess all the frames on the video village monitors and make the necessary corrections. Each 1st AC, set up in the basement of the house, would be given two cameras to pull focus on - usually one wider frame that was easier and a more difficult, telephoto frame.

Fresh cards and batteries would be loaded into the cameras then all the crew would leave the set. Once the set was cleared, the actors entered the location and could begin performing the extended scenes throughout the different rooms in the house. 

Shooting on the Venice’s X-OCN ST compression at 6K 3:2 meant that a 1TB card would give them 60 minutes of recording time. If they reached the end of the cards, the cameras would all cut, the actors would leave the house, then the crew would come in from the basement and reload the cameras for another take. 

Each day they were usually able to film two of these different setups.

ANTI-FILMMAKING

There are a number of reasons why I’d describe the look of the film as having a kind of anti-cinematic aesthetic. For one, they shot at a deep stop, rather than with a more traditionally cinematic shallow depth of field. This supported the idea of objectivity by not selecting what the audience must look at by isolating it with focus, but rather inviting them to peruse the frame with their gaze.

They used little Leitz M 0.8 lenses which were small enough to stay out the way, yet sharp. These were shot without any diffusion to preserve a modern, objective look - which was also emphasised by a hard, contemporary, digital look in the colour grade - rather than trying to create something filmic or sentimental in any way.

They exclusively used natural lighting, relying on sunlight for day scenes and a few period accurate practicals at night - without any fill or bounce. Again, rather than shooting exteriors early in the morning or later in the afternoon when the light would feel a bit more cinematic, backlit and beautiful - they purposefully shot exterior scenes in hard, real, unflattering midday sunlight.

To be able to film night exteriors without any artificial light they used a military style infrared camera - which was later upscaled with AI in post. 

WHAT WE DON’T SEE

One of the reasons that makes this film so haunting comes from an idea I’ve mentioned before on this channel: what we don’t see is sometimes more impactful and terrifying than what we do.

Rather than showing the genocide happening in the camp next door, we never see it visually, however we hear it with sound design off in the distance - which brings home the idea of their detached filmmaking style.

Showing that pursuing reality and objectivity can, in this case, be more impactful and powerful than using the tools of movie magic to manipulate audiences.