ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES

By Oliver Webb

Táris director Todd Field’s first feature in 15 years, brilliantly captured by DP Florian Hoffmeister BSC, which follows the fall from grace of maestro Lydia Tár.

The film opens with an in-depth interview between the formidable orchestra conductor, played by Cate Blanchett, and the American writer and essayist Adam Gopnik. She’s at the height of her career, one of the few people to be in the category of EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony) winners, and is also the first female conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. The release of her upcoming autobiography Tár On Tár is also announced. After such an extensive introduction, and on viewing the movie, it is easy to believe that Lydia Tár is a real person in this extraordinary cinematic achievement.

Tár premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, where Blanchett won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and has since received critical acclaim for the lead performance, Field’s direction and Hoffmeister’s cinematography. Indeed, Hoffmeister won the prestigious Golden Frog at the 2022 Camerimage Festival for his work on the film.

“I first met Todd in Berlin in July 2021,” says Hoffmeister. “Until that point we’d only spoken over the phone and he then sent me the script. I met him in Berlin and we started prep immediately. It was a very fluid process. He is a true auteur and it was his original screenplay. When you read a script by a writer/director, it’s a very strong voice.”

Discussing his initial conversations with Field about the look of Tár, Hoffmeister says, “I don’t really have a strong need to go immediately into conversation about the meaning of the script, because the meaning of the script is in essence voiced by the person who is going to direct it,” he says.“ Todd had amassed a really intimate knowledge about the world of classical music, which was very foreign to me. It was very detailed. There was also a form of detachment in the script that really struck me. The style of writing slowly revealed different layers of reality that I think make the film such a rich experience to watch.”

Field and Hoffmeister had to work quickly during the pre-production stages. “90% of the film was shot on-location,” recounts Hoffmeister. “We jumped in the car on day one and do a lot of scouting. It is like a puzzle before things come together. I would observe how Todd reacted emotionally to a particular place and how it resonated with my reception of the script. There was a lot of subconscious communication happening all of the time.

“Todd was adamant from the start that beautifying the images would not be the right way. He had this phrase when we shot tests, where he would say that it looked like ‘a movie with a capital M, and that’s not what we are about to do.’

“Those expressions and comments really fell into place with that feeling of detachment when I read the script. Holding back was a very big theme. I have this saying, about not putting a hat on a hat when it comes to cinematography, because often times cinematographers, in our excitement, might want to add a comment by what we do with the camera. Tár was not the film to do any of that. It was all about standing back to observe and let those different levels of reality surface by themselves in the minds of the audience.” looked at, we went back to the drawing board, refined the search and shot again.

“I tested practical things. For example, in the film we had what we called ‘The March of Tár’, as she always marches through the different stages and steps of her journey,” Hoffmeister explains. “At this early stage, Todd already knew specifically the beats per second as he was working on the score with Hildur Guðnadóttir. I found a long hallway in the production office, where I set-up tracks with the camera, trying out lenses and shooting at a certain speed, sync-ing ourselves to the beats per second, just to find out the right lens for that feeling – the closeness and intimacy, or whether it should be more observational, etc. During the second test, Todd came down to the office and looked at the footage, and that was the breeding ground for where we developed the shared vision of the film.”

Hoffmeister captured Tár using ARRI cameras. “There was a bit of Alexa 65, and we also shot large format Alexa LF and also regular Super 35mm, but we changed the formats quite a bit. We based ourselves on the Signature Primes, but we were actually chasing a look from a particular lens which Todd had used to shoot plates and other stuff in New York before he came over to Berlin, which he really liked. This proved to be really an obscure Zeiss lens. I watched that footage remotely and it really resonated with me.

Due to time constraints, Hoffmeister didn’t look at any creative references during prep. “We never even watched a film together,” he admits. “The time we had, plus the creative and practical challenges ahead of us, were so demanding that we just didn’t have time for that. Exchanging references is an easy way to find a common language, but because we were working hands-on from day one, our own truthful, genuine common language started to build.”

A crucial part of the process for Hoffmeister was testing cameras and lenses. “I would try to go to a space that already resonated with the film, maybe a location that we already had access to. Then I would shoot different camera and lens comparisons. Ideally, I would do this by myself. When I presented them to Todd, it opened the space of resonance, where I was actually showing him what I thought to this point I understood of his script and of the shared conversations we had had. Then you start making choices. If ‘Movie with a capital M’ was a reaction to a lens that we

“Of course, that lens was very old and would have never survived even the first week of shooting, because of the demands we had. So when we had narrowed down the choice of glass to the Signature Primes, we then went on quite an extensive journey to handtune those lenses to the look of that old Zeiss glass, with Christoph Hoffsten, the local lens technician at ARRI Berlin, who then built us hand-crafted versions.”

The film was shot over a period of 56 days. Discussing the jogging sequence in which Tár hears a scream from nearby woodland, Hoffmeister explains that they didn’t have long to capture the shot.

“We worked with camera operators, including the very talented Danny Bishop ACO, but that was one of the very few shots that I operated myself. First, we started on track and then we evolved to Steadicam and in the end, there is this long lens shot through the bushes. The light was fading away and I knew exactly what Todd wanted. So I grabbed the camera, went into the bushes and sat down and put it on my shoulder. It was very stressful sequence to shoot because we were losing the light so heavily, but it really has a different energy because of that.”

Discussing the impressive, ultra-long take of the sequence set in the auditorium of The Juilliard School in New York, Hoffmeister notes, “One of the things Danny contributed was his experience from having shot All Quiet On The Western Front (DP James Friend BSC ASC) using Stabileye, a camera-moving device designed in Britain. It’s a stabilised head that can be hand-carried and it’s remarkably stable. Initially, Danny wanted to shoot that sequence with Stabileye, but there we couldn’t readily access one. So, we built our own rig with a more common gimbal head. Danny was crucial in terms of instructing the grips who had to carry it, as he has a lot of experience as a Steadicam operator and the physicality required in relation to carrying it. When we did the rehearsal day, he worked with the grips and taught them how to move their bodies whilst carrying this rig, without making steps too visible for example. There was a real technique to that and the result is remarkable.”

Hoffmeister’s gaffer was Florian Kronenberger. “We kind of went from extreme to extreme with the lighting. Tar’s apartment, where she lives, needed 360-degree source lighting, for night as well as day. Florian came up with amazing rigs to enable the production to pull that off without having to use cherry pickers which would have cost a fortune. On the other hand, when we shot at The Julliard, he came up with the idea of putting IKEA China Balls onto the existing LED fixtures. He’s very capable as a gaffer to go from full-on, to almost no impact at all. He understands that very well and was instrumental in helping me achieve this look.”

In terms of Hoffmeister’s approach to lighting, he explains, “It is all about authenticity of space. The light could never feel evident as film light. Obviously, all lighting is film lighting, but it was crucial to find the absolute sweet spot where it became an immersive experience, without any form of artificiality. Todd had real musicians from the orchestra acting opposite Cate Blanchett, and that decision informed my approach to the lighting. When you work with non-professionals, you have to give them space, a space they feel safe in that you have created for them, and I thought there were some amazing performances from them.”

Hoffmeister worked with on-set DIT Lorenzo Zama. “I have worked with Lorenzo now for the last three years,” says Hoffmeister. “We live-grade on-set and actually skip rushes grading as a step. I try as much as possible to light to print. Lorenzo will match the shots live while we are shooting.

“On - we worked with ARRI Media in Berlin. During testing we rediscovered this old digital print emulsion from the days when they first developed the Alexa camera. They would do these side-by-side tests to prove the point that you could capture digitally and film-out onto celluloid print for distribution and to give the grader an idea of how it would look when it got filmed out through the ARRILASER. There is a whole tradition of grading, of analogue printing, a whole way of thinking that was put into these tests, and which led to the introduction of the DI (digital intermediate). That knowledge was something that we tried to access. The film was graded by Tim Masick of Company3, who has been a collaborator with Todd for over 15 years. We talked to him about this idea and he really embraced it.

We graded the film around what we referred to as the ‘ARRI Digital Print Emulsion, and Tim did a fantastic job.”

“When you work with Cate Blanchett,” Hoffmeister concludes, “it’s almost taken for granted that it’s going to be glorious, because she is just as good as her reputation and is a fantastic actress. She is a filmmaker in her own craft, she knows about the technicalities and acknowledges the necessities of those technicalities. She would go again, or repeat things if it didn’t work out technically. I feel really privileged having had the opportunity contribute to this film, and having had a chance to work with Todd and Cate as well as my amazing crew.”