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The DGA Special Projects screening of Mike Figgis' Hotel gave its audience a chance to see a film projected the way the director intended, on Digi-Beta PAL.
Hotel is a mini-DV (digital video) production (shot with Sony PD100 cameras) that simultaneously tells three stories about a film crew shooting a Dogma-style version of The Duchess of Malfi in Venice, with the producer attempting to murder the director, and the hotel staff eating the guests in the basement. The ensemble film stars Rhys Ifans, Salma Hayek, David Schwimmer, Saffron Burrows, Lucy Liu, Julian Sands, Burt Reynolds, Max Beesley and John Malkovich.
After the screening, Figgis talked about the unique challenge of making this movie — 35 actors, no script, five weeks and one hotel — with DGA director Jeremy Kagan.
"The spirit of the film came from an immense love of cinema. The ability to explore and experiment. When the opportunity visits you, it is an opportunity you grab with both hands," Figgis said. "It is an extension of Time Code in a sense, because the equipment was smaller, even cheaper, and more disposable."
Figgis chose to shoot with PD100 cameras. "This is the camera of the night. Colors start to pop. The blues and the reds, the prime colors, look so painfully beautiful. I'm stunned about the quality of these cameras. It's not 35 mm. It's a different kind of camera. You can make this kind of film in a certain kind of light that you couldn't do on 35 for the obvious reasons of size and how it reads image," said Figgis.
With the help of a Royal Academy of Art design student, Figgis invented a camera rig that allowed him to stabilize the image of his hand-held camera. This rig looked very much like a steering wheel.
In addition, a lot of innovative work was done also with sound. He couldn't use a boom because there were too many cameras and the boom would inevitably be in someone's shot. The rigs were set up with either a Sennheiser on top or a stack of radio receivers on the back. He also bought 15 mini-discs and spent a couple of weeks adapting them using the Sennheiser microphones and a power pack. In some of the big scenes, the actors had mini-discs sewn into their costumes with the microphones.
To prepare the cast for the experience, he advised them to watch his previous film, Time Code, to give them some indication of his method of working.
Figgis would rather talk to an actor than rehearse. He felt if one is making a film that gets more technical and bigger, you do need to block just to help everyone, but he's wary about losing the "juice of the scene" by acting it out in a rehearsal on an emotional level. "I would rather spend the time with all the actors talking about the scene so everyone understands the same psychology before they go in and then those first takes have a real edge to them," Figgis said.
Figgis shot in sequence. His ensemble cast met every day before he started shooting. They watched everything he shot the day before, cut together with sound and music, and then they discussed what they had seen. This is when he would make suggestions to the cast. Because of this, he felt his cast became bolder in their performance.
When asked about his storytelling philosophy, Figgis said, "The problem with linear narrative is that you are kind of hoodwinked into following the plot, often to the detriment of seeing the fine work of the filmmaker, (and) the actors, in order to do the perfect film. Often it's just that damn plot thing that gets in the way. We've become addicted to plot. Plot used to be something that served as characters, and now characters serve as plot, and dialogue has become schematic about telling you the plot. What I love about European film is that plot is very much secondary to characters and I felt that going into this kind of filmmaking."
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