Death On The Nile Cinematographer On Shooting Gal Gadot’s Big Entrance Scene: “She Knows How To Own The Room When She Walks In” - 8days Skip to main content

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Death On The Nile Cinematographer On Shooting Gal Gadot’s Big Entrance Scene: “She Knows How To Own The Room When She Walks In”

Haris Zambarloukos has worked with Kenneth Branagh on eight films, but Death on the Nile is probably the most challenging of them all.

Death On The Nile Cinematographer On Shooting Gal Gadot’s Big Entrance Scene: “She Knows How To Own The Room When She Walks In”

Despite its title, Kenneth Branagh’s Agatha Christie whodunnit Death on the Nile wasn’t filmed in Egypt — it was shot in the UK. Even more surprising: It was shot mostly on land.

While the filmmakers were spared the pains of working with the sometimes fickle-minded Mother Nature, it didn’t make the production any easier. According to cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, of the eight projects, he collaborated with Branagh — including the Oscar front-runner Belfast — the 1930s-set Death on the Nile is probably the most challenging, largely because the action takes place onboard a luxury river steamer, the S S Karnak, which was fabricated from scratch.

“We built this life-size boat and a stage to surround it because we couldn’t find one to put it in,” the London-based, Cyprus-born Zambarloukos, 51, tells 8days.sg over Zoom. “Technically, everything we did to make the boat feel real, exotic was a challenge.”

Construction of the vessel began more than a year before principal photography started at a skidpad at Longcross Studios outside London. It was 72m long, 15m wide, and 13m high, and weighed 204 tonnes, and housed in a stage — dubbed the “superstructure” — was 116m by 48m wide. 

The ship was designed in such a way that it allowed Zambarloukos and his team to move around easily with the 65mm Panavision cameras. “The outcome [of shooting on a 65mm camera] is always beautiful,” he says. “It’s the most velvety capture you can have for any film.”

There’s another plus in using the 65mm format. Explains Zambarloukos: “There are many, many great actors in the film, and we wanted to have the opportunity to shoot them all in a single shot, and often, to put them in a space and really feel their presence without the need of extreme close-up.”

Elsewhere, the superstructure had a bespoke lighting grid and backlit screens lining the perimeter of the set and providing ambient sunlight to represent the Egyptian sunshine. The actual footage of the Nile and other local landmarks projected were edited from plates shot by a second unit.

The VFX team would then composite the actual Nile shots projected, says Zambarloukos who employed the same method on Mamma Mia albeit on a smaller scale. “We didn’t use blue screen,” he adds. “We use this back-projection system to give us a real feel of the atmosphere and the lighting.”

Next to shooting on the boat, lensing the actors were a cinch. So what was it like to light the scene that introduces Gal Gadot’s socialite heiress character as she alluringly waltzes into a London nightclub like a rock star?

“She’s very easy to light,” says a beaming Zambarloukos, who re-created the feel of the 1930s by studying the works of Joseph Walker, the renowned cinematographer of Robert Capra, as well as stills photographer George Edward Hurrell.

“Gal is just naturally glamorous and beautiful. She has an effortless effervescence, Gal. She certainly knows how to own the room when she walks in. Also, she is such an amazing actress — the way she walks, the way she understands the scene, the way she understands what the camera is doing and what the lighting is doing. So, it becomes very fluid and effortless.”

Death becomes her: Kenneth Branagh discussing a scene with Gal Gadot on the set of Death on the Nile. That's cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos in the back — he's right behind Gadot, wearing the checkered shirt.

Whether it’s a visual effect-heavy fantasy like Thor or a low-key family drama like Belfast, a cinematographer’s job is always to find a point of view, says Zambarloukos. “Most of the time I find in films, whether they are big or small, it’s about making things bigger, bringing things in and finding the essence of the scene. So once you know that, you are not distracted, the audience isn’t distracted.

“I believe cinema should be immersive — you should really feel it. And in that respect, anything you can give that is real is helpful. If I can minimise even 10 per cent of the VFX with something real, that’s 10 per cent more that either the audience feels it or the actors feel when they are on stage.

“Most of it is about removing the distractions, making it immersive and also even if it is minute, every little thing counts. I think cinematography and filmmaking, in general, is what I would call impressionistic; every little dot is an impressionist painting which makes a difference to the whole.”

Hold the door, please: Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot checks out the great temple of Abu Simbe. The landmark was recreated on a backlot at Longcross Studios outside London. It took artisans 16 weeks to build the monument using polystyrene and plaster.

That said, Zambarloukos is grateful that Death on the Nile, which has been delayed many times because of the COVID-19 pandemic, is dropped in cinemas instead of a streaming service. Even if it did, he won’t feel slighted at all given how the quality of home entertainment has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years. “But what you do not get is the communal viewing experience — people getting together to watch a film,” he says. “It’s a much more enjoyable experience.”

Zambarloukos believes the movie, which recently opened No. 1 in the US as well as in Singapore, offers viewers a chance to satisfy their wanderlust vicariously. “I think we’ve all been restricted in our travels and social gatherings because of COVID, and a film like Death on the Nile is just such a wonderful way of experiencing all those things we really couldn’t do during the pandemic in a cinema.”

Death on the Nile (PG13) is now showing in cinemas.

Photos: 20th Century Studios, TPG News/Click Photos

 

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