Director of photography on Sorority, Lorenzo Levrini, discusses his approach to shooting the film, his on-set experiences and working with long-time collaborator, writer/director James Webber.
What drew you to the project?
I’ve worked with James for a long time and I knew this was going to be a project I wanted to be involved in as soon as I read it. I had shot the short film Soror, which this film is based on, so I knew the characters and the material and I knew I wanted to be a part of telling this story. It’s a moment in the lives of these characters, it’s told simply but is very intimate and emotional and human, which is the kind of material I’m usually drawn towards.
Explain the visual style of Sorority.
We built on the style we had established with Soror. The look is naturalistic, and the camerawork is visceral and intimate and handheld. It’s driven by the characters, their emotions and their movements. Occasionally we intersperse some more objective and stylised moments; shot on a slider and in slow motion.
Building on your previous work on the short film version Soror, how did you and James collaborate on the feature?
Our collaboration is based on a shared understanding of approach and subject matter. We were talking about the project for some time, and then when we got close to green light we started scouting some locations and talking through the story. James always does a pass of the shotlist by himself and then we get together and discuss it. When we get to the set there’s usually not too much discussion between us. James is really focused on working with the cast and if there’s any discussions about shots or approach, that usually happens pretty quickly and painlessly. The biggest discussion that happens is when we’re trying to do something slightly technical – for example, for the closing scene of the film we had sunlight but I really wanted the scene not to be in sunlight so I was silking out the light and we had to work together to find what angles could be shot when and which ones were too wide and would have to be postponed till another day.
What gear did you use to make the film?
I wanted to use the same lenses as Soror, the Hawk C anamorphics, but we opted for an Alexa mini, which wasn’t available in 2014 when we shot Soror. We were mostly handheld, and occasionally used a slider. We had a simple lighting package. For the party scene we added a dolly and some extra lighting, but really the kit was very minimal.