• Blogs
• Forums
• Tradeshows
• Partners
• White Papers
• Podcast Show Notes
• Events

Performance Enhancing

Nov 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Michael Goldman

Darren Aronofsky’s team strategically highlights Mickey Rourke’s work in character-driven film.

           

All visual elements of The Wrestler were designed by Director Darren Aronofsky (right) and DP Maryse Alberti to highlight the performance of lead actor Mickey Rourke (left).

Director Darren Aronofsky's new film The Wrestler isn't so much a story about the title character as it is the wholesale documenting of a character who is, in fact, the entire story. The film, which buzzed through the Sundance Film Festival this year because of Mickey Rourke's star turn as washed-up wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, is so completely a character study that virtually every aspect of the filmmaking process was designed to highlight Rourke's performance above all other factors.

“I really wanted to do something very different from my previous work,” Aronofsky says. “[My 1998 film] Pi was kind of a character study, but this movie is far more naturalistic. Usually when I talk about a visual language in one of my movies, I'm talking about it coming directly out of the story itself. But in this case, I wanted to base the visual language out of Mickey. I wanted to create a sandbox for him to play in any direction, with no limitations — something very naturalistic and authentic.”

Realism

Aronofsky therefore partnered with a cinematographer who had a background in documentary work: Maryse Alberti. At Aronofsky's suggestion, she shot the movie in the widescreen Super 16 format (2.4:1 aspect ratio — rare for a Super 16 project), rather than HD — a briefly discussed option — and executed a handheld documentary approach for following Rourke's character around.

Alberti explains that building on the director's desire to frame Rourke at the center of everything that goes on meant also designing a world around him that he naturally fits into — gritty urban locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania that are, in a sense, extensions of the character himself. “[Tim Grimes, production designer, chose] places that describe this kind of life — auditoriums, bars, and strip clubs and things,” Alberti says. “Randy doesn't fight at Madison Square Garden. He fights at school gymnasiums and abandoned ballrooms.”

Therefore, the movie's imagery was, in Alberti's words, “rooted in the school of realism — designed to give you a sense of the soul of the man and also the larger place he inhabits. So rather than thinking so much about a color palette, we thought more about the sense of place throughout filming. It's not a documentary. These are actors, but we are putting them in real places and following them around, much like a documentary.”

Central to satisfying this sensibility was the decision to shoot the movie in Super 16. Although they were given an initial opportunity to consider HD, Alberti and Aronofsky decided early on that the story had to be told on film. Alberti tested a few different stocks before settling on Kodak Vision3 500T 7219 stock for night work and interiors and Vision2 500T 7217 for day exteriors.

Portability was a big deal for Aronofky's approach to telling the story, which was shot with an Arriflex 416 camera. That need outweighed possible grain concerns; given the gritty nature of the story's environment, filmmakers didn't worry about grain getting away from them. They felt confident the digital intermediate process at Technicolor New York would give them a way to control any grain issues in a fashion that would have not been possible with an optical blowup.

Want to use this article? Click here for options!