Behind the shot: Filming One Hundred Years of Solitude: Part Two

Cinematographer Camilo Monsalve talks us through filming a rain-soaked sequence in One Hundred Years of Solitude: Part Two.

A year since One Hundred Years of Solitude brought Gabriel García Márquez’s novel to the screen, the series returns to Netflix for its second and final chapter. Directed by Laura Mora and Carlos Moreno and filmed entirely in Colombia, Part Two sees the town of Macondo entering a new era of modernisation.

In some ways, it continues the visual style set out in Part One, but cinematographer Camilo Monsalve (episodes 3, 4 and 7) wanted to progress the lighting and textural feel. The first part leant on full-frame and wide shots, favouring Cooke Anamorphic Special Flare lenses with a fast T1.8 aperture, while in Season 2 they changed glass, using ARRI ALFA 2x anamorphics for a more landscape-oriented feel. They also set themselves the challenge of more continuous shots, often with wide lenses and complicated camera moves through houses and stretches of Macondo.

For Monsalve, who usually works on feature films, joining forces with other DOPs for a series was a completely new experience. “It was totally different but super cool,” he grins. “We had this collaborative conversation, bringing our own ideas and looking into the world of the other DOPs, trying to carry their ideas into our episodes and also add our own.”

Top priority was that the look moved on in line with the story and time period. The advent of electricity in episode 3 allowed the cinematographers to introduce new visual components, while the arrival of the train in episode 4 brought smoke and pollution. Episode 7, meanwhile, was unique for including a torrential downpour.

Filming the endless rain scene

Getting the rain right was important for Monsalve: “Normally when people think about rain, they visualise European or American rain, but in Colombia, it can be different; almost foggy. I wanted the audience to feel the humidity, the swelling. It was a good challenge to create this texture and aesthetic, so it felt more like tropical rain.”

They realised that vision in a standout nighttime sequence that follows José Arcadio running towards the train in a single, unbroken shot. The camera begins on a Scorpio 45 crane before being handed off, at the precise moment of a lightning strike, to a second operator on the ground and then seamlessly passed again to another operator riding a quad bike; all drenched in lashing rain.

“Carlos and I wanted to create this feeling of a continuous state, beginning with the camera far away from José, then pushing in, going closer and closer,” Monsalve explains. “Then we wanted to make the audience feel like they’re next to him; to feel his emotion intimately in this important moment. Almost as if the camera didn’t belong to him or to us.”

The pair – both of whom love to draw – storyboarded by hand, deciding it had to be a continuous shot to allow the audience to really feel the emotion. “In our other episodes, everything was on [steadicam], TRINITY or cranes – but here, Carlos and I wanted something different. We wanted to start stabilised, then move to handheld to reflect the drama in the character’s mind. We started to create this kind of fluid [movement], like rain, then quick release when the thunder is coming, the lightning’s going out, then the strike – and then the camera follows him and runs with him.”

Three camera operators made that transition seamless: the shot begins on the Scorpio crane, then the camera is passed to the second operator, who moves around Arcadio, then it’s handed to the A camera operator on the bike. From there, it runs with Arcadio across the field, towards the train. “The release and camera passing was super hard,” chuckles Monsalve. “Then adding the choreography with the special effects…everything was a practical effect.”

Creating a realistic downpour

The hot, dry location wasn’t going to lend a hand on the weather front, so the production had to create a realistic downpour across an entire field, bringing in specialist rain equipment from Spain. The lighting team had their work cut out.

“Lighting was a big challenge because it’s super-wide and I have to be on top of that, and I have to light this massive field and feel the rain,” says Monsalve. “The problem with the rain is that I have to light it very specifically to feel real. If not, you can just lose the rain.”

With the rain, lightning, handoffs, focus pulling, actor and movement all needing to land together, the sequence became, says Monsalve, “almost like a huge dance.”

Alongside the ARRI ALEXA Mini LF and ARRI ALFA anamorphic lenses, with the Scorpio 45 crane extended to 52ft for the opening movement, a rain deflector was a key part of the puzzle: with so much water in the air, even a single drop on the lens could mean having to reset the entire sequence. Exposure posed another challenge as the camera moved from the crane into the field, solved with a variable ND control to adjust exposure while maintaining a consistent T-stop, to preserve the intended depth-of-field and feel of the image.

He reckons it took around 11 takes to nail the shot – he can’t recall exactly, but does remember the slog of getting everyone and everything back to the first position. “The reset was crazy,” he laughs. “José Arcadio was exhausted too, because he had to run so much!

“I think the choreography of all those pieces together was the most challenging part. The rain, the camera, the lighting, the acting – every detail. But at the end, it was perfect. It was beautiful and everyone gave 300%. I think everyone was super proud of that shot.”

 

This article appears in the October/November issue of Definition

WORDS: NICOLA FOLEY. IMAGES: @MAUROGONZALEZA