By Oliver Webb
Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here follows the true story of a family torn apart by military dictatorship in 1970s Rio de Janeiro. Beautifully captured by DOP Adrian Teijido ABC, the film scooped Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards, becoming the first Brazilian produced film to win an Oscar.
How did you first get involved with I’m Still Here?
Adrian Teijido: Walter is a very important director. He’s made films such as Central Station and The Motorcycle Diaries. The last feature film he made was On the Road in 2012. I’ve always wanted to work with him. Unfortunately to tell you the truth, as soon as I was interested in doing this film, I thought he already had another DOP lined up for the project. Part of the money to produce this film came from Wild Bunch in France. So, they needed to spend some of the money with French finance and initially they hired a DOP based in France. After a few tests, he left the project. A very close friend of mine, Sergio Machado who used to be Walter’s AD told Walter about me and so production called me. Walter’s seen a few of my films and he particularly likes my work on River of Desire. So, we had a chat and I knew he was having lots of issues with the project. I told him that I’m 100% available and I would love to do this film. At this point he was considering stopping the production due to the number of problems, but he said he'd consider me to do it in the future.
After a week he called me again and said we're going ahead with the film and asked if I could be in Rio the same day. I live in Sao Paulo, so I told him I’d be there tomorrow instead. I met him and we had dinner together. We went to a production screening and we watched lots of films as references. I read the script and he gave me the original book as a gift and we started working on this project. I already knew some the cast from previous projects. Selton Mello, who plays Rubens is also a director and I made a feature film with him (The Clown, 2011).
I already had a very good relationship with some of the cast and the crew. The first few weeks were very intense for me because they already spent part of the production with the other DOP. I went to see the house and watch rehearsals and I looked at the references and had conversations with production designer Carlos Conti and had meetings with the wardrobe department. It was information overload the first two weeks, but I accepted the challenge.
Did you have much time for conversations about the look of the film?
Adrian Teijido: I didn’t have any conversations with the previous DOP. I spoke with lots of people and met with the original camera assistant and asked for more information. They didn’t start shooting the project beforehand, it was only a series of tests. I watched those to understand what Walter liked and didn’t like. He had a very clear vision in his mind about the film. He used to frequent the house in the 70s and he has lots of very strong memories from that time. Walter always said to me that the first part of the film should be sunny as we are in 1970s Rio. Vilhelm Hammershøi, a Danish Painter, was also an essential reference for the house.
That time during Rio was very culturally intense because Bossa Nova had already been developed and lots of musicians were coming from all other parts of Brasil. Our capital had moved to Brasilia, which was still being built with its very strong architecture. There are lots of famous architects from Brasil, such as Oscar Niemeyer. On the one hand, we were living in a very strong cultural moment at the beginning of the 70s. On the other hand, we had this brutal military dictatorship that you can feel in the film. That was really interesting for me because I grew up in that time. I was very young, around ten years old and at the time I had a feeling that something was very wrong, although I didn’t know what it was. I felt it through my parents feelings. My father was very tense and upset with a lot of things, but of course they tried to hide it from me. It was a very important film for me in order to reproduce an important moment for Brasil.
What was your approach to capturing the different time periods?
Adrian Teijido: I shot another film in 2019 called Marighella,(directed by Wagner Moura) which was about military dictatorships. Carlos Marighella was a hero guerrilla activist during the 1960s. It’s set around the same time as I’m Still Here, but it’s a completely different film because we follow the war. Whereas in I’m Still Here, we see the war through a family and in a more subtle way. For Marighella, we did enormous amounts of research about that era and what Rio was like during that time. We watched lots of films, including Costa-Gavras’ Missing and other films that looked at similar themes here in South America.
When I was invited to Rio, I already had an idea of that era, but we instead show a sunny, joyful Rio at the beginning and a very different environment. Walter had already decided that he wanted to do the film in 35mm. I shot tests with the original cast in the house and on the beach and I tried to reproduce some of the environment. Walter is a very cinematic guy and wants you to feel the grain. The first part of the film we shot in 500 ASA, which gave us an interesting grain, even for the external sequences. You don’t usually need much ASA to go outside, but we were looking for the grain. After Rubens disappearance, when the guards are entering the house and close the curtains, I pushed the film one stop in order to increase the grain. When we were in the third stage of the film, closer to the 2000s, I used 200 ASA in order to diminish the grain and to have a clearer image. It was the first time that I used the grain as a conceptual texture. That's how we developed that conceptual cinematography and at the same time, we changed a lot of the camera attitude. The first part was happier, which meant more handheld shots and more freedom as we wanted to feel the joy of the family. After Ruben’s disappearance, we became more static.
Which camera and lenses did you select, and why?
Adrian Teijido: In the beginning, we used Aaton Penelope with Panavision Primo lenses. The camera came from Panavision Paris. Walter really liked the tone. I do prefer ARRI to tell you the truth. As there is a time jump in the film, I changed the equipment. For the later scenes I used ARRICAM Lite with Leica Leica Summilux and for both cameras we used 3-perf.
Which lights did you use?
Adrian Teijido: It was a bit of a problem for us because in Rio we have lots of light, but the light changes a lot. It was a real location and not a set. For general sequences, I had 18K lights coming through the windows. When we are tighter in the house we used NANLUX lights, with softer light coming through.
Do you have a favourite lighting package that you normally use?
Adrian Teijido: It has changed a lot during the last few years as we have switched to LED lights. I used to love strong lights, like 20K maybe, but I’m still adapting to LED lamps and I trust a lot in the gaffer. I’ve used lots of LED lenses over the last few years. We did tests with my gaffer to try to find a proper colour temperature for those lamps during the night and day.
Did you create any LUTs with a colourist? And how did you apply these during the shoot?
Adrian Teijido: Yes, we created a kind of LUTS, but my fidelity with those LUTs was not so strong because we had to approach so many different situations and during the film I realised some LUTs didn’t work for certain situations. We don’t have any labs in Brasil anymore, so we had send the film to Paris with a courier once a week. So, it took almost 10 days to see the dailies. At the lab in Paris, colourist Arthur Paux did the offline material and I would often exchange ideas and references with him. It was part of the challenge as I didn’t have lots of time during pre-production.
How long was the duration of the shoot overall?
Adrian Teijido: I think it was around 15 to 16 weeks, with some additional days which we used to shoot some aerials and the Super 8 footage. We had two Olympus cameras that we developed in London.
What did you enjoy most about working on the film?
Adrian Teijido: I’m very proud of it and it feels like you’ve left something very important for younger generations. The events happened 50 years ago and lots of young people don’t know exactly what happened and I think we always have to remember. It’s like a historical document of what happened. It was brutal and awful. In Brasil they actually changed some laws due to the film. There are still lots of missing people from that period and we have a special law now about finding out about people who disappeared and at the same time trying to recompense the families who have lost parents. It’s much more than a film and it’s of political importance.
Water always says that I’m Still Here is about absence and memories and I like that. When Walter described his memories to me and said this house was a very happy environment, those things were very important to us. It is not easy to shoot on film and it’s a completely different process. Finding a focus puller was also quite challenging. Marco Chile Contreras was my focus puller who had lots of experience working on film. My gaffer, Ulisses Malta was also a great companion. I had a very good camera operator in Lula Cerri. I like to operate, but I didn’t operate this film. It was a very special set. Fernanda Torres was very concentrated and it was very emotional to watch her working.
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