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American C inematographer

MARCH 2014

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The Grand Budapest Hotel

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Wes Andersons The Grand Budapest

Hotel, shot by Robert Yeoman, ASC,
follows the whimsical adventures of a
legendary concierge and his protg.
Iain Stasukevich
Unit photography by Martin Scali. Photos and frame grabs courtesy of Fox
Searchlight Pictures.

Shot by Robert Yeoman, ASC, The Grand Budapest Hotel is very much
a film in keeping with his previous collaborations with director Wes
Anderson: a storybook tale with complex narratives and first-person
narrators, captured in an illustrative style thats both theatrical and
cinematic. The central story is bookended by scenes set in the late 1970s,
when an elderly author (Tom Wilkinson) recounts the details of his
extended stay at the Grand Budapest Hotel in the 1960s. He recalls a story
told to his younger self (played by Jude Law) by one Monsieur Moustafa
(F. Murray Abraham), the hotels owner at the time.
The film then transitions to the early 1930s, when Moustafa, then
called Zero (Tony Revolori), serves as a lobby boy for the impeccable
Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), head concierge of the hotel at the
height of its fame. Trouble begins when Gustaves octogenarian lover, the
rich widow Madame Desgoffe-und-Taxis (Tilda Swinton), is found
murdered at her estate, and her will bequeaths to Gustave a priceless
painting. The surviving Desgoffe clan vows to contest the will, but not
before Gustave and Zero swipe the painting. The police then arrest
Gustave for Madame D.s murder, leaving Zero with the task of clearing
his mentors name.
The Grand Budapest Hotel was shot entirely in Germany, and
Anderson set the story in a fictitious Eastern European province,
Zubrwka (a real-life brand of Polish vodka). As with many of the
directors films, vague historical and geographical references locate the
story somewhere between fantasy and reality. Wes prefers to draw from
real-world references to create his own world, says Yeoman. In this
movie, for instance, the Fascists in power arent specifically Nazis, but
they certainly could be interpreted that way.
During prep for the film, Yeoman and Anderson spent a lot of time
scouting locations in Germany and Poland together. To get an idea of how
certain scenes might play out, they sometimes used a film camera to shoot
some scenes as they scouted, with various crewmembers serving as standins. Anderson then used his own hand-drawn and voiced animatics to
build the structure of each scene. Wes tried to plan out as much of the
movie in advance as possible, says Yeoman. He does painstaking
research, and we plan our shots pretty carefully during prep.
Occasionally, new ideas come up while were shooting, but we generally
have a pretty good idea of what to expect for each scene.
Anderson curated an extensive image library for his collaborators.
Many of those books had pictures of old European hotels from the 1930s
and other visual references that were relevant to our story, says Yeoman.
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Anderson notes, Our best reference was the Internet. The Library of
Congress photochrome-print collection is sort of like Google Earth for
1905. We actually found some of our locations that way, and a few of
them looked a lot like they did 108 years ago.
The production also maintained a library of reference DVDs, which
included The Red Shoes, Twentieth Century, Love Me Tonight and Grand
Hotel. Wes loves the Ernst Lubitsch comedies of the 1930s: The Shop
Around the Corner, Trouble in Paradise, The Merry Widow and To Be or
Not to Be, Yeoman says. We looked at those more to familiarize
ourselves with the 1.37:1 aspect ratio, which Wes wanted to use for the
1930s sequences. This aspect ratio opens up some interesting
composition possibilities; we often gave people a lot more headroom than
is customary. A two-shot tends to be a little wider than the same shot in
anamorphic. It was a format Id never used before on a movie, and it was a
fun departure. You can get accustomed to 1.85:1 or 2.40:1 to the point
that the shots become more predictable.
Sequences set in the late 1970s, when the author addresses the camera
from behind a desk, were filmed in 1.85:1, and scenes set in the 1960s
were filmed in 2.40:1 anamorphic. Yeoman shot the latter material using
anamorphic Techno-Cooke prime and zoom lenses from Technovision.
They have a very interesting quality theyre not sharp and crisp like
Panavision Primo anamorphics, he notes. I was a little nervous about
how they fell off at the edges. I think the 40mm was actually pretty soft in
the lower center. Cameramen dont like seeing that, but Wes embraced the
imperfections of the lenses because of their distinctive look. Cooke S4
prime lenses and an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm zoom were used for
the rest of the film.
Principal photography was strictly a single-camera affair, and Yeoman
used an Arricam Studio provided by Arri Berlin. When youre as
compositionally specific as Wes and I are, one camera is the only way to
go, the cinematographer muses.
Yeoman takes a low-tech approach to accomplishing Andersons
trademark swish pans and dolly shots. I generally prefer an Arri gear
head, but at times Ill opt for an OConnor Ultimate fluid head, particularly
for swish pans that are more than 90 degrees, he explains. I can be more
accurate and move the camera faster with the fluid head. We had several
long dolly moves, and we prefer a large dolly like the Chapman Hybrid 3.
Wes prefers to ride with a handheld monitor so he can be near the actors.
Anderson constantly encouraged Yeoman and key grip Sanjay Sami to
find new ways to accomplish shots. A new addition to their toolkit was the
Towercam, a telescoping camera platform from MAT in Berlin. The
Towercam was occasionally used in place of a crane or to boom the
camera between floors, as in the sequence where an incarcerated Gustave
and his fellow inmates stage a prison break. When the lantern dropped
through a hole in the jail-cell floor to the basement, we suspended the
Towercam upside down so the camera could descend all the way to the
ground, says Yeoman. Wes often challenged us, and Sanjay always came
through!
Yeoman shot the entire picture on Kodak Vision3 200T 5213. We did
that on Moonrise Kingdom and found that the lab could handle the
correction [for day exteriors], he remarks. Without the 85 filter, the
film stock is rated at 200 ASA instead of 125, which helps late in the day
when youre losing light.
The Grand Budapest is first shown in a shabby state, its crumbling
faade (a combination of locations in Grlitz, Germany, and miniatures
shot at Babelsberg Studios) concealing an interior decked in flat shades of
nicotine, with low ceilings and narrow halls. The cavernous atrium of a
former department store in Grlitz served as the hotels main lobby.
Production designer Adam Stockhausen hung a translucent egg-crate
drop ceiling to the ground floor and boxed in the lobby with wall flats to
make the Cold War-era hotel feel claustrophobic and oppressive. It was
an austere environment, Yeoman remarks. The entire lobby ceiling was
designed to resemble an overhead fluorescent source, and we
accomplished that with 24 12-light Maxi-Brutes shining through a layer of
Rosco 216 White Diffusion that covered the ceiling.
Yeoman lit all interiors with tungsten instruments and practicals on
DMX dimmers, and he typically lit to T3.5. We did a few zoom shots with
a Techno-Cooke 40-200mm zoom in the 1960s hotel lobby, and I lit those

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to T8 because the anamorphic zooms look slightly soft unless theyre

given a deeper stop, he adds.

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