Stills from a project I worked on called "Hamlet: Out of Joint"

[Michael Hammond]

I was recently cinematographer for a really interesting project in Lisbon, Portugal supported by the national council for arts. Essentially it's a contemporary mixed-media take on Hamlet that combines filmed content and contemporary dance. The content I filmed with the team will be projected onto two large screens on a stage. Sometimes the screen will show the same scene, but each side a mirror image of the other. Other times the two screen will have different scenes on them, but those scenes are complementary to each other.

The director wanted things to feel claustrophobic and to help achieve that we delivered in 3:4 aspect ratio, did a lot of close-ups of the actors, and crammed multiple actors into a very small space for filming. We also want the audience to feel part of the piece, so often the actors break the 4th wall.

Lighting

Because the content on screens are Hamlet's memories (murder, madness, betrayal) we also wanted drama, and we needed things outside the scene to drop off into blackness. I proposed a bunch of uplighting and (severe) side light to provide that "ominous" feel, and often used one key light alone with enough light to basically drop the backgrounds into darkness. Top light was used from time to time in scenes where the dialogue was less dramatic. And when actors moved, they moved from one key light to another, passing through darkness in between the lights.