Interview curated by Corrado Serri CCS
Written by Sophie Cousens from her novel of the same name, a “New York Times bestseller”, and directed by Nick Moore, the film is a UK-Italy co-production. It’s set in London, but in the credits there are many Italian names. Did you shoot entirely in the UK?
No, we filmed for about four weeks and a couple of days in England, and three weeks and a few days in Italy.
While watching the film, I couldn’t identify any Italian locations. So congratulations, mission accomplished!
For production reasons, we shot part of the film in Italy: a series of interiors, but also an exterior that concerned us—the tennis court. In this scene, the male protagonist, Quinn (Lucien Laviscount), plays on clay rather than the typical grass courts of England. However, we did some research and found that there are tennis clubs in England with clay courts. Otherwise, both the very English director, Nick Moore, and the production would have had their doubts.
We filmed all the kitchen scenes in Italy, on a set built in the studio: Minnie’s (Sophie Cookson) kitchen, Layla’s (Mandip Gill) house, and the interior of Greg (Will Hislop). Another location that was
incredibly difficult to find in Rome was Quinn’s office. We filmed it at the Toyota headquarters in Rome, where I had to ask the production designer to spend a significant part of the budget on frosting all the windows because, in the story, the building is located in London’s City, while we were actually near Fiumicino. We also shot the interiors for the New Year’s Eve Party scene in Italy.
If you hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have guessed that all those scenes were filmed in Rome.
Credit must go to the production designer, Francesco Scandale.
Can you tell us about the technical and human relationship differences between filming in the UK and in Italy?
I’m still very attached to the Anglo-Saxon system. I lived in England for ten years and worked there continuously for fifteen. Making films is like making music; it’s a universal language. The Anglo-Saxon system is different from ours when it comes to managing technical equipment. Personally, I prefer the English system. Grips handle everything related to the camera, while electricians deal with everything related to lighting, including frames, covers, rigs, and structures, which in Italy fall under the responsibility of grips. In England, the team of electricians is usually larger than that of the grips. I’ve grown accustomed to the English system.In Italy, our way of working stems from the American system: grips handle both “lighting grip” and “camera grip” tasks. However, this often creates some confusion here, while in the UK, grips strictly do not deal with lighting tasks.
How do you shoot a romantic comedy? You told me romantic comedies are not a genre you’ve previously explored, either as a viewer or as a cinematographer. So, you made a remarkable debut, collaborating with director Nick Moore, who has edited legendary comedies such as Notting Hill.
Nick edited some of the most successful comedies from the late ’90s and early 2000s, especially those that made the English production company Working Title famous: Love Actually, The Full Monty, About a Boy, Notting Hill, not to mention the many other films he worked on as either editor or assistant editor. As a first assistant editor, he worked on The Empire Strikes Back and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, to name just a couple. Nick is a fantastic person, and perhaps the only romantic comedies I’ve seen are precisely the ones he edited. There was this shared history. Without a doubt, this film was a challenge for me. The genres I’m passionate about have always been different—one of my favourites is noir. That tells you that, even visually, I’m drawn to contrasts and chiaroscuro; my tastes lean in that direction.
Let’s talk about the conception of the “romantic comedy” look, which follows specific conventions. You worked within this glamorous genre without falling into the overly glossy or commercial style. Nor did you adopt what I call a “platform look,” which is a somewhat standardised aesthetic we see today. If I pick a frame from your film at random, I can tell it’s a romantic comedy, but I’ve noticed touches of originality, which we’ll explore further. Tell me how your process began, starting from your first read of the script.
Even though Nick had already directed a couple of films aimed at younger audiences, he himself considered this his directorial debut; he confided that he felt as if he had never directed before. Nick is about 20 years older than me, has an immense knowledge of cinema, and, as I mentioned, has worked with all my idols. On the first day on set, he wasn’t convinced about one of my ideas, but two minutes later, he said, “You’re right. I understand what you were saying, and I agree.” Then he added, “As Alan Parker used to tell me…” and at that point, I burst out, “Nooo! You can’t start a sentence with ‘as Alan Parker used to tell me!’ Put yourself in my shoes!” Working with him was a constant stream of anecdotes like that [laughs]! During pre-production, Nick emphasised that, while the film was a romantic comedy, he wanted to delve into the dramatic elements in the background of both protagonists. Quinn’s mother, Tara, has emotional and mental vulnerabilities stemming from being abandoned by her husband when Quinn was a child. Minnie’s mother harbours resentment toward Tara due to a kind of inferiority complex related to her social background. Nick wanted these and other aspects to come through. When I asked him what kind of look he envisioned, I expected him to reference something like Jennifer Lopez’s romantic comedies, with soft, flat lighting. Instead, he mentioned The Bear, which I absolutely loved.
I was actually going to ask if you had The Bear in mind for the many scenes set in the kitchen!
This unexpected reference to The Bear gave me incredible inspiration. Not so much in terms of the film’s lighting specifically, but it encouraged me to reflect on certain elements. English romantic comedies differ from American ones. The former tend to have a more realistic, less fairy-tale approach. Or rather, it’s still a fairy tale, but portrayed in a more grounded, down-to-earth way. One thing I noticed in The Bear is the photographic progression in the first season. It starts off very gritty, muted, with dark circles under the eyes and so on, then becomes bright, clean, with higher key lighting and more polished light on the faces. I pointed out this evolution to Nick, and while he hadn’t rationalised it, he had internalised it because he liked it. That’s important because a director should primarily work on instinct. So I suggested, “Why don’t we think about a similar progression of style that mirrors the main character Minnie’s narrative arc?” Nick then gave me a second clue—he sent me the famous video interview with Roger Deakins, where he demonstrates how he uses lenses. Like Deakins in that video, Nick prefers to use wider-than-normal focal lengths close to the character, rather than lenses 50mm and up, which convey more distance, often emphasised by the presence of the interlocutor in the frame. With this suggestion, he was preaching to the choir—I was actually worried he’d ask me to use longer lenses to maintain regularity, proportion, and the absence of distortions seen in other films. This approach also made This Time Next Year a slightly less conventional romantic comedy. Once we set these rules, we systematically broke down the script together, scene by scene, identifying the visual language we would use. Up to a certain point—scene 64, if I recall correctly—we used handheld cameras. From scene 64 to scene 104, we primarily used Steadicam. After scene 104, the visual language shifted to fixed cameras or dolly shots. This was our way of reflecting Minnie’s progression in taking control of her life through the camera’s movement. The film begins with her completely at the mercy of her own chaos. Things start to look up, only to fall apart again. At the moment when Minnie has her first realisation—when she decides to roll up her sleeves and start a new life—that’s when we switched to Steadicam, with fluid camera movements. Finally, we used tripods or dollies when Minnie achieves success, just before reuniting with Quinn. Spoilers, but it’s a romantic comedy—we already know it ends happily! I should add that, in the first part of the film, we decided to use a wider focal length for Minnie compared to Quinn, while still matching their relative sizes within the frame. In the middle of the film, both are framed with the same focal length. Later, when it’s Quinn who becomes vulnerable and fragile, he’s the one framed with the wider focal length. We used the 47mm and 58mm lenses almost exclusively. It’s worth noting that all of this remains imperceptible and works on a subliminal level.
Filming in large format aligns perfectly with the intention of staying close to the actor. Using a wide lens for close-ups allows the setting to remain present.
Exactly, because if you shoot a close-up with a 32mm in Super 35 close to the actor, the feeling is noticeably different compared to a 48mm in large format. A 48mm retains the characteristics of a 48mm lens.
The Dawn Scene. Close-up shot at 47mm
If you change the format, the focal length doesn’t change; what changes is the field of view due to the portion of the sensor being used. Essentially, you’re capturing a larger portion of the image projected by the lens, but the lens’s intrinsic characteristics remain unchanged. With Super 35, we would have had undesirable distortion because, after all, this is a romantic comedy, not an art film. We realised that using a larger format would allow us to treat faces like landscapes. This made sense, especially because the film was released in cinemas in addition to being available on streaming platforms, so we always approached it with the big screen in mind. We shot in large format using an ARRI ALEXA Mini LF, with a complete set of Signature Prime lenses, and in a couple of instances, I used Signature zooms. I find these lenses very beautiful—they’re modern but still retain a softness in the out-of-focus areas that I find pleasing. They don’t feel too clinical. In my opinion, a drawback of many modern lenses is that they’re too perfect for high-resolution cameras, exaggerating detail. For the flashback scenes, I used a set of Zeiss Super Speed T1.3 lenses, working with the sensor in Super 35 mode. During the London shooting period, at the Cine Lens Summit organised by CVP, I had the chance to try out the Impression Filters. If I’d had the opportunity to test them earlier, I might have used them for this film. I had the Black Hollywood filters with me, but in the end, I never used them. I love when it’s the lenses themselves that create softness—it feels more natural to me.
Let’s talk a bit more about the difference in lighting between Italy and the UK.
The obvious difference is the natural light: we filmed from late April to May in Italy and from May to June in England. Last year (2023, editor’s note), like this year, was particularly unpredictable in terms of weather. I was worried about continuity between the very high sun in the Italian sky and the angle it would have in the UK. My main concern was for the outdoor tennis scene shot in Italy. Thankfully, the scene in the story takes place in summer, so it remained plausible, although a keen eye might notice that the English sun would be less sharp and less contrasted.
In the UK, the sun’s angle is always lower compared to what we’re used to, even during the hours when it would be at its zenith.
I sometimes had to shoot interiors in Italy before the corresponding exteriors in the UK, so I lit them hoping for similar conditions outdoors later, or I lit in a way that left room for adjustment in post-production, for example, avoiding direct sunlight. In England, it’s more common to use reflected light because the sun is often absent. Ideally, to avoid inconsistencies, you’d shoot the exteriors first, but for this film, that wasn’t always possible.
Or you could do as they do in House of the Dragon, where, to give the VFX team more time, they first shoot the dragon-riding scenes on green screen. For each shot, they simulate both overcast and sunny skies, then head to the location later. Regarding the lighting, do you feel you managed, as the director suggested, to take some risks or poetic license?
Yes, I was fortunate enough to do a photographic test before filming; at the very last moment, I had access to Sophie Cookson, the lead actress. During that test, I established my contrast ratios. In this aspect, I like to work as though I were shooting on film. I enjoy setting parameters: I decided I would shoot this film between 2.8 and 3.5. During the tests, I determined the ratio between my key light and shadows, as well as the colour contrasts I would use for day and night scenes. At Frame by Frame, together with my colourist, Valerio Liberatore, I created a LUT based on the curves of Kodak Vision 2 5218 and Vision 3 5219 film stocks. We worked on adjusting the red tones, which tend to lean towards orange in digital cameras—always a bit too warm for my taste. We cooled them down and made them denser, more film-like. During shooting, I maintained these contrasts and looked for opportunities to add my personal touch. Since this was a romantic comedy, these tweaks were possible but required a very delicate approach. For example, it made sense for this film to be more saturated than average, but without going overboard. I used this approach in the party scene at the start of the film, as well as in all the flashbacks. The party, set in the OXO Tower in Southwark, London, was filmed in Rome a month and a half before the corresponding exteriors in London. I only knew that the OXO sign was red, so I decided to use red as a unifying element for the party interior, incorporating other colours but keeping red as the dominant one. I tried to find elements that inspired me to be creative while maintaining consistency. It’s a fairly linear film; there weren’t any scenes that allowed for extreme choices. I had an excellent camera operator, Angelo Bonomelli, while I often operated the handheld camera myself. We used two cameras simultaneously on only a few occasions, amounting to about two weeks in total. Personally, when working with two cameras, I prefer to stay on the first camera rather than the second.
Do you measure contrast ratios with a light meter?
In this, I’m very traditional. I measure exposure with a light meter and generally do so with every setup change. I don’t change scene, but change setup. I always re-measure my key light. I tend to want to check my values at the first setting to calibrate my eye as well. I’m capable of doing everything by eye, checking the waveform and other instrumentation, but I find them limiting, because they tell you if the exposure is correct, but they don’t tell you if you’re maintaining continuity. You can do it by eye, and it can be corrected a lot in post-production, but I’m firmly convinced that if I capture an image with coherent ratios during shooting, I use colour time to improve the photography, not to match the differences in contrast and exposure. When I light the first setup of a scene, I measure the key light and other lights to ensure I’m within the contrast ratios I want, then I do everything by eye. Regarding look development, I put the colourist in contact with my DIT. For this film, respectively the mentioned Valerio Liberatore and Daniele Tartacca. When I’m not in the camera, I’m often inside the DIT’s cave; the CDLs we produce together are already a pre-colour, which I want to be approved by the director during shooting, or even before, thanks to photographic tests.
Tell me about how you lit the interiors, also in relation to the different social extractions of the characters.
The kitchen interior of Minnie’s parents’ house, a modest public housing home, is lit with a single source, an 18K HMI in the backyard, made very wide and very diffused with a double butterfly, nothing else.
An organiser might be frightened hearing about an 18 KW, but you adopted a naturalistic solution, because an 18 KW used in this way is the representation of diffused light from an English sky.
Exactly. When we were shooting in Tara’s enormous and beautiful villa, we positioned four 18 KW lights around the house. It was certainly an important and costly approach, but it allowed us to shoot very quickly. It was also a choice consequent to the dimensions of the spaces and windows, which were 6 metres high and 4 metres wide; with a 4 KW we wouldn’t have even lit half a window. Moreover, always with the 18 KWs placed at the right distance, I had no drop off, I had a constant aperture of 2.8, also in service of naturalism.
Tell me about the treatment of the many flashbacks in the film.
The flashbacks were also the subject of photographic tests. I proposed using the LF, but with the sensor in Super 35 mode and with Super 35 lenses, the Speed Super Zeiss T1.3, which I love very much. This format change is perceptible, but not obvious. Then we made a slightly different LUT, with less saturated colours and a slightly different curve, with a bit more green. We didn’t want an obvious contrast, and we’re talking about flashbacks starting from 1990, an era that in our imagination is almost contemporary. We realised that by bringing the red curve of the two LUTs closer together, what is most influenced is the skin tone. There’s a red component in the skin tones, regardless of whether the actors are Caucasian, African, or Indian. By matching the red curves of the two LUTs, we managed to differentiate them in everything except the rendering of skin tones. So in the flashbacks, we created a world in Super 35, slightly different in contrast and colour rendering, but without changing the specific skin tones of the protagonists: you perceive being in another era, but you can’t quite understand why.
The protagonists have two very different skin tones and share many shots; did this condition you in any way?
No, I had no difficulty lighting them together. On one occasion, in the dawn scene, at the beginning of the film, I remember that we gave Sophie 200 or 300 Kelvin more warmth in the light simulating the dawn sun, because she has a very fair complexion. During shooting, with the UK gaffer Ian Barwick, we said to each other that perhaps we needed to warm her up a bit more compared to Lucien, because we realised that the same colour temperature on both gave the effect of two slightly different lights. But apart from that case, I must say everything went perfectly.
Starting from this set-up, which is one of my favourite in the film, I’d like to discuss with you an endless and philosophical question: in this night interior you chose to let moonlight enter. You chose to make the moonlight felt in an urban and illuminated night interior, which doesn’t happen in reality. Can you tell me what reasoning you made for this scene, for this moon, for the colour you chose to give it?
Moonlight and Shadow
For me, it’s also one of my favourites, and one of the simplest. Moonlight is a double-edged sword, it can be annoying and distracting. Initially, I hadn’t planned to use a coloured light, but then I opted for a source at 6,500 degrees Kelvin with a third of green: this slight hint of green gives you a more silvery sensation, less electric blue. The moonlight was the subject of my photographic tests, during which I also determined the temperature of the warm light I would use in these scenes. Other times I’ve made the moon neutral, that is, white.
The moon is white, but cinema often makes us forget that.
In this case, I wanted a slightly coloured moon, to remain in a fairytale world, to give it a reassuring connotation. From my perspective, the moon can even be made green or purple; in fact, I think in the next films I’ll do it like that, if the context allows, because I get tired of repeating myself. I didn’t use much Cross Light in this film, because it tends to create higher contrasts, but in this case, I liked how it created a halo around her when she approached him. I like working with shadows, even unexpected ones, I find them stimulating. I like leaving the shadow when the actor projects an interesting one.
Let’s make a final assessment of this first time with this director, tackling a genre you had never approached before.
I learned a lot from Nick. I appreciate directors who are confident in their abilities, who don’t try to overshadow you or micromanage, because they know everyone has a specific role. But when they make an observation, it’s important to listen carefully. Someone like Nick, who speaks little, when he talks about cinematography is pertinent, and it’s always an added value. The production was intense, we shot for **seven and a half weeks**, but it was still very demanding, with some very large locations and some significant movements around London. Let’s say we would have liked to have more time, more than anything to have more material to provide to the editing team. Nick used everything we shot, he must have cut at most half a scene. In conclusion, I’m very happy with the final result. It was stimulating to film a genre I didn’t think I was capable of tackling.
Thank you for this chat, I’ve learned a lot. This film is already out in the UK, on Netflix UK and Amazon UK, while in Italy it is now in cinemas and will soon be on a platform.
Luca Ciuti on the set of This Time Next Year
Camera: ALEXA Mini LF (FF + S35)
Lenses: ARRI Signature Primes, ARRI Signature Zooms, ZEISS Super Speeds MKIII
Recording Format: ARRIRAW
Aspect Ratio: 2:1
Rental: Panalight (Italy), Shoot Blue and Panalux (UK)
Post-production: Frame By Frame
Gaffers: Ian Barwick, Gabriele Gorga
Key Grips: Frank Hellebrand, Giordano Spadoni
Operator: Angelo Bonomelli
Focus Pullers: Daniele Dionisi
DIT: Daniele Tartacca
Colourist: Valerio Liberatore @Frame by Frame, Rome
