Behind the scenes: The Favourite

Most cinematographers don’t necessarily want their on-screen work to call attention to itself but the bold and frequent use of ultra-wide angles in The Favourite are an exception. The fish-eye view seems to trap the characters of this historical drama in a bubble, which was quite the intention.

“By showing you the whole room and also isolating the character in a small space you get a feeling of no escape,” says Robbie Ryan BSC ISC. “You’re meant to feel a sense of claustrophobia. Even though they have all this luxury and power, the characters are isolated, imprisoned even. At the same time, it’s absurd.”

Director Yorgos Lanthimos had used a wide 10mm lens for a scene in his previous film The Killing of a Sacred Deer and wanted to use it more extensively for his theatrically comic take on the eighteenth century court of Queen Anne. Perhaps no director has taken to the lens quite so boldly since Terry Gilliam used it for similarly surreal effect in Twelve Monkeys and Brazil.

“Yorgos tasked me to find something even wider than 10mm so I went to Panavision and found a 6mm glass called SF6, which I dusted off, showed to him and he loved it. It’s a crazy angle but it became the signature lens and seems to suit the story very well.”

The super wide-angle lens has a close focus distance of 1 foot 6 inches and a 180-degree field of view. Ryan used it to fill the frame with as much of the set as possible, but deliberately far away in most cases so you can’t make out the details.

“We combine that with…