Written and directed by Sofia Coppola, the film Priscilla is based on Priscilla Presley’s memoir Elvis and Me, recounting their romance and time together as a couple. The movie reunited Coppola with cinematographer Philippe Le Sourd, ASC, AFC, and Harbor colorist Damien van der Cruyssen — the trio have worked together before on La Traviata (2017), The Beguiled (2017) and On the Rocks (2020). 

Philippe Le Sourd

Le Sourd has known Coppola for 10 years, and when she approached him about Priscilla in July 2022, he happily came on board. They started preproduction in September.

“Through each project — from The Beguiled to On the Rocks and finally Priscilla — Sofia has become more and more engaged with the DI process,” says Le Sourd. “I think she feels very connected to this project, so she wanted to be sure that what we translated with Damien was accurate.”

Damien Van der Cruyssen

“Sofia has full trust and confidence in Philippe,” adds Van der Cruyssen. “He stayed the whole two weeks of DI, and Sofia came in regularly to review with fresh eyes and give us notes.”

Coppola is all about collaboration, says Le Sourd. “Though she has a very specific idea of what she wants and how to show it, she’s completely open to what you can bring to the set as a cinematographer. She’ll know if she wants to zoom or track inside the corridor, or if she wants music at this moment or emotion in that moment, or if she wants one shot or two shots. She can be very specific, so we spent a lot of time together to talk about the script.”

The Shoot
When they’ve collaborated in the past, Le Sourd and Coppola shot their movies together on film, but for Priscilla they made the decision to shoot digital.

“We tried a lot of different cameras, lenses and formats,” says Le Sourd. “I knew the film wouldn’t be shot in Cinemascope, because if you are trying to create something intimate, Cinemascope would probably be bigger than life. The film was shot 1.85:1 on the ARRI Alexa 35. I shot with the ultra-speed lens from Panavision, with an old lens. We didn’t want the end of the film to be too shiny or “crispy,” but not nostalgic either. It was not like The Beguiled… we were looking for something different.”

During prepro, Le Sourd called on Van der Cruyssen to start building a custom look up table (LUT) for the movie.

“Philippe sent me his look bible and test footage,” recalls Van der Cruyssen. “The prep window was short, and we only did one round of tests, so — after some back and forth — I built three LUTs based on the test footage. After a few days of production, Philippe settled on the more refined option and this became the show LUT.”

Capturing Emotion
Le Sourd described how, for him, shooting the movie was less about creating a certain “look” or a specific color and more about an emotional connection to the script.

“I think it’s about emotion with Priscilla,” explains Le Sourd. “It’s not about an historical moment. I tried to connect with the emotion from the script, the director, the actors. That relationship you build together on-set, I tried to translate that with light and framing.”

“Priscilla is in every shot, so we had to be careful how we conveyed this and made sure we didn’t shoot the same way when she was 14 as when she was at Graceland.

“We knew the moment of the kiss was very important and that we could translate it in such a wrong way for today compared to at the time,” he continues. “We had to be careful emotionally with the camera and light. We needed to be almost as shy as the character.”

One of the biggest challenges for Le Sourd was the timing, as he had just six weeks to capture everything. The scene he’s most proud of is the last scene he shot, which takes place in Elvis’s bedroom.

“It was the end of their marriage,” he says. “I was very concerned about it and how to use the lighting and framing to illustrate how their love was dying. The idea was to bring in pulsing light from outside, like the blood leaving him, but I didn’t know immediately how to do this.

“The scene is very important and very emotional, with these two characters (and actors) leaving us. I remember Cailee didn’t want to leave the set. She wanted to do the last scene, the last track down the corridor, over and over. She didn’t want to leave Graceland. That was very emotional for her and for all of us. You could see the sacrifice and the work she did for six weeks.”

Le Sourd is aware that although he has now shot three movies with Coppola, each one is very different, and he a likens this to re-building their relationship each time.

“You need to reconnect,” explains Le Sourd. “It takes time; day by day and shot by shot.”

Changing Palettes
Van der Cruyssen says, “the movie has two main looks: the German look and the US/Graceland look.”

These looks evolve as time advances, becoming more saturated toward the end of the ‘60s and ‘70s (set in LA and Las Vegas) before returning to a more subdued palette at the end of the relationship and the end of the movie.

For the Graceland and US scenes, the team worked with real visual references of Elvis and Priscilla, using stills to help inspire the style of the movie. In fact, the wedding and the photoshoot were actual photographs.

“Of course, production design and hair and make-up all helped to give it the ‘60s look,” says Van der Cruyssen.

For the German part of the movie, Le Sourd and Coppola wanted a softer grey-ish palette that would reflect the boredom of Priscilla as a teenager in this world.

The dailies provided a good base for the grade, but Le Sourd had limited time on-set, so it was down to Van der Cruyssen to polish the final color.

Because Le Sourd is behind the camera, he doesn’t “have much time to spend with the DI team — just a rough idea when I start a scene,” he explains. “Damien has to put everything back together, and between him, me and Sofia we have found a common language to make sure the story translates in the end. Because I know Damien very well and he knows my photography very well, we’re both very respectful of each other.”

Van der Cruyssen, who worked on FilmLight’s Baselight, had two weeks for the theatrical grade and main DI working with Le Sourd and Coppola, and then an additional few days for VFX updates and the HDR/SDR pass. “It was a relatively short amount of time to get it done, but thanks to the beautiful photography we managed to grade the movie in our two-week DI window,” comments Van der Cruyssen. “Baselight’s Color Cross Talk tool was very helpful to build the look and the restricted color palette.

“There are so many gorgeous scenes in this movie; it was a colorist’s dream,” he adds. “I love the variety of looks we accomplished between the German side and the colorful American side, including fun scenes of bumper cars, casinos, LA and of course the Las Vegas bedroom scene.”