How Sofia Coppola Shoots A Film At 3 Budget Levels

INTRODUCTION

Sofia Coppola’s films feel like quiet daydreams. With worlds of isolation, luxury and honest human relationships, captured through a lens of melancholic beauty.

Throughout her career she’s directed films at various budgets, from the indie level, semi-gun and gun Lost In Translation, to the larger scope but time pressed Priscilla, all the way to the luxury-laden high budget Marie Antoinette.

Let’s take a deeper look at each of these three productions to see how Sofia Coppola used the resources she had to tell powerful stories about women protagonists framed by desaturated, pastel palettes, a mature restraint, and an almost musical sense of stillness.

LOST IN TRANSLATION - $4 MILLION

A core component of Coppola’s work is that not only is she a director but also a writer. Having written the screenplays of all of the features that she had directed.

While traveling and spending long stretches in hotels, Sofia Coppola began imagining a story about two lonely Americans adrift in Tokyo - which stood as a microcosm of a relationship. 

She wrote the Lost in Translation screenplay over six months: a quiet exploration of disconnection, misunderstanding, the camaraderie between foreigners, fleeting moments of intimacy and everything lost between the lines. 

To get the approximately $4 million production budget, Coppola and her team pursued more of an independent model of financing than a studio style one - where a single company buys and owns the film. In this approach, the filmmaker sells distribution rights separately across different international territories, using those presales to finance the film.   

Because the film was not controlled by a single studio or U.S. distributor it allowed her more creative control and gave her the final cut.

The relatively low budget allowed them to shoot the short length, approximately 70 page feature script over 27 days. It also meant they had to use a smaller technical crew and a more compact gear package.

Coppola and her DP Lance Acord embraced these technical limitations by adapting a production style characterised by working with the real world environments which are available - rather than trying too hard to construct a world which isn’t real though built sets, or supreme control of lighting.

They felt they could create a visual middleground by embracing a similar approach to other movies with this real world feel like Festen or The Anniversary Party that were shot on the digital video format which was still in its infancy, but elevate this look by instead shooting on 35mm film and subtly supplementing light in these real world environments when needed. 

Since their low budget meant it wasn’t possible to lock off large sections of the city, they filmed most of the Tokyo exteriors in a run and gun, semi-documentary style (allegedly without a shooting permit). This allowed them to get incredible shots of the actors walking around at iconic locations like Shibuya crossing - with real people as extras in the background.

To get away with filming in this style they shot handheld with a lightweight 35mm camera, and a skeleton crew of Acrord, Coppola and his 1st AC Mark Williams, pulling on an old school manual follow focus judging distance by eye - without any monitors in sight.

They used two camera bodies on the production - mostly the small 35mm Aaton 35-III which was used for handheld or other scenes, or the larger Moviecam Compact which was needed for close quarter applications like shooting in hotel rooms or bathrooms where the Aaton made too much noise.

He paired these cameras with a set of Zeiss T/1.3 Superspeed primes - mostly shooting on the 35mm focal length, which gave the same perspective as that of a tourist’s point and shoot camera.

They also carried a long Angenieux Optimo zoom for picking actors up in public spaces from far away with the more compressed telephoto lens. 

Even for locations which they did have more control over, like the solo hotel room scenes with Johansson, they employed a similar, technically minimalist approach. Only Coppola, Acord and Johansson were allowed in the room - with occasionally the wardrobe, make-up and AC allowed in to check all was going well. Acord would operate and pull focus, often without even rolling sound, to give these scenes a handheld, intimate feel.  

Although much of the framing and shot selection was worked out in the space, they did on occasion jot down some notes detailing character movement and shots, especially for sequences which involved more complex movement.   

True to this real world approach Acord used lots of natural light. He shot all night exteriors using only the real available mixed light sources in the city, like sodium vapour, neon and lanterns, without adding any additional film lights. To do this he shot night exteriors on Kodak’s high speed, lower contrast 500T film stock 5263. While he used a 320T 5277 stock for daylight scenes or interiors. 

The fast Superspeeds allowed him to shoot wide open or at T/2 to have enough light for some of these night exteriors. However, in the more populated and brightly lit areas like Shibuya he’d actually stop down to around T/4 or T/5.6 and underexposed to keep a low contrast, low saturation look. 

For some interiors, like the subway or arcade they’d rely mostly on the location’s available fluorescent tube lighting. However, Acord did get his team to supplement the arcade scene with a few 4 foot 4-bank Kino Flos, with cool daylight bulbs.

Or the hotel bar, which was mainly lit by warm practical lamps, supplemented by some added film lanterns that were the same colour temperature.  

Instead of cutting and shaping light with large 4x4 floppies, diffusion frames or black flags and lots of c-stands, which may happen on a traditional industry set, his electricians would just use little off-cuts from diffusion gels and black wrap, which they’d rig on the light with croc clips. Which is much faster and leaves a minimal gear footprint.  

Coppola was able to pull off this beautiful film on its relatively low budget, by writing a shorter screenplay that focused mainly on two actors, which largely took place in one controllable hotel location. And then shooting most of the exterior scenes which would’ve usually needed more control, permissions and budget, in a run-and-gun style with a skeleton crew, to give the story its feeling of authenticity and scope.

PRISCILLA - $20 MILLION

Lost In Translation’s 70 page script was made for $4 million. So when you hear that Priscilla’s 80 page script was budgeted at $20 million - you may imagine that this would come with much more time and control for Coppola.

However, since it was a period drama, based on IP,  with a larger art department and wardrobe scope, they were actually only able to get 30 shoot days out of the budget.

Also, if you factor in inflation that $20 million would be roughly the equivalent of a $12 million budget at the time when Lost In Translation was shot. 

Coppola wrote the screenplay about Priscilla Presley’s life between the ages of 15 to 27, based on her memoir Elvis and Me. The film plays out through Priscilla’s eyes and chronicled the ups and downs of navigating a complex relationship - with both its dark and lighter side. 

Before production started, she had to cut out 15 pages from the initial script in order to limit shoot days and make the budget work.   

Funding was sourced by Italian producer Lorenzo Mieli through the shareholders at Fremantle, under the name of a production company called The Apartment Pictures.

To keep costs down and best utilise the budget they shot in Toronto and built sets on soundstages for the Graceland interiors. 

Coppola teamed up with one of her regular cinematographers Phillipe Le Sourd to create the film’s visual tone. They stayed away from recreating iconic historical moments in a photocopy style, and rather created a language that felt like a memory that was specific to the film and Priscilla’s point of view.

A reference that informed this was a backlit, black and white photograph of a woman in silhouette by Saul Leiter. Many frames lean into this look, framing characters against a strong, single source backlight such as a window which blew out with overexposure. This backlight often washed out the shadows and gave images a lower contrast - which Coppola has always been a fan of.

Another budget compromise they had to make was gear related. Le Sourd, who had only ever worked on film, was forced to select a digital cinema camera. He chose an Alexa 35 with Panavision Ultra Speed and Super Speed lenses. 

Although they did use little snippets of 16mm 250D stock shot on a Bolex H-16 and Super 8mm 50D or Ektachrome 100D to create period appropriate home video style footage.

Coppola and Le Sourd found ways to push the tone with the cinematography. A long, slow zoom out on an Angenieux HR 25-250mm lens created a sombre feeling of alienation. 

They used a handheld camera for emotionally heightened moments. 

A shifting orange, red neon lighting from Skypanel S360s and other LEDs inside the room gave the scene a feeling of love, living, blood and hurt. 

Overall, Coppola used Priscilla’s budget to tell an intimate portrait of a relationship through the experiences of its protagonist. 

The period setting required larger art department set builds and greater scope production design, a larger cast and greater control over technical setups and locations - with no room for run and gun shooting.

MARIE ANTOINETTE - $40 MILLION

In a similar vein to Priscilla, Marie Anoitnette was Coppola’s first big introduction to making a period film about a well known figure in history.

She based the script on the book Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser - which chronicled her life leading up to the French Revolution. Coppola sought to create an impressionistic interpretation of Marie Antoinette which would let the audience get lost in her luxurious world and imagine what it would be like to experience life in Versailles during that time.

To create this larger than life scale portrayal that was full of visual set pieces, an enormous wardrobe department and meticulous, audacious production design - required a larger budget of approximately $40 million (somewhere around $65 million when adjusted for inflation).

To raise so much capital required backing from one of the big studios: Columbia Pictures.  

All it takes is watching the film to see where some of that spend ended up. The film is laden with a large cast and loads of extras all kitted out in truck loads of fabulous wardrobe, set against opulently designed sets and locations which included access to the real Palace of Versailles.

All of this takes lots of planning, crew, resources and time. They were therefore able to shoot from January to April, far longer than the approximately 30 days she had for her other productions.

Again, she worked with DP Lance Acord to develop a visual approach. Coppola didn’t want to fall into the conventions of period filmmaking being dark, cold, and neutral. Instead they wanted to reflect her luxury environment by making it brighter and more pop with a colourful, pastel palette.

Another convention they pushed back against was a widescreen aspect ratio. Instead opting to shoot the film in the taller 1.85:1. This gave frames more height and meant wides could capture more of the architecture and high ceilings. 

Lighting these large spaces in a more high-key style required a larger team of technicians and more gear. For example, for day scenes his team built a lighting platform outside the windows, or used crane lifts, and pushed through rows of 12K HMIs. The windowpanels out of the frame were covered with a thick diffusion. This created giant, soft panels of light.         

Unlike the electrical team on Lost In Translation who would use natural light, black wrap and offcuts of diffusion, the lighting in Marie Antoinette was much more traditional and larger in scale with a full collection of frames, flags and lights.

For night interiors Acord tried to create a candlelit look using film lights. His team built different strings of bulbs - with either 60 watt or smaller 15 watt bulbs - that had a colour temperature of 2,800K. 

Some of these lines were rigged onto or around styrofoam balls, or 4x4 or 8x8 frames with diffusion. They also used rope lights, placed on tables or actors' laps to give soft light from below.

These cast a soft ambient glow across the spaces and gave enough exposure to be able to shoot on the 500T 35mm film stock used for interior and night scenes. This had a slightly softer contrast than the Kodak 250D stock that they used for exteriors which was more vibrant and saturated.

Like on Lost In Translation his camera package consisted of a lightweight Aaton which he paired with an Arricam. 

He used old Cooke Speed Panchros from the 50s and 60s which were rehoused by Van Diemen. This vintage glass gave a soft diffusive quality to images - which complemented the pastel look, and lowered the contrast with a veil effect when they were shot against a bright backlight.

CONCLUSION

Ultimately, the size of a film’s budget shapes everything: from the scope of production design, costume and locations, the size and notoriety of the cast, to the crew size and gear choices, and, perhaps most importantly, the time and level of control you have on set. 

As Coppola’s work shows, working within those limits isn’t just about money; it’s about adapting your approach to tell the best story with the resources you have.