Working on his first feature film, Vadim Perelman notes that he benefited enormously from the expertise of veterans on both sides of the camera. “We pulled together the finest,” he states. “They just connected to the story, and based on the strength of the material, I was able to surround myself with the best people and get the help I needed to make this movie.”
Perelman says that his main teacher and closest collaborator on the set was veteran director of photography Roger Deakins. “Roger is one of the greatest cinematographers in the world, and I felt incredibly honored to have him on my first movie. He is more responsible for me learning how to be a film director in a short time than anyone else. Roger excels in beautiful lighting and compositions and classic shot structure and coverage, and he disciplined me in those essentials of feature filmmaking.”
“Roger was a key voice in keeping the style of the movie simple and clean and not overly complicated,” London adds. “What this movie demanded was a transparent way to connect with the characters and the story. The more you can simply experience it in a primal way, without feeling like it’s been filtered through any kind of artistic criteria, the better.”
Roger Deakins agrees, “This is really a character piece, and on a film like this, the cinematography should blend into the background. You do want to heighten certain points and there are moments that tend to be surreal, but basically you’re trying to make it seamless so the audience is immersed in these characters’ lives. It’s not a film where you want to do a lot of wide shots. You’ve got to stay on the people, because you want to see those expressions and read the emotions in their faces.”
Production designer Maia Javan took a similar approach in the setting for the drama. “We tried to background the production design so as not to compete in any way with the humanity of the story,” she remarks. “We worked very closely with Roger Deakins to create a palette that was very subtle.”
Javan herself is of Iranian descent, but Perelman notes that her heritage was not a determining factor in choosing her to design “House of Sand and Fog.” “Any production designer could have done the research for authenticity purposes. What was important to me was how she responded emotionally to the story. Maia was a wonderful collaborator, and has become a great friend. She was there from the first storyboards, and she accompanied me on those endless drives up to San Francisco to look for potential houses. She did an amazing job.”
Given the title of the movie, the centerpiece of the story is the house that becomes the catalyst for the drama. “We spent five or six weeks in Northern California, driving around Pacifica and Half Moon Bay looking for the right house,” Javan says. “The temptation was to come up with some fabulous old bungalow, something that would make everybody in the audience think, ‘Oh boy, I’d fight for ownership of that house, too.’ But Vadim, much to his credit, had the idea to play against that…to give it a more ironic tone by making the house itself rather plain. So instead, we tried to create a somewhat sad, timeworn little house with peeling wallpaper and dents and dings all over the place.”
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