DP Adam Newport-Berra channeled the '70s on Kodak 35mm film for director Michael Angelo Covino's screwball divorce comedy 'Splitsville'

Director Michael Angelo Covino (The Climb) was adamant about shooting his screwball comedy, Splitsville, on KODAK 35mm film with cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra (Emmy-nominated for The Studio). "That was one of the flags that we planted where we're shooting a film that harkens back to a lot of films from the '70s with a similar screwball nature about divorce and infidelity in this really fun way," Covino explains. "Shooting on film is very flattering [to the faces and the environments]."

Covino channeled Woody Allen, Blake Edwards, and Lina Wertmüller in making "a timeless film that will be just as relevant in 30 years as it is today," exploring open marriage and delusional behavior with high and low comedy. This goes back to the comedy of remarriage in the '30s and '40s (The Awful Truth and The Philadelphia Story), which has its roots in the bawdy Restoration Comedy of the late 17^th century (The Country Wife).

In Splitsville, good-natured Carey (Kyle Marvin, who co-scripted with Covino) is shocked to learn that his bored, new-agey wife Ashley (Adria Arjona) wants a divorce after multiple infidelities. He runs to his best friend Paul (Covino) and Julie (Dakota Johnson) for solace and is further shocked to learn that the secret to their happiness is an open marriage. That is, until Carey sleeps with Julie, which throws all of their relationships into chaos.

For Covino, the exploration and interrogation of pseudo happiness and frailty in modern marriage was compelling. Relationships are messy and unpredictable, and Covino takes pleasure in elevating the absurdity of it all with slapstick comedy. That's where shooting on film comes in.

"I think shooting on film sets a tone immediately of what we're setting out to do," says Newport-Berra. "It adds such incredible production value, and I find that film in a lot of ways is actually quite liberating. A lot of filmmakers will say that shooting on film requires more light or it requires more time and it's just more arduous, but I find it's more fluid, and you spend a lot less time staring at a high-definition monitor picking apart what's in the background of a shot, and a lot more time looking through the viewfinder and letting the actors perform.

"I trust that film is going to render faces beautifully; it's going to capture something really honest, and it's going to create an image that feels intimate and very human," Newport-Berra adds. "For us, it was really fun to build a world and then just live inside it with the film camera. We pushed hard to find locations [in Montreal] that worked well for natural light and excited us."

The cinematographer shot with the Arricam LT camera with mostly KODAK VISION3 200T Color Negative Film 5213. In addition, he shot some VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 for night work. His preferred lens was the vintage Panavision Ultra Speed Zeiss. "We love the way that [the Zeiss] fell apart when we shot them wide open," Newport-Berra continues. "It was a little fuzzier, a little softer, really beautiful on faces. I felt like we could create a look that was familiar yet somehow felt like we had never quite seen before. It was analogous to a lot of the references Mike was bringing to the table that felt like our own."

The film starts with a zany car ride, in which Carey and Ashley sing "Whenever I Call You Friend" (the version with Kenny Loggins and Stevie Nicks). Some sexual foreplay then results in Carey swerving out of control. This causes a van to careen out of control and flip over while the couple inside are having an argument of some kind.

"We had two days to [get] all the car scenes, and we only had one day where the highway was shut down," says Covino. "So the crash and the aftermath happened on the second day. We loved the idea of setting up a scene one way and then completely destroying that to create something far more absurd and surprising that also tells you what kind of film this."

But the car crash had to come out of nowhere and be unique. So, they came up with the idea of a 360-degree oner on a gimbal. They start through the windshield and pan with the car; we see the van crash and then pan back to Carey and Ashley for their reactions, which was the most important part of the scene.

Yet they had to do it twice because the pan came too early the first time. But the stunt kept getting delayed the second time because the remote head that they were on kept glitching. "That was a really tense day," the director adds. "It paid off, but it was challenging."

After the crash and Ashley's crushing revelation, Carey runs away and makes his way to the beautiful house of Paul and Julie (presumably in the Hamptons). They found the perfect Montauk-style house with wood siding, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a gorgeous view of the lake, despite the ever-changing weather conditions. "We loved the way light came in, and the water became the vista that we were always shooting into, and we got the sun behind us," Covino adds.

In addition, the lakefront house lent itself well to blocking the outrageous eight-minute fight between Carey and Paul after Carey confesses his sexual escapade with Julie. "It felt like I was making a short film with my friend but with really talented people and a ton of money," says Covino. "We insisted on doing our own stunts and we were dead set on having it be a certain length and doing it practically." To make it easier on themselves, they shot the bulk of the fight right before the start of production.

What begins as a series of slaps downstairs quickly turns into a wrestling match, destroying furniture, before pivoting to the kitchen, where they hurl utensils at one another. "Kyle and I took our time every night and we were methodical," Covino continues. "We would go to a bouldering gym and train on the mats and throw each other around and just keep rehearsing different sections of hand-to-hand fighting. And then figure out how to bridge from one section to the other."

Although they shot the downstairs brawl as one continuous shot, with the camera taking a voyeuristic perspective, they realized that it worked better with some additional coverage. "We talked a lot about that, and we really put a lot of pressure on the master," says Newport-Berra.

"And it was the right way to approach the scene: how can this play in one shot? I try to do that with everything, but especially with something like this. It makes finding the coverage so much easier when we can see the entire scene in one shot. Because then Mike can watch the take and see if it works and move on or where we can make the scene better. It was really about shooting that master and being economical about the extra coverage that we got."

Then the mayhem escalates upstairs with the smashing of walls and an aquarium in the son's bedroom. They take a break to save the goldfish in the nearby bathroom tub before resuming their childish fight and crashing through the window.

"The fish played a big part in the film: they were a thematic reference that we kept coming back to." Covino says. "And we had to convince the owners of the house to let us flood a room. So we had to build a pool liner underneath the carpet and we redesigned that whole room and turned it into a pool. Then I had to hit the tank perfectly with a fake bowling ball. We had one take to pick up those fish and do everything."

Speaking of goldfish, Carey clings onto several bags of them while riding a roller coaster at an amusement park. This was shot with the ARRIFLEX 235, the smallest and lightest 35mm camera, on a custom mount, with a tight lens for the frontal view.

Everything was going fine until someone accidentally tripped the breaker and the roller coaster shut down. By the time power returned, they lost the lighting continuity.

"But the production team begged the amusement park to let us come back, and we were able to pick it up one more time," Newport-Berra explains. "And the amazing thing is that the length of the mag is pretty much the length of the roller coaster. So, we had to time it perfectly and roll the camera at the perfect time because, if we didn't, we would roll out before we got the shot."

Splitsville culminates with a wild birthday for Paul and Julie's son at their main home with the entire cast (plus a cameo by Nicholas Braun as a Mentalist). It recalls the ensemble mayhem of a Robert Altman film as the camera roams everywhere, revealing new delights.

"We wanted to create an immediacy to it, building the energy with a sense of urgency," says Covino. "We had this idea of living in single takes, walking room to room with a character, following them over the shoulder, bringing the movie to life in a way."

The house they chose had the perfect layout for balancing exteriors and interiors. "It was a fun space to move through," adds Newport-Berra. "I really love the longer shot where it moves into the kitchen and Carey grabs the dog, takes the dog to the office, locks the dog in the office, walks out, and finds Paul at the front door and it carries us through."

Adds Covino, "It was like throwing them all together into a stew and the camera is the spoon that's stirring the stew."