Photo: MK2 Magazine interview with Eric Gautier (Director of Photography) for "On the Road"

Eric Gautier, Director of Photography and Walter Salles, Director of "On the Road"

After The Motorcycle Diaries, you joined Walter Salles again for On The Road. In what way do these 2 road-trips respond to each other?

For The Motorcycle Diaries, we carefully followed Guevara's exact itinerary in Latin America. It was a trip which took the form of an opening to the world. On the road, on the contrary, is a inner journey: the destination doesn't matter, what matters is the movement, the sensory experience of drugs, sex, weariness. One of the direction's choice was to capture sensations: the cold, the heat, the fear. This meant filming the actors without makeup, very close to the faces, with long focal length. To shoot with film was obvious, because the story takes place in the early 1950s. It needed texture, grain. To transpose the novel's spontaneity, we did hand-held shooting (camera on shoulder), leaving a great freedom of movement for actors. I wanted to keep something amateur, something imperfectly controlled technically, because the beauty in Kerouac lies in the clumsiness of the language, the breaks in the rhythm.

Source  Via @KstewAngel