The reference register was chiaroscuro, the painters' high-contrast light before it was ever a film term. A single soft key, raked across a plain studio background so it falls off fast into deep shadow. No general fill. I let the blacks go to true black and used deep negative fill on the far side of the face to keep it carved rather than flat.

Black and white is unforgiving on exposure, so I monitored on false colour throughout and graded the contrast on set rather than fixing it later. He wears heavy-framed glasses, which in hard side light catch every source in the room, so much of the setup was angling the key and the eyeline to hold a clean catchlight and keep the lenses readable.

Around the interview I shot the beats the voice-over needs. The blank sheet of paper, hands writing without revealing the words, and a closing tilt that lifts off him and settles on the page. The props came from the fragrances themselves, the figs, cherries, tea, and osmanthus inside the Chapters, lit to the same hard, low-key logic as the face.