Development
After meeting at a Creative Artists Agency screening of Hunger in 2008, director Steve McQueen got in touch with screenwriter John Ridley about his interest in making a film about "the slave era in America" with "a character that was not obvious in terms of their trade in slavery."[8] Developing the idea back and forth, the two did not strike a chord until McQueen's wife found Solomon Northup's 1853 autobiography Twelve Years a Slave. "I read this book, and I was totally stunned," said McQueen about Northup's memoir. "At the same time I was pretty upset with myself that I didn't know this book. I live in Amsterdam where Anne Frank is a national hero, and for me this book read like Anne Frank's diary but written 97 years before — a firsthand account of slavery. I basically made it my passion to make this book into a film."[9]After being in development for some time, the film was officially announced in August 2011 with McQueen to direct and Chiwetel Ejiofor to star as Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery.[10] McQueen compared Ejiofor's conduct "of class and dignity" to that of Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte.[7] In October 2011, Michael Fassbender (who starred in McQueen's previous films Hunger and Shame) joined the cast.[11] In early 2012, the rest of the roles were cast, and filming was scheduled to begin at the end of June 2012.[12]
Filming
With a production budget of $20 million,[1] principal photography began in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 27, 2012. After seven weeks,[13] filming concluding on August 13, 2012.[14] As a way to keep down production practicalities and costs, a bulk of the filming took place around the greater New Orleans area — mostly south of where the real-life Solomon was enslaved.[15] Among locations were four historic Antebellum plantations: Felicity Plantation, Magnolia Plantation, Bocage Plantation, and Destrehan Plantation.[16] One of the plantations in Vacherie, was just a few miles from the actual site. "To know that we were right there in the place where these things occurred was so powerful and emotional," said actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. "That feeling of dancing with ghosts — it’s palpable."[17] Filming also took place at the Columns Hotel and Madame John's Legacy in the French Quarter of New Orleans.[18]Cinematographer Sean Bobbitt, who also was the film's primary camera operator,[19] shot 12 Years a Slave on 35 mm film with a widescreen aspect ratio using both an Arricam LT and ST. "Particularly for a period piece, film gives the audience a definite sense of period and quality," said Bobbitt. "And because of the story's epic nature, widescreen clearly made the most sense. Widescreen means a big film, an epic tale – in this case an epic tale of human endurance."[20] In addition to keeping with the nature of the story, the filmmakers avoided a desaturated visual style that expressed a more gritty documentary aesthetic.[21] Drawing visual comparisons to the works of Spanish painter Francisco Goya, McQueen explained, "When you think about Goya, who painted the most horrendous pictures of violence and torture and so forth, and they're amazing, exquisite paintings, one of the reasons they're such wonderful paintings is because what he's saying is, 'Look – look at this.' So if you paint it badly or put it in the sort of wrong perspective, you draw more attention to what's wrong with the image rather than looking at the image."[2
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