James Goldman, SOC, on the set of THE LAST DUEL. Photo by Jessica Forde © 2021 20th Century Studios
in 55, 65 days, Ridley Scott is still the top of the game. He’s so smart. And, it helps that Dariusz Wolski can light. Like I said, we can’t quite shoot at a full 360 degrees, but we can shoot, like, 270 degrees with the way Dariusz lights and what he’s trained himself to do. You have two cameras that look incredible, you have one camera that looks great, and you have one camera that is set up for a specific thing, and because of that he can make it look great. It’s a unique partnership that the two of them have. You kind of squeeze in there as an operator. On the life side, traveling was interesting. I was flying on empty planes into empty airports. Dublin felt super empty. Not a bad way to see a new city on foot, though. It felt kind of strange sometimes working knowing the rest of the world was taking a time out. CO: Were there any aspects of the shoot that were particularly challenging or particularly
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satisfying? Any interesting anecdotes from the set? Goldman: Ireland was harder than France. Just in the pure physicality of the locations and what we shot. We spent a day on muddy hillside shooting a pretty impressive battle that required everyone to get down and in it. It’s just one of those things where if you shoot on the side of a hill in the mud, then you are shooting on the side of a hill in the mud, and everybody has to pitch in to make it work. Four cameras shooting all the time, constantly, with Ridley seeing how you’re positioning cameras in trees, trying to get the Steadicam in there to come up the hill with them, trying to get a crane shot at the same time—there’s just a lot of things that go into everybody having to pitch in. The grips pushing stuff in horrible conditions, everything getting filthy dirty, people slipping and sliding all over the place.
We’re supposed to shoot this fight scene in two days and Ridley showed up in the morning with a plan for how he wanted to do it and we literally shot this scene in one day. I saw the dailies for it, it’s going to be a fantastic scene, but everybody worked twice as hard to get that done in one day and that put us a day ahead of schedule. It’s one of those things that’s rewarding even as it’s kind of brutal. It’s always nice to see those days end but there is a satisfaction in knowing that you got it done. I think everyone in the film business enjoys those days at one time or another. To be honest every day on set Ridley is tossing out some anecdote. He’s been doing this a long time and has a line for everything. The operators wear walkies all day and at the end of that walkie is Sir Ridley. We call it Radio Ridley. He runs things on that radio. Advising camera positions, coming up with
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