British Cinematographer - Issue 105

UNITING CINEMATOGRAPHERS AROUND THE WORLD

Issue 105 May 2021

POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC

A QUIET PLACE PART II

MIKE ELEY BSC | ANGUS HUDSON BSC | NANU SEGAL BSC | PAOLO CARNERA AIC | REMI ADEFARASIN OBE BSC | FABIAN WAGNER BSC ASC | TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC

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CREDITS / BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER / ISSUE 105 / MAY 2021

BRITISH

CINEMATOGRAPHER

UNI T IN G C INE M AT O G R A P HE R S A R O UND T HE W O R L D

Publisher | STUART WALTERS | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | stuart.walters@ob-mc.co.uk Publisher | SAM SKILLER | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | sam@ob-mc.co.uk

“It's been a long journey, but things are changing, the opportunities are opening up and I’m happy to help spearhead it and promote more inclusive crews.”

– TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC

Editor | ZOE MUTTER | +44 (0) 7793 048 749 | zoe@britishcinematographer.co.uk Design | MARK LAMSDALE | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | mark.lamsdale@ob-mc.co.uk Sales | LIZZY SUTHERST | +44 (0) 7498876760 | lizzy@britishcinematographer.co.uk Sales | RUPINDER RANDHAWA | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | rupinder@ob-mc.co.uk Website | PAUL LACEY | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | paul@paullacey.digital Subscriptions | MATT HOOD | +44 (0) 121 200 7820 | matt.hood@ob-mc.co.uk

SUPPORTERS EDITOR’S LETTER

CONTRIBUTORS ZOE MUTTER is the editor of British Cinematographer. She has more than 15 years’ experience covering creative and technical industries, writing for and editing titles including Televisual, Total Production International, AV Magazine, The Producer, Film Stories, Digital Photographer and Photoshop Creative. With a passion for the art and craft of TV and film production, from cinematography through to visual effects, Zoe also has experience covering the worlds of technology, photography and design.

ADRIAN PENNINGTON is British Cinematographer’s editorial consultant. He is an experienced journalist and editor whose work has appeared in Variety, Premiere, Screen International and The Hollywood Reporter. He is international editor for ACE Cinema Editor, co-author of Exploring 3D: The New Grammar of Stereoscopic Filmmaking, former film editor at Varsity and winner of the Anne Frank Award for Film Criticism. His favourite films are Gilda, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Blow Up. JOHN KEEDWELL GBCT/UAV PILOT, the GBCT News Editor, is a documentary and commercials cameraman who has worked on many productions around the world. He crosses over in both film and tape productions and has great knowledge of the new file-based formats and their methods of production.

KEVIN HILTON is a freelance journalist who writes about technology and personalities in film and broadcasting, and contributes film reviews and interviews to a variety of publications in the UK and abroad.

MARK LONDON WILLIAMS reports on analogue and digital moviemaking for publications such as Variety, LA Times and Below The Line in Los Angeles.

MATT TUFFIN is a producer and journalist who has 20 years experience writing about visual mediums, from photography through to filmmaking. He has produced films around the world, for clients such as Peugeot, English Heritage and Tata Steel, so is well versed in the orchestrated chaos of going from page to screen.

TREVOR HOGG is a freelance video editor and writer who composes in-depth filmmaker and production profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, Canadian Cinematographer, and POV Magazine. Based in Canada, he is big fan of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Batman: The Animated Series, Studio Ghibli, and Australian filmmaker Peter Weir.

VALENTINA VALENTINI is a London-based entertainment, travel, and food writer and also a Senior Contributor for Shondaland. Elsewhere she has written for Vanity Fair, Vulture, Variety, Thrillist, Heated, and The Washington Post. Her personal essays can be read in the Lost Angeles Times and Longreads.

WITOLD STOK BSC is a director of photography of 24 feature films, 25 TV features, and 50+ documentaries, and director/scriptwriter of 13 shorts. He lectures at Arts University Bournemouth, Goldsmiths University of London, and Andrzej Wajda's Master School of Film Directing in Warsaw.

SUBSCRIBE Published six times a year, you can receive the magazine posted to your home or office, or access anywhere with our digital subscription. To subscribe please visit www.britishcinematographer.co.uk/subscribe For queries please contact Matt Hood on +44 (0) 121 200 7820 or email: matt.hood@ob-mc.co.uk

British Cinematographer is part of LAWS Publishing Ltd, Premier House, 13 St Pauls Square, Birmingham B3 1RB The publishers wish to emphasise that the opinions expressed in British Cinematographer are not representative of Laws Publishing Ltd but the responsibility of the individual contributors.

LAWS Publishing are proud to be corporate sponsors of Heart Research UK

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REFLECTION AND EVOLUTION

L

et’s begin with heartfelt congratulations to all the worthy winners and nominees whose talent was recognised at the recent BSC, ASC, BAFTA, Academy and SOC Awards ceremonies. The awards triumphs are highlighted in this issue, with many of the winning productions explored in previous editions.

Elsewhere in this issue, change and reflection are common themes, from IMAGO Diversity & Inclusion Committee Co-Chairs Nina Kellgren BSC and Elen Lotman ESC’s article about how the committee is remodelling its structure, while continuing to encourage a more inclusive industry, through to Mike Eley BSC’s President’s Perspective piece about the opportunities for reflection and change the pandemic could present.

Whether it was shifting release dates, virtual awards ceremonies, or a move from big screen to home viewing, each stage of the filmmaking and watching process evolved rapidly in light of unprecedented events. That necessity to adjust is explored in some of this issue’s behind-the-scenes pieces on productions such as The Life Ahead - one of the first films to be graded remotely during the pandemic - and Locked Down - with COVID obstacles featuring in its narrative as well as reflected in the production protocols the crew adhered to. This edition’s The Big Picture also shows cinematographers sharing their shooting experiences and ways in which they needed to rethink how they work.

While the past year has been demanding and devastating for many, the lockdowns presented an opportunity to pause and reassess where the industry’s weaknesses lie and how to emerge stronger, as Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC highlighted when I spoke to him about FX series Snowfall. “After what happened to George Floyd and during the break that followed due to COVID and the lockdown, Hollywood has had time to re-examine itself in terms of how inclusive it is,” he told me. “People of colour who are cinematographers and might have been overlooked in the past now seem to be getting opportunities that were not there when I graduated.”

But one thing remains unchanged - the desire for the big screen experience. A nationwide survey, commissioned by the Film Distributors' Association, confirmed the UK public is eager to return to cinemas when they start reopening in May. This issue’s cover story production, A Quiet Place Part II, also adapted as a result of the pandemic, having been originally planned for release in March 2020.

It was a pleasure to experience the film in all its splendour on the big screen at a recent COVIDsafe physical press screening and I welcome viewing many more remarkable productions on the big screen in the months ahead.

Until next time, Zoe Mutter - Editor British Cinematographer Magazine British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 03

Celebrating Cinematography Thank you to the cinematographers who choose Film A Metamorfose dos Pássaros (The Metamorphosis of Birds) Paulo Menezes. Alice Et Le Maire Sébastien Buchmann AFC. A Quiet Place 2 Polly Morgan ASC, BSC. A White, White Day Maria Von Hausswolff. Ad Astra Hoyte Van Hoytema ASC, NSC, FSF. All You Need Is Love Tom Erisman NSC. Apollo 11 Buzz Aldrin | Bob Bird | Jerry Bray | Michael Collins | Adam Holender ASC. Artemis Fowl Haris Zambarloukos BSC, GSC. Aziz Ansari: Right Now Autumn Durald Arkapaw. Bad Education Lyle Vincent. Bad Hair Topher Osborn. Bait Mark Jenkin. Beginning Arseni Khachaturan Bergman Island Denis Lenoir AFC, ASC. Blue Bayou Ante Cheng | Matthew Chuang ACS. Boi Nilo Zimmerman. Censor Annika Summerson. Ch Uva E Cantoria Na Aldeia Dos Mortos (The Dead And The Others) Renée Nader Messora. Chemical Hearts Albert Salas. Cordelia Tony Slater Ling BSC. Crisis Nicolas Bolduc CSC. Cubby Sinisa Kukic. Da 5 Bloods Newton Thomas Sigel ASC. Death On The Nile Haris Zambarloukos BSC, GSC. Der Atem (The Breath) Cornelius Plache. Der Boden Unter Den Füßen (The Ground Beneath My Feet) Leena Koppe. Diamantino Charles Ackley Anderson. Die Kinder Der Toten Kelly Copper, Pavol Liska. Doc Martin Simon Archer BSC. Eight For Silver Sean Ellis. Été 85 (Summer of 85) Hichame Alaouie. Eternal Beauty Kit Fraser. Euphoria Marcell Rév HSC | Drew Daniels | Adam Newport-Berra | André Chemetoff. Eyimofe (This Is My Desire) Arseni Khachaturan. Fanny Lye Deliver’d Giorgos Arvanitis AFC, GSC. Février (February) Ivan Chertov. Fire Will Come Mauro Herce. Gasman Martin Prinoth | Max Sänger. Ghost Pleasure Paul Guilhaume AFC. Ghost Town Anthology François Messier-Rheault. Ghost Tropic Grimm Vandekerckhove. Give Me Liberty Wyatt Garfield. Hellhole Nicolas Karakatsanis. Her Smell Sean Price Williams. Holler Dustin Lane. I Am The Night Trevor Forrest, Matthew Jensen ASC, Michael Mcdonough ASC, BSC. I Know This Much Is True Jody Lee Lipes. La Femme De Mon Frère (A Brother’s Love) Josée Deshaies. Lake Of Death Axel Mustad. Last And First Men Sturla Brandth Grøvlen DFF. Le Sel Des Larmes (The Salt Of Tears) Renato Berta. Last Night In Soho Chung-Hoon Chung. Little Women Yorick Le Saux AFC. Los Conductos (Encounters) Guillaume Mazloum. Luce Larkin Seiple.

Malcolm and Marie Marcell Rév HSC. Marriage Story Robbie Ryan BSC, ISC. Martin Eden Alessandro Abate | Francesco Di Giacomo. Mare Erol Zubcevic. Mary Michael Goi ASC, ISC. Matthias And Maxime André Turpin.

Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always Hélène Louvart AFC. Notes From The Underworld Rainer Frimmel. No Time To Die Linus Sandgren FSF, ASC. On The Rocks Philippe Le Sourd ASC, AFC. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Robert Richardson ASC. Otac (Father) Aleksandar Ilic. Passion Simple Pascale Granel. Pappy Hour Julia Swain.

Paradise Drifters Jasper Wolf NSC. Pillars Christian Vasquez. Pokémon Detective Pikachu John Mathieson BSC. Premature Laura Valladao. Preparations To Be Together Róbert Maly. Queen And Slim Tat Radcliffe BSC. Room 212 Rémy Chevrin AFC. Seberg Rachel Morrison ASC. Small Axe Shabier Kirchner. So Pretty Bill Kirstein. Sorry We Missed You Robbie Ryan BSC, ISC. Sound Of Metal Daniël Bouquet NSC. Sous le ciel d’Alice (Skies of Lebanon) Hélène Louvart AFC. Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Dan Mindel ASC, BSC, SASC. Succession Patrick Capone, Andrij Parekh ASC, Christopher Norr. Sunset Mátyás Erdély HSC. Technoboss Mário Castanheira. Tenet Hoyte Van Hoytema ASC, NSC, FSF. The 40-Year-Old Version Eric Branco. The Banker Charlotte Bruus Christensen ASC. The Beach Bum Benoît Debie SBC. The Devil All The Time Lol Crawley BSC. The Eddy Julien Poupard AFC, Eric Gautier AFC. The French Despatch Robert D. Yeoman ASC. The Inheritance Ryan Petey. The Irishman Rodrigo Prieto AMC, ASC. The King Of Staten Island Robert Elswit ASC. The Lighthouse Jarin Blaschke. The Lodge Thimios Bakatakis. The Nest Mátyás Erdély HSC. The Painted Bird Vladimír Smutný. The Souvenir: Part II David Raedeker. The Starling Lawrence Sher ASC. The Story Of My Wife Marcell Rév HSC. The Tango Of The Widower Diego Bonacina. The Truth Eric Gautier AFC. The Two Sights Joshua Bonnetta. The World To Come André Chemetoff. Three Deaths Kenny Suleimanagich. The United States vs Billie Holiday Andrew Dunn BSC. The Walking Dead Stephen Campbell, Duane Charles Manwiller & Jalaludin Trautmann. Tove Linda Wassberg Two Against Nature Sean Price Williams. Uncut Gems Darius Khondji AFC, ASC. Under Alice’s Sky Hélène Louvart AFC. Wendy Sturla Brandth Grøvlen DFF. West Side Story Janusz Kaminski. Westworld John Grillo, Paul Cameron ASC & Zoe White. Whelm Edward Herrera. White Lie Christopher Lew. Wonder Woman 1984 Matthew Jensen ASC. Zanka Contact Benjamin Rufi. Zola Ari Wegner ACS.

#SHOOTFILM Learn more at Kodak.com/go/motion *Productions released, shot or in production in 2019/2020.

© 2021 Kodak. Kodak and the Kodak logo are trademarks.

CONTENTS / BRITISH CINEMATOGRAPHER / ISSUE 105 / MAY 2021

IN THIS ISSUE...

07 PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE

BSC President Mike Eley BSC examines the opportunities for change and reflection and the new ways of thinking the industry can embrace following the pandemic

48

54

On the cover...

Polly Morgan BSC ASC and writerdirector John Krasinski share insight into the creation of A Quiet Place Part II

Behind the scenes...

Mike Eley BSC on The Dig

08 &PRODUCTION/POST TECHNOLOGY NEWS

News highlights from the wonderful world of filmmaking

REVIEW: 24 EVENT BSC AWARDS

Celebrating the incredible winners and nominees whose achievements shone brightly at the third annual BSC Awards

REVIEW: 28 EVENT OPERATORS AWARDS

As the Operators Awards celebrates its 70th anniversary, we look back at its formative years and examine the important part the awards still play

30 WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? A comprehensive rundown of DPs latest productions along with shots of the shooting stars in action

36 NEW WAVE

For Ben Moulden, much like cinematography, life is all about contrast and perspective

37 POINT OF VIEW

As the National Film and Television School turns 50, NFTS director Jon Wardle, reflects on the evolution of the School’s training offerings and the learning philosophy at its core

38 IN THE FRAME

Exploring the vibrant career of senior colourist/co-head feature colour at Company 3, Stephen Nakamura

70

72

Behind the scenes...

Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC on Snowfall

42 VISIONARY

Celebrating the talent of Ellen Kuras ASC, a supreme storyteller always drawn to stories told through visual mediums and fascinated by how meaning is created in film and photography

44 THE CRAFT

Witold Stok BSC explores the powerful influence paintings can have on filmmakers

46 THE BIG PICTURE

Cinematographers share their experiences of shooting whilst ensuring safety during the pandemic and rethinking how they work

48 CAMERA CREATIVE

Polly Morgan BSC ASC and writerdirector John Krasinski share insight into the creation of A Quiet Place Part II - an action-packed race for survival with a family focus, requiring energy in the camera as it embarks on a journey with the characters

Behind the scenes...

Alan Stewart BSC on Tom and Jerry

THE 54-75 BEHIND SCENES

Mike Eley BSC on The Dig; Angus Hudson BSC on The Life Ahead; Nanu Segal BSC on Marvelous and the Black Hole; Paolo Carnera AIC on The White Tiger; Remi Adefarasin OBE BSC on Locked Down; Fabian Wagner BSC ASC on Zack Snyder’s Justice League; Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC on Snowfall; Alan Stewart BSC on Tom and Jerry; Jenna Rosher on Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry; and Matthew Goodman, Erin Ranney and Mark Sharman share their experiences of shooting wildlife documentaries

76 CINEMATIC CLASSIC

Bill Pope ASC reflects on his lensing of The Matrix - a pioneer of the action sci-fi genre, known for its innovative effects and high-concept narrative

78 INNOVATOR

Shining a light on Motion Impossible’s Rob Drewett, whose love of travel and working outdoors saw him become an underwater and wildlife cameraman and later develop free moving camera support technologies

80 SET TO POST

Standout examples of grading, post, and workflow wizardry

82 LETTER FROM AMERICA As storytellers, cinematographers should protect the vision that develops from the first reading of the script and remain a part of the filmmaking process throughout, says Steven Poster ASC

83 IMAGO NEWS

As IMAGO’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee celebrates its fiveyear anniversary and remodels its structure, Committee Co-Chairs Nina Kellgren BSC and Elen Lotman ESC examine how the initiative can help spread change in the industry

84 GBCT NEWS

GBCT Chair Tim Potter looks at the importance of being mindful of mental health. John Keedwell GBCT examines how this year’s BAFTA results mirror the wider world British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 05

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PRESIDENT’S PERSPECTIVE / MIKE ELEY BSC / BSC PRESIDENT

OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE BRITISH SOCIETY

OF CINEMATOGRAPHERS Board of Governors 2021 PRESIDENT: Mike Eley BSC VICE PRESIDENTS: Rob Hardy BSC Nigel Walters BSC GOVERNORS: Balasz Bolygo BSC HSC Oliver Curtis BSC John Daly BSC John de Borman BSC AFC Gavin Finney BSC James Friend ASC BSC Adriano Goldman ASC BSC ABC Angus Hudson BSC Phil Méheux BSC Tim Palmer BSC Ula Pontikos BSC Kate Reid BSC Laurie Rose BSC Christopher Ross BSC Oliver Stapleton BSC CO-OPTED ASSOCIATE MEMBER REPRESENTATIVE: Chris Plevin BOARD ADVISOR: Joe Dunton MBE BSC (non DoP) BSC IMAGO REPRESENTATIVE: Nina Kellgren BSC COMPANY SECRETARY: Audra Marshall TREASURER: Frances Russell

No great release. Instead, a slow, tentative emerging from the foxhole, like the shell-shocked combatant who senses the bombardment has finally stopped and they can peer out once again to the wider world.

I

t’s been said enough times the last twelve months and one would dearly like it to be true; as much as we want to return to ‘normal’, we cannot go back to how things were before and that this is the opportunity for change.

As well as large-scale projects to change/save the world, there is the opportunity to simply step back and reflect and remind ourselves exactly what it is we should be striving for. It gives us the opportunity to go back to earlier goals that before 2020 had lapsed into ‘long-term’ but which once again should be marked ‘urgent’.

I feel we are doing this individually as well as institutionally.

Taking stock. The BSC is definitely doing this - though some of it pre-dates COVID times - with its reassessment of statutes and criteria, all of which will be put to the Society at upcoming membership meetings. This is good housekeeping as much as anything but also an awareness that new thinking needs to be applied to a modern and outward looking Society.

Any new statutes will endeavour to strengthen membership participation. This has been a long time coming and is essential if we are to have a fully functioning and mature Society.

IMAGO is another body that is undergoing re-selfassessment. There is a call for back-to-basics. One of its original tenets when it was formed in 1992 was to champion the idea of - and challenge the absence of - authorship rights for cinematographers. Although there are outposts of enlightenment on this subject in some parts of Europe - Norway and Denmark notably - cinematographers in many territories do not get a lookin when it comes to either official recognition of authorship or what’s called Secondary Rights, residuals stemming from sales, rental or distribution.

Though Jost Vacono BVK won his battle in 2016 to have his work on Das Boot recognised as being integral to the success of the TV series and consequent film, and thus due a share of the profits, it did not auger an opening of floodgates in favour of the cinematographer. Jost’s case has now been referred to the German Supreme Court and so he waits on yet another verdict.

Meanwhile, Croatian cinematographers contemplate their decades-long held status as authors of their work ripped away from them by government policy. These are but two examples of recent battles. In many parts of Europe, such as in the UK, there isn’t even anything close to being a battle. That cinematographers are nothing more than technicians pushing a button at the request of someone of a higher order is a given, it seems. So where does one start?

There is insecurity in some quarters that a demand for remuneration at the tail-end of the process will leave us exposed to a forced reduction at its start, i.e. our rate. That the scales will somehow be adjusted to compensate loss for the producers.

But the argument should never be framed in that way; there is the moral issue - written in law - of ownership. It should stand separate and only to be relinquished at the cinematographer’s say, not anybody else’s.

In Holland, a patron of the NSC by the name of Ruud Dobler has picked up a long-standing but recently neglected campaign of the Dutch Society and started a lobbying body called FAIR - Film Authorship In Right. It seeks to change Dutch law to match that of the EU (it appears the brutal arm of Brussel’s bureaucracy does not rule supreme across the continent after all; who knew!?) and give due recognition to those who create a work of artistic and commercial standing.

Under Dutch law, producers and actors are seen as the talent worthy of Secondary Rights; the key to Ruud’s approach though has been to pull in all the creative, belowthe-line workers and lobby on their behalf. Not only does this acknowledge the collaboration inherent in filmmaking but it also harks back to the old dictum of strength in numbers. Is this the model by which we here in the UK can push for recognition?

This conversation needs to be part of our reawakening.

On Friday 9th April the BSC held its 3rd Annual Awards Night. Inevitably, it was virtual, but it served to remind us of the great work done over the last year as well as allowing us to honour Dedo Weigert for his vision and innovation as well as the Mark Milsome Foundation for its work with young people in the industry. For me personally, the highlight was seeing Nina Kellgren BSC receive the BSC ARRI John Alcott Memorial Award.

As well as being a wonderful cinematographer and an inspiration to women following in her footsteps, she has worked tirelessly in recent years on IMAGO’s inclusion and diversity programme. She has been a great ambassador for the BSC and we salute her.

As for the Awards night itself, having people tune in from around the world added an air of inclusiveness as well as a fun element that felt refreshing, despite the fact that nearly everyone involved would have given their eye teeth to be at a live event.

Hopefully, we will never see its like again and it will be a curio, a one-off, in the history of the BSC. Next year, handshakes, hugs, kisses, table-hopping, professional haircuts, waiting for a taxi at 2 in the morning in the pouring rain - you know, all the things we’ve missed. n British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 07

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

JOSHUA JAMES RICHARDS WINS CINEMATOGRAPHY BAFTA FOR NOMADLAND

T

he best in film was celebrated at the 2021 EE British Academy Film Awards, with British cinematographer Joshua James Richards winning the Cinematography award for Nomadland. Nomadland won three further BAFTAs: Best Film, Director for Chloé Zhao and Leading Actress for Frances McDormand.

Accepting his award for Cinematography, Richards said: “Thank you, BAFTA. I’m so filled with gratitude.

This means more than I can say. My fellow nominees, congratulations and thank you. I am so inspired by all of you.

Joshua James Richards You are such incredible artists. Thank you, won the Cinematography Searchlight, the Nomadland team, Frances BAFTA for Nomadland McDormand. Our wonderful director Chloé, you’re the reason I’m here.

Zhao made history, becoming the second woman to win a BAFTA Directing award. When the film went on to receive the BAFTA award for Best Film, Zhao accepted the award on behalf of the Nomadland team, saying: “We would like to dedicate this award to the nomadic community who so generously welcomed us into their lives. They shared with us their dreams, their struggles, and their deep sense of dignity. Thank you for showing us that ageing is a beautiful part of life, a journey that we should all cherish and celebrate.”

ASC AWARDS:

WINNERS INCLUDE MANK, THE CROWN, THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT, AND THE MANDALORIAN

Erik Messerschmidt ASC

Steven Meizler

Promising Young Woman won two awards: Outstanding British Film, and Original Screenplay for Emerald Fennell.

The Father also received two awards: Leading Actor for Anthony Hopkins, and Adapted Screenplay for Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller. Supporting Actor was won

by Daniel Kaluuya for Judas and the Black Messiah and Supporting Actress was awarded to Yuh-Jung Youn for Minari. Soul won Animated Film and Original Score. Another Round won Film Not in the English Language. Sound of Metal won Editing and Sound. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom won Costume Design and Make Up & Hair. Writer/director Remi Weekes received the award for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for His House. My Octopus Teacher won Documentary, Rocks won Casting, Tenet won Special Visual Effects and Mank won Production Design. The Present won the British Short Film award, while the BAFTA for British Short Animation was won by The Owl and the Pussycat.

The Special Award for Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema was presented to filmmaker Noel Clarke. The Fellowship, the highest honour the Academy can bestow, was presented to director Ang Lee. The EE Rising Star Award, voted for by the public, went to Bukky Bakray.

JEFFREY A. REYES JOINS LEE FILTERS AS US GENERAL MANAGER

LEE Filters has appointed Jeffrey A. Reyes to lead the company’s operations in the US as general manager, based at the company’s US office in Burbank, California.

Reyes joins LEE Filters from equipment and expendables retailer Filmtools, where he served as sales manager for direct production and Latin America. He has also held key sales roles with ARRI, ZGC, Band Pro and Samy’s Camera and is an associate member of the American Society of Cinematographers.

COOKE OPTICS’ NEW APPOINTMENTS Aurélien Marra

Sofia Coppolla

Outstanding achievement in cinematography was championed at the 35th annual American Society of Cinematographers Awards in a virtual ceremony held at the historic ASC Clubhouse in Hollywood. Erik Messerschmidt ASC won the Theatrical Release Award for Mank. Steven Meizler was presented with the Motion Picture, Mini-Series or Pilot Made for Television Award for The Queen’s Gambit “End Game”. Aurélien Marra won the Spotlight Award for Two of Us. Jon Joffin ASC won the Episode of a One-Hour Television Series (Commercial) Award for Motherland: Fort Salem “Up is Down”. Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw won the Documentary Award for The Truffle Hunters. Baz Idoine won the Episode of a half-hour series for Television Award for The Mandalorian “Chapter 13: The Jedi”.

Writer-producer-director Sofia Coppola was presented with the ASC Board of Governors Award for her significant contributions to cinema.

The full list of nominees and winners can be seen on the British Cinematographer website.

08 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Multi-award-winning lens designer Iain Neil (right) has accepted the role of chief optics advisor at Cooke Optics.

He will provide support for Cooke’s team of in-house lens designers and support the company’s plans to develop next-generation lenses that will keep Cooke at the forefront of the industry. Neil is the recipient of 12 Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Achievement for the design of lenses and optical systems, two Emmy Statuette engineering awards, and a Fuji Gold Medal Award in recognition of his lens work in image origination.

Cooke Optics has also announced the appointment of Andy Buckland (left) to the newly created role of director of product management. Reporting to Tim Pugh, CEO, Buckland’s new role includes responsibility for developing Cooke’s product roadmap, including launching forums to enable the design and development team to engage more effectively with a diverse range of customers and users.

ARRI APPOINTS STEPHAN SCHENK GENERAL MANAGER GLOBAL SALES & SOLUTIONS

As general manager global sales & solutions, Stephan Schenk has taken over responsibility for the worldwide sales and service of ARRI’s hardware products and the company’s solutions business.

Schenk reports directly to Executive Board member Markus Zeiler. He is responsible for all the sales and service departments of the camera systems and lighting business units, including the ARRI System Group in Berlin. Additionally, the regional managers from the Americas, China, East Asia Pacific, and EMEAI will report to Schenk.

ANITA OVERLAND ANNOUNCED AS SCREENSKILLS FILM SKILLS COUNCIL CHAIR

Producer Anita Overland, whose industry credits include The Iron Lady and Small Axe, is the new chair of the ScreenSkills Film Skills Council. She succeeds Iain Smith, of Applecross Productions, who recently stepped down after 12 years’ service with ScreenSkills and its previous incarnation as Creative Skillset.

The Film Skills Council also welcomes new members: Lyndsay Duthie, CEO of the Production Guild of Great Britain; Nadine Marsh-Edwards, of Greenacre Films. Tanya Scott, writer, illustrator, and founder of the Visible in Visuals platform to encourage a more inclusive industry, has joined the Animation Skills Council, alongside animator Michael Morgan.

Images courtesy of Motion Impossible

GREAT SHOTS FROM A SAFE DISTANCE Customizable remote production solutions for films, dramas, and commercials.

Cinematographer David Baillie recently showcased how to achieve a cinematic look with dynamic camera moves, while social distancing. Remotely controlling ARRI SkyPanel and Orbiter lights, as well as an ALEXA Mini LF, Signature Prime, and SRH-360 remote head mounted on AGITO, Motion Impossible’s remote dolly system, he shot action, drama, and car sequences with perfect precision.

“Combining the ARRI SRH-360 and the AGITO gives back to cinematographers much of the creativity and freedom of movement we had before COVID restrictions. In addition, they can often do away with the hassle of laying track.

This is a combination I expect the industry to continue using long after we’ve all been vaccinated.”

David Baillie, BAFTA and Emmy-winning cinematographer

SRH-360

www.arri.com/remote-solutions

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

ERIK MESSERSCHMIDT ASC WINS CINEMATOGRAPHY OSCAR FOR MANK

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he film industry’s finest were honoured at the 93rd Academy Awards, a smaller than usual - but no less entertaining and celebratory - COVID-safe event at Los Angeles’ Union Station. Erik Messerschmidt ASC won the cinematography award for his magnificent lensing of Mank, his first Oscar win. Nominees in the category were Sean Bobbitt BSC (Judas and the Black Messiah); Dariusz Wolski ASC (News of the World); Joshua James Richards tre) takes (Nomadland); and Phedon Papamichael ASC Director Chloé Zhao (cen mbers me GSC (The Trial of the Chicago 7). to the stage with some and crew – of the Nomadland cast

Accepting his award, Messerschmidt sh cinematographer Briti ng udi incl said: “Wow, I wish I could cut this into five (far left) Joshua James Richards pieces because it’s such an honour to be nominated amongst all of you. David [Fincher], thank you for creating an environment where we could do our best work. I got to go home and the first woman of colour. Taking to the stage with some feel like I gave it my all every night. Ceán [Chaffin], thank members of the Nomadland cast and crew - including you for the endless support. Eric Roth, thank you for British cinematographer Joshua James Richards - Zhao the guidance. Amanda [Seyfried], Gary [Oldman], what said: “On behalf of my fellow producers, Peter Spears, a privilege and a joy to watch you work. The entire cast, Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, and the one and only Frances thank you for hitting your marks; it mattered. This really McDormand, we thank the Academy, and we thank our belongs to an extraordinary crew who I could not do brilliant fellow nominees, and we thank all the hearts anything without. Brian, Will, Alex, Dave, Gary, Dwayne, and hands that come together to make this movie; from Danny, Jerry, and all of your team, you make my job easy.

Searchlight Pictures and Jessica Bruder, who trusted us Thank you. And thank you to my beautiful wife Naiara, with her beautiful book, to our brilliant cinematographer who tolerates this crazy business and helped me get Joshua James Richards, and to the entire Nomadland through this movie.” company. We want to show our deepest gratitude

Nomadland also triumphed, winning best picture, to Linda May, Swankie, Bob Wells, and the nomadic best director for Chloé Zhao, and best actress for community - all the people we met on the road. Thank Frances McDormand. Zhao is the second woman in the you for teaching us the power of resilience and hope and history of the Ocars to win the best director award and for reminding us what true kindness looks like.”

Other wins on the sparkling night of filmmaking celebration included Mank which took home best production design (Donald Graham Burt and Jan Pascale); Sound of Metal’s best sound and best editing triumphs (Mikkel E. G. Nielsen); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’s awards for costume design (Ann Roth) and hair and make-up; and Tenet’s visual effects win (Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley and Scott Fisher - DNEG). British writerdirector Emerald Fennell was crowned victorious in the best original screenplay category for Promising Young Woman (lensed by Benjamin Kračun). Anthony Hopkins won the best actor award for his role in The Father and another British actor, Daniel Kaluuya, was presented with the best supporting actor for his portrayal of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. Among the other shining stars of film recognised on the night was Youn Yujjung who won best supporting actress for Minari; Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round which won best international feature; My Octopus Teacher which took home the best documentary award; and Pixar’s Soul which was awarded best feature and best original score. To see the full list of winners and nominees, please visit the British Cinematographer website.

SCREEN INDUSTRIES UNITE TO TACKLE BULLYING, HARASSMENT, AND RACISM

SOC AWARDS: GEOFFREY HALEY AND JIM MCCONKEY ANNOUNCED AS CAMERA OPERATORS OF THE YEAR

he BFI and BAFTA have announced the next stage of ground-breaking work to tackle bullying, harassment, and racism in the workplace with a new employer Action List for the film and television industry, as The Film and TV Charity launches new services, providing immediate support for workers.

The new Action List is based on the Set of Principles and Guidance published in 2018 developed by the BFI in partnership with BAFTA and in consultation with organisations across the film, games and television industries in response to urgent and systemic issues around bullying and harassment exposed. The Guidance outlines the law around bullying, harassment and racism, and also includes sexism, ableism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination. It sets out the responsibilities of employers and provides advice for employees and freelancers to prevent and tackle workplace bullying, harassment, and racism. A supporting Dignity at Work Policy, developed in partnership with Bectu, provides a template for companies, productions, and festivals to complement the Guidance and Principles to tackle workplace bullying and harassment.

The Action List makes further recommendations including taking the new ScreenSkills online training module on bullying and harassment, and ensuring all employees and freelancers are aware of the new suite of bullying support services launched by The Film and TV Charity. The Action List can be downloaded from the BFI website.

Research commissioned by The Film and TV Charity, published in February 2020, which collected data on more than 9,000 workers, revealed that bullying remains highly prevalent – across all subsectors, 84% had experienced or witnessed bullying or harassment, with even higher figures in some subsectors. Those who had experienced bullying were twice as likely to want to leave the industry and highly likely to have had mental health problems. In direct response to this need, the charity has developed a suite of new services to provide more support for individuals who have experienced or witnessed bullying including: the Bullying Pathway Service, offering free, confidential and independent industry-specific legal, HR and mental health advice; and digital incident-recording tool Spot.

The Society of Camera Operators (SOC) recipients for Camera Operator of the Year in Film were announced at a virtual ceremony.

Geoffrey Haley SOC won Camera Operator of the Year in Film for his work on Cherry, topping a talented group of nominees including: Don Devine SOC & George Billinger SOC (Greyhound); Jason Ellson SOC (Mulan); John “Buzz” Moyer SOC (The Hunt); and Sasha Proctor SOC (The Outpost).

Jim McConkey SOC was awarded Camera Operator of the Year in Television for his work on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. The TV category nominees included: Don Devine SOC (Perry Mason); Simon Jayes SOC (The Mandalorian); Andrew Mitchell SOC (Ratched); Henry Tirl, (Wandavision).

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10 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Erik Messerschmidt ASC with the Oscar for best cinematography for Mank (Credit: Matt Petit/A.M.P.A.S.)

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

BLACKMAGIC DESIGN HELPS JONAS LJUNG ACHIEVE WORKFLOW SUCCESS ON ANIMAL FOOD

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Jonas Ljung

hort film Animal Food was captured using a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K as the B camera - used in conjunction with an ARRI Amira - with all post completed in DaVinci Resolve.

Directed by Swedish filmmaker and entertainer Jonas Ljung and shot on location in Sweden, dark comedy Animal Food explores one man’s abnormal interest in animal food. While being humorous and engaging, the five-minute film also challenges the viewer to question what they should and should not eat.

“I was aiming for a Wes Anderson or Roy Andersson kind of aesthetic, lifting the deadpan personality of the protagonist,” says Ljung. “I prefer a softer old-school organic look, so DP Haris Mlivic suggested using his vintage Zeiss Standard primes with my Voigtländer MFT primes to match.”

On choosing the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, Ljung says: “As an aspiring director, buying a Pocket 4K and learning how to use it greatly helped me to understand the filmmaking process.

The camera produces fantastic images and the postproduction workflow, with Blackmagic RAW, makes everything so much easier.”

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K was essential to capturing a shot vital to the film’s concept.

“To capture a bird landing on a ball of fat, we had to use a light and flexible camera that could film for hours straight waiting for the bird. The Pocket 4K’s low compression was crucial to get the footage to match the image of our A camera. We also used it for gimbal and overhead shots with great success.”

The bird was keyed out from the fat ball scene.

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NICOLAS BOLDUC CSC SHOOTS CRISIS ON KODAK 35MM FILM

Design’s compositing software, Fusion, to produce a realistic composition, also switching out some skies and resolving issues missed in the shoot or which could not be fixed on set.

All post-production, including editing, was carried out in DaVinci Resolve, with grading completed by colourist Martin Steinberg. He was briefed by Ljung to create a heightened reality that “felt slightly alien in the supermarket location, but soft and warm inside the protagonist’s home”.

Animal Food was test screened at BARCIFF (Barcelona) with some great feedback and reactions and will now go on to the festival and competition circuit with the official premiere at Beverly Hills Film Festival on 28 April.

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efore the COVID-19 pandemic, drug overdoses caused by opioids dominated news headlines - the subject of Crisis by filmmaker Nicholas Jarecki (Arbitrage). The film interweaves three narratives that examine the family impact as well as the roles of law enforcement and pharmaceutical companies and a conscious decision was made to maintain a universal aesthetic throughout the production. “If you go handheld with one story and dolly with another or do these crazy tints, it becomes dogmatic and defeats the purpose of what Nick wrote,” says DP Nicolas Bolduc CSC (Enemy). “His visual style has always been grounded and rooted. I like that a lot because it doesn’t try to create artifices around the story. We were on the same page on how to shoot it with the camera being physically close to the actors, wider lenses and to be into their bubble.”

To share the same space with the actors, Bolduc shot with the Arricam LT camera and tended to favour 40mm, 50mm and 75mm lenses from the Panavision C Series. A fundamental component was capturing the footage on 35mm, with over 1.5 million feet of film provided by Kodak. “I have never gone off film for the simple reason that if you turn on the camera and do nothing else it automatically looks better,” notes Jarecki. “It has a certain poetry to it, everything is not crisp clear, and you have the grain. There’s also its vibe, colour reproduction, the falloff of light, depth of field, and how objects shift in the focal plane. Film gives you this intimacy with the faces of the actors and yet there is layer of emotional abstraction at the same time. We had to make a lot of sacrifices to shoot on film.”

“When you start exposing film, again you realise that it exposes faces in a way that digital cannot handle,” notes Bolduc. “How the grain and light react on faces, and the way the magenta, green and yellow blend together, the skin tones become fantastic.”

The night scenes were captured on Kodak VISION3 500T Color Negative Film #5219 C CS c ldu Bo Nicolas while Kodak VISION3 250D Color Negative Film #5207 was utilised for the daytime settings.

“I didn’t push it. We didn’t want too much grain as the image needed to be clean and crisp. We also wanted to avoid it feeling like a documentary. It was important to the story to have the camera and filmmaking be invisible.”

Unfortunately, the production was unable to find a suitable video tap to accurately display the imagery.

“That being said, we did try to create a look in camera and to paint with light,” says Jarecki. “We did do DI and had help from one of our production partners as well as Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3. But at the end of the day, we were going for natural.

We’re not trying to create a look in there. We’re trying to honour film. Maybe we even go photochemical next time!”

Article by Trevor Hogg

12 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

DP JOE “JODY” WILLIAMS AND DIRECTOR CRAIG BREWER UNITE FOR COMING 2 AMERICA

Cinematographer Joe “Jody” Williams and director Craig Brewer partnered with Panavision and Light Iron to take audiences back to Zamunda in the sequel to Coming to America.

“I

was honoured and ecstatic to get a chance to help shape this next chapter of the story,” says cinematographer Joe "Jody" Williams who reteamed with director Craig Brewer following their work on the series Empire. “Like most people of my generation, especially Black people, I had a nostalgic connection to the first movie. It was one of the first times we saw ourselves projected in this way, as royalty.”

It was that feeling that the filmmakers wanted to recapture in Coming 2 America while crafting a visual palette reflecting Zamunda’s 30 years of progress.

The filmmakers framed the story in large format with Panavision’s Millennium DXL2 camera, which Brewer had employed on the Eddie Murphy-starring feature Dolemite Is My Name.

Brewer felt completely at ease with Williams behind the camera, referring to the cinematographer as “technically brilliant” and “able to bring a richness to the imagery.” Coming 2 America also reunited Brewer with Dolemite veteran Corinne Bogdanowicz, senior DI colourist at Light Iron Los Angeles. “What she’s brought across these two movies has been beautiful,” Brewer says.

Coming 2 America’s 57 days of principal photography took place almost exclusively on stages and locations in Atlanta, where Williams and Brewer found convincing backdrops for Manhattan and Queens. The camera and lens package was sourced through Panavision Atlanta, and Light Iron Atlanta provided dailies services.

The filmmakers framed for the 2:1 aspect ratio, within which, Williams wanted as many head-

to-toe shots as possible and to keep the frames big and expansive to “see the grandeur of the beautiful costumes and palace sets”. Williams consistently rolled at least two DXL2s simultaneously: “We had scenes with four or five comedians - not just actors, but funny people who were going to be riffing and ad-libbing. We wanted to be able to catch the magic.”

The cinematographer mostly worked with the DXL2 at its native 1600 ISO, although he occasionally set it instead for 800. “I loved all the latitude, and the 1600 was especially great when we did night-exterior scenes,” he says.

During preproduction, Williams shot lens tests at Panavision Chicago, cycling through a variety of largeformat optics to potentially pair with the DXL2. “I did portrait shots looking at the subject’s face and brown skin with lights turned on and off,” he recalls. “All of the Panavision lenses are amazing; to me, they’ve always been the premier glass. But the Primo Artistes spoke to me for this movie. They had a more human, intimate sensibility. They have a bit of personality that’s not too in your face. The bokeh is really nice, the roll-off is great, and they have a softness, but it’s not too soft.”

Woody Omens ASC photographed the original Coming to America with Panavision’s then-new 35mmformat Primo spherical lenses, which Williams employed for a flashback. To achieve the proper coverage with the 35mm-format Primos, Williams cropped the DXL2’s large-format Monstro sensor to capture a Super 35mm gate - which, thanks to the full sensor’s 8K resolution, still allows for 5K capture, a boon to the visual effects the flashback sequence required.

“We had scans of the original film, and we wanted to keep everything fairly true to how the older footage looked,” DP Joe “Jody” Bogdanowicz notes. “The challenge was Williams really getting the newer footage to look more like the older footage. We put some grain on there to get more texture, and

I ended up twisting the colour a little bit and actually taking away some of the range, squashing the highlights and giving it more of a gritty look.”

The question for costume designer Ruth E. Carter and production designer Jefferson Sage was whether to recreate what was seen in the first film or evoke the wardrobe and architecture of the original while embracing materials that reflect the modern world.

“We ultimately decided that the movie means so much to everyone, and in particular to African American culture because it presented Black royalty on film in a way that had never really been seen before. But now the world has seen Wakanda, so we felt we had to bring the best-looking elements we could that are inspired by the first one. It feels familiar, but you’re in a better place now,” says Brewer.

For example, the 1988 version of the palace featured a pink and teal ballroom with palm trees painted on the walls. For the sequel’s ballroom, Sage referenced the original with palm-tree carvings, while Williams gave a nod to the old set’s colour palette through his colourful lighting for such scenes as King Jaffe’s funeral. “I really gravitated to those colours, particularly in the spectrum from teal to purple,” Wiiliams says. “Those are royal colours.”

Bogdanowicz describes the overall look throughout the rest of the palace as “warmer, with a little bit of creaminess”. “When it’s later in the day, we let it go a little bit further with a really rich, warm look, and other times it was a little more subtle,” she says.

“We had a lot of colour to play with in Zamunda, golds and blues and jewel tones, and we had a lot of fun being able to push things without going gaudy.”

At the start of the DI, Williams told Bogdanowicz the priority was to “highlight the beautiful brown skin tones, and to accentuate the colours without it becoming hyper-colourful or cartoonish”. Bogdanowicz agrees oversaturated colours can look artificial. Instead of directly boosting saturation, she focused on colour separation while “creating an overall curve that can give you rich colours”.

“You can have a coolness in Director lower areas of the curve and a bit of Craig Brewer warmth in other areas,” she says. “By doing that, you get more colours on the screen, and that adds saturation to the image without actually pushing the saturation as a dial, which can so easily make certain colours go crazy.”

Unit photography by Quantrell D. Colbert and Annette Brown. All images courtesy of Amazon Studios and Paramount Pictures.

14 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Photo: Cate Cameron

AnamorphicI Primes & Zoom From T2.3

“The project came up through my agent while I was in Australia. For me, it was great — a high profile comedy with Kristen Wiig.

We decided to use Sony’s Venice camera loaded with the latest firmware update. When it came time to selecting the lenses for the project, Director Josh Greenbaum made it very clear from the beginning that he wanted to shoot in anamorphic 2.39 to capture the vistas in the film. We blind tested various anamorphic lenses and just kept going back to the Cookes.

With the Cooke lenses, I had a consistent look throughout the entire project. The ‘Cooke Look®’ is a number of things, some more tangible than others. What I really like about Cooke lenses is that they are not overly harsh. They give you ways to take the digital edge off the cameras, which are so sharp in higher resolutions — sometimes being too digital looking is somewhat unflattering. That’s a concern of DPs worldwide. Cookes are sharp, but with a certain gentleness and are more flattering than other modern lenses… but it’s not a vintage kind of look. It’s sort of how they are made.

They’re infused with a hand-made quality that extends to the image as well.

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I want to applaud Cooke because they have a lovely consistency across all their lens families. Having a similar look is really important to DPs, but I know when I put on the Cookes and I’m testing, that’s what I get, and that’s quite nice. It’s a look that is carefully considered and flattering for the actors… and that can be the most important thing.”

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

VERO LAUNCHES IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL PRODUCTION STUDIO

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ioneering new virtual production solution VERO is now fully operational in the UK, offering highend LED surround screen backdrop, realtime graphics and powerful in-sync camera tracking.

The project brings together content, technology and operations talent from multiple companies, who have joined forces to enable creatives and filmmakers far more on-set visual control. VERO features Desay 2.6mm pixel density LED screen technology from Production AV and visual content by MadeWithVero. Utilising Production AV’s touring and events experience, the solution can be deployed across the UK as needed by the production.

VERO enables directors to see the visual backdrop in real-time during filming on set, with the powerful graphics engine tracking technology meaning the action is always realistic and moves with the subject. The team is pooling talent from across the South West to achieve its goals, and is offering the VERO studio for hire, kit supply and for live events. It is already attracting attention from Channel 4, HBO and Keo Films.

INDUSTRY MOURNS THE LOSS OF ARRI’S MAX WELZ

LIVERPOOL'S NEW TEMPORARY SHOOTING SPACE NAMED THE DEPOT

Liverpool’s new purpose-built film and TV shoot space has been named The Depot, taking inspiration from the location’s history as a former bus site. The Depot is seen as critical to Liverpool’s strategy to cement its reputation as one of Europe’s premier film and TV production hubs.

It is one of the major projects earmarked in Liverpool’s Recovery Plan to stimulate the city’s post-pandemic economy. It is predicted The Depot – which is expected that the shooting space will be operational by Summer 2021 - will create a £24m economic boost for the regional economy, creating 360 new jobs and 760 indirect jobs.

ARRI legend Max Welz has passed away at the age of 95. Joining ARRI in August 1945, as the company’s 50th employee, Welz remained true to ARRI for the next 62 years and holds the company record for years of service.

After starting as a lathe operator, when the company was outsourced to Brannenburg am Inn, he quickly became a master lathe operator and milling operator. From 1948 onwards, he held numerous positions at ARRI in Munich, managing several departments and establishing new ones. In 1986, Welz was granted general power of attorney as division manager for production engineering.

In 1991, he took over responsibility for the entire production of camera and lighting equipment as technical manager of apparatus engineering. In 1992, he was appointed to the management team of Cine Technik; he decided to step down from management in 2001 after many successful years.

At the end of his career, he led ARRI’s casting technology department in Stephanskirchen back into the black as managing director.

“Our sincere sympathy and heartfelt condolences go out to the family of Max Welz. He shaped generations of ARRI employees. We now mourn the loss of a cherished companion and look back with gratitude on decades of successful cooperation,” said ARRI Executive Board Member Markus Zeiler on behalf of the shareholders, the Supervisory Board, the Management Board, and all the ARRI colleagues.

16 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

LOS ANGELES-BASED MEDIA GIANT HCP SET TO OPEN SECOND STUDIOS SITE IN BARKING

The Los Angeles-based media juggernaut, Hackman Capital Partners (HCP), is to open a second site in the borough after first securing Dagenham's film studio, set to be the largest film studio in London. HCP has arranged a deal with the council to lease two warehouses in Barking which will become studios.

Known as The Wharf, the 10-acre site on the River Roding will complement Dagenham's larger Eastbrook Studios complex. The company's second investment brings up to £350 million into the borough. Hailed by the town hall's regeneration arm, Be First, as having the potential to create more than 1,800 jobs, the studios are expected to open before the main Eastbrook site and could be available for filming as early as this autumn.

SURVEY REVEALS UK AUDIENCES ARE EAGER TO RETURN TO THE CINEMA A nationwide survey commissioned by the Film Distributors' Association and carried out by research agency MetrixLab confirms that the British public is

eager to return to cinemas when they start to reopen next month, with 59% citing the cinema as their most missed out-of-home entertainment activity.

The survey reveals 40% of audiences are planning to return within the first few weeks after reopening and confirmed that lockdowns over the last year have reignited audiences’ passion for seeing films on the big screen. These encouraging findings highlight that cinema is something that is struggling to be recreated at home, with two-thirds of respondents favouring the big screen experience, immersive sound, special effects, and access to a wide range of new films that only cinema can offer.

The survey shows a high level of confidence in the rigorous standards of safety, putting cinema at the top of the entertainment sector in this regard.

PROCAM AND TAKE 2 FILMS REBRAND AS

Procam and Take 2 Films, will begin trading under the brand name Procam Take 2. All branches and divisions, including Procam Projects and Procam NY, are included in the rebrand which introduces a strong new visual identity, with an integrated website, and centralised business purpose. Procam and Take 2 Films have worked sideby-side within the camera and grip rental market since Procam’s acquisition of Take 2 Films in 2016. Established in 1989 and 1999, both companies have significant experience supplying filming equipment to many of Britain’s best-loved television series and feature films.

JOHNNY COLLEY JOINS PIXIPIXEL AS DIRECTOR OF LIGHTING

Rental company Pixipixel has appointed Johnny Colley as director of lighting. Colley said: “Coming from a background working as a lighting gaffer for over two decades on feature films, dramas, commercials and music videos, I am eager to share my knowledge and experience and look forward to building relationships, growing the business and supporting crews.”

Steve Knight, MD of Pixipixel said: “With his previous experience as business director for ARRI Lighting Rental and more recently as managing director for Sumolight Rental, Johnny brings a great level of expertise to lead the lighting department.”

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

DP PATRICK MELLER ON CAPTURING THE FASTPACED, PERFORMANCEFOCUSED RARE BEASTS Bold cinematography reflecting the tone and nuances of the script was cinematographer Patrick Meller’s ambition when shooting Rare Beasts.

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Meller knew he would be shooting a lot of portraiture and wanted to capture as much detail as possible in the faces. To achieve this, ARRI’s Ed Jones and Simon Surtees supplied Meller with an Alexa 65 and 65 S lenses for the shoot. “The Alexa 65 is a captivating camera. There’s so much information in the image, the fall off is beautiful, and it captures skin tones and colours with a natural softness,” he says.

“The 65’s Prime lenses are soft, have a lovely wrap around and an impressive focal range. I can’t thank ARRI enough for supporting me and the production team with their most advanced camera.”

Similar focal lengths to that of the human eye and wider lenses were used to open up the characters’ worlds. As the film is fast-paced and full of emotion, Meller wanted the camerawork to be frantic in terms of speed, but also to be “sensitive and delicate to enjoy the calmer moments in the script”.

While Mandy represents control, her love interest Pete represents chaos, which Meller reflected through composition and lighting. Calm and controlled scenes were generally more brightly lit and DP Patrick Meller framed in a more “relaxed and positive way”. If chaos was being depicted, the DP chose a “moodier and typically handheld” approach.

Piper and Meller also discussed the scenes playing out in one or two shots.

Not wanting to overshoot the coverage as “too many cuts can remove you from the scene”, they tried to tell the story in one shot when possible.

he off-beat comedy, Rare Beasts, which marks Billie Piper’s directorial debut, centres around the struggles of career-driven single mother Mandy (played by Piper) as she juggles the pressures of work, motherhood, family, and love.

Impressed with the pace of the script and its range of characters, Meller was excited by the possibilities the theatrical and amusing dialogue presented and how it could be dramatised for the screen. “When exploring where we could take the character of Mandy visually, we decided the cinematography should echo the pressures of her life,” says Meller.

With Piper acting in almost every scene, much time was spent in prep constructing a visual landscape that best reflected her script and gave her the freedom to commit to playing the protagonist. “She didn’t need to worry about the construction of the scenes or lighting as we’d already curated the majority of the language,” says Meller. “This dynamic created a shorthand for us that meant she could focus on her performance and those of the other actors.”

Piper wanted the camera to feel like a member of the cast, which Meller did not want to be “immersive in a documentary way”. He explains: “I wanted it to be bold and cinematic and chose not to use over-the-shoulder or dirty framing for the dialogue. I wanted to put the viewer right there inside the conversation.”

18 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

To fulfil Meller and Piper’s visual ambitions, a largely focused and conventional approach was adopted throughout. “However, I did use a split dioptre in one scene to put Mandy and her mother on the same focal plane, hoping it would connect them emotionally,” Meller explains. “Dutch angles and upside-down framing were used to signify that Mandy’s world was somehow off-kilter. In the dream sequence at the end of the film I had fun with overexposure and using an off-speed shutter to create horizontal banding.”

Simplistic and conventional lighting was also chosen, mainly working with soft sources and occasionally pushing harder sources through windows to up the contrast. “We didn’t want much lighting on the floor which might restrict the actors,” he says. “Like Billie, I wanted the camera to be a cast member and to shoot from PATRICK MELLER wherever felt right.

Therefore, we used a lot of lightweight LEDs like LiteMats, Astera tubes and Jem Balls which had a low profile and could be rigged in corners and from above.”

Meller collaborated with DIT Anton Badstuber for on set colouring and then with Asa Shoul at De Lane Lee for the final grade. Shooting on the Alexa 65 at 6.5k RAW generated a large amount of data that needed to be verified, backed up and then transcoded for the offline and the dailies. “It was going to be a huge cost to the production, so we designed a workflow with Mario Radinovic at ARRI that allowed us to input the RAW to the Codex vault but spit out ProRes 4444 XQ in Log as our master files,” explains Meller. “It saved the production a huge amount on hard drives and processing time but most importantly we didn’t lose any resolution.”

Article by Zoe Mutter

“WHEN EXPLORING WHERE WE COULD TAKE THE CHARACTER OF MANDY VISUALLY, WE DECIDED THE CINEMATOGRAPHY SHOULD ECHO THE PRESSURES OF HER LIFE.”

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NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

PRESENTING MATTHEWS GOBO PLATE BABY PIN

BAFTA UK SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMME APPLICATIONS ARE OPEN

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atthews Studio Equipment has released a new smart mounting solution to add to their Gobo Plate line - the 5/8” Baby Pin. Designed to save time and energy when mounting 2.5” grip heads to an endless variety of equipment and set architecture, the Gobo Plate Baby Pin includes a flat 3” wide by 1/8” thick steel “plate” portion with a clear zinc coating. A variety of machined cut outs, designed for versatile functionality, include a T-slot with V centring, as well as two ½” diameter, three 3/8” diameter, and six ¼” diameter spaced circular holes to easily accept attachment hardware or rod pass through.

SONY AND IMAGO TECHNICAL COMMITTEE JOIN FORCES TO OFFER SHARPNESS CONTROL

Sony and the IMAGO Technical Committee announced that, following several meetings at IBC exhibitions, one of the requests from cinematographers, DITs and colourists gathered by the Technical Committee (ITC) in its latest survey, has been fulfilled by Sony's Japanese engineers. Analysis of the Request to Manufacturers survey launched nearly two years ago by the ITC, showed that access to texture and especially sharpness parameters was required by professionals to allow them to master the artistic process. As a result, control of sharpness for X-OCN and RAW materials is now available in the new version 3.5 of the Sony RAW viewer. RAW Viewer is application software that allows you to view RAW/X-OCN/ XAVC/SStP files recorded using the F65/PMW-F55/PMW-F5/NEXFS700/MPC-3610 (VENICE/CineAltaV) unit or a combination of the unit and the SR-R4/AXS-R5 /AXS-R7 portable memory recorder.

BAFTA scholars Jason Harris (left) and Jurell Carter with Jamie Dornan (middle)

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pplications are now open for BAFTA's UK scholarship programme - part of the organisation's charitable activity to support talented people at all stages of their career in film, games and television. The programme - supported by the Kirsh Foundation, the Reuben Foundation, Warner Bros. and Tinopolis - is open to British citizens in need of financial assistance to take eligible undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the UK. Each BAFTA Scholar receives between £5,000 to £12,000 towards their annual course fees (if undertaking postgraduate study) or towards living expenses (for undergraduate courses), as well as mentoring support and free access to BAFTA events around the UK. The application deadline is Wednesday 26 May.

MOTION IMPOSSIBLE RELEASES NEW NOVA FIRMWARE Motion Impossible’s AGITO remote control modular dolly is gaining powerful new features as the result of a new free firmware upgrade for all users. Nova, the new firmware now available for free download, introduces repeatable movements to the AGITO arsenal, provides a more ergonomic and streamlined user interface for the AGITO’s remote control, and signals some of the future directions the Motion Impossible team plan to take with AGITO’s ongoing development. A newly unified UI now includes a dark mode, the ability to quickly switch between sports, trax and repeatable moves mode, real-time speed feedback to show how fast the system is moving, additional control mapping, enhanced tower controls, and advanced steering modes, including steering angle hold for the perfect circle without track.

CHROMA-Q CARBON NEUTRAL TESTING WITH GREEN VOLTAGE LED lighting innovator Chroma-Q has been pre-production testing in collaboration with Green Voltage zero emission generator units. Working with a selection of Brute Force lamp heads, the crew, plus Green Voltage director and experienced operator, Adam Baker tested the LED Wendylight alternative, together with Green Voltage’s 5kW VOLTstack E-Gen remote power systems.

With the Brute Force running at full power, the generators provided over 2.5 hours operation. The fully dimmable LED fixture, with its extended CCT range between 2,000K and 10,000K, also underwent additional testing at various colour temperatures and intensities, resulting in even greater operating times. Ideal for remote use or noise restricted environments, where silent operation is essential, the Green Voltage VOLTstacks are available in 2kW and 5kW sizes, with higher output additions to the range due in the second quarter of the year.

20 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

WFTV LAUNCHES FOUR NATIONS MENTORING SCHEME Women in Film and Television’s (WFTV) Four Nations Mentoring Scheme is designed for women looking to take a significant step in their career. 41 mentees have been selected from across the four nations to take part in the 2021 programme which runs for six months, during which time each of the participants is paired up with senior industry professionals for six hours of mentoring contact alongside peer-to-peer training and seminars, WFTV events and wider industry networking opportunities.

Mentors taking part in this year’s scheme include writer Sally Wainwright, Peter Fincham, Co-CEO Expectation Entertainment, Director Phillippa Lowthorpe, CEO Wonderhood Studios David Abraham, Channel 4 commissioning editor Fozia Khan, Director Sarah Gavron, and presenter and journalist Ellie Flynn. The England scheme has been launched in association with ScreenSkills and is supported by BBC, UKTV and Channel 4. The new schemes launched in Scotland and Wales are supported by Netflix who also sponsor the existing scheme in Northern Ireland.

RUBEN WOODIN DECHAMPS CREATES MINDFUL VISUALISATION IN THE REASON I JUMP

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he 2020 Sundance Audience Awardwinning documentary The Reason I Jump by Jerry Rothwell uses the memoir of Naoki Higashida as the means to explore the lives and internal logic of five autistic children situated in the US, UK, India, and Sierra Leone.

“I come from a music video and short form documentary background predominantly, so this was the first time I was onboard to shoot a whole feature documentary,” reveals cinematographer Ruben Woodin Dechamps.

“Jerry was looking for someone with not just an observational background to help design the visual language for the more sensory moments. I wanted to create an observational approach which was an honest and quiet visual cinematic experience, an invitation into intimate spaces where you could feel comfortable looking without judgment. We wanted to allow moments to play out with held frames, keeping it stripped back where possible without the temptation to look for too much coverage.”

Both the visuals and sounds have a hyperreal quality to them. “We could dip into moments of overstimulation in the subjective parts, but the objective had to stay honest,” says Dechamps. When shooting subjectively and focusing on the contributors’

preoccupations, he shot a lot of macro as the sense of scale and the seduction of detail kept coming up in research that was carried out. “Naoki’s words visualised through the journey of a young boy through landscapes act like our spirit guide between the nonverbal and verbal worlds. We wanted to highlight the feeling of peace and relaxation, which came from movement, so our camera journeys through abstract visual landscapes with the boy, always drawn by this need for movement. We opted to shoot spherical in 2:35:1 format to play with the layers of scale within their sensory experiences.”

Feral in London supplied the camera and Movi.

“We predominantly shot on the ARRI Alexa Mini at 3.2K with Zeiss Standard Speeds and ARRI Macro,” says Dechamps. “I mostly used 20mm, 32mm and ARRI Macro 100mm. Alongside the Mini there was also some

DOPCHOICE ADDS EVEN SOFTNESS TO CAMEO F-SERIES FRESNELS DoPchoice’s Snapbag softbox and Snapgrid grids soften and direct the output of the Cameo F-Series Fresnels. The Snapbag SBSAHF is made to mount exclusively to the Cameo F-Series, comes packed flat in its own pouch and snaps up instantly in a one-piece rectangular accessory. Being lightweight, it attaches in seconds directly to Cameo Fresnels with hook and loop straps that fit around the barn doors.

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VITEC GROUP ACQUIRES LED TECHNOLOGY COMPANY QUASAR SCIENCE The Vitec Group has announced the acquisition of LED lighting technology provider Quasar Science. The innovator in linear and tubular LED lighting solutions for cinematic applications will become part of the group’s production solutions division alongside Litepanels: a supplier of LED lighting panels for television lighting and cinematography acquired by the group in 2008. This acquisition is part of Vitec’s commitment to advancing LED lighting technology for broadcast, to bring lighting solutions to the market faster and to expand further in the cinematic lighting market.

Sony FS5, and archive home movies material shot on Hi8 and iPhone which Jerry used within the edit. Lighting was minimal. We had practicals and a couple of light panels where needed. Predominantly I worked with focus puller and Movi tech Richard Savage on the UK shoots, and the rest was with local assistance. We finished the film at Dirty Looks in London with Gareth Bishop.

I created some looks in Lightroom from frame grabs which we discussed with Jerry and then worked from the Log-C in the DI to finish the film.”

One of the biggest challenges on the shoot was learning how to work with the contributors, notes Dechamps. “To shoot with sensitivity without relying on the bedrock of language to understand and predict where the scenes may head. Here is someone whose neurological processing isn’t linear with dissonant inner and outer realities. They may be super anxious, not because you have a camera in your hand which just edged closer but because of an experience years ago which they can’t help but revisit.”

Article by Trevor Hogg

LITEPANELS LAUNCHES APOLLO WIRELESS DMX SYSTEM Litepanels new powerful and stable dual-band wireless DMX system Apollo Bridge uses advanced dynamic frequency hopping technology to instantly create a robust wireless DMX network anywhere.

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Apollo Bridge can also be used with any control software or console including Blackout, Luminair, ETC, GrandMA and Chamsys to send commands, using the sACN DMX protocol, wirelessly or via the LAN ethernet port. Single DMX512 universe boards can also be used by connecting them through the Apollo Bridge 5-pin XLR I/O port. Apollo has been designed to operate any fixture with a DMX input, as well as DMX networking and wireless DMX equipment.

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 21

NEWS / PRODUCTION / POST & TECHNOLOGY ROUND-UP

VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKY DISCUSSES HIS CAREER AND BLACK-AND-WHITE SILENT FILM GUNDA

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ussian filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky is known for his poetic and visually powerful documentaries ¡Vivan las Antipodas! and Aquarela. His black-and-white silent film Gunda, which saw him team up with co-cinematographer Egil Håskjold Larsen, takes us back to the origins of filmmaking. For Joaquin Phoenix, executive producer, it’s a film of profound importance and artistry. Birgit Heidsiek spoke with Kossakovsky about his visual approach, the challenges he faced, and his fascination with 96 fps.

What made you decide to become a cameraman?

I always wanted to be a cameraman. I spent my entire childhood using a photo camera to film butterflies, flowers, fish, birds, and landscapes. I started taking photos at the age of six or seven. It was a privilege.

My uncle gave me his photo camera. At the age of 12 children can get summer jobs when school is out. I got a job in a factory that produced motor bikes and earned enough money to buy a 500mm lens for my camera.

Did you dream of a career as a film director?

I never wanted to be a director. The camera is essential for cinema. It makes a film, but not the story. I don’t believe in films that tell stories; I believe in films that show something. If people want to tell a story, they can write a book. I don’t believe in storytelling. Cinema should not tell a story; it should show us something instead.

What does cinema mean for you?

In Russia, we watch films in movie theatres — not on TV, not on computers. We have two main film schools, and each of them has great cinema projection. While I was studying scriptwriting and directing in Moscow, I watched four or five films a day on the big screen. This is a privilege that education affords. Today in Europe, you can’t find anything like it.

Where did you start your career in the film industry?

I worked as a camera assistant for the best Russian cameramen in the Leningrad-based documentary film studios for a few years. I directed my first film by accident. I got access to a great philosopher, but I was not allowed to bring an entire film crew to assist me, so I started shooting. I showed the footage to directors

so I could turn it into a movie. They suggested that I edit the footage myself because I had also worked as a professional editor for five years. I was afraid to present footage myself, so I called Georgi Rerberg, the cameraman who shot Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky. I showed him my footage and he liked it and said, “I’ll go with you.” He shot the main episode of my first movie.

Is it true that you shot one of your early films through the window of an apartment in St. Petersburg?

It happened accidentally. In 2000, I was in Germany where I wanted to shoot a comedy. During that period, I returned to Russia five or six times, where I shot personal footage from the window of my apartment. After a year of waiting around in Germany, I realised that I didn’t have money for the comedy, but I did have great footage for a comedy which I ended up shooting from my window.

Do you always shoot your films yourself?

After working with Rerberg, I was unable to find anyone who could shoot my films as well as he did. So, I ended up being the cameraman on most of my films. However, Gunda I made with Egil Håskjold Larson from Norway; he’s a great Steadicam operator. I saw his movie 69 Minutes of 86 Days - a documentary about a refugee family travelling from Syria to Sweden over the course of 69 days. He was following a family - and he paid particular attention to a three-year-old girl - with the Steadicam. He was so professional, so profound in his understanding of movement and the distance between the camera and the subject. The most important aspect of camera work is to find the right distance between camera and the subject. It was brilliant Steadicam work.

For Gunda, I had to film animals closely and I had to move with them, therefore I needed a Steadicam operator.

vsky Victor Kossako (left)

How did you start Gunda?

It started with finding the right actors.

Normally, it takes a lot of time to discover the heart of my film. In this case, it was easy. We met Gunda on the very first day of our research. I opened the door to the pigsty, and Gunda

came towards me. She was cinematic - powerful. Her look was strong. So, I told my producer Anita Rehoff Larsen, “we’ve found our Meryl Streep!”

What kind of visual concept did you choose?

I studied the sty where she lived, so we designed the set to be identical to her home but with a 360-degree slot to shoot through. We put dolly tracks around the sty. We were outside, but the lens was inside, and the slot was just big enough for the lens. Wherever she was, we were just able to follow her. We didn’t disturb her because only the lens was inside, while the camera and the crew were outside. She was also gentle with us, and so friendly - even when she gave birth, she was comfortable with us. She was a dream character.

What kind of equipment did you use?

We used the ARRI Alexa-Mini, which is convenient and easy to use for this kind of documentary. It’s really fast and small. We used an Angénieux 24–190 zoom lens.

We used some lighting, but very little so we wouldn’t disturb her. It was practically unnoticeable. The pigsty had a lot of dark corners, so we made some little additions to light these areas. We used a disco ball light for these dark areas. Normally, a disco ball light rotates, which is why it creates its unique effects. But we didn’t move it, so it lit the entire sty. Wherever she went, she eventually came into the light.

We didn’t know where the piglets would go and there were so many of them. You can’t light everything because that would destroy the look. But these little spots of light looked natural because there were holes in the roof, so it looked as though the sunlight coming through the roof was lighting the sty.

Why did you decide to shoot the film in black-and-white?

We made the decision to shoot in black-and-white because it brought me back to the birth of cinema.

Another consideration was that, depending on the circumstances, colour can be overwhelming. If you see blood in colour, it is too naturalistic and your attention wanders. Often, lush colours make us focus on different things, such as the background. I didn’t want to show cute pink piglets - and believe me, they really are cute.

I didn’t want to seduce the audience this way. I felt that black-and-white would make us focus on their being instead of on their appearance.

At the end of the film, we see Gunda looking for her piglets, who are gone. How often does this happen to a pig?

Twice a year. Piglets normally live between two and six months and then they are slaughtered for food. This is what we do.

But Gunda lives in privileged

22 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

conditions compared to other pigs - at least she enjoys freedom. It is very good in Norway. Ninety per cent of the pigs in factory farms have no chance to dig; they spend their whole lives on a concrete floor in a small cage.

Don’t farmers see animals as living beings?

I hope that people will face the fact that we are cruel. At the moment, we are living on a planet with seven billion people. We have one billion pigs living in cages, 1.5 billion cows living in horrible conditions and 50 billion chickens that live in cages all their lives. We have to face up to it; we have to stop doing this.

Do you want to open people’s eyes?

Documentary cinema is a great tool to show the realities of the world, to show things that we do not see, that we perhaps don’t want to see or that we have collectively agreed that we don’t want to see, so we allow ourselves the privilege of not thinking about them. With Gunda, we want people to see these animals as sentient beings and we want to encourage them to consider the possibility of their consciousness and selfhood. Gunda is the most personal and the most important film I have ever made.

Gunda is quite the opposite of your previous film Aquarela. Do you like to shoot films that look different from one another?

I like to use a different style with each new film. I like to challenge myself and I don’t want to repeat myself. If I had to do that, I would quit. I started Gunda at the same time as Aquarela because I wasn’t sure if there was a market for 96 fps. There is no market yet, but now I will continue making movies at 96 fps, I will not go back. I don’t know why filmmakers - and especially cameramen - don’t understand that there is no point in filming at 24 fps. We aren’t restricted any longer to a 10-minute roll of film in a big bulky magazine. We have no limit.

At 96 fps, we can see emotions play across a face, and we can even see fast, subtle movements, which would otherwise have been blurred. I noticed this when I was making a short film about a ballet dancer who was very emotional when dancing. But I couldn’t see her facial expressions at 24 fps; they were just a blur. So, I started to experiment and then I noticed that when I went to 48

“I OPENED THE DOOR TO THE PIGSTY, AND GUNDA CAME TOWARDS ME. SHE WAS CINEMATIC - POWERFUL. HER LOOK WAS STRONG. SO, I TOLD MY PRODUCER ANITA REHOFF LARSEN, "WE'VE FOUND OUR MERYL STREEP!"” VICTOR KOSSAKOVSKY fps or 96 fps, I began to see the emotion on her face.

Of course, we need the correct speed in projection, but if you can shoot at 96 fps, then you can project at 96 fps. I don’t understand why it’s not done.

Cameramen are the ones who revolutionise cinema, not filmmakers. It is time to change. We have colour, we have sound, stereo sound and Dolby Atmos sound.

We have digital and we have to move forward because 24 fps is over and done with.

Do you consider digital filmmaking to be an advantage?

Of course. You can’t compare digital with the previous technology. Many things are simply impossible without digital. When we filmed Gunda, we didn’t know when she was going to give birth. For situations like this, the pre-recording feature in the camera was great. We

didn’t have to keep the camera rolling all the time in order to capture the first seconds of her giving birth.

The camera was pre-recording but not recording - it pre-records 30 seconds. This is a revolutionary tool.

What was your shooting ratio?

We didn’t film much for Gunda. We were lucky to shoot only 4:1; it was like old-school cinema. It was like the old days when we shot 35mm. We filmed a total of only about six hours of footage.

What is your next film going to be?

My next film is a comedy called Architecton which is about building a futuristic city. As for the camera work, it will be revolutionary. It will be funny, but it will also be a surprising utopian vision. n

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 23

EVENT REVIEW / BSC AWARDS / BY ZOE MUTTER Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC and James Deakins presented the BSC award for Best Cinematography in a TV Drama

A TIME OF TRIUMPH

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ilmmaking achievement was celebrated at the third annual BSC Awards ceremony.

Despite being held virtually due to pandemic restrictions, the spotlight shone on outstanding cinematography and camera operating throughout the last year, as well as acknowledging those who have contributed to the society either directly or, in the opinion of the BSC, to the wider industry.

There was talent and creativity in abundance from this year’s BSC Awards nominees, with the finest cinematographers, camera operators, industry associations and experts crowned victorious at the virtual ceremony. Speaking ahead of the awards announcements, BSC President Mike Eley BSC took to the virtual stage and reflected on the rather unusual and difficult year which has seen cinematographers rise to the challenge: “British cinematography is as vibrant and as creative as ever, its reputation founded on a pool of artistic and industry talent that has served the UK film industry for over 100 years, and which the BSC has been proud to be a leading part.

“It’s been a supremely difficult year for all of us on so many different levels, with the illness or the threat of illness never far away. The BSC salutes the NHS and the care workers that have worked so tirelessly and brilliantly this past year. We have seen selflessness, fortitude, and determination closer to home in our own

24 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

industry. Being deemed ineligible for government aid was a blow to all the freelancers who make up so much of our department, adding yet more uncertainty to their lives. Getting back to work has been a slow and not always comfortable experience, but there’s a reason UK camera crews are sought after around the world. They are passionate about what they do, and they deliver.

May we never take that for granted either.”

Eley also paid tribute to the talented filmmakers who have sadly passed away in the past year: Mick Mason Associate BSC; John McGlashan BSC; Mike Rutter Associate BSC; Tony Spratling BSC; Ian Wilson BSC; and Arthur Wooster BSC.

Host for the evening was Mike Southon BSC, introducing the event as one which would “celebrate the work and personalities that have raised the bar of what our industry can achieve aesthetically and were not only dealing with budgets and time, but this time everybody’s health”. Southon also acknowledged that this year’s nominees reflect the trend of streaming, accelerated by viewing from home.

Southon went on to present the Operators Award for TV Drama to Benjamin Treplin for his work on Das Boot (series 2, episode 8). Accepting his award, Treplin said: “I’m truly honoured. I want to thank Philip Blaubach BSC for nominating me, all the members of the ACO, the BSC and GBCT who voted for my work and found it worthy Normal People of being on the shortlist, and, last but not least, the jury, who chose me to receive the award.”

The Operators Award for Feature Film went to Maceo Bishop for Uncut Gems. Accepting his award via video message, Bishop said: “It was an honour to work on this film…I worked as a camera operator for 14 years and I think this film really pulled all of the skills that I developed over those 14 years into play - not just in terms of holding the camera but being sensitive to what was happening with talent in the moment. I felt like I was able to be there with them for what they were experiencing.”

Next Southon shone a light on the winners of the BSC Short Film Cinematographers Competition, announced in October last year. The Student winner was Tamas Apor Meder for Summer Shade and the BSC Club winner was Dan Atherton for The Passenger. Both were awarded an Alexa Mini package from ARRI.

German director of photography and inventor of the Dedolight, Dedo Weigert was awarded the Bert Easey Technical Award. First presented in 1949, the award is named in honour of Bert Easey, who in 1947 was head of the camera department at Denham and Pinewood Studios and was integral in the formation of the BSC. The award is presented by the Board to an individual or company who “has contributed something outstanding in the way of endeavour or equipment”. Before announcing the award, Nigel Walters BSC highlighted Weigert’s incredible career, achievements, and innovations.

Accepting his award, Weigert said: “My passion and my heart is with those who have dedicated all their character and all their lives to this profession. I’ve met some of those in the 40 countries I have filmed and in my work as a DP that is still in my blood and in my heart. I’m looking forward to the day when we can go back into a studio because I have some new tricks that I’d love to show to you…Filming was never work for me. If after 18 hours, somebody would come and say Suzie Lavelle BSC ISC won the let’s go to lunch. I would say, BSC Best Cinemato ‘the light is so nice, I’ll come a TV Drama award graphy in for Normal People (season 1, back later’. I had the privilege episode 1), of meeting many of the famous DPs…and some who took great care of me, inviting me to their homes, teaching me. In England, I have some heroes. One of them is Duncan Brown. He is one of the few people I’ve ever met, who could see light. Many of us only see the reflection of light.” >>

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EVENT REVIEW / BSC AWARDS / BY ZOE MUTTER

BSC AWARDS 2021 WINNERS BSC Awards Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature (sponsored by MBSE) Winner: Erik Messerschmidt ASC for Mank Nominees: Sean Bobbitt BSC for Judas and the Black Messiah; Joshua James Richards for Nomadland; Alwin Küchler BSC for The Mauritanian; Dariusz Wolski ASC for News of the World

>>

The BSC Special Achievement Award was presented to the Mark Milsome Foundation. Following the tragic death of British cameraman Mark Milsome ACO, who was killed whilst filming a car stunt in Ghana on the set of Black Earth Rising 2017, the Mark Milsome Foundation was set up, inspired by the achievements and character of the talented camera operator. The Foundation has since made great strides in creating change through a variety of initiatives including the launch a survey to help assess the current state of health and safety in the film and TV industry.

Presenting the award, Chris Plevin ACO Associate BSC shared some words from Mark’s father, Doug Milsome BSC ASC, who said the Foundation had “been an incredible source of support”. “Seeing more than 4,000 crew wearing black T-shirts to honour Mark on the anniversary of his death was overwhelming and an incredible comfort,” said Doug Mislome. “Also, watching training programmes for young people develop, carrying on Mark’s ethic of supporting others means his own beliefs and charitable nature will live on…Mark was too bright a star to burn out and thanks to the foundation, his spirit, kindness and good nature will shine on for a long time to come.’”

Foundation Chairman, Kirk Jones, accepted the award on behalf of the Mark Milsome Foundation, thanking everyone in the industry, in particular lighting and camera departments, for “their incredible support since day one”. “Shortly after Mark’s death, Andra

Erik Messerschmidt ASC won the BSC Awards Best Cinemat a Theatrical Feature awa ography in rd for Mank

Milsome [Mark’s wife] asked if it would be possible to set up a foundation and many people have given months of their time since then to make it happen.

Not just to keep Mark’s name alive for the sake of it, because Mark wouldn’t have wanted that, but to keep his ambition alive, his ambition to help young people, to support them, to allow young people to enter the film industry if they are talented, determined, ambitious and passionate. Not necessarily because they have contacts or because they’re wealthy or because they have great qualification, educational qualifications, but because they deserve to be there,” he said.

“Due to the nature of Mark’s death, it was only a matter of time before the foundation turned our attention to health and safety on set…One of the things which has been noted and may well have prevented Mark’s death in Ghana in 2017 is a historical problem, which is completely understandable: people feeling nervous and anxious about speaking out on set if they feel concerned about health and safety. I understand how difficult it is if people are in a junior position or if they are racing to make the day…but it’s a really simple change that I hope will be adopted throughout the industry. If anyone feels uncomfortable in that moment on set, please find the courage to speak up even if it means delaying things for a few

BSC Best Cinematography in a TV Drama (sponsored by Sony) Winner: Suzie Lavelle BSC ISC for Normal People (season 1, eps 1) Nominees: Adriano Goldman ASC BSC ABC for The Crown (season 4 eps 3 Fairytale); Rob Hardy BSC for DEVS (season 1, eps 7); Shabier Kirchner for Small Axe (season 1, eps 1 Mangrove); Steven Meizler for The Queen’s Gambit (season 1, eps 7 End Game)

Operators Award for Feature Film (sponsored by Panavision) Winner: Maceo Bishop for Uncut Gems Nominees: Colin Anderson/Graham Hall for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker; Christopher Ball for The Lighthouse; Brian S Osmund for Mank; Peter Robertson for The Gentlemen

Operators Award for TV Drama (sponsored by Ronford-Baker and RED) Winner: Benjamin Treplin for Das Boot (series 2, episode 8) Nominees: Chris Bain for The Crown (series 4, episode 6); James Layton/Matt Poynter for His Dark Materials (series 1, episode 7); Dan Nightingale for Dracula (series 1, episode 3); Benjamin Semanoff for Ozark (series 3, episode 3)

BSC ARRI John Alcott Memorial Award (sponsored by ARRI) Winner: Nina Kellgren BSC

BSC Special Achievement Award (sponsored by CVP)

Maceo Bishop accepting the Operators Award for Feature Film for Uncut Gems

Winner: The Mark Milsome Foundation

Bert Easey Technical Award (sponsored by Fujinon) Winner: Dedo Weigert

BSC Short Film Cinematography Award (Sponsored by ARRI): Student winner – Tamas Apor Meder for Summer Shade Benjamin Treplin accepting the Operators Award for TV Drama for his work on Das Boot

26 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

BSC Club winner: Dan Atherton for The Passenger

Mark Milsome Foundation Chairman Kirk Jones accepted the BSC Special Achievement Award on behalf of the Foundation

Dedo Weigert (right) won the Bert Easey Technical Award, presented by Nigel Walters BSC

seconds.”

The BSC Best Cinematography in a TV Drama award was presented by Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC and James Deakins, live from LA, to Suzie Lavelle BSC ISC for her beautiful lensing of Normal People (season 1, episode 1). Accepting her award - somewhat overwhelmed with emotion - Lavelle said: “Gosh, that’s quite a shock. I wasn’t expecting that, especially with the amazing nominees. I’ve enjoyed all your shows so much - they got me through lockdown…I’m in Belfast, with the same team, and same director to do our next show, so they’ll all be amazed and delighted to hear about this.

“Normal People was an amazing show for me because I’ve been doing a lot of multi-camera TV and Lenny [Abrahamson] was a director I’d known since I learned filmmaking and I’d really loved his work. To get the chance to work with him and to do a very simple, single-camera show - and it was quite a small show and all about storytelling - it was kind of the best experience of my life.”

Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature was presented to Erik Messerschmidt ASC for his work on David Fincher’s black-and-white biopic Mank.

“I’m absolutely honoured. Thank you so much,” said Messerschmidt. “This film was an incredible journey for

Nina Kellgren BSC with her BSC ARRI John Alcott Memorial Award

all of us. Thank you to David Fincher for his trust and Ceán for her encouragement and an extraordinary cast and a crew who I cared deeply for. They’re my family.

Brian, Alex, will Dave, Danny, Jay, Dwayne - we made the movie together.”

Rounding off the night in style was the announcement of the recipient of the BSC ARRI John Alcott Memorial Award. Sponsored by ARRI in memory of the late John Alcott BSC - whose work continues to inspire future generations - the award is presented to a person, who in the opinion of the BSC Board

of Governors, has made a significant contribution towards perpetuating the original aims of the society.

This year’s incredibly talented recipient of the award is Nina Kellgren BSC.

Presenting the award, Chris Ross BSC said: “Telling stories is how we make sense of the world.

We all benefit from having a film industry that reflects the diverse reality of the world we live in. Diversity in cinematographic technique, genre and medium have been quintessential characteristics of Nina’s life.”

Accepting her award, Kellgren said: “I’m deeply honoured to be given this, and especially in the name of such an incredible cinematographer, John Alcott…When I was first invited into the BSC and I first went into a room full of BSC DPs, it was pretty daunting…but then I realised actually I was just in a room full of people with exactly the same passion for cinematography that I had and I felt at home…It’s particularly touching for me that this is ARRI sponsored because they’ve supported me through the whole of my career.

“It really brings home how valued the BSC is when you put your name on the board for the first time and you can put those letters after it. There was an instant shift in attention and respect, particularly when shooting out of the UK. That’s been my experience working with IMAGO and throughout the world - that the BSC is very important and full of heavyweight talent.

I’m very grateful to be given this award by my peers.” n

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 27

EVENT REVIEW / 70 YEARS OF THE OPERATORS AWARDS Operators Night 2003. Left to right: Harvey Harrison BSC, Alex Thomson BSC (BSC Lifetime Achievement Award), Nick Phillips (BSC Bert Easey Technical Award for Libra 3), David Worley GBCT (GBCT Operators Award for Reign of Fire), Ted Deason (GBCT 1st Assistant Camera Award)

CELEBRATING TALENT

As the Operators Awards celebrates its 70th anniversary, we look back at its formative years and examine the important part the awards still play in recognising outstanding achievement and the camera operator’s vital role in the filmmaking process.

I

n 1953, four years after its formation, the British Society of Cinematographers decided to celebrate technical expertise and creativity in cinematography in the form of annual awards. The following year, three BSC Awards were presented, the first of which was backdated to 1951 and received by George Ashworth, a camera engineer at Pinewood, for designing a beam splitting camera. The second, backdated to 1953, was presented to Ossie Morris for his photography on Moulin Rouge. Robert Krasker’s Romeo and Juliet received the third award, backdated to 1954. Celebrating technical achievements, photographic triumphs, or both in unison, the BSC Award was then presented every year.

In the early 1950s, the BSC’s directors of photography organised a dinner at The Orchard in Ruislip to thank their operators and crew for their hard work, talent, commitment, and loyalty. Costing a guinea to attend, the evening featured drinks aplenty, a sit-down dinner, and a speech delivered by a guest of honour. The event marked the first official Operators Night.

Since that momentous occasion, Operators Night has gone through various iterations, from pub crawls and gatherings at The Bull in Gerrards Cross to posh nights at the Connaught Rooms and Ladies Nights at the Spider’s Web in Watford or The Savoy. Over the years, Operators Night CT GB ti ciu Peter Cava e GBCT has evolved into one of the Society’s most th ng ni win rators successful annual functions, allowing DPs and pe O a er m Ca izabeth their crews to meet socially.

Award for El 2005 in As the gatherings increased in popularity - with attendee numbers growing from the tens to the hundreds - annual visits to drink and dine were held more regularly at Pinewood or Elstree Studios.

The BSC President announced the winners and after-dinner speakers such as Richard Attenborough, Norman Jewison, Cubby Broccoli, David Putnam, Terry Gilliam, Robin Williams, Ken Russell, Dustin Hoffman, and Ralph Fiennes, amongst many others, dazzled the room with their speeches.

28 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Having initially handed out the cinematography and technical awards at its Annual General Meetings, the BSC later incorporated their presentation into the BSC’s Operators Night. In 1976, principally to acknowledge the importance of camera operators, the BSC then added the Associate Member category to its membership and Operators Night continued to grow in popularity.

It wasn’t until 1989 that the format of the awards event became more formalised. Panavision and the GBCT joined forces to create the Panavision-GBCT Camera Operators Award and the Focus Pullers’ (Golden Knob) Award. Nominations and voting were conducted by the GBCT membership, with the award being handed out to winners by the BSC President at Operators Night.

The first ‘golden camera’ award was presented to Mike Roberts, Associate BSC GBCT, for his amazing work on the Oscar-winning Mississippi Burning, assisted by focus puller, Eamonn O’Keeffe GBCT.

In 2007, the last “golden” awards were handed out at the GBCT’s 30th anniversary dinner and dance, “A Night to Remember”. Held at the Royal Lancaster Hotel, the event saw awards presented to camera operator Roger Pearce and focus puller Rawdon Hayne.

Between 2006 to 2010, no Operators Awards were presented at Operators Night. Perhaps the incredible ability and talent of the legendary operators who had received the Golden Camera in the past made others reluctant to put productions forward, or maybe it was due to the increasing number of DPs who were operating themselves.

Regardless, something more had to be done to remind the film and television industry about the benefits of having a good operator and the skills they bring to a production.

Standing beside a cold, windswept unit base on a beach in Wales, a small group of camera operators - who became the originators of the Association of Camera Operators (ACO) - decided to join forces to form a plan to ensure the role of a first-class camera operator was not forgotten.

In 2010, the ACO was formed, thanks to its hardworking founders - Peter Taylor, Chris Plevin, Rodrigo Gutierrez, Peter Robertson, Peter Cavaciuti, Paul Edwards, and Martin Hume - and additional support from Frances Russell of the BSC and Deanne Edwards of the GBCT. The founders had a clear plan of action, wrote rules and regulations, organised a Board of Management, encouraged other operators to join, and voted in the first President - Rodrigo Gutierrez. ACO Presidents since then were The founding members of the ACO in 2009.

Chris Plevin; Peter Cavaciuti;

Left to right: Peter Taylor; Chris Plevin; Rodrigo Gutierrez; Peter Robertson; Peter Cavaciuti; and Paul Edwards (Martin Hume out of frame but pictured in image top right of opposite page)

Ben Wilson; and Sean Savage, with Peter Robertson taking over the reins earlier this year.

The ACO’s original aim was to promote the importance of the camera operator’s role to production personnel, while nurturing existing talent and maintaining David Worley GBCT quality when operating. A accepting his GBCT Camera Operators decade later, with a trip to Award from Cine Gear in Los Angeles, Stephen Fry paid for by sharing a DTI for Reign of Fire in 2003 grant with the GBCT, Chris Plevin was able to develop good relationships with the US equivalent camera operating organisations.

The ACO is continuing to develop a truly international profile, with operators joining from around the world, demonstrating the Operators Awards’ global approach. As well as building strong working relationships with BAFTA and the SOC in Los Angeles, the ACO’s website is populated with informative articles, videos of Q&A sessions, and a vast collection of photographs of members at work.

Board members are responsible for patron liaison, membership, events, editorial, diversity, among many other important issues. Funded by ScreenSkills, the BSC and ACO work in partnership on a mentoring scheme to help experienced technicians develop lighting and operating skills. A group of members have also joined forces with the BSC and GBCT to work on the Operators Awards Committee judging panel, which Rodrigo Gutierrez worked to reinstate from 2011 (for Feature Film) and from 2015 (for Television Drama). In collaboration with a designer, Peter Cavaciuti created

Operators Visual EffecNight 2001. Left to rig (accepting ts), Gilbert Taylor B ht: Roy Field BSC (B SC GBCT for GBCT Operators Aw (BSC Lifetime Ach SC Charles D Staffel Band of Br others), Dan ard (TV) to Martin ievement Award), M l Award for Hum ar ny Shelmer dine (GBC e GBCT & Martin K tin Hume T 1st Assis tant Camerenzie a Award)

“IN THE EARLY 1950S, THE BSC ORGANISED A DINNER AT THE ORCHARD IN RUISLIP TO THANK THEIR OPERATORS AND CREW FOR THEIR HARD WORK. THE EVENT MARKED THE FIRST OFFICIAL OPERATORS NIGHT.” two modernised Operators Awards which, since their inception, have been sponsored by Panavision and Ronford-Baker. In 2020, RED came on board as an additional sponsor.

The Operators Awards Committee, comprising members from the three societies, continues to evolve and improve the rules for the voting membership, assisted by the ACO/BSC/GBCT Admin Team and David Worley Associate BSC GBCT ACO - the only camera operator to have twice received the golden camera award, as well as the new Feature Film and Television Drama awards.

Operators Night is still going strong, 70 years after its inception. But for the past three years, the Operators Awards have been presented as part of the BSC Awards night. This year, marking yet another

first, the BSC’s awards event was celebrated virtually, acknowledging outstanding work in TV drama and feature film. As the event continues to evolve, it has been proven that the Operators Awards can successfully be presented at the BSC’s Awards night. However, Operators Night will continue in its own right, with further details to be revealed. n

Thanks to Peter Robertson Assoc. BSC GBCT ACO; Peter Cavaciuti Assoc. BSC GBCT SOC ACO; Phillip Sindall Assoc.

BSC GBCT ACO; Sham Whittaker, ACO Secretary; Phil Meheux BSC GBCT; Trevor Coop Assoc. BSC GBCT ACO; Frances Russell from the BSC; and Deanne Edwards from the GBCT for their help with this piece. Additional information was verified by the GBCT’s magazines, including Eyepiece.

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 29

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP

MAESTROS IN MOTION B

erlin Associates: Edward Ames shot feature film Evie for Full Circle Films Ltd with directors Dominic Brunt and Jamie Lundy. Will Baldy is shooting an untitled project for Netflix/DC. Sarah Bartles-Smith is shooting Queens of Mystery (S2) for Sly Fox Productions with director Ian Emes. Len Gowing is shooting the second block on The Bay (S3) for ITV in Manchester with director Nicole Volavka. Alvaro Gutierrez has completed shooting feature film Desde La Sombra in Spain with director Felix Viscarret for Tornasol Films. He is shooting We Hunt Together (S2) for UKTV/ BBC with director Jonathan Teplitsky. Annemarie LeanVercoe is shooting a block of Endevour with director Ian Aryeh. Nick Martin is filming with Big Talk Productions The Offenders for BBC 1 with director Stephen Merchant.

Toby Moore is shooting a sequel to feature film Fisherman’s Friends for Fred Films. Trevelyan Oliver is shooting with Tiger Aspect Productions Hitmen for Sky 1 with director David Scant. Neil Oseman is shooting Hamlet for Bill Kenwright Productions with director Sean Mathias. Tom Pridham is working on various commercials, television drama and green screen shoots. Benjamin Pritchard is shooting Teacher for Clapperboard/Channel 5 with director Dominic Leclerc. Andrew Rodger shot a promo for Conor Maynard and is grading feature film Confession. Pete Rowe has completed shooting Partridge for Baby Cow Productions and is currently shooting Dodger for NBC Universal with director Rhys Thomas.

James Swift is shooting a block of All Creatures Great and Small (S2) for Playground Entertainment/Channel 5 with director Sasha Ransome. Matt Wicks is preparing to

Eira Wyn Jones’ photographs from her recent shoot for Evian

shoot The Witchfinder for Baby Cow Productions for BBC2. Phil Wood is coming to the end of shooting block two of Doctor Who (S13) for the BBC and is about to begin shooting Ragdoll for Sid Gentle Films/Alibi. Simon Rowling recently finished shooting feature Jeepers Creepers: Reborn for The Well Productions.

Casarotto Ramsay & Associates: Eben Bolter BSC is shooting the upcoming adaptation of J.P Delaney’s novel The Girl Before with director Lisa Bruhlmann. Sturla Brandth Grøvlen has wrapped on War Sailor in Norway with director Gunnar Vikene. Sam Care has started prep on James Graham’s Sherwood in Manchester with director Lewis Arnold. Julian Court BSC will shortly start shooting the fourth season of Killing Eve for Sid Gentle Films. Sarah Cunningham is operating for Laurie Rose BSC on Lena Dunham’s Catherine Called Birdy for Working Title Films.

Matt Gray BSC is filming World Productions’ court-room drama Showtrial with director Zara Holmes. David Katznelson DFF BSC is working alongside director Alice Troughton on Midwich Cuckoos for Snowed-In Productions. Frank Lamm is soon to wrap on Lucas Films’ Star Wars: White Snake with Susanna White at the helm.

Helene Louvart AFC lensed Jaime Rosales’ upcoming feature Girasoles Silvestres in Barcelona and is now shooting Leonor Serraille’s A Little Brother. Kate McCullough is in Toronto shooting Alice Sebold’s Lucky, directed by Karen Moncrieff. Zac Nicholson BSC is in Scotland working with Stephen Frears on The Lost King starring Sally Hawkins. Tim Palmer BSC is about to finish the fifth season of The Last Kingdom in Hungary. David Pimm is filming Ragdoll for Sid Gentle Films, having

recently wrapped on My Name is Leon with Lynette Linton for Douglas Road Productions. Aaron Rogers is operating C Cam for Fabian Wagner ASC BSC on HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Annika Summerson is working with director Robbie MacKillop on the upcoming Kudos series You in Germany. Simona Susnea is about to finish Up on the Roof, with Ben Hecking directing. Mark Wolf is soon to start prepping Patrick Dickinson’s Cottontail for Magnolia Mae shooting in Japan and the Lake District. Michael Wood is shooting Citadel with Tom Sigel ASC for Amazon Studios.

Echo Artists: Stuart Bentley BSC has begun shooting Life After Life with director John Crowley for BBC. Nadim Carlsen is shooting director Ali Abbasi’s The Long Night. Carlos Catalan is shooting Amazon’s The Power (eps four, six and eight) with director Shannon Murphy. David Chizallet AFC has shot an untitled feature with directors Luc Bricault and Ida Techer. Rachel Clark has been grading Reggie Yates’ Pirates. Andrew Commis ACS will soon begin the grade for Armagan Ballantyne’s Nude Tuesday. Nick Cooke has finished the grade on Lynsey Miller’s Anne Boleyn for Fable Pictures. new echo client Ruben Woodin Dechamps has been shooting short film Weekend Dad with director Dorothy Allen Pickard for BBC and the BFI. Bonnie Elliott ACS has begun prepping on The Shining Girls with director Daina Reid for Apple TV. David Gallego ADFC has begun prep on Laura Mora’s The Kings of the World. Lachlan Milne ACS NZCS has wrapped on season four of Stranger Things. Will Pugh is shooting eps 1-3 of drama Crime with director James Strong. Korsshan Schlauer has

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Will Pugh on location in North Wales on Sophie’s Story which he has now wrapped

Lorena Pagès and Korsshan Schlauer on the set of Top Boy

DoP Dominic Bartels with directors Lisle Turner & Claire Coache Credit: Kie Cummings

wrapped additional photography on season four of Top Boy. Maria von Hausswolff is shooting Hylnur Palamason feature Vanskabte Land. Felix Wiedemann BSC is grading on Mrs Harris Goes to Paris. Joe Anderson; Federico Cesca; Edgar Dubrovskiy; Charlie Herranz; Jo Jo Lam; MacGregor; Lorena Pagès; Christopher Miles; Michael Paleodimos; Noel Schoolderman; Niels Thastum, DFF; and Sean Price Williams have been busy in commercials.

Independent Talent: Ole Birkeland BSC is in Australia filming Pieces of Her with Minkie Spiro. Darran Bragg is shooting The Larkins with director Andy de Emmony. Bjorn Bratberg is filming The Long Call with Lee Haven Jones. Oliver Curtis BSC is shooting Stay Close for Lindy Heymann. Ben Davis BSC is shooting My Policeman with Michael Grandage. Anthony Dod Mantle ASC BSC DFF is shooting Lonely Boy with Danny Boyle. Simon Dennis BSC is working on American Crime Story (S3) with director Ryan Murphy in the US. Adam Etherington BSC is shooting the new ITV series Hollington Drive, directed

by Carolina Giammetta. Arni Fillippusson is shooting block two of the new series Extinction, with director Laura Scrivano. Kit Fraser is shooting The Railway Children Return with Morgan Matthews. Catherine Goldschmidt is filming Chloe with Alice Seabright and Amanda Boyle.

Stuart Howell is about to shoot The Peripheral with Vincenzo Natali. Eric Kress is working on Borgen (S4) for Netflix. Suzie Lavelle BSC ISC is shooting Conversations with Friends, with director Lenny Abrahamson. David Luther is shooting new series The Swarm, with director Luke Watson. Roman Osin BSC is prepping for The Last Voyage of the Demeter with André Øvredal. Mark Patten

BSC is in South Africa shooting Raised by Wolves (S2) with Ernest Dickerson and Alex Gabassi. Stephan Pehrsson BSC is shooting SAS: Rogue Heroes with Tom Shankland.

Tat Radcliffe BSC is filming Matthew Warchus’s Matilda.

Christopher Ross BSC is shooting The Swimmers with Sally El Hosaini. Ashley Rowe BSC is prepping to shoot The Noel Diary for Charles Shyer. Carl Sundberg is shooting Flowers in The Attic for showrunner Paul Sciarrotta. Mark Waters is shooting Endeavour (S8). Erik Wilson BSC is shooting Landscapers with Will Sharpe.

Maja Zamojda BSC is shooting on The Great (S2).

Loop Talent welcomes Emma Dalesman to the roster who has been shooting films for Rambert and meeting with directors for long form projects. Jon Muschamp has finished the grade for Dreaming Whilst Black for the BBC. Rick Joaquim SASC is shooting a film for Netflix in his native South Africa. Aman K Sahota has been meeting with directors for narrative projects. In commercials, Kyle Macfadzean has shot for Brewdog and The Outnet; Nick Bennett travelled around the country shooting for Marks and Spencers; Rik Burnell shot commercials for brands including Adidas and collaborated with director Kit Vincent on documentary Red Herring; Chris O’Driscoll lit fashion and beauty commercials for brands including Remington; Paul MacKay lensed commercials for Amazon and Playstation; Matt Gillan worked with regular collaborators Black Eye Films; and Bertrand Rocourt has been meeting with directors.

Lux Artists: Tom Townend is prepping for Joe Cornish’s new Netflix series, Lockwood & Co. Justin Brown is prepping for Willow, directed by Jonathan

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Simon Rowling and the Jeepers Creepers: Reborn crew

Entwistle. Lukasz Zal PSC is prepping for Jonathan Glazer’s currently untitled new feature. Daniel Landin BSC lensed an eBay commercial, directed by Tom Kuntz.

Michael McDonough BSC ASC is prepping for Lou, directed by Anna Foerster. Rob Hardy BSC has wrapped on MEN, the new feature from director Alex Garland.

Giuseppe Favale shot a Jack Daniels commercial, directed by Ian Pons Jewell. Nanu Segal BSC is shooting Emily, directed by Frances O’Connor. James Laxton ASC shot a Reebok commercial, directed by Jonas Lindstroem and continues to prep for The Lion King follow-up, directed by Barry Jenkins. Jessica Lee Gagne continues to shoot Ben Stiller’s new series Severance. Guillermo Garza shot Stella Artois and Verizon campaigns, directed

by AG Rojas. Jakob Ihre FSF is shooting Johan Renck’s new feature Spaceman. Arnaud Potier AFC shot an NDA commercial, directed by Harmony Korine. Olan Collardy wrapped on the new currently untitled feature from Raine Allen-Miller. Martijn Van Broekhuizen NSC is prepping for Gangs of London (S2). Ula Pontikos BSC continues to shoot Russian Doll season two, directed by Natasha Lyonne. Steve Annis is shooting Inside, directed

by Vasilis Katsoupis. Magnus Joenck is shooting Rebel Ridge, directed by Jeremy Saulnier. Mauro Chiarello lensed a Samsung commercial, directed by Isaiah Seret.

Adolpho Veloso shot an NDA commercial, directed by Nicolai Fuglsig. Manuel Alberto Claro continues to shoot Kingdom Exodus, directed by Lars von Trier.

Adam Scarth is shooting Pretty Red Dress, directed by Dionne Edwards. Jody Lee Lipes is shooting The Good Nurse, directed by Tobias Lindholm. >>

STUDIO LOCATION FEATURES COMMERCIALS DRAMA TELEVISION EQUIPMENT GENERATORS TRANSPORT SUPPORT INNOVATION SAFETY SUSTAINABILITY 12/04/2021 18:08

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 31

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP

Edward Ames (left) shooting feature film Evie, with Dave Nolan (1st AD) and Honey Lundy (actress playing young Evie) Sam McCurdy on location in Canada making season 1 of Scriptures

Nicholas Benn ett commercial sh on a the coast near oot on Mallaig

McKinney Maccartney: Stuart Biddlecombe is finishing the grade on season four of The Handmaid’s Tale and is about to start prep on The Devil’s Hour for Amazon, directed by Johnny Kenton. Mick Coulter BSC continues to shoot Outlander on location in Scotland. Sergio Delgado has started working on Canoe Man for ITV. Gavin Finney BSC is prepping Darkness Rising for Channel 4 and HBO, directed

by Peter Kosminsky. Jean Philippe Gossart continues to shoot season two of Netflix’s The Witcher and is preparing to join Netflix’s The Lark. Steve Lawes continues to film The Hot Zone: Anthrax on location in Canada for National Geographic. Dale Elena McCready is filming The Rising for Sky. Sam McCurdy BSC is shooting series Scriptures on location in Canada for Warner Brothers. Andy McDonnell continues to shoot BBC drama You Don’t Know Me, directed by Sarmad Masud. Mike Spragg finished filming Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist on location in Canada and begins prep for The Last Kingdom (S5). Richard Stoddard has finished Brassic (S3) and moves on to Extinction for Sky One. Robin Whenary is starting prep on the Doctor Who Christmas special in Cardiff. Denis Crossan BSC and Clive Tickner BSC have been shooting commercials.

My Management welcomes Amsterdam-based Pieter Vermeer to the roster. After finishing his studies in photography at Artschool, St Joost in the Netherlands, he soon became a sought-after DP for commercials, music videos and features. Chris Dodds has been shooting commercials for Tesco with director Caroline Irby and BBH, a Remington campaign with director Simon Sorted, and a charity project for Agenda Alliance with director Matt Russell. Dominic Bartels has been shooting short film Cold in Hereford, written and directed by Claire Coaché and Lisle Turner. Craig Dean Devine has started prep on Ladhood (S2), directed by Jonathan Schey. Filip Marek shot in Budapest with director Thor for Sargenor through Saga Films, teamed up with Marek Partys for a Slido shoot and director Robert Hloz for a Krusovice spot.

Sam Meyer lensed Pokerstars in Paris and McVities through Unit 9 (Dir: Tom Brown), a Daniel Briskin music 32 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

video with Pulse, a John Lewis content shoot directed by Silent Tapes, Snickers with Milk Money (Dir: Glenn Kitson) in Edinburgh, and a Central Cee music video through Great Coat directed by LX. Sy Turnbull shot a Vista Print commercial with Annex Films (Dir: DP Stuart Seb Pettreti). Tuomo es go gh ur yb Dr Virtanen collaborated hand held on ot sp an MCM with director Vesa Manninen on projects in Helsinki. Nicolaj Bruel DFF worked with BRW Filmland and director Gabrielle Mainetti for part three of a Mulino Bianco shoot in Rome, shot a Unibet spot in Copenhagen (Dir: Simon Ladefaged). Adric Watson shot a Krunk music video (Dir: Greg Hackett at Spindle), a Vodafone shoot in Liverpool with producer Michelle Stapleton at Madam, a music doc with Objektive films (Dir: David Tomaszewski), and a Paloma Faith music video through Prettybird (Dir: Yousef). Ahmet Husseyin worked with Passion Pictures on a Compare the Meerkat campaign (Dir: Dave Scanlon), worked with Black Dog/RSA on a Sons of Raphael shoot (Dir: Loral Raphael), and a Saybo spot with Rage Films (Dir: Terry Paul). Pete Konczal shot in LA and New York for Infiniti (Dir: Steve Fuller), a Lifestance commercial (Dir: Mark Seliger), and a BMW spot (Dir: Jonny Mass). Robbie Ryan BSC ISC collaborated with Academy Films for an Aviva TVC in Scotland (Dir: Seb Edwards), a Lord Jones spot directed by The Sacred Egg at Riff Raff, a Nick Cave shoot through Uncommon Creative Studio (Dir: Andrew Dominik), Will Young with MY Accomplice (Dir: Wiz), and a Cancer Research spot (Dir: Jessy Moussallem at Object Animal). Jallo Faber FSF shot a Mercedes campaign (Dir: Valentine Petite through Anorak), a Froniter spot (Dir: RBG6), Samsung (Dir: Mackan), a Caviar shoot (Dir: Owen Trevor), and an ATG spot (Dir: Tobias Granstrom). Arnaud Carney teamed up with Skillsprod TV for a Berluti shoot in Barcelona (Dir: Marcelo Melo), shot a Garnier spot in Marseille with Downtown Paris for a Garnier spot, and a YSL shoot through Storner Productions (Dir: Fabien Constant). Gaul Porat shot a Nismo spot in Dubai (Dir: Nico Kreis), worked with Déjà vu to shoot Amazon Prime (Dir: Shahir Zag), and lensed Toyota Olympics 2021 (Dir: Oldie). Ekkehart Pollack lensed a Smart shoot through Zauberberg Production in Barcelona (Dir: Daniel Warwick), shot a Toyota commercial in Athens through RSA (Dir: Jake Scott). Paul O’Callaghan shot a Ford S Max commercial (Dir: Loren Colson), an Audible spot through Sassy Films (Dir: Floris Ramaekers), and recces for Raw TV mini-series Imposters for Netflix (Dir: Gareth Johnson).

Todd Martin lensed a Verizon shoot (Dir: Julian Marshall) and worked on a Sky Sports shoot through Biscuit (Dir: Dan Difelice). Ben Coughlan worked with VEVO on its DSCVR artists to watch programme (Dir: Jim Wilmot).

Tomas Tomasson shot in Iceland with True North on One Strange Rock and a Mentos commercial in Iceland (Dir:

Saman Kesh). Lee Thomas shot a Keep Wales Tidy campaign (Dir: Chris Thomas). Darran Tiernan lensed a Pepsi commercial in LA (Dir: Russ Lamoureux). Jo Willems is filming Little Nemo in Slumberland in Toronto (Dir: Francis Lawrence). Daisy Zhou worked on an Urban Decay shoot in New York (Dir: Charlotte Rutherford), a Prada spot in LA (Dir: Martine Syms, a Cynthia Erivo shoot through Radical Media (Dir: Mollie Mills), and a Cuervo Dobel Tequilla shoot in Mexico (Dir: Emma Westenberg). David Lanzenberg shot The Morning Show (S2) (Dir: Mimi Leder). Stuart Dryburgh ASC shot a commercial for MCM on GUM Studios virtual stage for Swell productions (Dir: Tarik Malak). Ashley Barron ACS is shooting block three of All Creatures Great and Small (S2) for Playground Entertainment, PBS (Dir: Andy Hay).

Planb: Uri Barcelona and Planb Steadicam operator Sacha Naceri shot Karim Huu Do’s short film Ne me quitte pas. Josep Civit is in Budapest shooting director Keith English’s feature The Cost of Lies. Elias M. Felix is finishing the grade of new series Paraiso and started shooting director Marçal Forés’ feature Aa través de mi Ventana. Federico Cantini started shooting Flamin’ Hot, Eva Longoria’s directorial debut. Planb Steadicam operator Pau Reig is in Madrid shooting Netflix series In from the Cold (Dir: Ami Canaan Man). DP Diego Rosenblatt has joined Planb roster and is in Chicago shooting series The Chi (Dir: Gandja Monteiro). Pablo Díez is in Spain shooting series Bienvenidos a Edén (Dir: Daniel Benmayor).

PrinceStone: Dan Nightingale ACO is shooting The Almond and the Seahorse (Dir: Celyn Jones and codirected and lensed by DP Tom Stern ASC AFC). Rob Hart ACO is filming BBC One thriller series The Girl Before (Dir: Lisa Brühlmann, Cin: Eben Bolter BSC0. Joe Russell ACO is shooting A camera and Steadicam on Red Gun, the Game of Thrones prequel (Cin: Fabian Wagner BSC ASC). Peter Robertson Assoc. BSC ACO is shooting A camera and Steadicam on The Little Mermaid, shooting A camera and Steadicam (Dir: Rob Marshall, Cin: Dion Beebe ASC ACS). Sean Savage Assoc. BSC ACO SOC ACO President is filming Citadel (Dir: Anthony and Joe Russo). Tony Kay ACO is shooting The Larkins (Dir: Andy De Emmony). Fabrizio Sciarra SOC Assoc. BSC GBCT ACO is shooting Dungeons and Dragons in Belfast (Dir: John Francis Daley and Jonathon Goldstein, Cin: Barry Peterson). James Layton ACO is shooting A camera and Steadicam on The Great (S2) (Dir: Colin Bucksey, Cin: John Brawley). Simon Baker ACO is filming the second feature film of Downton Abbey (Dir: Simon Curtis, Cin: Andrew Dunn BSC). Cosmo Campbell ACO is shooting B Camera, Steadicam on Amazon Studios series The Power (Dir: Reed Morano, Cin 2nd unit: Carlos Catalan).

Matt Fisher ACO shot the next series of See for Apple TV in Toronto and will now shoot Disenchanted in Dublin for Disney Films (Dir: Adam Shankman, Cin: Simon Duggan ASC). Peter Wignall ACO is shooting dailies on various productions, including 2nd unit on The Bubble (Cin: Hamish Doyne Ditmas, Dir: Jimmy O’Dee), and shooting splinter unit on Doctor Strange 2 (Dir: Lome Raimi, Cin: Katie Swain). Tom Wilkinson ACO is in Budapest shooting A camera and Steadicam on the next

series of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan for Amazon Studios (Cin: Richard Rutowski ASC). Diego Rodriguez is director of photography on documentary Juventus: All or Nothing a documentary shooting in Italy.

RA Agency: Svetlana Miko ACO worked with cinematographers Oliver Curtis BSC, Ben Todd, and Adam Scarth on commercials using ARRI Zoe Goodwin-Stuart ACO Trinity and recently joined is working on Stay Close feature Colour Room with Denson Baker NZCS ACS.

Sara Putt: Giulio Biccari is shooting Stay Close in Manchester for Red Productions. Duncan Telford is prepping the new series of The Cockfields for Yellow Door Productions. David Mackie shot a film in Lebanon for the World Monument Fund. Yinka Edward is shooting in Nigeria on a project called The Black Book. Sweetheart, a BFI feature Emily Almond-Barr lit, won The Glasgow Film Festival Audience Award. Andrei Austin ACO Assoc. BSC SOC is operating on The Bubble (Dir: Judd Apatow). Danny Bishop ACO Assoc. BSC SOC is operating on All Quiet on the Western Front in Czech Republic (Dir: Ed Berger, Cin: James Friend BSC). Ed Clark ACO started on SAS Rogue Heroes for Kudos Productions (Dir: Tom Shankland). James Frater ACO SOC wrapped on The Witcher (S2) and is working on Mahogany before starting on a block of The Midwich Cuckoos for Snowed In Productions. Zoe Goodwin-Stuart ACO is working alongside Gulio Biccari on Stay Close. Ilana Garrard ACO wrapped on Netflix’s Anatomy of a Scandal and is prepping for film The Swimmers. James Leigh ACO continues on Stephen Merchant’s series The Offenders for Big Talk and Amazon. Will Lyte ACO is working on Top Boy. Vince McGahon ACO Assoc. BSC is operator/ Steadicam operator on Embankment. Alastair Rae ACO Assoc. BSC is in Scotland working on The Last King. Aga

Camera an operator To d Steadicam m Wilk ACO on Ja inson ck Ryan

Szeliga Assoc ACO will soon start as operator on Red Gun. Tom Walden Assoc. ACO welcomed a baby girl, wrapped on Sex Education, and worked on a feature film.

Julian Morson is working on The Little Mermaid with Rob Marshall. Rick Woollard has been working on L’Oreal, McDonalds, Nespresso, Persil, Dior and River Island commercials and dailies on CURSR.

United Agents: Philippe Kress DFF is shooting the SF Studio/Netflix film Kærlighed for Voksne in Denmark (Dir: Barbara Rotenborg). John Lee BSC is shooting The Rig for Wild Mercury Productions (Dir: John Strickland). John de Borman AFC BSC is prepping Why Didn’t They Ask Evans for Mammoth (Dir: Hugh Laurie). Gavin Struthers ASC BSC is in Ireland for Epic, a pilot for Disney/ABC (Dir: James Griffiths). Marcel Zyskind wrapped on feature Dali Land in Liverpool (Dir: Mary Harron). Alwin Küchler BSC is back in LA, having wrapped on Falling Blocs for MARV. He was nominated for the BAFTA Film Awards and BSC Awards for The Mauritanian. Donna Wade is shooting Malory Towers (S2, Ep 7) for King Bert Productions (Dir: Gary Williams).

Alan Almond BSC is reading for a variety of projects.

Danny Cohen BSC is shooting Slow Horses for Apple TV. Damian Paul Daniel has finished work on documentary When I was Younger (Dir: Noella Mingo). Martin Fuhrer

BSC is meeting for various projects. David Higgs BSC will soon start prep on The Amazing Mr Blunden for Sky. Kieran McGuigan BSC is lighting Leftbank’s The Fear Index (Dir: David Caffrey). Laurie Rose BSC is shooting Working Title’s Catherine Called Birdy (Dir: Lena Dunham). Bet Rourich is busy with commercials and about to start work on The English. John Sorapure is second unit director of photography and second unit director on Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Simon Tindall is shooting Hidden (S3) for Ed Taflan. Ollie Downey BSC is shooting Amazon and Sister Pictures’ The Power (Ep 3,5,7) (Dir: Ugla Hauksdóttir and Lisa Gunning). Laurens De Geyter is shooting Hans Herbots’ latest feature in Belgium. Sam Heasman is shooting three episodes of The Sandman for Warner Brothers and Netflix. David Rom is lighting Ted Lasso (S2). Simon Stolland is reading and meeting for several projects. Si Bell is lighting A Very British Scandal for Blueprint Pictures/BBC/Amazon (Dir: Anne Sewitsky). Sam Chiplin is reading and meeting.

Charlotte Bruus Christensen ASC wrapped on All the Old Knives and is having a well-deserved break. James Friend ASC BSC is shooting All Quiet on the Western Front for regular collaborator Edward Berger and Rocket Science/Amusement Park/Netflix. David Marsh lit pilot Black Ops and is now lighting the Call the Midwife >>

Get ready for a new era in film and television production

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 33

WHO’S SHOOTING WHO? / CINEMATOGRAPHERS ROUND-UP

Svetlana Miko ACO, Trinity operator

Jake Scott on a prelight for Greygoose commercial

2103_BC_EVO-220x70-RZ.indd 1

34 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Christmas special. Anton Mertens SBC is lighting series Luxembourg (Dir: Nathalie Basteyns and Kaat Beels). Milos Moore is lighting series Rules of the Game for The Forge/ BBC (Dir: Jennifer Sheridan). Neus Olle AEC BSC is busy with commercials. David Raedeker BSC is lighting series The Essex Serpent for SeeSaw Films/Apple TV+ (Dir: Clio Barnard). Niels Reedtz Johansen is lighting a TV drama in Copenhagen. Kate Reid BSC is lighting series The Baby for Nicole Kassell, Sister Pictures, Sky and HBO. Joshua James Richards is busy with Nomadland awards press and publicity and Camera and Steadicam operator Dan Nightingale meeting for future projects. Ed Rutherford is ACO shooting Wolfe lighting The Serpent Queen for Stacie , shot Arnaud Carney for Garnier era Passon and Lionsgate cam e fram full ice Ven y with Son Television/Starz. es 8 and Zeiss Supreme prim Anna Valdez Hanks is lighting Magpie Murders for Peter Cattaneo and Eleventh Hour Films/Britbox. Ben Wheeler is on The Tourist for Two Brothers Pictures/ BBC/HBO Max in Australia (Dir: Chris Sweeney). Remi Adefarasin OBE BSC shot a Ten X commercial with Elle Key in London through Caviar.

Alex Barber has

Erik Henriksson shooting a music video directed by Anton Tammi Credit: Anton Tammi

been busy with commercials, most recently a B&Q commercial with The Sacred Egg in London for Riff Raff films, and a TK Maxx commercial for MJZ London (Dir: Fredrik Bond). Simon Chaudoir collaborated again with directors The Sacred Egg for a BT commercial in Kiev with Riff Raff and a Dior commercial for Frenzy (Dir: Axel Morin). Lasse Frank shot in Slovenia with Martin Werner for Hornbach and is shooting with Andreas Nilsson in Kiev. Brendan Galvin is shooting film The In Between in Atlanta (Dir: Arie Posin). Stephen Keith Roach worked on a Met Police project for Academy (Dir: Seb Edwards) and a National Lottery commercial (Dir: Gary Freedman c/o of Independent in London). Tristan Oliver is shooting The Trouble with Jessica (Dir: Matt Winn).

United Talent Agency: Stuart Howell is shooting series The Peripheral. Gavin Struthers BSC ASC is filming a pilot for the series Epic. James Friend BSC ASC is lensing All Quiet on the Western Front. Ed Wild BSC is shooting Halo.

Vision Artists: Benedict Spence is shooting Sister Pictures’ TV dramedy This is Going to Hurt (Dir: Lucy Forbes). Last month, Spence’s last collaboration with Lucy - In My Skin - won the RTS Cymru award for Best Drama. Jonas Mortensen wrapped This Way Up (S2). Mortensen won the Kinsale Shark Awards Gold Best Cinematography award for short religious comedy The Birth of Valerie Venus (Dir: Sarah Clift). He is shooting a documentary with Rise Films following historical Russian espionage in the UK. Jean-Noel Mustonen FSC is shooting a comedy series with director Pete Riski.

Nick Morris is shooting BBC musical drama series Superhoe. Morris’ episodes will be directed by Stroma Cairns. Dan Atherton wrapped short film Beyonce Almighty (Dir: Alexandra Brodski). Ann Evelin Lawford shot art film for gallery showing Thick Bleach for director and multimedia artist Zoe Buckman. Anna MacDonald is

20.04.21 13:59

Robbie Ryan BSC ISC on set for Lord Jones

Camera and Steadicam operator Tony Kay ACO operating the ARRI Trinity on The Larkins

James Frater ACO SOC wrapped on The Witcher

prepping for short film Why Me? (Dir: Abdou Cisse) and for BFI-funded musical drama short film Buffer Zone (Dir: Savvas Stavrou). Kia Fern Little - a recent Vision Emerging Artists roster signing - has been shooting 2nd unit for Top Boy (S2). Courtney Bennett has been shooting 2nd unit on Raine Allen Miller’s currently untitled feature debut. Jim Jolliffe wrapped the pilot for an NDA comedy series with Red Bee Media. In commercials, Jaime Feliu-Torres shot for the NHS with Merman; Eoin McLoughlin shot home brand spots (Dir: Locky at BBH); James Blann has been lighting pieces with new collaborators CANADA; James Watson has been back up North working with Chief TV; Richard Mott shot video game commercials with Smuggler; Arthur Loveday lit charity commercials for Stella McCartney and fashion pieces with River Island; Luke Scott shot commercials with Sweet Shop; Ian Murray lensed more projects with Irresistible; Martin Hill shot beautiful food with Another Film Company and heartwrenching pieces for the NHS, produced by HLA; Spike Morris shot sports commercials with Spindle; and Tim Green shot fragrance commercials for Dior with Frenzy.

Wizzo & Co: Aaron Reid wrapped Stephen (Dir: Alrick Riley). Gary Shaw is prepping the opening block of His Dark Materials (S3). Diana Olifirova is shooting Heartstopper (Dir: Euros Lynn). Patrick Meller wrapped short film Don’t Forget (Dir: Mika Watkins). Adam Gillham is attached to and prepping an embargoed drama. Ryan Kernaghan is shooting drama Karen Pirie (Dir: Gareth Bryn). Oli Russell wrapped Sex Education (S3). Nicola Daley ACS will grade Gentleman Jack (S2).

Molly Manning Walker is shooting Superhoe (Dir: Dawn Shadforth). Molly won a British Arrow (Silver) for her work on NHS: We Are Nurses (Dir: Billy Boyd Cape).

Håvard Helle wrapped Martin Owen’s The Loneliest Boy in the World. Luke Bryant will grade feature The

Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight (Dir: Vanessa Casill). Karl Oskarsson IKS is prepping an embargoed drama for Netflix. Charlie Goodger will grade feature Year 10. Christophe Nuyens SBC is shooting an embargoed drama for Netflix. Susanne Salavati is shooting Back to Life (S2) (Dir: Ella Jones). Sverre Sørdal FNF is prepping a feature. Hamish Anderson shot pilot I Hate You (Dir: Bex Rycroft). Seppe Van Grieken SBC is shooting a drama in Liverpool. Steven Ferguson shot pilot Silky Hotel (Dir: Tommy Gillard). Jan Richter-Friis DFF will grade Cobra (S2) remotely and is in the US prepping a drama. Nick Dance BSC is shooting Gentleman Jack (S2) with director Ed Hall. Fede Alfonzo shot for Jamie Rafn and Will Bex for The Bobbsey Twins. Joe Douglas worked with director Amy BeckerBurnett, and Franklin Dow with Charlotte Regan. Theo Garland shot with Jim Owen, and Arran Green with Marley Morrison. Ben Magahy shot with Randy Krallman, Antonio Paladino shot with Claas Ortmann and David Procter with Stella Scott. Tim Sidell picked up a British Arrow (Bronze) for his work on Everyman: Music Makes You Feel Film (Dir: Sophie Jones).

WPA: Stephen Murphy BSC ISC begins principal photography on Atlanta (S3) with director Hiro Murai for FX. Arthur Mulhern begins prep on Channel 4 prison drama Screw from creator Rob Williams and STV Studios. Tom Vaughn will direct the opening block. Ed Moore BSC begins prep on new series The Birth of Daniel F. Harris for Clerkenwell Films and Channel 4 (Dir: Alex Winckler). Anna Patarakina FSF begins prep on a new three-part series The Tower for Mammoth Screen and ITV (Dir: Jim Loach). Baz Irvine ISC begins prep on the first block of upcoming Amazon version of series Call My Agent for Amazon, Bron Studios, and Headline Pictures (Dir: John Morton). Kanamé Onoyama continues principal photography on the third block of

Kyle Macfadzean shooting for Brewdog in Scotland

Top Boy (S3) with director William Stefan Smith for Netflix. Tony Slater Ling BSC continues shooting drama Wolfe for Sky and AbbottVision (Dir: Adrian Shergold).

Catherine Derry continues principal photography on feature film CURS_R for Stigma Films (Dir: Toby Meakins).

PJ Dillon ASC ISC is shooting series That Dirty Black Bag for Palomar and Sundance TV (Dir: Brian O’Malley).

Mattias Troelstrup wraps on the second block of Hanna (S3) in Prague for Amazon and NBC Universal (Dir: Weronika Tofilska). Vanessa Whyte begins principal photography on Ted Lasso for AppleTV+ (S2) with director Matt Lipsey. Joel Honeywell wraps in Manchester on episode three of Wolfe for AbbottVision and Sky (Dir: Sean Spencer). Jaime Ackroyd wraps on feature film Breakfast in Beirut, shooting in Bulgaria, Greece and the UK for Millennium Films (Dir: Tina Gharavi). Ruairi O’Brien, ISC continues principal photography on the final block of Amazon’s The Power (Dir: Neasa Hardiman). Jake Gabbay wrapped on a new spot for Nike with LCS Studio (Dir: Ramone Andreson) Jake also wrapped with Caviar for Adidas’ latest spot (Dir: Lainey Richardson). Thomas Hole shot a new spot for Virgin Radio with EMO Ltd (Dir: Jon Riche) and wrapped on two further new spots – one for McCann with director Chris Ranson and JBL and a spot for Chelsea FC with Copa 90 (Dir: Ben Jones). Matthew J. Smith wrapped a spot for McDonalds with Tony Petersen Film (Dir: WATTS). Dan Holland received an Arizona Short Film Festival Best Cinematography nomination for his work on the multi-award winning short I Wish for You. Dan also wrapped multiple spots with director Paul Butterworth - Hovis with Brave Spark and Holland and Barrett with VCCP. Benjamin Todd shot a promo for Skrillex with director Ben Strebel and Biscuit. He then travelled to Paris with director duo AB/CD/CD and VERY for a McDonalds spot. n

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 35

MEET THE NEW WAVE / BEN MOULDEN

FRESH PERSPECTIVE Filmography so far: Jetski (2021), All My Friends Hate Me (2021), The Drifters (2019), Two Pigeons (2017), Cyberbully (2015), Division 19 (2017), Tower Block (2012), Bigga Than Ben (2008).

What advice would you give someone considering becoming a cinematographer?

Start shooting and keep shooting. And stop calling yourself a cinematographer.

When did you discover you wanted to be a DP and what inspired you to follow this career path?

I started in photography and studied it at university. It was there that I was influenced by the music videos of the ‘90s and directors like Walter Stern, Jonathan Glazer, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham. Their work was so visually groundbreaking and always pushing new ideas and technologies. My final piece for my degree became a moving image piece rather than photography and I was hooked from then on.

What have been your greatest triumphs and disasters on set?

Sometimes filmmaking is all about mitigating disasters, let’s face it. I was shooting a film in Detroit once and the lighting truck had broken down. The whole crew were left waiting with only one scene, set in the back of a van, left to shoot to make the day. I had a torch and a bottle of water in my hands, so I used them to light the scene. It looked amazing, and we made the day.

I have also lit scenes with fires and gas lamps during power cuts and other technical disasters. Those sorts of challenges keep things interesting and remind us that art comes from limitations; something that’s easily forgotten when you have access to endless equipment.

Where did you learn your craft?

Music videos. I started as a runner, like many others, and battled with myself about whether I should go through the camera department ranks. I worked on a couple of dramas as a camera trainee and realised pretty quickly I made a lousy assistant, so I started shooting short films, begging for cameras from Panavision and shooting films whenever possible. With some success at this, I started a small company with a partner and we gradually built a name for ourselves shooting music videos. It was in that intense and creative atmosphere that I cut my teeth.

What are your favourite films, and what makes them stand out to you?

The Conformist: It’s such a director/DP collaborative piece. The bold use of coloured lighting, the way the framing and the story perfectly complement each other; it’s always been a favourite.

Bringing Out the Dead: This film is all about Robert Richardson ASC’s lighting for me. It’s very brave and unjustified throughout and is a hugely powerful element of the story. It had a great influence on freeing me from any rigid ideas about lighting.

Bad Day at Black Rock: Another huge influence. The framing in this film is so deliberate and beautiful. I try to reference it in everything I shoot.

The Italian Job: If anyone asks me to name my favourite film, this is my Ben Moulden stock answer. It doesn’t need any at a dolly for a Bet 365 explanation, it’s a perfect movie.

What lights your fire outside of work?

I can often be found in the Forest of Dean on a mountain bike with my two sons.

What has been the biggest challenge in your career and how did you overcome it?

Missing out on projects early in my career that felt at the time like the end of the world. It’s not, of course, that’s just a lack of perspective. Much like photography, life is all about contrast and perspective.

At least that’s how I see it. Get that right and one can overcome most challenges.

What piece of kit could you not live without?

Decent glass, and a skilled 1st AC. Which film would you love to have shot?

Trainspotting. It rocked my world when it came out the energy and anarchist nature of the whole piece, the story, and the style. It was a perfect movie for me

at the time and I always thought if I could just shoot one Trainspotting, I would die a happy man.

As far as catharsis is concerned, no other film affected me more than Embrace of the Serpent. I can’t explain why, it just had that intangible magical effect on me that is really rare.

Which productions are you most proud to have lensed, and why?

Turning, a short I shot a few years ago that was BAFTA nominated, has a special place in my heart. It was as much about the process of making it as the result. All My Friends Hate Me, that I shot at the end of 2019, is another film I’m very proud of. We were trying to create something akin to Force Majeure, which I think we more than achieved.

What’s the best and worst thing about your job?

Balancing life and work is probably the worst part of my job. My kids are still young, so they always take priority at the moment, but it’s hard to say no to stuff!

Working with a team of people all striving hard to realise your vision is very empowering and rewarding.

I love the anarchist nature of a film crew. Everyone ultimately works for themselves; everyone has chosen to be there. I always run my department as egalitarian as possible - everyone has input and no-one knows what shade I like my tea.

What are your aspirations for the future?

Well, as I said, if I shoot one Trainspotting, I’ll die happy, so that’s always on my to-do list. But I’m older and wiser now, so I understand cinematography won’t change the world. However, I would love to shoot one documentary that changes some minds or explains some tricky concepts. Some writers have a beautiful way of explaining difficult concepts, and good cinematography can really enhance that if it’s done right.

What do you think are the industry’s biggest challenges?

Environment - not changing poly cups for Nespresso pods. The clash of financial and creative - I hope there are economic systems in the future that ease the dependence of one on the other. n

commercial

Who in the film world inspires you?

Robert Richardson ASC for his bold approach to lighting. Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC, obviously for his work, but also for being such a lovely guy.

The way he answers the endless questions he gets is inspiring. Jack Cardiff OBE BSC, Gordon Willis ASC, Orson Welles.

What’s the most useful advice you’ve received and from whom?

“Light for F4 and don’t change the stop.”

John Lynch told me that as I was driving him to hospital, while running on a Pepsi commercial some years ago. He’d only cut his finger and was fine.

36 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

On the crane for the film Tower Block

POINT OF VIEW / NURTURING TALENT / JON WARDLE, NATIONAL FILM AND TELEVISION SCHOOL NFTS Director Jon Wardle

LEARNING BY DOING

As the National Film and Television School celebrates its 50th anniversary, NFTS director Jon Wardle, reflects on the evolution of the School’s training offerings and the learning philosophy at its core.

I

t’s been 50 years since the NFTS first opened its doors in Beaconsfield with our first intake of 23 students and just four departments: production, camera, editing and sound. We’ve come a long way since then and although our anniversary year looks very different to what we had originally anticipated, there is still cause for celebration as well as the chance to reflect on all the NFTS has achieved over the past half a century.

From just four departments in 1971, we now have more than thirty. Five decades on, the NFTS has evolved into the production powerhouse it is today, training over 500 students annually to the highest possible standards.

We run more behind the camera courses than any other film school in the world, teaching disciplines like Post Production Supervision, Assistant Camera, and Production Accounting. We consistently push into new territory to meet the ever-changing demands of the industry and support our students to work in an increasingly varied range of interdisciplinary genres and mediums.

This is in part the reason NFTS alumni are some of the most in demand and well-known creative talents worldwide. But alumni success is also down to the School’s philosophy of learning by doing. It means that when students graduate, they are fully equipped to hit the ground running. Not just in the hard skills required to be a world-class director of photography or composer; they are also armed with other essential tools such as collaboration and negotiation which enables them to thrive.

The knowledge gained while at the School has empowered our graduates to make an unrivalled impact on all corners of the film, television, and games industries and their work is consistently recognised with national and international accolades.

A few years ago, during a return visit, alumni of the School and visionary cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC said of his time learning his craft with us: “The NFTS gave me a solid base from which to move forward.”

With the screen industries continuing to grow under-represented groups to attend the NFTS is at exponentially and demand for content creation greater the heart of this, and we award over £900,000 of than ever before, I’d like to think Sir Roger’s words will scholarships and bursaries annually. Through our still hold true for our students 50 years from now. outreach programme Access NFTS, we are working

In cinematography specifically, NFTS graduate ever harder to reach those who will most benefit from achievement is stellar. From It’s a Sin and Chernobyl financial assistance and to attract people from diverse to Normal People, between backgrounds who might not 2015-2020, graduates of the have considered a career in NFTS Cinematography MA shot film, television, or games.

154 HETV projects – that’s an

As we look to the astonishing 25% of all the HETV future, what do the next 50 made in the UK. years hold for the NFTS?

Our UK-wide expansion Since our inception, we’ve continues apace with hubs in demonstrated the School is Beaconsfield, London, Glasgow, a creative force that never Leeds, and Cardiff, enabling us stands still. Right now, the to respond to the needs of local industry is undergoing a major production economies. Our industry renaissance. Changes are renowned creative and technical happening in every corner short courses have become essential of a sector that thrives on to film and TV professionals keen to emerging new talent, those upskill and further their careers. who bring fresh new voices SIR ROGER DEAKINS CBE BSC ASC

One of the silver linings of and the ability to tell highly lockdown has been our ability to impactful stories. continue our renowned Masterclass

The NFTS motto is programme virtually, with some of the leading lights ‘Our Credits Tell the Story’ and regardless of how many from the world of film and television. David Fincher, radical technological advancements we witness over Elisabeth Moss, Asif Kapadia, Paul Greengrass, Bradford the coming years, one thing that will always hold true Young, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Malorie Blackman, Sam is the power of story.

Mendes and countless others have graced the learning

The next 50 years and beyond will see the spaces of our students over the past 12 months, with NFTS remain in lockstep with the demands of many saying the Masterclasses kept their spirits up the industry, instrumental in keeping the pipeline during such a turbulent time. of talent bursting with the next generation of

Our commitment to ensuring the NFTS is passionate, highly trained graduates and storytellers a multi-cultural and inclusive environment, and who will go on to become leaders and influencers at our students and graduates feel seen, heard, and the forefront of the creative process. n represented across all areas of the industry remains

a key priority. Providing more opportunities for nfts.co.uk

“THE NFTS GAVE ME A SOLID BASE FROM WHICH TO MOVE FORWARD.”

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 37

IN THE FRAME / STEPHEN NAKAMURA / SENIOR COLOURIST / CO-HEAD FEATURE COLOUR, COMPANY 3

COLOUR CHAMELEON

Selected filmography The Nevers (2021) (TV series) News of the World (2020) Da 5 Bloods (2020) Raised by Wolves (2020) Crazy Rich Asians (2018) (TV series) Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018) Alien: Covenant (2017) X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) The Big Short (2015) The Martian (2015) Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014) X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) Prometheus (2012) Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (2011) Quantum of Solace (2008) The Hurt Locker (2008) Zodiac (2007) The Departed (2006) The Aviator (2004) Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) Panic Room (2002)

What inspired you to become a colourist?

I worked at a duplication company owned by Warner Bros. and I started, like a lot of people, as a tape op.

There were colourists there and that’s how I first learned the job existed. I worked on mastering some animated shows like Batman and Animaniacs in the early ‘90s and after a while, I knew I wanted to colour liveaction shows.

How and where did you learn the craft?

I joined the Post Group as an assistant. A lot of the top colourists of today were there at the time. I assisted for a while and learned what colour grading was all about and eventually I got work as the colourist on the show seaQuest DSV. The clients were happy with my work and soon I was also doing a lot of commercials and music videos.

Who or what are your biggest inspirations or mentors?

I assisted the colourists at the Post Group, and they helped me get a firm grasp on the job. I would always be experimenting on my time off - putting the negative of something that I liked up [on the Telecine] and trying to see if I could make it look as good as the colourists did. If I got stuck, I could ask whichever colourist was there at the time.

s (2018) Crazy Rich Asian

What would you single out as your big break?

In the early 2000s, the technology to finish feature films digitally was still being developed. The tools we had for TV work - things like windows and keys and defocus - weren’t available for features. I had been

grading David Fincher’s commercials and music videos and the non-theatrical releases of his features The Game and Fight Club. He wanted to finish his next feature, Panic Room (shot by Conrad W. Hall ASC), as a DI [digital intermediate], which was a brand-new thing. But he wanted all those controls that we had for video finishing.

He encouraged me to move to Technicolor from the Post Group so I could be the colourist for that film. I was like, “Sounds great!” I’d be working with David and on the cutting edge of this new technology! Then Tom [Newton Thomas] Sigel [ASC] wanted to finish his new film, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, as a DI, too.

I’d coloured some of his TV work at the Post Group and he wanted me to do his DI. I was off and running in this brand-new field!

What are the key qualities of a star colourist?

Part of it is about temperament. You have to be able to work with cinematographers and directors and sometimes a whole lot of other people and always have ideas to present but also be able to quickly show people options. Of course, one absolutely essential aspect to success as a colourist is an eye for colour. You need to respond to very subtle changes in hue and contrast and have a feel for how these [attributes] affect the mood and meaning of a scene.

Some people pick that up pretty quickly. With others, it takes a long time. Some people really never get there. They’ll see things as too green or too magenta or too low contrast. Some people who want to be colourists can do a good job for an individual shot but just can’t hold a look consistently throughout a whole movie - 3,000 shots or whatever it is. You can work with them for years...and then you have to kind of let it go.

It’s just not the job for them.

The Nevers (2021)

38 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

(TV series)

What are the fundamentals of a successful colourist/ DP relationship?

You have to be able to share the cinematographer’s sensibility. You need to be a bit of a chameleon.

Everybody has a different kind of style - a different idea about what things should look like - and as a colourist, you want to see things the cinematographer’s way to a great extent, so they don’t feel they have to micromanage every scene.

When I start on a movie or TV show, I’ll usually pre-grade some scenes. Ideally, we can then sit down in the same room and start reshaping shots together. Maybe they keep asking for me to brighten faces or they usually want to darken the background or put vignettes around the frame or desaturate particular colours. Soon, I can say, “OK, I see how this person looks at photography. I know how they respond to certain looks.”

Once you work with a DP multiple times, you get a feel for how they look at things.

Prometheus (2012)

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

“WHEN HE’S WORKING WITH RIDLEY SCOTT AND I, WE DO THINGS THAT ARE QUITE EDGY AND VISUALLY QUITE STRONG AND POWERFUL AND HE’S RIGHT THERE WITH US - A PART OF THE FAMILY.” DARIUSZ WOLKSI ASC

What role do you believe colour and the grade play in enhancing a production?

A lot depends on the production. There are films that have a very intense look built in the grade that could never be created any other way. Then there are times when it’s more about evening everything out and polishing, similar to what a timer did in the photochemical days.

Very often, there are situations where productions just can’t wait hours or days for the perfect weather, and we can go in and we can add in the equivalent of filters and grads, and we can affect the contrast and shape the light to a great extent.

On big visual effects shows, shots often come in from multiple effects companies and the work can be beautiful but until everything is seen projected in context and in the colour space that it will be seen in theatres, people can’t know exactly how it’s going to look. Maybe the sky element suggests that the tree we’re looking at would have more direct sunlight

than it has so I could isolate the tree, and then use colour correcting tools to change the look of the tree, maybe add some contrast and saturation, to make it sit perfectly within the finished shot.

What innovations have you been impressed by?

I’ve worked on DaVinci colour correctors my whole career and they’re always adding new tools. Everything I’ve discovered along the way has been about giving the client something they need that I can’t quite do with the normal tools.

I coloured the Brad Bird film Tomorrowland, which was shot by Claudio Miranda [ASC]. It was the first feature to do a version in the HDR Dolby Cinema process and it was before Dolby’s technology was completely able to do everything necessary. We were working with

Dolby and Blackmagic Design [makers of DaVinci Resolve] and our in-house team of colour scientists, led by John Quartel, to make it all come together.

I was recently asked to come up with a unique look for some flashbacks on a series, so I did a lot of experimentation within Resolve’s OpenFX palette using their Glow tools to come up with a look they liked. I love to experiment with every tool available when I need to do something I’ve never done before.

What advice would you give aspiring colourists?

I think it’s a really exciting time to be a colourist because just look at how much content there is out there. And a lot of it is really fantastic! You have all the cutting-edge directors and cinematographers doing TV and features.

It used to just be network TV, theatrical releases, and >>

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IN THE FRAME / STEPHEN NAKAMURA / SENIOR COLOURIST / CO-HEAD FEATURE COLOUR, COMPANY 3

>>

some cable shows. Now even YouTube has great stuff to watch. And there are so many platforms where people can experiment. It’s not like when I had to learn on my off hours when there was a bay available.

But I also think there is a lot of value in sitting in the same room with the cinematographer and watching the same images because that’s really a great way for me to get a feel for what they like and don’t like.

Do you think it’s still important to work as an assistant and to train at a post company or do you think the future is more about learning at home?

I think that people still do better in an environment where they can learn directly from experienced colourists and in a professional situation with clients and deadlines.

Cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel ASC says: “As a cinematographer, you need to have a vision of what you want to begin with and where you want to go at the end. I think that the gaffer and the colourist are key collaborators in that. The more you work with somebody, the more you can relinquish the OCD aspect of control.

Stephen Nakamura is somebody I’ve worked with for What are the biggest recent changes you have seen in many years and we have a certain common language. the world of colour grading?

In a creative process with an artist that you HDR is a big difference. Some cinematographers like respect, you expect to have opinions come back at to keep the essential feel of the P3 finish when we you. I think one of the privileges of being a director of master for HDR and others like to really explore how the photography is that you can take the opinions you like possibilities of making brighter highlights, more intense and respectfully decline the ones that don’t work for colours and the perception of darker blacks can add to you. When I’m working with Stephen, I know I’m going their visual storytelling. to like quite a lot of his opinions.

Another change that came from the pandemic, of One of the major challenges with Da 5 course, is remote work. Company 3 has had the ability Bloods was making sure that throughout the digital grade, for a long time to do colour grading where the colourist we stayed true to the look of that reversal film that is in one place and the clients are somewhere else but portions of the movie was shot on. We didn’t want to go much more of that has happened over the past year by to all the trouble of shooting 16 millimeter reversal and necessity and I think that’s both good and bad. It’s good not have it end up looking the way it was supposed to because I can collaborate with cinematographers while look. We also had some digital shots that had to blend they’re off on location shooting their next project. In in with those shots. I knew that Stephen could get us fact, I’m currently working from one of our Los Angeles most of the way there before I even started going in to facilities with Dariusz, who’s shooting in Rome, and Company 3 to work with him.

Tom Sigel, who’s in the UK. Also, we shot a lot of night exteriors in the jungle with only a 0) 02 (2 Da 5 Bloods moonlight source. Spike [Lee] likes to work fast so there wasn’t much time for lighting, and we didn’t have that The Martian (2015)

40 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

much [lighting equipment] anyway. This was really the jungle. Since I know exactly what Stephen is capable of, I knew when we were shooting that it would all work but there’s no way we could have shot those scenes as quickly as we did if we didn’t have someone like Stephen who could finetune the look and also keep it all looking natural.”

Cinematographer Dariusz Wolksi ASC says: “Stephen and I go way back to the first Pirates of the Caribbean, which was when digital colour grading for feature films was a cutting-edge technology. Since then, we’ve worked on so many pictures and we’ve developed an extreme shorthand. He understands my aesthetics.

I’ve done movies with numerous directors and introduced them to Stephen and they’re still using Stephen.

We work with [digital imaging technician] Ryan, who creates the files on set where I can basically sketch the look and then those files go to Stephen and he does his own work based on what we gave him. He has much more control in his grading theatre, of course, but he’s already starting out with a good idea of what the director and I are looking for.

I know he works in all kinds of ways depending on the cinematographer and director. When he’s working with Ridley Scott and I, we do things that are quite edgy and visually quite strong and powerful and he’s right there with us - a part of the family.

I grew up with a very strict knowledge of what the film lab can do. But today, you can analyse and dissect every frame and put windows around everything and keys...the technology is overwhelming!

And that creates a danger because you can do too much to it. Stephen knows where to use [that technology] and he knows where not to.

He has a great sense of how images should look even if a lot of it is actually a visual effect. Think of the classic thing that happens when you have a bluescreen outside the window. The VFX people might create a perfect looking view of what’s outside. But we know that the window should be blown out. In real life, you wouldn’t have a perfect exposure outside the window and if you did, it would look horrible and artificial. So, if you give Stephen those two elements, you know he’s going to just balance them perfectly.” n

Beautiful look.

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VISIONARY / ELLEN KURAS ASC / BY VALENTINA VALENTINI

SUPREME STORYTELLER

While at Brown University, studying semiotics and social anthropology in the late 1970s, Ellen Kuras ASC, took a photography class at Rhode Island School of Design. It was a move that changed the course of her life, as she found herself intuitively drawn to stories told through visual mediums and was fascinated by the idea of propaganda and how meaning is created in film and photography. the reason The Betrayal (2008) was matographer Ellen Kuras became a cine by Ellen l, (Credit: From The Betraya asavath) Kuras and Thavisouk Phr

42 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

A

fter moving to New York City in 1982, Kuras began working as an assistant on documentaries and as an electrician on dramatic films. During nights, she completed the coursework for a master’s degree at New York University, and decided to do her thesis project as a continuation of the work she’d begun in Rhode Island, documenting her Southeast Asian refugee neighbours and exploring the line between documentary and fiction. Seeking a Laotian language teacher, she hired Thavisouk Phrasavath, who would eventually become her friend, subject and collaborator on The Betrayal – Nerakhoon (2008), the documentary that would garner Kuras’ first Oscar nomination and Primetime Emmy win.

The Betrayal was the reason Kuras became a cinematographer. She first began the film as the director-filmmaker and had hired a cinematographer to shoot. When the first days of dailies came back, she saw that they were beautiful images, but realised that they didn’t really say very much, they didn’t tell the story. So, she picked up the camera to explore what it is to create meaning with the camera, and in doing so, that was the beginning of a lifelong inquiry into visual metaphor.

Though Kuras started The Betrayal back in 1985, she didn’t finish the film right away, citing creative reasons: “I didn’t want to edit the film in a traditional

documentary way,” says Kuras. “Most documentary editors at the time would first edit the interviews and then stick in the images to illustrate the words. I needed the images to be seen as visual metaphors and having as much power as the words to tell the story.”

She and Phrasavath turned to editing the film themselves to try to remain true to the visual approach.

Another roadblock in finishing the film was that she couldn’t access the archival material she knew she wanted to complete the story - not only was the material highly classified by the US government, but Laos was also a communist country closed off to the world.

Needing to show memory and first-person narrative, Kuras turned to creating her own archival footage in the spirit of the truth. Financing the film through grants and her own pocket, she ended up working on the project whenever she had free time. After nearly two decades of doing that in between shooting films, Kuras saw how the United States and Britain were entering Afghanistan and Iraq, and she felt that the story of The Betrayal - about the devastation left behind in Laos after the Vietnam war - needed to be told. This was 2006, when Kuras was at the peak of her career.

“I’d had half a dozen scripts on my desk asking me to shoot in 2006 and I was about to begin prep on Recount (2008),” she says. “My film felt like an incomplete sentence, so I knew I had to go back to it with resolve.”

The Betrayal was accepted at Sundance Film Festival, where it was nominated for best documentary and went on to be nominated for a Film Independent Ellen Kuras didn’t want to edit The Betrayal in a traditional Spirit Award, an Academy Award and docume way (Credit: From The Betr ntary ayal, by won a Primetime Emmy.

Ellen Kuras and Thaviso uk Phrasavath) During those two decades, Kuras was constantly working on films - first, as a cinematographer on big studio films like Blow (2001) and Analyze That (2002), and for beloved independent films too, like Swoon (1992) and Angela (1995), both of which won her Sundance Jury awards, Summer of Sam (1999) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

But Kuras had always wanted to direct, and considered herself a “filmmaker,” not wanting to be limited as either “director” or “cinematographer.”

She wanted to be both.

Kuras has directed episodes of series including Catch-22 (2019) during the new golden age of television

A Little Chaos

“My first avenue of being able to enter into filmmaking was through documentary,” says Kuras, who counts Costa-Gavras, Gillo Pontecorvo and Stanley Kubrick among her early filmmaker heroes. “Films like Z (1969) and Missing (1982), I just loved the way CostaGavras dealt with suspense and drama, often using real-life situations in such a way that we understood the politics of it. Another really influential film for me was Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966). I was blown away by his creation of a film that looked like a documentary but was actually a drama. Tom Laughlin’s Billy Jack (1971) opened my eyes to changing points of view. It was the first time I saw a ‘Cowboys and Indians’ film that was from the point of view of the Native Americans, and it really took me aback. And of course, 2001 A Space Odyssey, opened up a whole other way of thinking about human existence and narrative.”

Kuras feels that those films stayed in her psyche even as she was headed toward a different type of career path in social anthropology, and that they informed her even more when she began making her own movies. She was also hugely influenced by her year studying in France, where she attended École des Études du Cinema in Paris. There, in a fully French-speaking program, she studied the basis for meaning and perception as it related to the psychoanalysis and psychology.

“I came to the camera part of filmmaking with a director’s eye,” she explains, referencing her many years shooting feature films in NYC and around the world, “and was often asked by many when I would start to direct, but I felt like I couldn’t actually dive into directing until I finished The Betrayal.”

After The Betrayal was released in 2008, Kuras felt freer to concentrate on directing because she had a clean slate and also more confidence because of the success of The Betrayal. She began working on commercials at Park Pictures as a director-DP and continued to shoot for features like the sweet Away We Go (2009) and the luscious A Little Chaos (2014); Netflix’s limited series docudrama Wormwood (2017) and more recently, Fran Lebowitz’s Pretend It’s a City (2021). And in 2016, she also began directing TV episodes and has cut her teeth in the new golden age

When Kuras began working on commercials at Park Pictures as a director-DP she continued to shoot features such as A Little Chaos (2014)

of television on shows like Ozark (2017), Legion (2018), Catch-22 (2019) and The Umbrella Academy (2019).

“Moving into episodic TV to direct is a big transition for most,” says Kuras. “But I have to say that for me, I’d been asked for a long time when I was going to start to direct. And I think that’s because the way I always approached cinematography was as a director - thinking about how where I put the camera can help create meaning for a scene or using lighting to create emotion for the story. I was asking questions and helping directors to design the looks of their films just like a director would do and I wasn’t being presumptive or arrogant, it was just a way of collaborating for me.”

Kuras freely admits that she knew she always wanted to be able to control the overall picture in filmmaking. It was the nature of needing work that steered her into cinematography, which she also admits to loving, in addition to her blossoming career as a director.

“I love the way the camera can speak,” she says.

“I love the way the camera can create meaning. It was a natural course for me to shoot for all those years, but I realised that I really did want to be able to create stories that go beyond the contribution of the cinematography.”

When the pandemic hit, it stalled the final stages of financing and prepping for her first narrative feature film, LEE, an international biopic with Kate Winslet as photographer Lee Miller, a fashion modelturned-acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue

magazine during World War II. But she was able to continue her work as a DP on Martin Scorsese’s documentary about David Johansen, front man for the New York Dolls, and is currently directing the second episode on Amazon Originals’ thriller, The Terminal List, with creator and director Antoine Fuqua and Chris Pratt.

“It’s harder for [small films] to adhere to both internal protocol and state protocol,” says Kuras, shifting her focus to the challenges she currently feels in the industry. “Even on a big studio show, I’m experiencing those difficulties and added costs: all the key players - myself, the producers, the assistant director, the cinematographer - we all have to selfdrive while doing a scout. It’s enormously tiring and cuts off the conversation that we would all be having in a van together. We’re really feeling that gap in communication, that creative synthesis that happens when people come together and start forming ideas. Everybody’s just trying to get back to a semblance of normalcy, but you can’t look at what’s happening from a place of isolation.”

While that is the impact in an immediate sense on the creative process, Kuras feels that the bigger picture looks brighter as more people get vaccinated.

She has heard from sales agents trying to put together deals, that movies are coming back, though she doesn’t believe we’ll ever see the industry like it was pre-Writers’ Strike in 2008. But Kuras, never daunted by change, has adapted many times over to a morphing industry and, more to the point, to her own sense of transition and evolution. It’s thrilling to see what this next stage of her career will bring to us all. n

“I ALWAYS APPROACHED CINEMATOGRAPHY AS A DIRECTOR - THINKING ABOUT HOW WHERE I PUT THE CAMERA CAN HELP CREATE MEANING FOR A SCENE OR USING LIGHTING TO CREATE EMOTION FOR THE STORY.” ELLEN KURAS ASC British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 43

THE CRAFT / ARTISTIC INFLUENCES / BY WITOLD STOK BSC Heath Ledger as Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (Credit: Warner Bros.)

The influence of paintings such as Francis Bacon’s 1972 Self Portrait (left) can be seen in films such as The Dark Knight and Inception © The Estate of Francis Bacon. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage 2021.

Photo: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd

A PAINTER’S EYE

Why should cinematographers looking to produce unique creations seek influence from centuries-old art? Witold Stok BSC explores the powerful influence paintings can have on filmmakers.

I

n cinema’s multi-rooted parentage, painters, poets, novelists and theatre animators line up with engineers, craftsmen, builders of medieval cathedrals or the creators of mass-produced Bauhaus works. 17th century Italian opera welded together music, movement, drama and stage illusion, resurrecting ancient Greek drama’s sense of universality. Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk idea of ‘total artwork’ - integrating music, acting, visuals, scenery and more, to mesmerise large audiences through a rush of emotional charge - surrenders to the power of fiction and, at its peak, challenges viewers’ minds.

The cinema spectacle picks up from the opera and, later, the music hall experience of our ancestors. Motion relates film to other performing arts. Much of what happens on stage, superficial and yet paradoxically alive, goes on in our yard - the reality of space, the mise-en-scène, the pivotal presence of actors as characters, music, visual creation, and drama. Cinema-makers gradually learned the

44 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

ropes of proper storytelling, mostly from literature: the plot-driven narrative, the play of cause-effect, the actionin-time factor. The novel’s chain of events became film editing. Literature, as novelist E.L. Doctorov points out, “gives to the reader something more than information.

Complex understanding – indirect, intuitive and non-verbal – arise from the words of the story.” Film amalgamates these pursuits of beauty and expression, bringing inherent energy to our much younger medium.

“A painter can be interested in fine arts only. A composer may sit exclusively in music. But a filmmaker simply must be interested in art. And not just because something from one of the other art disciplines might prove to be useful; a filmmaker must think about cinema as art. All the muses are older than the films, and so it fits to listen to what the ‘council of elders’ has to say.

Concentrating exclusively on film leads to the involuntary copying of the language, and a copy will always lack what’s most important: its own feeling. There is no use learning film only through films,” according to director Andrzej Barański.

Director Jean-Luc Godard reminds us that cinema, born along with public transport, took us closer to events rather than just to places. “Film draws upon and sucks dry all the other arts,” said film critic David Thomson. The usual insults follow - too literary, too painterly, too stagey, too operatic. A reproaching epithet ‘theatrical’ damns a film for missing the vital Inception’s dream connection with reality. sequences borrow from the impossible The connection architecture of Dutch with the art of painting artist MC Escher - our closest relative, a (Credit: Warner Bros.) much older sister, almost

mother - is different. We don’t directly compete, yet secretly aspire to be like her. There is no immediate danger of losing our identity but, rather, a promise of nurturing. “Deprivation is for me what daffodils were to Wordsworth,” confessed poet Philip Larkin. Instead of deprivation and daffodils, directors, costume and production designers, and cinematographers talk and write about contact with inspiring paintings.

In the urge to speak now, in one’s unique voice, why drag from the past the heritage of centuries-old “dead art”? Fernando Meirelles, of City of God fame, answers: “Sometimes we want to dynamite the Louvre and try to create something from nothing, but sometimes all we want is to talk about the simple facts of life.” Both painting and film work through appearances, vitally linked through the physiology of seeing and reception. Ours is a mechanically based medium and yet often strives to imitate living reality. Flowing through visual expression, painting’s power guides us on how to notice deeper layers of reality. Robert Bresson said: “Have a painter’s eye. The painter creates by looking.” Christopher Nolan’s Inception dream sequences borrow from the impossible architecture of MC Escher as well as from Francis Bacon.

“You have to look to art to teach you and guide you in terms of expressing things beyond dialogue. I quite like the paradoxical nature of it. The more he removes, the less he tells you really about what’s out there, the more I find myself thinking about what’s in that dark space behind…

You never have the resources to fully create the world that you’re creating, so you are leaving a lot of voids, leaving a lot of gaps. So, part of what you’re trying to do is using those necessary gaps intelligently, so that where you’re not showing something, it’s helping you rather than feeling the limitations of the world you’ve created,” said Nolan.

When speaking about The Dark Knight and actor Heath Ledger’s portrayal of Joker, Nolan commented: “One thing Heath wanted to do was to apply makeup himself.

As an actor, he said, ‘Ok, this character would put his own makeup on in real life, so what would that look like if I just got the makeup.”

Architecture and sculpture deal with three dimensions. Representational paintings condense the

entire story of three-dimensional reality in a two-dimensional image frozen in time, with the suggestion of depth to project spatial illusion. With the same relevant intuition of the eye, films construct a story as a series of images within four-dimensional space-time, the fourth dimension being time. Until (and if) we switch to 3D, transforming the world into a two-dimensional image is one of the basic points of our pictorial work. Still, perhaps the most important to the storytelling, yet unquantifiable, beyond any stereometry, is the Paulus Po tt dimension of human emotion.

Cattle and er’s Sh

The painters from the 16th to early 20th a Stormy La eep in ndscape centuries pulled the visual strings of storytelling close to ours, creating an inspired representation of the world that is also its corrective, not merely what it ‘is’ but an expression of what they saw Bouts the and felt. Their inroads into formal inventions Dirk (c.1400 – 1475) Workshop of Child, Elder, St Luke Drawing the Virgin and s Museum to evoke emotional reactions in reception Flemish School of Paintings, The Bowe fascinate. Their observation of the effects of light phenomena in nature used as a dramatic element was revolutionary: the graphic expression and forming an expression of images, often revealed with a and narrative qualities of light, its mood-creating concise impact. Many of them would now be in the visual direction and contrast, colour and temperature, the mainstream, art house and independents. power of the mystery of shadow, soft or hard quality,

Most of the image-making techniques that high and low key, the distribution of highlights. They moviemakers “discover” were exercised throughout the perfected the effective tools to direct the eye: spatial centuries, sometimes through proto-film techniques. perspective in setting foreground against the background Painter Paulus Potter seems to employ shading to (using proportions, golden ratios, diagonals, verticals and accentuate a tempestuous feel, which looks much like horizontals), patterns and various shapes to underpin the an effect of graduated neutral density filters applied strengths of composition, contrasting textures, intensity diagonally in opposite corners of the frame. Why prise and contrast of colours, the impact of their psychological open an already unbolted gate? associations like setting red against opposing green or

Exploring painters’ secrets opens out a chance cold against warm, the degrees of colour saturation and to deepen and enlarge the filmmaker’s scope of monochromatic schemes. visual solutions to ensnare the spectator. The clichéd

“Don’t kid yourself. We’re all of us guinea pigs in cinematographic expression ‘painting with light’ still the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress,” carries some truth. Yet the cues and clues from paintings said Tennessee Williams. Painting relied on a knowledge don’t always have to propagate the tired stereotype of of myths, legends, and religious tales. It occasionally flirted “painterly” lighting but to learn from painters’ storytelling. with the inclusion of a word or an inscription within the Lighting a film is more about sculpting with light. I often frame, just like captions propped silent movies. These look for visual inspiration elsewhere too - stills, war cutting-edge storytellers explored the same crucial reportage, architecture, even dance or opera. narrative dilemmas in the psychological workings of seeing

Measuring up to the older siblings, we want and need to be telling the story on our own terms, not overindulging in one particular ingredient at the expense of others. Influence can enhance a work through fertilisation or poison by contagion, but ignoring this enriching legacy of our forebears would be short-sighted. In self-interest, from sheer narrative curiosity, we should not allow it to fade away from memory. When making pictorial choices, lessons in manipulating the viewers’ imagination can be fruitfully quarried from this mine to lead us forward.

In some ‘platonic space’, great works of art from all ages exist, simultaneously echoing and borrowing from each other. In Greek, icon means likeness or image.

In the Christian Orthodox Church tradition, the icon mediates in a spiritual heaven-earth connection between the depicted holy figure, the iconographer-painter, and the viewer. Creating an icon involves fasting, focused contemplation and prayer. Creating film images may involve excessive catering, a rush to meet schedules and lots of distractions. Still, in The Acts of the Apostles, the name of the town Iconium appears. The City of Images, quite a place for pictorialists, or should it be pictorians or pictographers? St Luke, the proto-cinematographer, icon-maker evahngelist (patron saint of painters as well as physicians) would be filmmakers’ President there. n

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 45

THE BIG PICTURE / COVID-SAFE SHOOTING / BY KEVIN HILTON

RISING TO THE CHALLENGE

A

fter a year in and out of lockdown, during which TV drama and streamed films kept people entertained and engaged, home audiences have finally been seeing the high-profile productions that were made under COVID-19 restrictions. Everyone involved in a production has had to follow the rules to ensure they and their colleagues remain safe, but cinematographers and camera and lighting crews in particular have had to rethink how they work.

General parameters for COVID shooting are laid out in the British Film Commission guide Working Safely during COVID-19 for Film and High-end TV Drama.

This was first published in June 2020, with an updated version appearing on 1 April this year, and includes UK government advice on: Thinking about risk; Who should go to work; Social distancing for workers; and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and face coverings.

There is also a section covering the camera department, including grips, crane, DIT, playback and the script supervisor. Among the recommendations is to allow sufficient time for the director of photography and key grip to plan safe working procedures as well as for installing and striking equipment according to COVID-19 safety rules. Laurie Rose BSC, who worked on several productions during this time, including Working Title’s Rebecca (2020), observes that a primary consideration for ensuring safety is “good, reliable and wide testing”.

Initially, he says, everyone was tested five times a week but, as infection numbers fell, this dropped to three times weekly. “We test, make our daily declaration of health, and have temperatures taken,” he says. “It’s paramount not to take risks and Kate Reid (middle) on the set of Ghost Light with ARRI Trinity operator Svetlana Miko

46 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

to use masks as well as keeping a distance. We’ve had a couple of close calls and we stood down for a day or so, retested, tweaked the schedule and carried on.

Filmmaking is about being in close proximity as a team, so we’re careful and no masks ever come off.”

Rose adds that there was originally the “grand idea” of having only one department on set at a time.

“Whilst this is a great concept, in reality it just doesn’t work, there is just not enough time to do that,” he says.

While acknowledging this procedure is “time consuming”, Annika Summerson did work under it while shooting Season 2 of Avalon UK/Sky One comedy-drama Breeders.

“We had got used to working as a team in the studio [The Backstage Centre, Essex], with one department going in, then clearing out before the next went in,” she explains. “My camera assistant was ‘by the set’, not on it, and focus pulling was done remotely from outside for both cameras.”

Summerson operated A camera, with Johnny Tyler on B camera.

Both cameras were brought on and off set by the grip, with as few people in the shooting area as possible.

“I hardly saw the camera assistant for several weeks,” Summerson says. “The sets were small and there was a lot of distancing, including having the clapperboard some way from the camera. We were wearing masks, the blue surgical ones, which were standard at the time, not the higher specification N95s that people are wearing now. We worked in bubbles - I was bubbled with Johnny and the actors and we were all tested twice a week.”

Some productions started out under COVID guidelines, but some were already shooting and had to be suspended. This included HBO Max’s fantasy mini-series The Nevers, which involved four cinematographers, Kate Reid BSC among them. Reid has shot four

Annika Summerson on a COVID shoot in a pub

productions since the pandemic began, including the short Ghost Light, and says it is not easy: “Working around COVID is hard but when we came back to The Nevers the organisation was exceptional in taking every measure and applying them to look after the cast and crew.”

This involved three tests a week, which, during Reid’s time with The Nevers, revealed two negative results. “We lost a focus puller,” she acknowledges, “and we couldn’t get a replacement, so we had to pull together and work in a different way, with the second AC on A camera stepping in. Producers and production staff didn’t need to be on set every day and three zones were created, with a central nucleus [the set itself], a ‘to the set’ boundary and beyond that the production base area. I kept within my bubble with the director and first AD and there were no crossovers of bubbles. Departments worked separately in a military style operation.”

A major change, noted by all those LAURIE ROSE BSC contacted, was on-set monitoring. Reid says she and the director “sat in proximity” to view footage but did not share a monitor, viewing instead on their own screens. To ensure safety, all devices were labelled with people’s names to ensure sole use. On Breeders, remote monitoring was enabled through having QTAKE live streaming on individual iPads.

Shooting styles and the selection of some hardware has also been influenced by the new regime, but, says Rose, not necessarily for the worse: “I’d wanted for a while to try some stabilised gimbal options and it was a no-brainer that remote heads could be a solution to distance and exposure on set. On both jobs I’ve done so far, I’ve used a Ronin gimbal in various modes, handheld with a support vest, grip carried, on cranes and vehicle mounts as well as in studio mode on a hand-wheel dolly. This has significantly reduced the number of people in the room and the proximity of crew to cast. Shooting handheld and being in close quarters with a maskless cast is a risk but we minimise contact time, so in a sense that has changed what we do.”

There is some fun to be had watching recent films and dramas to see if any compromises made for COVID are noticeable but the real message to take away is that crews and actors are staying safe while still producing quality entertainment. n

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To light Emily Blunt beautifully, Polly Morgan often used a DMX dimmer board, ARRI SkyPanels and Astera Tubes

48 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

T N L E I S

CAMERA CREATIVE / POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC / A QUIET PLACE PART II / BY ZOE MUTTER

R O R R TE

The family focus remains at the heart of the story in A Quiet Place Part II as the Abbotts face new threats exploring the wider post-apocalyptic world. As the tension builds, roving cameras follow their journey, with the texture and dilapidation of the abandoned surroundings beautifully captured on 35mm film.

“T

he scripts that draw me in are those with a strong emotional core balanced with powerful visual landscapes that I feel connected to,” says Polly Morgan BSC ASC. That connection to the narrative was achieved in the cinematographer’s latest creative venture, Paramount Pictures’ A Quiet Place Part II, as the visual language in writerdirector John Krasinski’s script ensured the characters, locations, and action-packed yet heartfelt story were vividly communicated in an “immersive and emotive” form.

“John wrote the film how he saw it, so the beautifully visceral storytelling drew me in immediately. The script was a blueprint for how we would execute the movie,” says Morgan.

“The wonderful thing about this film is people’s physical reaction when watching it, the gasps of fear or responses to the touching moments. The central story of the family trying to survive together was appealing, especially as I was a new mother when filming began. There’s the action aspect, but at its heart, it's a family drama.”

Before exploring visual concepts for A Quiet Place Part II, Morgan and Krasinski discussed the energy and premise of A Quiet Place (2018) - a more intimate experience set in a post-apocalyptic world that sees the Abbott family silently seeking refuge from blind creatures that hunt by sound. The story’s continuation in the second instalment follows Evelyn (Emily Blunt) and her children Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and Marcus (Noah Jupe) as they explore the world beyond.

“We shot the first film on just a few key sets in and around New York’s Hudson Valley, but for A Quiet Place Part II, I wanted to completely open up the film’s universe to show the scale and how the whole world is under siege,” says Krasinski. “I had a vision of a road movie with characters weaving in and out of spaces which are both intimate and vast. Our story is so chaotic and insane at times that I wanted to be able to open it up, close it down, then open it back up again, almost like the aperture of a camera.”

“It becomes a race for survival, requiring a dynamic camera, that was a participant in their journey,” adds Morgan.

The action in A Quiet Place - beautifully lensed by Charlotte Bruus Christensen ASC - mainly unfolds in a farmhouse. While the family’s journey and world expand in the sequel, Morgan wanted a seamless transition between the films, not a distracting change in look. “I imagined people watching the movies backto-back, so I wanted to continue Charlotte’s look and feel, referencing some of the visual language,” she says.

“I wanted to keep the warm, saturated colour of the first movie, so Polly decided to continue using 35mm celluloid film. It also helped to juxtapose the grit and decay of the sets in the new movie with the colour of the family in the expanded world,” adds Krasinski.

Creative influence was drawn from filmmaking greats such as Steven Spielberg - Jaws (1975) and Jurassic Park (1993) especially inspired Krasinski - and Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), as well as modern westerns such as the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007) and Alfonso Cuarón’s fast-paced Children of Men (2006). “We were making a modern Western and wanted to capture the epic landscape and intimate drama within it,” says Morgan. “The nostalgia and classic style of moviemaking were important to convey, and this film is reminiscent of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s films John grew up watching. That feeling of nostalgia could also be seen in Charlotte’s classical framing and use of the Panavision C Series anamorphic lenses for the first film.”

The way in which widescreen framing captures landscapes and close-ups once again made it the best choice, especially now the family was exploring new terrain. “Setting the characters alone within this wide frame creates a sense of insecurity and makes you wonder what’s behind them,” says Morgan.

Pace and rhythm were paramount during prep, from how to affect the audience’s emotions through the push and pull of the camera to when to adopt a slow build-up of tension. “John is a natural risk-taker, always pushing everybody to improve the movie. He would tell me what he imagined and then ask, ‘How can we pull this off?’” says Morgan. “We examined the coverage needed to convey tension when the family hides from the creatures and how camera movement could evoke feelings in the viewer when the Abbotts venture outside.”

>>

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 49

CAMERA CREATIVE / POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC / A QUIET PLACE PART II Polly Morgan BSC ASC found shooting on film “amazingly freeing”

>>

Setting the characters alone within a wide frame creates a sense of insecurity

BUILDING A POST-APOCALYPTIC WORLD

Plans to shoot in Upstate New York were altered when production designer Jess Gonchor sent Krasinski photos from Buffalo, New York, thrilled by the possibilities the location presented. Upon joining the pair on a location scout in April 2019, Morgan realised the setting perfectly suited the world they hoped to create, boasting abandoned steel mills, giant structures such as lighthouses, and expansive overgrown plots of land. “There was so much history there and an industry that had died out. Everything was beautifully aged and dilapidated, offering so much patina and texture,” says Morgan. “The greens department and set decorators were phenomenal at building upon that and creating the post-apocalyptic feel of an abandoned world.”

During the initial weeks of prep, Morgan and colourist Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 examined test footage shot in New York and discussed how best to ensure a direct continuation of the look of A Quiet Place, which Sonnenfeld also graded. The family’s bond is at the heart of both films - A Quiet Place centring around parents protecting their children from the horrors of the outside world. A Quiet Place Part II is a coming-of-age story where the children take charge and protect their vulnerable youngest sibling and mother.

“We wanted it to feel warm and to lean into the family drama aspect of the story rather than using a cool, somber tone. It’s about the characters’ emotions and relationships, so we wanted to embrace the outside world’s colours, the deep greens and natural light,” says Morgan. “Shot at the same time of year, both films had the same warm tones. Stefan built a LUT that would be applied to the few sequences we captured digitally as well as the film negative scans.”

Following a month of prep in New York, Morgan and Krasinski spent extensive periods in Buffalo during pre-production visiting each spot, dissecting every scene, and exploring blocking and camera movement.

While most of the film was shot on location in Buffalo,

With A Quiet Place Part II, writerdirector John Krasinski wanted to open up the film’s universe to show the scale and how the whole world is under siege

50 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

scenes inside the furnace, at the radio station, water tower, and in the farmhouse basement and barn basement, were sets built at Buffalo FilmWorks. “Using mainly existing locations allowed us to have a much deeper authenticity, but it was as exciting as it was stressful,” says Krasinski.

Some street scenes were filmed in Akron, New York, and certain environments, such as the train carriage, were explored in virtual reality before they were built. “That was a real train carriage transported from Mississippi to Buffalo and then modified,” says Morgan. “VR allowed us to visualise where the hole Regan peers through could be placed, what could be seen outside the window, and how we might position the train on the track to get the best vista outside.”

A close creative partnership formed between Morgan and production designer Gonchor during the build of the furnace inside the vault, a set which presented some complications. When it was initially

designed it was quite large to accommodate four actors.

“But the main intention was for the film to feel real, so the furnace needed to feel small,” says Morgan. “It was shrunk until it was so small the actors were crouching inside.”

The fixed-ceiling furnace incorporated panels that could be removed to allow access for the camera, but when filming, they either removed the back of the furnace or the door and pulled the camera back and forth using a Mo-sys head on an Aero Jib.

A FREEING EXPERIENCE

Shooting on 35mm film inherently captures the texture and grain in a way that is unachievable shooting digitally, according to Morgan. “It was a glorious experience; something I hadn’t done for about five years. I love how the texture is baked into the image - something I have attempted to recreate with the Live Grain tool used in the DI with digital capture. I was impressed by how the film negative retained the detail. Sometimes my highlights were more than six stops over and the detail was preserved. With digital, you have to be careful not to clip the highlights - once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

Morgan found shooting on film “amazingly freeing”, allowing her to collaborate more closely with Krasinski and to have conversations side-by-side on set rather than running back and forth to the DIT tent. “I just loved walking around with my light metre and not worrying about the monitor,” she says. “John and I passionately felt shooting on film would capture all the textures and tones of the abandoned world. Celluloid provided an unparalleled depth and palette to the image, helping to create a feeling of timelessness and nostalgia.”

The extra sensitivity offered by the Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 stock saw it used for around 80% of the film, including the many night scenes and some sequences shot on stage. The Kodak Vision3 250D 5207 was selected for the remaining day exteriors and a selection of interior sequences. “I extensively tested a whole range of stocks at Panavision New York. The Kodak stocks I selected are a great modern rendition of the older stocks I used when I first started shooting film. For the prologue flashback sequence, I used the 5207 daylight, and was really impressed with the colours,” says Morgan. “I’m very sensitive to green and this movie featured so much

The greens depart ment and set decorators bu ilt incredible location upon the s to create the post-a in Buffalo feel of an abandon pocalyptic ed world

“IT BECOMES A RACE FOR SURVIVAL, REQUIRING ENERGY IN THE CAMERA - IT NEEDED TO GO ON THIS JOURNEY WITH THEM.” POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC foliage it needed to look perfect. The way film captures greens is a lot more true to our eye. Digital greens can often look artificial and can be tricky to work with, but the film negative captured it beautifully.”

As Morgan wanted to use FotoKem for film scanning and EFILM for dailies, the exposed negatives were shipped from Buffalo to Los Angeles, where both companies are located. “There were no direct flights, and the negatives took time to be processed, so it could be a few days before we watched the dailies, which was nerve-racking but worth the wait,” she says.

Morgan shot with the 35mm Panavision Millennium XL2 paired with Panavision T Series anamorphic lenses, predominantly using wider lenses. Morgan and the camera crew worked with three XL2 bodies, supplemented with the ARRI Alexa Mini for an elaborate shot in a Volvo, a marina sequence, and an underwater scene.

While Charlotte Bruus Christensen shot the first film on Panavision C Series lenses and used spherical lenses, which were faster for the night work, Morgan opted to shoot with one set of anamorphic lenses.

Panavision’s Dan Sasaki modified a set of the more modern T Series anamorphic lenses so they produced an identical look to the C Series. “The modified T Series lens set allowed me to shoot at 2.8 and not have to stop down for unwanted artifacts. I also needed good close focus because we shot wide and close,” says Morgan. “I’ve loved working with Panavision ever since I was a runner at Ridley Scott’s company, RSA. Their lenses are incredible and the Millennium XL2 felt like a natural choice, partly due to the compact 35mm body.”

Water work required Hydroflex underwater housing and a Chapman Leonard Amphibian remote head. During an underwater scout at the marina where the shoot was planned, Morgan discovered the visibility was poor as bad weather had made the water murky. Therefore, a half-day underwater shoot in a pool was required. “Luckily, Pete Romano from Hydroflex was in New York and assisted us with that sequence - his skill was invaluable.”

NATURAL MOTIVATIONS

Largely motivated by natural sources, Morgan’s lighting choices made maximum use of “the gorgeous times of the day”, embracing contrasting warm and cool

hues, from the blue light of dusk through to glowing sunsets. “Polly found such beautiful ways to work with the lighting and to capture these huge spaces and really helped build on what we created in the first film, expanding it out into a wider world,” says Krasinski.

“We wanted to focus a lot on natural lighting, on the coolness of the moonlight and the warmth of the fires.”

As Morgan highlights, “a world abandoned through fear leaves little room for artificial sources”, but when natural lighting was not possible, modern sources that could connect remotely to a dimmer board were used, allowing quick intensity and colour changes. “We needed to move quickly. As soon as the camera changed direction, the lighting had to respond accordingly,” she says.

Working in Buffalo in the summer meant limited night-time hours, which could prove to be problematic with much of the film taking place at night. Working with minors also limited shooting time, so the crew would often ring the set with lights.

The interior steel mill scenes were captured at Buflovax - a large, abandoned beautiful warehouse which allowed enough space for SkyPanel 360s on scissor lifts inside, with multiple ArriMax 18K lights on Condors outside and a Bebee Light illuminating through the many windows. “The space was so big, and we really had to light it up because we were shooting on film. I didn’t want to push the film if I could help it, as I didn’t like what it did to the bottom of the gamma curve, so I always tried to rate the 5219 500 at 400,” says Morgan. “I used LRX remote control heads for the first time, with either fresnels or PARs, meaning no manpower was needed in the buckets of the lifts and we could respond quickly on the ground.”

The compact space in the furnace inside the vault also presented a lighting conundrum, especially as many shots developed from a wide and pushed into a closeup, making it difficult to hide lights. “I never wanted to impede John’s vision for a shot by saying we couldn’t light a space. It had to feel moody in the furnace and I didn’t want to pull the viewer out of the moment. To make it more terrifying, it needed to feel like we were in there with the characters, seeing it from their perspective.

“We already knew we would mainly tell the story through camera movement, so I had to fit my lighting around that. It was difficult to hide lights in what was essentially a tiny dark tunnel, but luckily, we made use of

both the ribs inside and props to hide little Litegear pads with snow blanket. I tried putting more diffusion around it, but because of the anamorphic frame and wide lens, the lighting often came into shot.”

Difficulties were also faced when illuminating the underground room that the furnace sits inside due to the approach of starting wide and then pushing in close. Morgan first discussed practical lighting options with production designer Gonchor and gaffer Dan Riffel, testing lanterns and double-wick and triple-wick candles.

An ETC Source Four was bounced into unbleached muslin on the ceiling to produce the desired ambience and a High End Systems SolaFrame 3000 created a spotted shaft of light coming down through a hole in the top of the vault. Astera Tubes were hidden behind columns and SkyPanels and Astera Tubes were hung to create the flickering candlelight, with the SkyPanels’ slow flicker effects delivering soft, subtle results and easy colour temperature adjustment using the DMX board.

“I wanted to light Emily [Blunt] beautifully, so we often used a DMX dimmer board and ARRI SkyPanel S30s and Astera Tubes to bring up the light on her face as the camera pushed in”.

For night work, Morgan used HMIs and SkyPanel 360s, half correcting the HMIs back to tungsten, to prevent the moonlight from appearing too blue. “The HMIs were corrected with 1/2 CTO and the SkyPanels matched at 4400 Kelvin. While the daylight sequences were motivated by windows, night-time scenes were motivated by fire, candles, or moonlight. I looked at True Grit because Roger Deakins’ moonlight and the contrast with warm light is so gorgeous. The big night exterior scene at the marina was challenging to light as there were many things to contend with including fire and water. It was one of a handful of scenes we shot digitally using the ARRI Alexa and then surrounded the area with LRX Fresnels on lifts and 360s on barges. An approach that could be easily controlled as we moved around.”

PERPETUAL MOTION

Krasinski wanted to use a constantly roving camera “which, like the Abbotts, can never stop”. “I also wanted a sense of fluidity in the camera movement, so I wanted to use long, sinuous takes, without any cuts which might relieve the tension,” he says. “This took a lot of planning, but was necessary to immerse the audience in the unabating sense of impending danger, keeping them on the edge of their seats, especially as the camera moves with the actor, following them through the action. The camera often starts very wide and pulls in close to create a steady rhythm but also a sense of life before the danger.”

Morgan and Krasinski were eager to embrace myriad methods of moving the camera to follow the characters on their journey. And with so much dynamic movement, there was an abundance of arms and tools to explore to capture the action. “The nature of the movement is different from the first film. It is an emotional family drama, but it’s also in a way an action movie requiring a lot of tools. When the actors are running full pelt, we wanted to be right there with them,” says Morgan.

The pair agreed a fluid and dynamic camera would create a subjective feeling while shot length determined the film’s rhythm. “The long shots created tension through pacing, allowing us to connect those in danger with the source of that danger, creating real drama in the frame without relying on cutaways and editing,” says Morgan. “You always hear that a movie is made in prep, but this one really was. We only shot for 50 days and the limited night hours and with the child actors meant we really planned ahead and were very specific about what gear we would need for each location.” >> British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 51

CAMERA CREATIVE / POLLY MORGAN BSC ASC / A QUIET PLACE PART II / BY ZOE MUTTER Authenticity was vital, so the furnace set needed to feel small and claustrophobic

>>

“SHOOTING ON FILM WAS A GLORIOUS EXPERIENCE. I LOVE HOW THE TEXTURE IS BAKED INTO THE IMAGE AND WAS IMPRESSED BY HOW THE FILM NEGATIVE RETAINED THE DETAIL.”

Morgan considers shooting episodes of FX/Marvel Television series Legion, created by writer-director Noah Hawley, a “wonderful education” in preparation for the action-packed A Quiet Place Part II. “There was a lot of camera movement in that series - we were always using some kind of arm.” Hawley, who Morgan also collaborated with on Lucy in the Sky (2019), was a fan of using camera movement as a storytelling tool, like Krasinski.

“A Quiet Place Part II was a natural progression. “Being so comfortable working with all the tools right from the initial conversations and through prep was essential in achieving the days when we got onto set,” says Morgan.

When moving the camera with the characters as they cross the countryside, the day-to-day package helping create the desired energy while they flee from the creatures comprised of a GF8 fixed-arm crane, an Aero Jib, a Mo-Sys L40 remote head, and a Libra remote head.

Multiple types of electric car were used, often with a Chapman Leonard Miniscope, a small telescopic crane, attached. It was ideal for capturing the characters running over uneven ground at Bethlehem Steel Mill and on the streets of Akron. The range offered by the telescopic arm on top of an electric vehicle was particularly useful for a oner tracking a character through town, into a truck, re-emerging and then walking towards a police car just before the creature attacks.

52 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

“We could never do that in one shot, because the special effects department needed to rig the police car for the impending attack,” says Morgan. “The Miniscope allowed us to track along the pavement, telescoping over the cars in the foreground, then pull back on the electric car. As the camera came around to the car, I could push the camera close to the bonnet and then as we moved further right there was a hidden cut as the camera moves through the windscreen.”

This action-packed scene also required a unique, complex custom-made sliding rig inside a modified Volvo [this will be explored in detail in a follow-up Masterclass in the July issue]. Some sequences were captured by Steadicam on rickshaws, including a fast-paced chase when the characters weave in and out of the steel mill.

“That was a complex dance between cast and crew.

Our wonderful Steadicam and A camera operator Matt Moriarty ran backwards with a Steadicam to capture the action,” says Morgan. “Not only were we shooting an action movie, it was also an action pace of shooting and Steve Cueva, our A cam 1st AC, also did a phenomenal job of dealing with the logistics, moving between different modes of camera operation and working with the multiple heads and camera systems.”

While the team mainly worked with the GF 8 and Aero Jib to achieve constant motion in the scenes shot on stage, for sequences shot on location they relied on 73-foot and 32-foot Chapman Leonard Hydrascope telescopic cranes, a 60-foot MovieBird crane, and a 50-foot Technocrane. “We were also always trying to control the sun, so we used huge cranes such as the Champion Crane with 60 x 60 rags on them.

Working in Buffalo in the summer meant limited nighttime hours, which could prove problematic as much of the film takes place at night

Polly Morgan loved the freedom shooting on film gave her to walk around with her light meter and not worry about the monitor

Key grip Manny Duran, who I worked with on Lucy in the Sky and Legion, was incredible when we were working with all this equipment. I couldn’t have made this movie without him. He was always thinking ahead, helping me decide what the best tool for the job was and controlling the sun. There was a lot of demanding rigging and large equipment, which Manny handled brilliantly.”

While as much as possible was captured in camera, visual effects magic was required to bring the creatures to life in all their terrifying glory. Morgan felt “incredibly spoiled” by the visual effects talent on offer: “Visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar and his team at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) were phenomenal.

They built the creature - nicknamed Happy - as an element for the first movie, so it was a continuation and evolution of that process.

“So we could frame up for the creature and ensure it was the right height when running towards the actors, we had a Happy stand-in - a person holding a stick with a paper face on it. The VFX team gave us plenty of flexibility to shoot without feeling constrained.

We shot a lot of plates, they did their own digital capture, and many blue screens went up, but they never restricted the creative vision.”

No matter how much action is packed into a production, for Morgan, it always comes back to the heart of the film. “It’s all about the performance and those quiet scenes too,” she says. “The movies that speak to me and the things I love shooting most are those gentler scenes and performances. While it is exciting to be challenged and to work with multiple departments to figure out how to pull something off on a big scale, my favourite elements of this movie are the quieter moments when it’s just the actors and the scene unfolding in front of the camera.

This film really lives in the close-ups.”

Krasinski seconds this sentiment: “One thing I said when we started was, ‘I won’t do this film if the intimacy is lost’. So even though we’re entering bigger realms, the core values of this family still drive everything. Intimacy keeps the themes from being overpowered. All the action and special effects come from the story rather than vice-versa. I love special effects as much as anybody, but I wanted everything to feel organic to what is happening to Evelyn, Regan and Marcus.” n

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TREASURES OF THE EARTH

When retelling the remarkable story of the Sutton Hoo excavation, cinematographer Mike Eley BSC and director Simon Stone adopted an elegant and distinctive visual style and handheld approach to convey the ethereal beauty of the rural locations and characters’ relationships as much as the wonder of the unearthed treasures.

54 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

BEHIND THE SCENES / MIKE ELEY BSC / THE DIG /

BY ZOE MUTTER

It was a huge task to work out how to create the mounds that feature prominently in the narrative (Credit: Larry Horricks/Netflix)

The Netflix drama is based on John Prescott’s 2007 novel about the 1938 excavation of treasure in Suffolk’s Sutton Hoo (Credit: Netflix)

“I

like to get into the head of the director as much as possible early in the filmmaking process, first listening to their ideas and then augmenting them,” says cinematographer Mike Eley BSC. “I enjoy that stage when what they say triggers something in me and then we adapt the approach together.”

This was once again integral to the evolution of the visual language in Eley’s latest production The Dig. Adapted for the screen by Moira Buffini, the Netflix drama is based on John Prescott’s 2007 novel about the 1938 excavation of treasure in Suffolk’s Sutton Hoo.

Eley met with The Dig director Simon Stone after being put forward by the film’s producer Gabrielle Tana, who Eley had worked with on Ralph Fiennes’ The White Crow (2018). Their first conversation focused on a mutual interest in European history as much as it did on the vision for the production. “Simon is Australian but lives in Austria and is a real Europhile. We instantly clicked and I enjoyed his fresh way of thinking. He’s incredibly engaging, is wildly enthusiastic about film and his points of reference could be quite unexpected which was exciting,” says Eley.

The cinematographer was already aware of the incredible unearthing of the 88-foot Anglo-Saxon burial ship containing precious artefacts which at the time represented the most significant discovery of its kind in England. But what he enjoyed most about the story of The Dig was its focus on the human element rather than the treasure. At the centre is the relationship between amateur archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) and Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan), the landowner who hires him to investigate the mounds on her estate.

Topics of discussion during pre-production included how to create an 88-foot-long sunken ship (Credit: Netflix)

“The low-lying human emotion underpinned the significant event of the dig and the fact life would soon be turned upside down by the second world war,” he says. “I thought this end of days feeling was beautifully handled in Moira Buffini’s script.”

With shooting delayed from August 2019 to the end of September, the crew enjoyed a lengthier prep period extensively exploring the creative and technical options and dedicating additional time to location scouting. As points of reference, Stone introduced Eley to new aspects of Eastern European cinema including films such as Jan Nemec’s war drama Diamonds of the Night (1964) and Earth (1930), Ukranian director Aleksandr Dovzhenko’s Soviet silent film about farmers’ uprising following a takeover.

At first, Stone was keen to call the production Earth in honour of Dovzhenko’s film. Although this was later decided against, the influence of the “almost

One challenge director Simon Stone (left) and cinematographer Mike Eley BSC re-examined on multiple occasions was how to shoot most of the film in one field (Credit: Larry Horricks/Netflix)

“I LIKE TO GET INTO THE HEAD OF THE DIRECTOR AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE EARLY IN THE FILMMAKING PROCESS, FIRST LISTENING TO THEIR IDEAS AND THEN AUGMENTING THEM.” MIKE ELEY BSC

experimental style of cinema” helped the director and Eley avoid getting too “stuck in the lockstep of the script and dialogue”.

Buffini’s script instantly brought to mind the beautiful large-format images captured by Eley’s friend and photographer Harry Cory Wright which were revisited for creative inspiration. “Harry shoots the Norfolk landscape and waterways which share some characteristics of where The Dig takes place in Suffolk. He rises early to capture the moment when the light is just appearing and the detail in his photographs is incredibly atmospheric,” he says.

As always, Eley spent as much time as possible with the art department early in prep, soaking up the history within the vast collection of reference pictures with “brilliant visionary” production designer Maria Djurkovic and her team. “We talked about the minutiae of a pocket watch or a telescope through to how we would create an 88-foot-long sunken ship,” he says. “It was a huge task to work out how to create the mounds that feature prominently in the narrative as well as the world around them.”

One challenge re-examined on multiple occasions was how to shoot most of the film in one field. Djurkovic, Eley and Stone’s discussions about what would need to be shot when and at what angles dictated the mounds’ placement. “If they were too close together you would see the second mound in scenes before it was revealed in the story,” he adds. “It was a jigsaw puzzle which Maria and the art department solved brilliantly based on where the camera needed to be positioned, giving us the freedom to shoot at about 280-degrees.”

Conversations about colour palette with the production design team resulted in the adoption of an earthy tone. “This was seen in the ochres, browns, yellows and faded greens of the costumes,” says Eley.

“We also knew the grass in the field would be turning by October, so it would no longer be lush green. Once we started digging, we’d have the rich brown of the earth.

Those were the colours we warmed to and encouraged.

We weren’t going to make the colours pop. Instead, Simon wanted to achieve a slightly faded look similar to a 1970s movie print that had lost its full lustre.”

Working with Goldcrest colourist Adam Glasman, Eley developed a LUT in line with Stone’s desired colour palette. “As Simon wanted the sky a particular pale blue, not too piercing, accompanied by earthy shades, this became our working model for the LUT and was later taken into the DI. It was then a matter of finessing, adding grain for texture, adjusting some of the skin tones, and a little vignette to hone the focus.” >>

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 55

BEHIND THE SCENES / MIKE ELEY BSC / THE DIG / BY ZOE MUTTER

The Dig retells the story of the incredible unearthing of the 88-foot Anglo-Saxon burial ship (Credit: Larry Horricks/Netflix)

>>

A LANDSCAPE-DRIVEN NARRATIVE

During moments of creative repose, inspired by filmic and photographic references, Stone and Eley decided how best to frame and showcase the landscape, which loomed large throughout prep and production and influenced choices including framing and aspect ratio.

Stone favourited a more widescreen approach and a 2.39:1 aspect ratio to align with the landscape-driven story, but Eley felt 1.85:1 would offer extra height for the sky and that “it would be a shame to lose that sense of elevation in the compositions”.

“Relatively late in the prep, Netflix became our backers. They favour the 2:1 aspect ratio so that helped finalise the decision,” says Eley. “It became a practical outcome that suited the film.”

The choice to shoot large format was made early on, partly influenced by Eley’s desire to adopt a similar large format approach to Cory Wright’s photography when capturing the landscape with the same scope and level of detail. “I knew The Dig would be predominantly handheld, or close to handheld using the Easyrig, and consequently it was probably the most physically demanding film since I shot Touching the Void. I initially felt the ARRI Alexa Mini LF would be well suited but as one wasn’t available, I worked

56 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

with the Alexa LF Full Size camera. Once you decide to go down that route, you fully embrace it. As always, ARRI were very supportive, and they gave us an LF to test in the field,” says Eley, who had trialed the Alexa 65 when preparing to shoot My Cousin Rachel (2017).

“We didn’t have the budget for the Alexa 65 on that occasion, but I was really impressed by the camera and its prime lens options, especially the beautiful and immersive shallow depth of field of the portrait lenses.

My experience of testing with the Alexa 65 stayed with me. I instinctively knew a large format sensor would work for The Dig which led me to the Alexa LF.”

The Dig’s handheld approach helped “keep the film alive” and allowed the characters to dictate where the camera should move. “We wanted to be respectful to the period, but not reverential to it, which this technique allowed,” says Eley. “I didn’t want to make it too rigid. It was a choreography between the camera and the actors.

Simon would decide where to start and end the scene, but it was up to them what they did in between. This meant we did more takes than normal, but we always found something unexpected. That’s the joy of filming; finding an unintended juxtaposition or new composition.”

The cinematographer required a range of prime lenses to support The Dig’s two-camera setup and capture the power and beauty of the locations and relationships. Having already been introduced to ARRI’s DNA LF lenses

by Simon Surtees from ARRI Rental UK, Eley chose to work with the 21, 25, 29, and 35mm along with an Angenieux 24-290mm zoom lens on occasions.

“The DNA lenses were de-tuned at the wider end of the range - the 24mm and 29mm - by about 10% to bring in the edges

Lily James as Peggy Preston (Credit: Netflix)

The narrative explores the relationship between amateur archaeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) and landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) (Credit: Netflix)

slightly. These became the primary lenses for the film and were used not only for the wide shots, but when we moved around the characters in the field, transitioning to a mid-shot or a close-up to give some focus to those characters,” he says. “I also used the 21mm more than I would normally because it offered a great expansive feel.”

The speed of the DNA lenses was also valuable.

Although he is “not a fan of shooting wide open just because you can”, for scenes such as the sequence which sees Edith’s health deteriorate, Eley ND’d down to wide open to help convey her nausea and light-headedness.

“Focus puller Marie-Sophie Daniel did an amazing job here as she’s brilliant at tapping into a scene’s emotion. The camera can make an actor look good, but it can also work the other way around. There can be a symbiotic relationship and close choreography between the two when an actor trusts the camera will find them,” says Eley. “Carey was incredible, too. She just allowed the camera to move around her and the focus was often found just by me breathing in and out with the camera and Marie-Sophie compensating when needed. It could have been chaotic, but it worked beautifully.”

Stone’s sensibilities were also “spot on” as he allowed the scene to continue, even when the dialogue had long run its course, resulting in a “wonderful ethereal moment”. The director’s willingness to explore unusual visual and sonic techniques was evident throughout the shoot. Like some of his earlier productions such as The Daughter (2015), the dialogue continued past the end point of select scenes. “It’s almost as if the characters’ thoughts are carrying on,” says Eley. “Simon wanted to incorporate that in The Dig to enhance the characters’ internal worlds and make the film feel timeless.”

While most of the story unfolds within the field, The Dig required a coordinated approach to shoot a pivotal scene in Suffolk when a Spitfire crashes into the river. Johnny Flynn, who played Rory Lomax, runs along the riverbank, and jumps into the water to attempt to rescue the pilot. “I must mention key grip Sergio Bernuzzi who rose to the challenge of working with fast-flowing water and all the safety precautions that come with that,” says Eley.

At the end of the 45-day shoot, the crew moved to Pinewood to film the latter part of the scene, with >>

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BEHIND THE SCENES / MIKE ELEY BSC / THE DIG / BY ZOE MUTTER Director Simon Stone wanted to achieve a slightly faded look (Credit: Netflix)

>>

“WE WEREN’T GOING TO MAKE THE COLOURS POP. INSTEAD, SIMON WANTED TO ACHIEVE A SLIGHTLY FADED LOOK SIMILAR TO A 1970S MOVIE PRINT THAT HAD LOST ITS FULL LUSTRE.” underwater cameraman Mark Silk capturing the Spitfire fuselage submerged in a tank. “Mark is incredible - we just briefed him and then watched on the monitor while he carried out these amazing moves through the water as Johnny dived in. The whole shooting environment was so un-Dig like for us and yet the almost spiritual encounter between Rory (Johnny) and the airman couldn’t have been done in any other way. The whole underwater team did brilliantly,” says Eley.

THE ESSENCE OF THE STORY

While the first few days of production are sometimes spent introducing the crew to the storytelling relatively gently, this portion of The Dig’s filming was “a significant logistical period”. The first week of the shoot took place in Suffolk, capturing scenes in locations such as Rendlesham Forest and Boyton Marshes.

“We were working with cranes, barges, and drones all in the first week, so it was an eventful start to the production, but this was good as it got the adrenaline pumping,” says Eley. “We were also blessed with great weather which allowed us to see the landscape, expansive skies and waterways that would help represent the essence of the story.”

Eley worked with Jeremy Braben and the Helicopter Film Services team during the initial week of shooting to capture aerial shots including a sequence of Basil frantically cycling to Ipswich and Edith walking along the path to the church. “Our rationale behind

these shots was that they needed to be all about the land. In the early days, we considered cutting to a map or ordnance survey to explain that the story is about the characters in the land and in a country that has changed over the centuries,” says Eley. “The idea of looking down on the land was central to our thinking, so the drone footage was crucial in that storytelling. It was about capturing an exciting shot of Basil cycling, but also giving the audience a chance to see him within that landscape.”

The production later moved to Surrey, just south of Guildford, where the bulk of the film was shot and where the main field and house were located, and where the mounds that play a starring role in The Dig were created. The field selected needed to feel like an extension of the scenes that had been shot in Suffolk.

“Until we started digging, all we had were the field, horizon, and sky, so we did tests to explore how to make the composition interesting. Simon and I liked the idea of positioning the ground in the bottom fifth and filling the frame with sky,” says Eley. “It was all about the elements.

For me, the sky denotes time through the passing of clouds and the sun. It’s nature’s clock allowing you to see a change in time which is what the film is about.”

This unusual and striking compositional technique is dotted throughout The Dig. In some sequences, almost the entire frame is filled with the mounds and the characters are placed in a small gap at the top to emphasise the presence of the earth.

The changeable weather experienced during the Surrey portion of the shoot was welcomed by the cinematographer who did not want wall-to-wall sunshine

A coordinated app roach was required to shoot a when a Spitfire cra pivotal scene she (Credit: Larry Horric s into the river ks/Netflix)

58 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Mike Eley predominantly shot The Dig handheld, or close to handheld using the Easyrig (Credit: Larry Horricks/Netflix)

throughout filming. “Cloud cover is unpredictable but it’s photographically better to work with due to the cloud formations that make shots at dusk more interesting as the sun sets.”

With much of the action taking place outdoors, the use of natural light was significant. The sun’s low position during the October shoot provided some incredible sunsets and dusk light but the speed at which it moved could prove challenging. “I wanted to shoot the exterior scenes in the field with natural light as much as possible and felt comfortable working with bouncing light off reflective material. We wanted to stay flexible and light on our feet but had 12x12 and 20x20 reflectors standing by if we needed to roll them in,” says the DP.

To add illumination and detail to the night sequences, two cranes were positioned on the horizon, where the land sloped downwards at the end of the field, with additional lighting offered by LED fixtures including ARRI SkyPanel S30, S60, S120 and S360 and a balloon light. “Gaffer Matt Moffatt also did a brilliant job lighting the scenes shot in the house. It was a great location, but we did not want to clutter the set with stands, so we mostly lit through windows using 12kW or 24kW HMIs. I try to avoid having lighting equipment on the floor of the set as I’d rather actors did not see the lights, so this setup worked well.”

DIT Phoebe Fraser was another great ally on set and was Eley’s “second pair of eyes”. “It’s always reassuring working with Phoebe who has an eye on the creative element so it’s not all about waveforms and the technical aspect.” For the cinematographer, The Dig was a reminder of the importance of building a close-knit team of passionate and skilled professionals such as Fraser and also having enough time in pre-production. “You need valuable time in prep to source locations and equipment which some cinematographers fail to get,” he says.

“It’s not enough to be shown locations that have already been chosen. You need to have input and be part of the conversation. That’s recognised by producers such as Gabrielle Tana who believes in the project and the script and wants to tell the story.” n

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KINDRED SPIRITS A compelling performancedriven tale of unexpected friendship, deteriorating mental health and haunting childhood trauma is captured with sensitivity and considered naturalism

by Angus Hudson BSC and a gifted filmmaking team.

“O

ne of the many appeals of being part of this project was making a film with Sophia Loren - a worldwide treasure and one of the last Hollywood icons,” says Angus Hudson BSC (Cashback, Last Passenger), remembering the cherished production experience of shooting Italian-language drama The Life Ahead in the summer of 2019.

“Playing the lead Madame Rosa in The Life Ahead also took Sophia out of the more glamorous roles associated with her and back to her earlier grittier roles in films such as Vittorio De Sica’s 1960 drama Two Women which won her an Oscar.”

Having collaborated on short film Away We Stay in 2010, there was already a connection between Hudson and Italian director Edoardo Ponti, Loren’s son. When Ponti came to co-write the screenplay for The Life Ahead (La vita davanti a sé) with Ugo Chiti and direct the film, he wanted Hudson to help capture the poignant story for the screen.

“Edoardo and I have a similar sensibility,” says the DP. “He’s one of the most appreciative and generous directors I’ve worked with. As a collaborator, he trusts me Implicitly, giving me confidence to put forward my vision.”

60 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

BEHIND THE SCENES / ANGUS HUDSON BSC / THE LIFE AHEAD / BY ZOE MUTTER Angus Hudson BSC: “I loved everything production designer Maurizio Sabatini did, from the colours of wallpaper he chose, to the minute detail in the set dressing.

You could point your camera anywhere and it would just work.”

An adaptation of Romain Gary’s 1975 novel The Life Before Us, relationship-focused drama The Life Ahead is set in the Southern Italian city of Bari and depicts the unlikely bond between two kindred spirits - Sengalese street orphan Momo (Ibrahim Gueye) and Madame Rosa (Sophia Loren), the elderly Holocaust survivor, former prostitute and children’s caretaker who reluctantly agrees to look after the turbulent 12-yearold. Their strengthening connection is marred with sadness as Madame Rosa’s post-Holocaust trauma and deteriorating health become increasingly apparent.

The story has history as Gary’s novel was adapted for the screen in Mosche Mizrahi’s 1977 French film Madame Rosa, set in Paris like the book. Starring Simone Signoret, it is the type of strong performance piece Hudson is drawn to.

In the recent retelling, the powerful performances he adores were again the lynch pin in the storytelling.

“Ibrahim Gueye who plays Momo is such a special young man,” says Hudson. “He’d never acted before and we were blown away by his natural talent. His tears in heart-wrenching scenes such as when Momo visits Madame Rosa in hospital were completely unprompted.

On top of the incredible performances, the script is so moving and the storyline touches on issues surrounding racism, immigration, religion and identity which I wanted to capture.”

Certain shots were specific and were spotted on the recce, such as the early scene which tilts downwards from a shot of the flyover to the back of Momo’s head and then cuts to him biting into a peach. Thereafter, the filmmakers largely went with the flow, responding to the needs of the story

Director Edoardo Ponti and Ibrahim Gueye (Momo)

CRAFTED AND CONSIDERED NATURALISM

Ponti spent extensive periods traveling around Puglia before official pre-production began, and chose most locations in the bustling port town of Bari and nearby Trani. This meant the relatively short three-week prep period, much of which played out in Madame Rosa’s apartment, was sufficient.

Hudson was primarily influenced by the sea, light, and architecture and the somewhat down at heel nature of Bari which was juxtaposed against the story.

The film’s look and feel were largely developed during a week of recces with Edoardo and production designer Maurizio Sabatini. “Sometimes references too early on obstruct the creative process because you’ve already decided what the film will be without being informed by the actual locations,” he says. “I got the job based on

Director Edoardo Ponti (left) and DP Angus Hudson (Credit: Greta De Lazzaris)

“AS A COLLABORATOR, EDOARDO TRUSTS ME IMPLICITLY, GIVING ME CONFIDENCE TO PUT FORWARD MY VISION.” ANGUS HUDSON BSC

Edoardo wanting to work with me again. Not having to pitch my vision was liberating because we didn’t enter the production process with preconceived ideas.”

With the visual direction driven by the surrounding environment, the director-cinematographer duo tried bringing key characteristics of Southern Italy into the storytelling. “The interior and exterior locations we would work with pushed me towards a crafted, considered and enhanced naturalism.”

Although loath to overly rely on reference material, the DP’s naturalistic approach was partly stimulated by the work of late 19th, early 20th century portrait painter John Singer Sargent. “Had he been alive today, I think he would have been a photographer or cinematographer,” says Hudson. “He had a very naturalistic way of painting that bucked the trend at the time, and I often revisit his work.”

The filmmakers incorporated the natural colour of materials like Puglia’s trademark limestone, which brings warmth and softness to any frame. Aware that lead characters Madame Rosa and Momo would often wear vibrant clothing, Hudson contrasted that saturation with the muted colours of Madame Rosa’s apartment.

Experimenting with the contrast between dark interiors and sunshine captured the essence of a “slightly tired Southern Italian town”. “In hot Mediterranean climates, houses often have their curtains drawn or shutters closed during the day to keep out the heat, creating darker interiors with the occasional stream of sunlight blasting through the gaps, illuminating the rooms with bounced light.”

When making informed decisions about how lighting and production design would work in unison, Hudson was blessed with la crème de la crème of the Italian film industry such as production designer Maurizio Sabatini, who has worked with acclaimed Italian directors such as Giuseppe Tornatore and Roberto Benigni. “I barely had to tell him anything,” says Hudson.

“He’s so experienced and sensitive to what might affect the lighting and how to design and dress a set for the lens. I loved everything he did, from the colours of wallpaper he chose and the minute detail in the set dressing to placing a coloured gel on glass to break up a background. You could point your camera anywhere and it would just work.”

In preparation, Hudson worked with trusted digital workflow supervisor and collaborator Francesco Giardiello, capturing footage in Rome to develop a single show LUT to use for the entire film to bond a variety of lighting conditions and locations harmoniously, enhancing the natural beauty of the surroundings, creating a “rich, sumptuous, heightened naturalism” in terms of colour and tonal separation and how they responded to and sat with how highlights and shadows rolled off. >>

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 61

BEHIND THE SCENES / ANGUS HUDSON BSC / THE LIFE AHEAD

>>

Angus Hudson on rare camera operating duties and Sophia Loren playing Madame Rosa (Credit: Greta De Lazzaris)

PLAYING WITH LIGHT

Shooting for three weeks in the primary filming location, Madame Rosa’s apartment - a “maze of rooms and corridors with little natural light” - was demanding, as Hudson explains: “Like many medieval Italian towns, Trani is made up of narrow winding alleyways. The apartment looked out onto neighbouring buildings’ walls just metres away, partly designed to keep out sunlight and heat, making it hard to get lights through windows. We used narrow based small Spiderlift cherry pickers to light through windows. It could be like threading a cherry picker through the eye of a needle we could never get quite enough distance on the lamps.”

Illumination responsibilities were entrusted to Francesco Zaccaria, a gaffer who had come highly recommended to Hudson by John Mathieson BSC. Zaccaria, Ponti and Hudson explored how to light Loren so she would “look amazing but not gloss over her age”. The DP wanted to avoid using flat beauty lighting which could look “too artificial or contrived and overly lit” and shot lighting tests to develop the most suitable approach. “I wanted to use naturalistic lighting to allow her age to emerge whilst also being respectful,” he says.

“At the time, Sophia was 84 and a fabulous 84-year-old at that, which Edoardo and I wanted to see on camera.”

They discussed how best to light the locations to fulfil Hudson’s desire for total freedom of camera movement and achieve his preference for lighting through windows. Wanting to play with strong sunlight in most scenes, the cinematographer investigated with Zaccaria which available lamps could achieve this effect.

Traditionally, HMI lights might be used as a daylight source through windows, but the team used tungsten lights as the primary light source for sunlight to warm things up. A new technique for Hudson was reviving an old technique working with tungsten light in daylight. “I was aware of the approach but hadn’t found the right opportunity to work with strong tungsten PAR64 light sources, in this case 8 light Maxi Brutes. There’s an art to sculpting the hard light tungsten fixtures of this kind produces that is being forgotten, especially with so many people pushing towards LED.”

Three Maxi Brutes were often set up on two small cherry pickers to enter a window at different angles, using different bulbs in each fixture - mediums, spots, and sometimes ACL’s (Air Craft Landing Lamps). One fixture was used for softer fill and fitted with medium bulbs and partially corrected with 1/2 CTB and diffused to simulate blue sky. For direct sun, the other fixtures had uncorrected spot and/or medium bulbs.

“For something really punchy, we used ACLs - bright DC powered spot PAR64s that run a bit cooler. This combination created the effect of a mixed level warm strong sunlight whilst injecting a cooler fill light into shadows, and with our LUT applied, created the desired level of colour separation.”

Although tungsten was predominantly used for all key lights, when needed, smaller LED lamps such as Kino Flo Diva-Lites and 1x1 Litepanels Geminis provided localised fill. “Occasionally we fixed skirted Fomex RollLites on the ceiling, all invaluable additions to the tungsten package. A few smaller HMI lamps were on hand for subtle bounced fill.”

Night work, like the colourful scenes shot at the bar Momo visits, relied on a combination of tungsten Maxi Brutes and PAR Cans - for backlights and lighting backgrounds - and LED technology to light the mid and foregrounds, relying extensively on Astera AX1s which are “much easier to work with in those kinds of situations”.

62 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Ibrahim Gueye plays Sengalese street orphan Momo. Sophia Loren plays Madame Rosa, the elderly Holocaust survivor, former prostitute and children’s caretaker

The scenes in the cellar room Madame Rosa retreats to were the only sequences requiring a set. As there would be no natural light in that environment, all lighting was driven by practicals in shot

Wrapped. Left to right: DIT Fabio Ferrantini, 2nd AC Laura Corio, DP Angus Hudson, operator Daniele Massaccesi, 1st AC Eleonora Patriarca

Gaffer France sc Zaccaria setting o 8 light Maxi Br the utes

The Life Ahead depicts the unlikely bond that forms between Momo (Ibrahim Gueye) and Madame Rosa (Sophia Loren)

The scenes in the cellar room, Madame Rosa’s retreat, were the only sequences requiring a set. Without natural light, all lighting was driven by practicals in shot, occasionally enhanced with tungsten 150w Dedolights, 1x1 LED LightPanels, with skirted and diffused LED Fomex RollLites in the ceiling to lift the ambience.

“Achieving the right balance through the lighting was involved as we had to light for 360 degrees. Other locations were real, so you just lived with them and enhanced what was going on naturally, but you could actually create this one,” says Hudson.

A RECIPE FOR SHOOTING SUCCESS

From first coming on board, Hudson wanted to shoot in a widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio with a full frame camera.

“I’d tested the Sony Venice but hadn’t shot a production on it,” he says. “A couple of friends had shared the fantastic experiences they’d had shooting on the camera, so this was a great chance to explore the opportunities.”

As well as preferring full frame, Hudson wanted to shoot at high ISOs which the Venice excels at. “We had the option to shoot at 2500 ISO, so we did, even in full sunlight, although we sometimes used 7-stops of ND. The higher ISO creates a unique texture, holds shadow detail and handles highlights remarkably well.”

During extensive lens testing, anamorphic options were examined but due to the busy production period, limited lenses were available. “The Sony Venice was excellent but a little sharp for my taste. I wanted to use older lenses, but some were slightly too interesting. I knew we would have many bright burnt-out windows in the back of frame. Not wanting an overly flary or milky look, I ruled out the Canon K35s which are gorgeous but wrong for this film. We ended up shooting full frame 6K with spherical lenses – a set of old Leica R lenses rehoused by TLS for Cinescope, with all equipment coming out of Panalight in Rome.

“The focus of the Leica Rs has a beautiful roll off. The lenses have a gentle level of contrast and deal well with veiling glare. Although the glass has a lovely softness, I used Black Satin filters to remove more edge.

As the lenses have inconsistent stop across the range, you must light to around T3 to interchange between them all. Easier when shooting at 2500 ISO.”

Hudson did not operate on his previous few films, dedicating more time to working with the director and lighting crew. Wanting to repeat this on The Life Ahead, he teamed up with another “member of Italian filmmaking royalty”, camera operator Daniele Massaccesi (Cloud Atlas, The Martian). “He’s hugely cine literate and brought so much to the project. When blocking a scene, Daniele has the ability to cut to the chase and simplify the coverage in a refreshing, elegant way. He has an amazing eye - he’s a predictive operator rather than a reactive one. Daniele often knows what the actors will do before they do; it’s the art of good operation.”

Composition was an intuitive process, with the actors, locations and the blocking out process often dictating the framing. “The film was not storyboarded;

we knew what we wanted to do in broad strokes,” says Hudson. “Spotted on the recce, certain shots were specific, such as the early scene tilting downwards from a shot of the flyover to the back of Momo’s head, cutting to him biting into a peach. Thereafter, we largely went with the flow, responding to the story’s needs.”

As the film is quite contained, with many interior settings, Hudson wanted to open up the world depicted through the exterior sequences. “Cityscapes and expansive wide shots are important, like chapter markers setting the scene and placing all the interiors in a real location.”

Experienced local drone operator Roberto Leoni captured aerial shots, often at sunset, to place the characters in the location. Hudson also asked friend and fellow UK-based cinematographer Baz Irvine ISC to shoot additional footage of the cityscapes and landscapes.

After talking him through the areas Hudson wanted to be captured and presenting photos taken on the recces, the DPs toured the area before Irvine did his own recces. “Baz has an exceptional eye,” says Hudson. “I gave him a stripped-back team because there was not a huge budget, and I gave him as much time to shoot as possible. Baz produced an embarrassing amount of amazing work - the editors were spoilt for choice.”

“It was amazing having Francesco following the project from the camera tests, to the LUT and workflow design, to the finishing work at Reel One,” says Hudson.

Throughout the shoot, DIT Fabio Ferrantini, one of Giardello’s frequent collaborators, used live grade on set with the show LUT and an ACES colour pipeline to fine tune the look. The rushes would then be sent to the near set lab where data manager Andrea Soncin applied the CDLs (Cinematographer Decision List – the live grade information carried in the rushes metadata) and did any balancing before preparing the transcodes for the edit.

“Fabio’s role was quality control and grading and ensuring the rushes looked great, rather than data management.

This meant before we even went into the grade, the edit assemblies looked beautiful, polished and as intended, allowing everyone to get used to the look of the film, making things easier down the line,” says Hudson.

In February 2020, post shoot, Hudson travelled to Rome to carry out a test grade and assess the Dolby Vision 4K HDR grading process. “At that time, we knew Netflix was on board.

Coincidentally, Netflix had employed Francesco to manage their post-production support and creative technologies infrastructure, so he’d nurtured the project from conception to delivery and was perfectly placed to support the film and its look,” says Hudson

The test grades soon proved their value because shortly after completion, lockdown occurred.

The Life Ahead became one of the first films to remotely grade during the pandemic. Instead of travelling to Rome for the final grade, Hudson graded from his London basement office using a 55-inch Flanders 4K HDR monitor and a hired decoder. For the remote grade, DIT Ferrantini’s CDL travelled in the footage metadata. “When the images came through the DaVinci Resolve and onto the screen, we were looking at the grade we did on set - the grade was 85% of the way there. All that work in prep paid off,” says Hudson.

Giardiello and his team designed a 4K HDR remote grading system with remote production and film equipment rental company CineArk. “Until recently, when making films the primary deliverable was for them to be shown on cinema screens and the best way to grade a project for the cinema is on a big projected screen. Sadly, nowadays, and more so due to the pandemic, the first place anyone sees a film is on their TV, so the primary deliverable now is moving towards HDR,” says Hudson.

“At the time of the remote grade I had lousy internet, so we had to do it using six 4G SIM cards in a mobile SIM card router, an encoder in Rome and a decoder in London, providing enough bandwidth to stream 4K HDR live from Rome. It worked remarkably well considering the technology and 4K HDR remote system hadn’t existed 10 days before, all thanks to Francesco, James Metcalfe at CineArk, and Netflix’s support.

Unusually, we had the luxury of time to grade because everything had shut down. I became far more involved in that process than normal. It was a nice way to occupy myself during lockdown.” n

“SOMETIMES REFERENCES TOO EARLY ON OBSTRUCT THE CREATIVE PROCESS BECAUSE YOU’VE ALREADY DECIDED WHAT THE FILM WILL BE WITHOUT BEING INFORMED

BY THE ACTUAL LOCATIONS.”

PLANNING AHEAD FOR THE LIFE AHEAD

“When production began, The Life Ahead was an independent film. Netflix bought it only after it had been shot,” says Hudson. “At the start, we didn’t know what deliverables we would be working to but knew there would be a cinema release of some sort as well as a release on a streaming platform, so I thought it would be silly not to allow for a 4K HDR finish.”

Therefore, the team went into principal photography having decided to shoot RAW X-OCN-XT and to master in Dolby Vision 4K HDR, allowing for all the main delivery options - 4K, UHD, HDR, SDR and P3 - “lining up all their ducks in prep” to ensure there were “no surprises” when it came to the grade and post and importantly the deliverables.

Kiwi Digital, a digital solutions lab based at Cinecittà Studios in Rome, provided all DIT services.

Rome-based post-production house Reel One was responsible for post and finishing. Having close ties with both companies, digital workflow supervisor Giardello was ideally positioned to help guarantee workflow continuity.

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 63

BEHIND THE SCENES / NANU SEGAL BSC / MARVELOUS AND THE BLACK HOLE / BY ZOE MUTTER One of the black-and-white sequences sees Sammy ride on a giant rabbit

A SENSE OF WONDER

Heightened naturalism, colour exploration, and fantasy sequences starring super-sized animals help convey the magic in writer-director Kate Tsang’s enchanting coming-of-age tale, beautifully lensed by Nanu Segal BSC.

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T

he power of friendship, magic and fantasy is at the core of writer-director Kate Tsang’s debut feature Marvelous and the Black Hole, a comingof-age comedy drama about troubled teen Sammy (Miya Cech) and the struggles she faces following the loss of her mother. When Sammy forms a bond with eccentric magician The Marvelous Margot (Rhea Perlman) she enters a vivid world of colour, joy and magical illusions that help her find hope and navigate her grief and anger.

The counterbalance between the story’s deeper, more hard-hitting themes and comedic elements appealed to cinematographer Nanu Segal BSC upon first reading Tsang’s script. “It was funny and charming but also very moving, especially the way the script handled the emotions of Sammy and her sister Patricia following their mother’s passing,” says Segal.

When contemplating the film’s overall tone, Segal and Tsang agreed a naturalistic but “slightly heightened” style would be most appropriate. “Kate is incredibly collaborative and has a unique Segal BSC nu Na er ph Cinematogra ting coming-of-age vision of the world which is an ch en le filming different to mine,” says Segal. and the Black Ho t) s lou rve Ma e tal Pleasan (Credit: Dana “That was a real strength because we each brought different things to the film that I hope combined to help tell the story in the way Kate imagined.”

The pair explored how best to move between the film’s everyday situations and Sammy’s internal world when she is thinking about her mother or experiences that are upsetting her. Tsang suggested changing the aspect ratio and opening out the image vertically when the audience enters the realms of Sammy’s imagination. “When we go inside Sammy’s head, everything is crisper, clearer and a little more photorealistic. She’s a teenager and the world within her imagination is more vivid, so we switched to Panavision

Super Speed vintage spherical lenses and a 16:9 aspect ratio for a truer rendition of the world,” says Segal.

Segal then shot the everyday sequences with Cooke Xtal (pronounced crystal) Xpress anamorphic lenses in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, believing shooting anamorphically to be an effective way to “elevate the everyday world into something slightly more nuanced”. “Often imagined internal worlds are painted in a more dream-like and abstract way, but we did the opposite by making Sammy’s dreams and fantasies crisper and more detailed to reflect that this is the space where she is most comfortable,” she says.

Keen to incorporate black-and-white dream sequences, Tsang introduced Segal to Wuxia Chinese martial arts films made in the 1960s. “Kate wanted to emulate the style of the Wuxia films she had watched in childhood. Budget and logistics meant we couldn’t shoot on black-and-white film. Instead, we shot spherically in colour on our Alexa Mini, and calibrated all our monitors to black-and-white. This allowed us to light for monochrome and visualise the final look, after the footage had been treated and converted into black-andwhite in post and grain had been added.”

As one of the black-and-white dream-like sequences sees Sammy ride on a giant rabbit - when she’s reminiscing about the fantastical stories her mother used to tell - Segal and Tsang investigated how best to approach such a scene on an indie budget. “Although our film is different in theme, we looked at Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) which also features super-sized beasts,” says the DP. “For our scene, we captured footage of a real rabbit and then filmed Sammy against a green screen riding on a giant bucking bronco-like bunny with a green saddle.

“We referenced Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) too as even though the texture of Marvelous is dissimilar, we were looking to work with a similar aesthetics in terms of naturalism and lighting. Inspiration also came from cinematographer Lachlan Milne’s beautiful compositions in that movie.”

CREATIVE MAGIC

Animation, hand drawn and brought to life by director Tsang, further enhanced the film’s visual world and added another magical and playful element to the story.

The approach adopted in The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) was examined during prep because although, unlike Marvelous, the film is shot purely anamorphically and in a real-world setting, the filmmakers believed it “beautifully married animated elements with live images”.

“Kate is such a fantastic artist with a singular imagination,” says Segal. “The success of Marvelous and

Scenes of Sammy’s dayto-day life are bleaker and colder than the more vivid sequences with Margot

Margot’s magical world is saturated and filled with colour and joy

Being a photographically performance-based film, most of the camera movement was pared back (Credit: Dana Pleasant)

“MAGICIANS ALREADY KNOW WHICH ANGLES WORK BEST BECAUSE THEY’RE USED TO DIRECTING THE AUDIENCE TO LOOK A CERTAIN WAY, SO I DREW FROM THEIR KNOWLEDGE WHEN SETTING UP THESE SHOTS.” NANU SEGAL BSC the Black Hole’s creative additions was all down to her natural. Aside from that, we used a small number of ARRI magic and ability to produce such gorgeous animations SkyPanels, Astera and Lite Mats which I love working with a handmade feel. Kate’s artwork also influenced with because they are lightweight, with a beautiful outour approach to shooting sequences involving magic put, especially when combined with fabrics.” tricks – we always tried to retain a homespun quality

The interior night work saw Nanu closely align alongside the live action.” with the “amazingly talented” production designer Yong

Demonstrating true dedication to one of the Ok Lee (The Farewell, Minari) to ensure the practical film’s central themes and fully immersing herself in the lighting - which was heavily relied on - was the right fit illusionary world being explored, Tsang trained to be a for the location and the character of the scene. “We close-up magician in preparation. She also became a also teamed up with the very creative and experienced member of the prestigious LA clubhouse for magicians gaffer Armando Ballesteros. Being from LA, Armando is and magic enthusiasts, The Magic Castle, connecting used to working with the intense LA sun. Plenty of with many practicing magicians in the process.

Magic Cloth and blackout panels were helpful not only

“We worked with a magic consultant Kayla when working the light fixtures but with the sunshine in Drescher to develop sequences such as the scene Santa Clarita, California, where we shot.” when a rose appears from Margot’s hand or when she

Segal, Tsang and production designer Lee used makes Sammy’s cigarettes disappear. The magic was a colour to distinguish between Sammy’s everyday combination of real close hand magic with a tiny bit of environment and the more vibrant world she enjoys once help in post to remove occasional wires from floating she meets Margot, with scenes of her day-to-day life and objects,” says Segal. in her home being bleaker and colder than the more vivid

“The magic scenes were such fun to shoot. I and colourful sequences with Margot. “Sammy’s father is approached them similarly to stunt work in terms of about to remarry, which she is unhappy about, and her where the camera is positioned in relation to the artist home has become a harsh environment which she feels performing the magic. Magicians already know which imprisoned by and is rebelling against,” says Segal. “When angles work best because they’re used to directing the she meets Margot and enters her more saturated world, audience to look a certain way, so I drew from their which is filled with colour and joy, at least at first sight, knowledge when setting up these shots.”

Sammy begins to come out of herself and moves away

Outside of the magic-focused scenes, a large from the sadness.” portion of the action was filmed in the house Sammy

On set, Segal worked with a data wrangler rather lives in with her family. “The house location we filmed than a DIT. Although it was not possible to grade these scenes in was excellent but some rooms, dailies, the data wrangler exported stills of every scene particularly Sammy’s bedroom, were tiny. This meant in log and Rec. 709, allowing the team to keep an eye we needed to remove doors from inbuilt wardrobes so I on the overall aesthetic of the footage from day to day. could get inside as far back as possible to capture “As we were working with that model, I monitored certain wide shots,” says Segal. everything Rec. 709, knowing we

“Focus puller Lauren Peele was amazing because would have much more there was rarely space for her in the room. She had to information to play with in the Tsang was feel out a lot of scenes instinctively and be reactive to grade,” says Segal. Aside from Director Kate rate blackkeen to incorpom sequences the actors’ movements without a sight line, whilst having to grade remotely due and-white drea working with quite demanding vintage lenses.” to lockdown, the final look did

The small footprint of the ARRI Alexa Mini Segal not shift much from what had captured the film on was also well suited to some of the been captured on set. “It was more restricting locations. “When you’re in tight spaces mainly focused on working with trying to get those wider shots, you use every centimetre Andre Rivas at Company 3 to the camera allows. It wasn’t a particularly handheld film, but when we Much of the composition needed to be more mobile and for the was instinctive and small amount of car work, it was useful based around the best to be filming with a more compact way to capture the acto rs’ performances camera such as the Alexa Mini.”

The crew also worked with a “small and flexible” lighting package in line with the available budget. “We didn’t have any lights bigger than an ARRI M40,” says Segal. “Combining the M40 with Magic Cloth was a great way to make a smaller source feel more

ensure the home environment had a coolness to it and wasn’t too rich and warm and that Margot’s world was more colourful and saturated. Occasionally, we added tiny windows of sharpening for the artists’ eyes, when they weren’t framed in the sweet spot of the Xtal Xpress lenses.”

Much of the composition was instinctive and based around the best way to capture the actors’ performances. “For instance, macro shots of Sammy tattooing herself were chosen so the audience feels like they are really with her in that moment when she’s harming herself. Those choices were always motivated by the character and how they are feeling or the intention of the scene,” says Segal.

Being a photographically performance-based film, most of the camera movement was pared back, making the texture of the lenses even more significant. “From our early conversations, it was clear the film would be based around more classical shot making. When we deviated from that for some joyful and freer moments such as when Sammy and her family are playfully running around the arcade or when Margot and Sammy are having fun and connecting with one another in Margot’s garden - we chose to go handheld,” says Segal.

“It was about creating space for the actors to play. Kate had written certain actions for them, but also allowed the camera and actors to embrace the freedom of those moments. I really enjoyed the contrast between instinctive handheld operating and the more composed work. Shooting scenes such as those and working with such an authentic, dynamic LA crew and talented cast was so joyful. I have such brilliant memories of the whole collaborative experience.” n

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 65

BEHIND THE SCENES / PAOLO CARNERA AIC / THE WHITE TIGER / BY ADRIAN PENNINGTON

EAT THE RICH N etflix has put its money behind A-list filmmakers like Spike Lee, Aaron Sorkin, and George Clooney whose films are all in the running for accolades. Da 5 Bloods, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and The Midnight Sky all have their merits, but none hold as high a rating as Ramin Bahrani’s The White Tiger on Rottentomatoes where it scores 92% among critics and 80% audience votes.

The heft of certain filmmakers may have directed Netflix where to focus its awards promotion. Whatever the case, the assured storytelling of the adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize-winning novel deserves to be more in the spotlight.

Writer-director Bahrani gets right to the heart of the novel’s biting satire about gross inequality. He invited Italian DP Paolo Carnera AIC to shoot it on location in India after seeing the latter’s work on crime saga Gomarrah.

“Scorsese was in Ramin’s mind, particularly Goodfellas but Taxi Driver too,” Carnera says. “The challenge for me was not finding a style so much as a way to shoot the film quickly. Ramin was trying to use the script’s voiceover as a structure to give himself the freedom of changing how the story is told in the edit.”

Like Goodfellas, the rags to riches trajectory of low-caste chauffeur Balram (played by Adarsh Gourav) infiltrating a mafia-like family, is anchored in voiceover and shifting flashbacks.

66 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

The White Tiger is a rags to riches trajectory of low-caste chauffeur Balram (played by Adarsh Gourav) infiltrating a mafia-like family (Credit: Tejinder Singh Khamkha/Netflix)

“The story is by turns a comedy, a tragedy and an ironic success story. It’s crazy. We show Balram’s past in poverty, a second part of his background in Dhanbad [an industrial town]. The bulk of the story takes place in Delhi and there’s a present tense in Bangalore.

“The script has 240 difference sequences and we shot in 90 different locations so that meant a very quick pace. Most days we had around 2-3 different locations.

I didn’t have time for elaborate lighting set-ups.”

Carnera spent eight weeks preparing in Delhi.

“Scouting was very important for me to gain a deeper understanding of the story’s world. I took hundreds of stills to help us make decisions.

“Delhi is not an easy town for shooting,” he continues. “I loved to shoot in Old Delhi, but we had just a very tight window there. We could shoot with Adarsh alone since he was not well known but if we’d filmed [co-stars] Rajkummar Rao and, especially, Priyanka Chopra Jonas then in two minutes we’d be surrounded by hundreds of people.”

The story’s pivotal car accident scene had to be filmed at night and in an empty street for this reason. “It meant shooting many sequences in New Delhi which is a much more controlled and colder environment while trying to recreate the colourful, vibrant of life of traditional Delhi.

“When I felt I was doing something too fantastic I had to stop. I wanted the audience to recognise that what we were shooting was reality. Just as I did in Gomarrah, it was about Paolo er ph gra ato em Cin d the enhancing reality by making Carnera AIC wante ise ogn rec to audience it a bit more powerful to s wa m tea the at that wh provoke a visual emotion.” shooting was reality

Shooting many scenes documentary style, handheld on Alexa Mini LF, Carnera was entranced by India’s street life. The first cut was more than three hours. “Everything was so interesting. We made 10-15

takes of each small sequence to give Ramin the freedom to shape the story in the edit.”

The first two weeks were on location in a small village to which the crew travelled two hours daily from Agra. “This was a really beautiful village with wonderful people. The light was amazing. It was so easy to shoot there.”

In contrast, the dry season (November – December 2019) exacerbated Delhi’s pollution. “The sky was milky, with no colour, almost like cloud. Worse than cloud. I had to fight this and find a way to make it brighter and more golden.”

The A cameras were Alexa LF in part to fulfill Netflix’s desired 4K+ resolution but mainly because Carnera believes the camera’s chip to be the closest analogue of film stock. Zeiss Supreme primes and Angenieux Optimo Zooms were selected for their speed; “not too sharp for large format cameras, which allowed me to shoot in really low light conditions.”

He adds, “I needed to have flexible tools to allow me suddenly to twist from a comedy storyline to a tragic one, from past to present, from a poor environment to a rich one.”

In this endeavour, he was assisted by a largely Indian crew, including gaffer Rubb Bhungdawala, key grip Karambiah Appaya along with Italian colleagues Andrea Grossi on Steadicam and focus puller Fabio Ciotto.

“We used many different lights including tungsten and HMI. On ZeroZeroZero [Carnera’s previous film], I used LED lights extensively for the first time, in particular SkyPanels. I also exploited this a lot on White Tiger. For scenes set inside the taxi at night I was able to control the colour temp and intensity of lights from the side and rear from an app on my iPhone to add a sense of movement.”

Carnera devised the colour palette during scouting, principally using pastel pinks, blues and greens “colours you can find anywhere in India, especially on neon-lit shops.”

The garage where Balram sleeps while his ‘masters’ are in a luxury suite floors above was in the basement of the hotel used in the film [in a Delhi suburb].

“While scouting we found people in the basement going about their business, with offices or ironing, with sleeping quarters and toilets. I responded to the amazing colours we found there when lighting our set. We didn’t want to make our central character too sad. It was a mix between harsh reality and some kind of funny reality.

There’s a very strong social analysis in White Tiger which recognises that the caste problem still exists in India.” n

BEHIND THE SCENES / REMI ADEFARASIN OBE BSC / LOCKED DOWN / BY ZOE MUTTER Director Doug Liman (left), Anne Hathaway and cinematographer Remi Adefarasin OBE BSC

LOCKED IN REALITY

A

couple in the process of separating who are forced to continue cohabitating due to lockdown restrictions are presented with obstacles and opportunities in director Doug Liman’s poignant yet often amusing portrayal of a pandemic era relationship that builds to a heist crescendo.

With the narrative of Locked Down centring around a situation the whole of society has been confronted with - the strains and uncertainty caused by the pandemic - the primary ambition was ensuring the film captured this unusual period in a truthful and believable way. Like Doug Liman’s Swingers (1996) and The Bourne Identity (2002), the director wanted much of his most recent film to be shot handheld to ensure it felt real and immersive.

Initially, Liman planned to shoot and direct, having taken on both roles for his first feature Swingers, but due to Locked Down’s short shooting schedule of 18 days and Liman’s desire to collaborate as closely as possible with the actors, he opted to focus purely on directing.

Producer Richard Weyland suggested Liman look at the work of British cinematographer Remi Adefarasin OBE BSC - with whom Weyland had previously collaborated on Band of Brothers (2001) - when selecting who would capture the world portrayed in the multi-faceted script penned by Stephen Knight (Dirty Pretty Things, Locke).

“I love Stephen’s writing and the concept explored in Locked Down,” says Adefarasin. “His scripts are so diverse but they’re all about humanity and the way people react to situations. This story really appealed because it was about a situation we all continue to suffer. Stephen, Doug and I also share a love of working on a variety of genres, so it was a no-brainer for us to team up.”

When Liman rehearsed scenes with the actors, Adefarasin used Artemis, a trusty app that has proven invaluable for many films he has lensed. He took stills with it to later discuss with the director when exploring how best to structure each scene. “The app also includes a movie mode, so you can record a tracking shot or suggest the camera move inwards at a certain point, for instance. Doug also had the app on his phone, so we both took shots and then could easily examine the best way to shoot each sequence, saving an enormous amount of time.”

As most of the narrative unfolds inside the house in which the couple are trapped while their relationship deteriorates, it was important to clearly establish its layout through the film’s visual storytelling. “Linda (Anne Hathaway) lived downstairs, and her partner Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) lived upstairs in the attic, so we tried to convey that through shots of him going up and down the stairs and passing or knocking on her door.”

The house location, based in Clapham, London, required some minor redecoration before shooting. As glass protecting precious paintings could not be removed from the walls, the crew had to be mindful of reflections

when shooting. Much of the short pre-production period types of productions. “Sometimes when you need to take was spent scoping out Harrods, the other prime location risks and experiment you can find that shooting with little where the later heist action plays out. “We visited the or no light looks better than an overly lit shot. You learn a vast store three times and I walked about six miles to lot about lighting just from the necessity of having to do select the best areas to shoot,” says Adefarasin. “We it with limited resources,” he says. needed to film some scenes in a safe, so we visited other

“On this occasion, gaffer Pat Sweeney made some buildings to see if they offered more cinematic options amazing small battery-powered LED lamps with magnetic but eventually decided to film in Harrods’ own safe.” backings that could be fixed to beams. Elsewhere, we didn’t

Videocalls, a staple of lockdown life, were also have cherry pickers, big towers or cranes for the shots incorporated into the narrative and needed to be filmed in or around the house - we lit mostly using ARRI M8 meticulously planned when working with cast members and M18 HMIs and tiny Aladdin A-Lite LED lights.” in different time zones. The budget would not allow

As Adefarasin knew there would be an element for camera crews to visit each distant location in which of handheld, he opted for the ARRI Alexa Mini LF due the actors were based, so footage was recorded from to the quality it offers in such a lightweight body, paired their computers or phones and sound recordists were with ARRI Signature Primes, from 18mm up to 150mm, sent to each location to capture clean audio. Budget because they are also “light and incredibly beautiful was allocated to aspects of the shoot such as filming lenses.” “I like to get the look of the film as close to how sequences of lead characters Hathaway and Ejiofor on we want it in camera, so we had a calibrated monitor on a motorbike or in a van traveling around London which set. This meant Doug knew the direction it was going required a second unit, crane and remote head. in and we later worked with Goldcrest colourist Adam

Adefarasin, who operated on the production, Glasman to refine the look,” he says. was joined by a tight-knit crew including 1st AC Julian

Adefarasin initially underestimated quite how Bucknall, 2nd AC Alex Collings, central loader Dan much of Locked Down would be shot handheld. At the Glazebrook, key grip Jack Flemming, boom operator end of filming, 1st AC Bucknall added up the footage on Orin Beaton, gaffer Pat Sweeney, and best boy Martin the data cards and worked out the cinematographer had Conway. Aligning with the film’s core theme, pandemic held the camera for more than 50 hours during the 18protocols were adhered to throughout, with all crew day shoot. “This film reinforced how fantastic shooting wearing masks and having three COVID tests a week. handheld can be. On the production I shot after Locked

“The whole team did an incredible job in the Down and have just completed (Shekhar Kapur’s What’s challenging circumstances resulting from the COVID Love Got to Do with It?) I suggested shooting some scenes restrictions and confined spaces. For example, filming handheld which I normally might not have done. It’s really in real locations meant we were limited by the height opened up my awareness of the beauty of handheld. of the rooms in the house. There were challenges for

“This film is bittersweet in a way because the Orin not only when boom operating but fitting the radio situation is still ongoing, but when COVID fades mics. I have an upmost respect for the actors too who away I believe people will see Locked Down as an were phenomenal working with demanding COVID important record of the state of England during this conditions, a tight schedule, and a complex script.” unprecedented time.” n

With many years of experience of shooting documentaries, Adefarasin is familiar with the multitude of techniques the ve unfolds inside adopted to light a range of environments Most of the narrati couple are trapped which can be applied to shooting other house in which the p deteriorates onshi while their relati

The primary ambition was ensuring the film captured the unusual lockdown period in a truthful and believable way

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 67

BEHIND THE SCENES / FABIAN WAGNER BSC ASC / ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE / BY MARK LONDON WILLIAMS

THE AGE OF HEROES

Zack Snyder’s Justice League sees Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, Aquaman, and The Flash, align forces

There’s justice for Zack Snyder’s League, at last. Fabian Wagner BSC ASC shares filmmaking insight into the creation of the highly anticipated action epic.

“I

’m looking forward to seeing it on the big screen,” says cinematographer Fabian Wagner BSC ASC of his work on Zack Snyder’s Justice League. A lot of people doubtless share that sentiment, in their post-pandemic yearnings, as the storied - perhaps even infamous - production has shifted from being apocryphal to extant and critically acclaimed, with its recent HBO Max release.

You might think that Wagner had already seen a version of his work, in its previous incarnation, when director Joss Whedon took over the reins from Snyder, who had left due to both incompatibly clashing visions with Warner studio brass, and because of the profound tragedy of his daughter’s suicide, in that same period.

The Whedon version had an ill-fated theatrical run a little over three years back - though given all that’s happened since, it feels like it could have been ten - but Wagner tactfully notes that while the “credits say the same (cinematographer)… I wasn’t involved.”

In other words, he had moved on too, after the original principal photography was finished in 2016, and he wasn’t available for the subsequent reshoots. But he was in LA, “before Zack had left the movie. He had cut original trailers,

68 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

which were all aired. We’d done the colour correction for those,” and that look, style, and tone, he adds “was the way it was meant to be.”

The version garnering such praise now is being called “operatic” or a mask-and-cape answer to The Lord of the Rings, but none of that comes as a particular surprise to Wagner. “We all knew in which direction the movie was going to go,” he says, though the journey held a surprise or two even at the beginning.

The first was simply being brought aboard to shoot it. Asked how it happened, he grins “that’s a good question - it was a stroke of luck. I’ve always admired Larry Fong, who’s (Snyder’s) regular DP. And to step into his shoes…”

Fong and Snyder were indeed a well-broken in pair of boots, with Fong having lensed most of the director’s well-known films, including 300, Watchmen, and the earlier Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, whose own dark death-of-Superman story set up the current Justice League tale.

But luckily for Wagner, Snyder was doing some admiring of his own. “Zack was a big Game of Thrones fan,” he says, and Wagner had shot some of the series’ most renowned episodes, including C Hardhome, replete with its Fabian Wagner BS k Zac of set the ASC on White Walker battles, and gue Lea tice Jus ’s der Sny perhaps even more (Credit: Clay Enos/ HBO Max) important for this film’s scope, Battle of the Bastards, which is a mini-epic unto itself about the human kind.

But there were other surprises besides simply getting the gig. Wagner learned they would be shooting on film - they used Arricams and Arriflexes, with Leica Summilux lenses - which he hadn’t “done in a while.” But more than that, he found that Snyder had a whole different ratio in mind, too.

“I stupidly thought he’d want to shoot the movie in 2.35:1 aspect ratio,” Wagner says, being unduly hard on himself. There was no reason to think this gathering of Amazonians, Kryptonians, Atlantaeans, an orphaned billionaire, and more, wouldn’t share the same anamorphic aspects of many an epic before it. But Snyder told him “I actually want to shoot it in 4:3.”

This may have come as a surprise to home viewers expecting the now-traditional rectangular viewing experience. It similarly came as a surprise to Wagner who “when I was a young kid - (the films) that made me fall in love with cinematography, from the ‘70s and ‘80s, were all widescreen. I assumed that’s what it would be.”

But then he adds “we forget a lot of great films were shot in 4:3.” The more he thought about it, “what a great idea. The framing, though, seemed odd to me,” at least, at first, but in making the titular heroes “taller” than they’d be in widescreen, Wagner allows that “it adds to the characters’ grandeur.”

Regardless of ratio, Wagner still found himself looking at a range of films and imagery in preparing for the shoot, including comics - where frames often traditionally mimicked those 4:3 proportions. “I looked at Tim Burton’s (Batman films), I looked at Zack’s again and looked at films like Sin City.” The latter, of course though directed by Robert Rodriguez - also adapted from a Frank Miller graphic novel, as was Snyder’s 300.

Miller, as well, wrote and drew one of the definitive Batman graphic The character of novels The Dark (played by Ra Cyborg Knight Returns, where fleshed out in y Fisher) is Snyder’s cut the caped crusader was older, grayer, and much more cynical similar to where Ben Affleck’s interpretation starts in this story.

“It became an accumulation of all of those things, to create that look - a

Director Zack Snyder and Jason Momoa (Aquaman)

Director Zack Snyder wanted to shoot the film in the 4:3 aspect ratio

“I LOOKED AT TIM BURTON’S (BATMAN FILMS), I LOOKED AT ZACK’S AGAIN AND LOOKED AT FILMS LIKE SIN CITY. IT BECAME AN ACCUMULATION OF ALL OF THOSE THINGS. THE MORE SOURCE MATERIAL YOU HAVE, THE BETTER.” FABIAN WAGNER BSC ASC whole bunch of different movies. It was really a strange mixture. I guess in the end, it’s like an accumulation of everything you’ve seen of those kinds of characters. The more source material you have, the better,” Wagner says.

But then he also had Snyder to draw on too: “He knows a lot about that universe.”

Snyder also knew that the 4:3 ratio happily approximates the screen proportions for the IMAX showings that the director had originally imagined as part of the film’s initial release, in those pre-Whedon, prepandemic times.

But instead of the 65mm film that would be required - along with the heavier cameras - they “shot in Super 35, shooting in full frame, which obviously works for IMAX.”

The 35mm film in question was all from Kodak, “using, pretty much the three films I’ve always been using - the 500 Kodak, the 250 daylight, and the 50 daylight,” from the renowned Vision 3 series of film stock.

The aforementioned ARRIs were an obvious choice for him, too, since Wagner, who currently lives in London, but hails from Munich, “did my apprenticeship at ARRI when I was fifteen.” As for the glass, Wagner “just had a feeling I wanted to try the (Leica) Summiluxes,” which paid off when, during a series of lens tests, he and Snyder look at each other and said “‘those are the ones!’

They’re soft and sharp at the same time (and) they have a beautiful fall off.”

Besides the fall offs, between camera, lens, and stock, he “was going for a dense negative, for both the colour grading, and “the amount of visual effects we had to do.” Or what they thought they were going to do originally, given that much of the budget AT&T pushed WarnerMedia to give the Snyder Cut wasn’t only for editing time, or to shoot the coda at the end, but to finish rendering all that had been left unfinished and non-composited from the earlier footage.

“I always think that good visual effects work is driven by how you shoot it,” Wagner says, which also explains why he was such a frequently recurring DP on Game of Thrones.

Part of how Wagner shoots is to meet the post-production folks halfway, with undertaking some of the effects in-camera. Or at least starting them.

He mentions, in particular, “interactive lighting,” including, perhaps the most interactive form of all - fire. He’s partial to using real fire if a scene calls for it, even for conflagrations that will later be extended digitally. “Hopefully, the visual effects get turned into that, what you do on set.”

At which point, “it’s just down to communication.” And happily, Wagner reports great communication with both the person who designed those sets, and the one who extended, or perhaps

destroyed them, in post, saying “I had a great relationship with DJ and Patrick.”

“Patrick,” would be Patrick Tatopolous, the production designer who rendered 300, and the earlier Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, for Snyder, along with films like Total Recall and Maleficent. And “DJ” is visual effects supe John “DJ” DesJardin, who, besides doing the earlier Matrix sequels, has worked Snyder’s whole superhero canon since Watchmen, along with Sucker Punch.

He also supervised HBO Max’s other springtime streaming behemoth (or is that two behemoths?), Godzilla vs. Kong.

A lot of the sets that looked like they might have been extended in post were, in fact, built to scale by Tatopolous and his crew. “Even though we had so many visual effects,” Wagner says, “the sets were huge,” with things like the downed Kryptonian ship, and many other locales filling “a whole stage - it was beautiful to work on those sets.”

But of course, even beautiful, full-sized sets will need some digital detailing when otherworldly visitors, demigods and meta-humans are involved, and as for DesJardin, Wagner has “been speaking to (him) for the last five years - we talked when Zack was on the project,” and kept talking, evidently, until he was back.

The reconstituted multi-hour epic features not only the finished effects work on the majestic sets, and the reworked action sequences, but (spoiler alert) also a new, dystopian postscript, that was filmed in LA. In it, the Joker, played by Jared Leto, makes a tentative truce with Affleck’s Batman, as the heroes are making a stand against Henry Cavill’s

now amok Superman - all of it pointing toward Snyderesque sequels we will probably never get.

Wagner didn’t fly over to film the new end sequence, due to Hollywood being in the throes of the resurgent virus, at the time. Plus, “I had a daughter - a young baby. I managed to spend a whole year at home with my young baby. If the world happened normally, I would’ve been away for the whole year.”

Away, and still with no reason to expect a return to Justice League in that time. Currently, he does sense a certain percolating of new work, slowly and steadily, as projects get prepped, including commercials, a few of which he has managed to do in the meanwhile.

On those shoots, he has used his recently discovered Summiluxes, but “I hadn’t used them on a longer project since.” Would he like to polish them up for another film with Snyder? “I’m fully aware of the fact that Larry is his main DP,” Wagner says, “but I’d love to work with him again.”

As for whether Snyder will get to do any more DC movies with or without him, Wagner does “hope that they continue. Zack’s always been a controversial figure (but) he has his fan base (and) he does have a great vision. I hope that the fans will take to this.”

If the rather rapturous reviews and online conversations are anything to go by, they apparently already have. n

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is available on Sky Cinema and NOW TV.

Snyder’s cut includes a redesigned Steppenwolf, created by the team at Weta Digital

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 69

BEHIND THE SCENES / TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC / SNOWFALL / BY ZOE MUTTER The fourth season of Snowfall, set in 1985, delves deeper into the world of Franklin Saint, played by Damson Idris (left)

TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION

Helping highlight the crack epidemic’s impact on ‘80s LA through the lensing of FX hit drama Snowfall was important to cinematographer Tommy MaddoxUpshaw ASC. Filming the series at a pivotal point of re-examination over how to diversify Hollywood storytelling added another level of significance to the crew’s work.

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ransporting audiences to the inner-city neighbourhoods of ‘80s LA, Snowfall takes a 360-degree approach when examining the effects of the crack cocaine epidemic. The fourth season, set in 1985, delves deeper into the world of Franklin Saint (Damson Idris), who escalated from selling marijuana to crack. Physically recovering from being shot at the end of season three, Franklin is also building his confidence and business while coming to terms with crack’s impact on his neighbourhood.

Cinematographer Tommy Maddox-Upshaw ASC was welcomed into the Snowfall production family to shoot season three after the late, great filmmaker and the series creator John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood, Four Brothers) brought him on board. “I’d admired John’s work for years before we were introduced by Spike Lee,” says the DP. “A few years later, John and FX production executive Gigi Causey, who I worked with on Straight Outta Compton, recommended me to the network and I entered the Snowfall fold.”

The bold style and colour palettes adopted in the pilot - lensed by Robrecht Heyvaert - and in the first two seasons - shot by Jeffrey Greeley and John Lindley ASC - wowed Maddox-Upshaw. While staying true to this vision, he wanted to put his own stamp on the episodes he shot with cinematographer Eliot Rockett. “It’s not a conventional show,” he says. “The visual cinematic language cinematographers are bringing to the home screen on series such as Snowfall is now on a par with what we used to only experience on the big screen.”

Snowfall’s focus on the destruction the epidemic caused in LA - which Singleton drew from the world he grew up in and the things he saw as a teenager - resonated with Maddox-Upshaw due The series - created by to the similar situation he’d witnessed as a child John Singleton - focuses on the destruction the living in ‘80s Boston. “Like Los Angeles, Boston c

crack cocaine epidemi 0s caused in LA in the 198

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Cinematographer Tommy MaddoxUpshaw ASC took inspiration from photographers such as Gordon Parks as well as online African fashion magazines (Credit - FX)

was hit hard by the effects of substance abuse,” he says. “It became violent and polarising because inner-city youths were profiting from something that was destroying the neighbourhood. Seeing how it transformed lives in my area made telling this story important to me. Snowfall doesn’t express it as a one-dimensional narrative about people hooked on crack. It dramatises the bigger picture about what happened in those black neighbourhoods, what appealed to the youths dealing drugs, how the situation turned violent, and the extremes addicts would go to.”

When determining season four’s visual language, Maddox-Upshaw and Rockett were given creative freedom so long as they “played within the storyline structures”. “I was quite heavy-handed in terms of mixing colour tonalities at times,” says Maddox-Upshaw, “because the story becomes more deeply involved in relationships and power struggles. Co-creator and writer Dave Andron, John Singleton and their writing team did a tremendous job peeling back the layers in each episode.”

The distinctive style of cinematographers such as Malik Sayeed along with the “masterful techniques when handling brown skin tones and working with different light levels” seen in the work of photographers like Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava, Barron Claiborne, and Marc Baptiste were influential for Maddox-Upshaw. He also examined the way online African fashion magazines photograph skin tones in contrast to models’ vibrant clothing. “This is inspiring because many of them are so beautifully jet black. I look at many images of people from that part of the world because they express themselves within the context of their culture and the chances they take with colour are exciting.”

Pre-pandemic, a large chunk of the series was filmed on location in South LA, where the story takes place, with additional scenes shot in LA’s San Fernando Valley to double up for South America. Maddox-Upshaw, who has lived in LA for the last decade, found filming on location helped put the story in context, but then production was forced to shut down when COVID hit. When filming returned, with strict COVID-safe measures in place, Snowfall became an isolated show. Sets were built on stages in downtown LA and some scenes were filmed in houses on a disused college’s backlot. This allowed the crew - who were having three COVID tests a week and controlling as many variables as possible to reduce the risk of outside transmission - to remain isolated in their bubble.

Production designer Tomas Voth helped to craft a believable ‘80s world on location and on the stages

Tommy MaddoxUpshaw ASC

Snowfall transports audiences to the inner-city neighbourhoods of ‘80s LA

“WITH MANY OF OUR CREW BEING BLACK, WE HAD AN EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO NOT ONLY THE SERIES’ STORYLINE BUT WHAT WAS HAPPENING IN THE WORLD AROUND US.” TOMMY MADDOX-UPSHAW ASC

Helping to craft a believable ‘80s world on location and on the stages was accomplished production designer Tomas Voth, who carried out extensive research and spoke to people who lived in LA during that period.

“Not everything needed to be bright because the characters were not in nice, light, and airy houses; they were making crack cocaine in abandoned warehouses and closed-down restaurants. Tomas would still give us opportunities to light scenes in a variety of ways, such as partially hanging fixtures that we could place a bulb in or gaps in windows which outside light could penetrate.”

LED fixtures were heavily relied upon, including a large number of Astera Titan Tubes. “Shooting at ISO 2500 and using the Asteras allowed me to achieve the nuances of skin tones and I then used a lot of muslin to bounce or diffuse the light. I also like using tungsten fixtures like for backlight. Working with gaffers Justin Dixon and Byron Marigny to shape the lighting was great.

We’re all friends and we have a shorthand approach and are comfortable suggesting and experimenting with ideas.”

Having shot with the Sony Venice for the past few years, Maddox-Upshaw once again appreciated its dual ISO and 16-bit colour depth for Snowfall. “When shooting other shows featuring a black cast such as Empire, I’ve noticed the Venice interprets skin tones in a different way to other camera systems,” he says.

“For example, when shooting against a white wall, you don’t have to find a way to neutralise the brown skin tone. The Venice is very true in terms of colour balance which is important because I want to find the most neutral spot and then manipulate. If I have a good base to start from, I know I have the range to manipulate the colour space and push things without it rolling certain colours. I can lower the exposure and make it darker while keeping that colour space and without the skin colour rolling a red or an offset orange.”

The Sony Venice Rialto extension system was also invaluable, allowing the front image block of the camera to be removed for mounting in smaller housing. “This meant key grip Bobby Thomas could quickly put the camera anywhere we needed it. Usually, a car rig takes hours to set up, but Bobby and his crew could put the camera in the car within 20 minutes using the Rialto.

“Manolo Rojas, A camera operator, also loved shooting handheld with the Rialto as he could make the camera smaller and place it right at the edge of B camera operator Pauline Edwards’ frame. It was a beautiful thing to watch and so responsive. We call Manolo Mr Fearless – he’ll jump off a building with the Steadicam. Pauline’s work on the shoulder is amazing. She’s our handheld specialist and is one

of the few black female camera operators on a studio show. During lockdown, she devoted time to practicing on a remote head and wheels and when we came back, she had an even more impressive skill set.”

Also playing starring roles in Maddox-Upshaw’s standout camera crew was the “incredibly talented” A cam 1st AC Alex Lim, and B cam 1st AC Prentice Smith.

Integral to the show’s distinctive look is colourist Pankaj Bajpai (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, House of Cards), who has coloured Snowfall since the pilot. MaddoxUpshaw and Rockett discussed what they would like to achieve through the LUTs with Bajpai, who developed additional colour manipulation options from the previous series. “We switched camera systems on season three and four, so Pankaj reconstructed the LUTs in line with that. He understands the colour science intimately and helps so many cinematographers, expertly manipulating the colour depending on the storyline. For example, I might ask him to create a LUT that blows the highlight a bit more to add some tension.”

Maddox-Upshaw and Rockett paired the Sony Venice with modified 24mm to 290mm Angénieux Optimo, Zeiss Super Speeds and a 15mm to 40mm Zeiss zoom – with both modified by Keslow Camera - along with Kowa Prominar Spherical lenses. “I love the Super Speed’s colour balance as it has a little bit of warmth.

I’m always looking for a lens that will act up upon being backlit and these have a great flare,” says MaddoxUpshaw. “I’m also a big fan of the Prominar’s heavier contrast of skin tone, bold flare and circular bokeh which bleeds a little.”

This characteristic of the Prominar was utilised in a devastating drive-by shooting scene culminating in the senseless and unintended death of an innocent child. “When Leon [played by Isaiah John] realises there was a child hidden in the back of the car who he has killed, the lens helped in the storytelling. We wanted the sun in shot to explode in the frame because Leon’s mind has gone and he is in disbelief at what he’s done,” says Maddox-Upshaw.

While the crew was challenged to rethink the approach to filming within the parameters of COVID protocols, the human element of the production process was also brought to the forefront: “Some crew had relatives in the ICU, so while we were figuring out the physical approach to shooting, there were people in my team who I care about who I also needed to check in with,” says Maddox-Upshaw. “It was tough for a lot of people who were going through this strain alongside the 13-month production, and it took a lot of perseverance. It was important for us all to realise people have lives outside of making movies and TV series and to be that much more grateful that they’re still coming into work with a smile on their faces and doing a great job.”

Filming the latest season also coincided with the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, a period that Maddox-Upshaw says was significant for many of the Snowfall crew. “With many of our crew members being black, we had an emotional response to not only the series’ storyline but what was happening in the world around us as some of the team have had first-hand experiences of discrimination. We already knew what we were doing through the making of the show was important and why we needed to examine the complexities of being black in America, but after the lockdown I think we all came back to working on the series with even more energy. I also think, as a community, more people are open to discovering the story of Snowfall and how this era affected our lives.”

Maddox-Upshaw is encouraged by the positive changes now being made in Hollywood.

“After what happened to George Floyd and during the break that followed due to COVID and the lockdown, Hollywood had time to re-examine itself in terms of how inclusive it is. People of colour who are cinematographers and might have been overlooked in the past now seem to be getting opportunities that were not there when I graduated from the American Film Institute. There have been many rejections for fabricated reasons over the years. It’s been a long journey, but things are changing, the opportunities are opening up and I’m happy to help spearhead it and promote more inclusive crews.” n British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 71

BEHIND THE SCENES / ALAN STEWART BSC / TOM AND JERRY / BY TREVOR HOGG

CAT AND MOUSE GAMES

It became apparent early on that the live-action and animated worlds were separate even though they would eventually unite

Breaking away from the trend of photorealism is the big screen adaption of Tom and Jerry which honours the cartoon heritage of the cat and mouse rivals while placing them within live-action environments.

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he hybrid approach employed by filmmaker Tim Story (Barbershop) was an interesting challenge for Tom and Jerry cinematographer Alan Stewart BSC (Aladdin) who acknowledges a Robert Zemeckis classic as a point of reference.

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit was the closest example of how we wanted Tom and Jerry and every other animal in the film to look,” states Stewart. “Their challenge back then was to put animated characters into a live-action movie. However, because Tom and Jerry already exist as animated characters, it was the other way around - the live-action characters and world had to revolve around them; quite rightly because it’s their film.”

Even though the animated characters would be created in post-production, on set there were scaled mannequins of Tom and Jerry. “We also had a Jerry mannequin on a stick, and basic puppets of Tom and Jerry operated by puppeteers that the cast could react with,” explains Stewart. “The puppeteers were an enormous help and were dressed in blue or green depending on the shot. Lighting was focused on the live-action cast. It became apparent early on that the two worlds were separate even though one day they would come together. I’m lighting Chloë Grace Moretz to make her look as good as possible; if she happens to be with a 2D animated cat, I will leave enough space for it to manoeuvre about.”

Preproduction began in April 2019 with principal photography between July 2019 and September 2019. 47 sets were constructed between three stages at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden and on its extensive backlot, with production designer James Hambidge (Holmes & Watson) devising a simple colour palette that avoided replicating the ones associated with Tom and Jerry.

72 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

“This was always about being bright, poppy and upbeat. It didn’t want to feel dark, in keeping with the original cartoons.” Battersea Park in London doubled for Central Park in some scenes while an additional unit captured some exteriors in New York City.

Despite the extensive set builds, environments still had to be extended with CGI and blue screen.

The basic exterior frontage of the hotel set came up around 15 feet and then was topped up with blue screen. “When we come out of the backlot hotel set and look right there is a massive blue screen where ultimately Central Park would go and to the left another blue screen to allow for street CGI extension later. You’re suppose to be on a street with tall buildings on both sides, but the set pieces only go up 2 rather than 17 storeys. Most of the street should be in shade. We put some cranes with diffusion screens over the street so we could make shadows where needed. When I saw the film, I was most impressed by how good the main street looked; it was a complete revamp of the Fantastic Beasts street.”

A large team of animators produced storyboards, animatics and previs. “By the time shooting started, we knew how it would be shot,” says Stewart. “It wasn’t regimented to the point that the frame had to be an exact replication of the previs and there was always scope for freestyle on the day.

The camera was meant to move most of the time, and I’d say 80 percent was shot using a Stabileye - the stabilisation system used on 1917. A friend of mine, David Freeth, used his many years of experience working with Libra mounts to develop the Stabileye - a very compact, reliable, and quick to use system. We could set it on a dolly, hand hold it or stick it at the end of a crane, giving so much freedom as to the way the camera moves. Stabileye could be controlled remotely so the grip only had to push the dolly. You could then track over carpets and relatively smooth floor surfaces.”

As Tom and Jerry already exist as animated characters, the liveaction characters and world had to revolve around them

Director Tim Story (left) and cinematographer Alan Stewart on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ animated/live-action adventure Tom and Jerry (Credit: Kerry Brown)

Scenes were mostly shot with two cameras, with a third one brought in when needed. “One of our Sony Venice cameras was kept in the Rialto mode so the camera body and lens block were separated by a two-metre cable,” says Stewart, who captured the 6K footage using S-Log 3. “This made using Stabileye so much easier.” The Sony Venice, supplied by Panavision, was paired with Panavision Primo Artiste lenses, including 27mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 65mm, 80mm,100mm, 125mm, 150mm, 200mm and 250mm.

“The 65mm was what we settled on most of the time.”

Big street exteriors were shot with HMIs while night scenes combined HMIs with tungsten lights and, inevitably, LED. “So much LED was embedded in the hotel foyer set. It’s incredibly flexible and simple, the gaffer, desk operator and I can wander around with an iPad [and fine tune and adjust the lighting].”

Although shooting with wider lenses to allow frame extraction cropping within the wider frame was considered, Stewart’s problem with that approach is that “you end up moving a two-dimensional image about and lose all of the parallax when you’re physically moving the camera”. “When you shoot a film, you need a coherent language and style.”

The characters’ size dictated the aspect ratio.

“This is essentially a kids’ film so let’s give the little mouse and big cat the most chance of being accommodated in a nice frame. 1.85:1, in this instance, does that. Whenever possible we tried to have Jerry moving on and over stuff, so he was not always on the floor. If we had shot spherical with an aspect ratio of 2.40:1, it would make the frame very wide to accommodate a full size shot of Chloë, Tom and Jerry on the floor.”

As well as being completed remotely due to the pandemic, the DI was complex in that mattes were made of all the animated characters, so the team had freedom to manipulate the real-world images separately. The colour was done by Stewart’s frequent collaborator Peter Doyle [Dark Shadows] at Warner Bros De Lane Lea.

Stewart’s crew included his key grip since 2015 Guy Bennett; A camera operator Chris Plevin; 1st AC A camera Dermot Hickey; DIT Gastone Ferrante; gaffer Mark ‘Rocky’ Evans; and desk op Eliot Coulter.

“The team are great at what they do. We have known and worked together for years; it feels like a family.

If everyone has the right work ethic, it can become a really creative and an enjoyable process.” n

BEHIND THE SCENES / JENNA ROSHER / BILLIE EILISH: THE WORLD’S A LITTLE BLURRY / BY ADRIAN PENNINGTON

A STAR IS BORN

Director of photography Jenna Rosher and director R.J. Cutler adopted an observational approach to capture a realistic portrait of award-winning singer-songwriter Billie Eilish.

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illie Eilish had just turned 18 when she swept the board at the 2020 Grammys, winning five awards, including best new artist and album. If not quite an overnight sensation her stratospheric success and remarkable musical maturity was bred in concert with her brother and song writing partner at the family’s modest home in LA.

Superstardom was not a foregone conclusion one year earlier when the cameras started to roll on véritéstyle portrait Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry.

“She was expected to blow up in big ways, but I had not heard of her at all,” admits director of photography Jenna Rosher. “When we first met, I was immediately blown away. Billie was compelling from the first frame.”

Rosher teamed with director R.J. Cutler with whom she had made 2009 Vogue documentary The September Issue.

“We jumped in right away and with a purely observational approach,” she says. This was in March 2018. “Our editorial approach was slim. What we knew was that here was a 17-year-old and we don’t want to come in and overwhelm her. I never say, ‘we’d be invisible’. That’s misleading. We are there and we are filming but we want to be respectful and certainly not be invasive to Billie or her family.”

This informed Rosher’s kit choice. “I want to be effective and efficient. The Canon EOS C300 Mark II is the workhorse documentary camera and the best for verité. It’s got a low profile and it’s lightweight, so I film with it all day. Plus, it meets the tech specs [a 4K HDR deliverable for Apple TV+].”

Aside from Cutler and Rosher, the crew who formed the sparse film team travelling as part of Eilish’s entourage for a year were one of the film’s producers and sound mixer Jae Kim.

With Eilish on tour, Rosher was unable to meet her ahead of shooting. The DP had to gain her trust while the cameras were rolling. “You have to build trust and that didn’t come from having lots of meals together before filming,” Rosher says. “Trust evolved as we filmed with her.

What was really interesting was that when we started, I didn’t necessarily want them to feel I was on top of them.

I started out a little further away from her on a longer lens.

That works for a lot of people and you can kind of hang back in the corner a little and observe.

“After about a week or so of filming she said, ‘I want you closer – I want to feel you near me, I want the camera to refer to’. You see evidence of that in the movie where she will make eye contact with the camera. What she’s doing is connecting to her audience and using it as her opportunity to look in the lens and say to her fans ‘you don’t normally get to see this moment’. It is a definite nod to The Office.

Billie is a fan and we knew that going in but using the camera this way was her approach and comfort zone.”

Rosher recorded 8-12 120Gb and 256Gb cards per day which she carried with her alongside ample battery spares and changes of Cine Zoom, Prime, and L Series.

To concentrate on shooting, she passed the cards over

Trust between DP lie Bil Jenna Rosher and Eilish evolved as the her h crew filmed wit

to a media manager for Cutler and the film’s editors to assemble possible storylines.

“I shot non-stop. I’m able to stand in a corner and hold the camera with a monopod for support. I could sense when she could do with a break, but she didn’t necessarily want us to leave. We needed to keep an ear as to what is going on. One of the most important things is to keep the audio rolling and to be there ready to go at any moment.”

The Canon was also used to capture a lot of the concert footage augmented at certain venues with material on ARRI Alexa Mini, ARRI Amira and Sony Venice.

“I didn’t light anything at all,” she says. “I used all available light. The C300 Mark II performed really well in low light. For dark settings (like interiors at night) I would adjust the ISO to 3200 max.”

The film crew travel

In 2005, Rosher was co-cinematographer on as part of Billie Eili led Jesus Camp, which earned a 2007 Academy Award sh’ entourage for a yea s r Nomination and directed the Woodstock Film Festival winning 2009 feature documentary Junior about the bond between a 75-year-old man and his 98-year-old mother. She’s also made documentaries about Robin Williams, Janis Joplin, Lance Armstrong and Bikram Choudhury, the disgraced founder of hot yoga.

“I’ve filmed with a lot of artists over the years and Billie is unique. What you see on camera is her personality. She is so willing to be vulnerable. Like any person, she is aware of how she is, but I didn’t feel there was a conscious need to be different in front of the camera. She was just herself. That was what was so magnetic about making a movie about her.”

There are dark glimpses to Eilish’s psyche, some relatable to any teenager, others which reveal the pressures of fame, such as being booed by ‘fans’ for not giving of her time post-gig.

At that point, when Eilish is shown bemoaning the demands on her, Rosher says her camera was there to be a witness not to be complicit in the intensity of public gaze.

“We are comrades for her and capturing what is going on.

I think the camera is a way for her to say look what happens to a person when they go through fame. Since she has seen the film, I think she feels she has this permanent record of what happened to her in a year that was challenging and painful at times.

She has said as much to us; that she didn’t realise the crew was capturing what was really going on around her and it’s only when she saw the movie that she was able to gain some perspective.” n For DP Jenna Rosher (right), the Canon EOS C300 Mark II is the workhorse documentary camera and the best for verité

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 73

BEHIND THE SCENES / WILDLIFE CINEMATOGRAPHY / BY ADRIAN PENNINGTON

WILD THINGS Cinematographer Matthew Goodman brings the imaging tools and storytelling techniques of a conventional drama into the domain of wildlife

As natural history production explodes, programmers are looking to connect audiences with wildlife in new ways. Three wildlife cinematographers shooting with RED cameras share the techniques and technology they use to capture the natural world.

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t just might be the golden age of natural history programming. BBC, PBS, National Geographic, and Discovery, the traditional homes of wildlife documentaries, are being joined by streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and AppleTV+. Series like Blue Planet spun away from presenting earth as a perfect Eden to confront issues of animal and human preservation.

Advances in technology, including drones, UHD cameras and infra-red imaging have also enabled new stories to be told in a more cinematic way. On the frontlines of this still growing genre are the cinematographers who are shooting incredibly compelling wildlife imagery while embedded in natural habitats.

MATTHEW GOODMAN

The Emmy-nominated Serengeti series follows the interconnected stories of a cast of savannah animals in a bold new dramatised natural history format produced for Discovery and the BBC. The intimacy established between viewers and animals is the result of some virtuoso camera work by producer John Downer and his team, which includes cinematographer Matthew Goodman.

“The idea is to engage people who wouldn’t normally watch nature docs by trying to capture more intimate, emotionally driven stories,” Goodman says. “We’re

74 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

bringing the imaging tools and storytelling techniques of a conventional drama into the domain of wildlife.”

The New Zealand-based cinematographer pairs the RED DRAGON with a Canon 50-1000 lens which is becoming the standard for filming wildlife. “There is such a wide range of focal lengths with this lens that you can get wide landscape scenes yet also zoom right in to get full faces of the subjects while maintaining a distance from them that doesn’t disturb them. The last thing you want to be doing in environments where it’s this dusty, or in heavy rain is to be exposing the camera to the elements.

“It’s also important to streamline what you take,” adds Goodman. “Most of the filming in the Serengeti was vehicle based but the style is often run and gun.

You need to be ready to always capture behavior which is why I use a Shotover F1 [a 6-axis gyro stabilised rig] to film when the vehicle is moving. With a Shotover you can film as you approach and pass something and keep the shot stable.”

When shooting for months on end in remote regions, as Goodman did in the Serengeti National Park, he needed gear that was going to hold up in extreme conditions. “The more experience you get, the more you can identify what kit is going to work and whether you can troubleshoot it if something goes wrong. You’ll be waiting weeks if you have to fly something back for repair. With RED I’ve never had a problem.”

When shooting for months on end in remote regions, cinematographer Matthew Goodman needs gear that will hold up in extreme conditions

While Erin Ranney gets sent on location all over the world, a lot of the time she is filming in the remote landscapes of Northern America

ERIN RANNEY

Erin Ranney is based in both Alaska and Washington state. While she gets sent on location all over the world, a lot of the time she is filming in the remote landscapes of Northern America. Ranney, who completed a master’s in Wildlife Documentary Production in England, is also a trained guide and naturalist in Alaska’s bear country.

“If you’re looking for really specific behavior with wildlife, it can mean months of waiting for it to happen,” says Ranney. “When it does, you need to be ready so the pre-record is really handy for those few extra seconds before you can hit the trigger.

It took a lot of trial and error to combine my field skills with my developing camera skills, but nothing replaces actually working through problems yourself,” she says. “I don’t come from a technical background but there are great user guides online and I found the EPIC-W easy to use.”

Supplementing the RED with a A7Sii and drone, Ranney’s work has appeared in shows for BBC, PBS, Smithsonian, and National Geographic. “I tend to shoot 6K and push the frame rate off-speed, especially when going close up with bears.

You want the detail because they move a lot quicker than people expect. When they’re going after fish it’s nice to have that grand slow-motion shot but keep it high resolution.”

A Canon 50-1000mm CINESERVO is her go-to lens for achieving both wider shots and intimate moments without having to take her focus away from eyepiece.

“Shooting from a distance means you are able to let the animal act more naturally.

Having that range allows you to peek inside a world you wouldn’t normally get to see without disturbing the animals.”

MARK SHARMAN

“The approach to filming wildlife is now more akin to feature film production, but with far fewer people involved,” says cameraman Mark Sharman. “My role is multi-faceted and covers cinematographer, operator, grip and sometimes even the gaffer. We’re always thinking about how we can cover the behaviour Cameraman Mark Sharman’s effectively, whilst also trying role is multi-faceted and covers cinematographer, operator, grip to make the sequence as and sometimes gaffer cinematic as possible with both the underwater and topside visuals.”

Sharman studied Television Production at Bournemouth University and qualified as an HSE commercial scuba diver before going on to specialise in filming wildlife and people in marine environments for high-end natural history productions. He has filmed across the globe with credits including Night on Earth (Netflix), Blue Planet Live (BBC One), Chasing Ocean Giants (Discovery+) One Strange Rock (National Geographic) and Jago: A Life Underwater (BBC and Netflix).

Underwater camerawork requires specialised equipment alongside the main camera, often a RED DSMC2 GEMINI 5K S35 in a Gates Pro Explore underwater housing. Sharman uses a range of additional kit to capture full sequences in a beautiful and dynamic way. This could include using underwater optical (Nikonos) lenses manufactured for analogue SLR use in the 1990s, which together with an adaptor can be used in combination with the latest digital cinema cameras in the DSMC2 range. He also employs a powerful zoom

Camera m equipm an Mark Sharm e underw nt alongside th an requires spe e ater seq uences in main camera tocialised ca a beauti ful and d pture ynamic way

“THE APPROACH TO FILMING WILDLIFE IS NOW MORE AKIN TO FEATURE FILM PRODUCTION, BUT WITH FAR FEWER PEOPLE INVOLVED.” MARK SHARMAN lens (50-1000mm) housed in a Shot Over M1 that he positions on a jib arm off a boat to smoothly track fast moving wildlife at the surface. A Diver Propulsion Vehicle (DVP) with an underwater camera attached is used to help track marine life at speed.

“The big advantage for underwater use of the GEMINI is the dual ISO sensor and fantastic dynamic range. Even on a bright sunny day the natural light levels drop the further you descend and being able to use the native 3200 ISO low-light sensor is a massive advantage, as it gives me a couple of extra stops. We’re often filming macro subjects and you need to let in as much light as possible whilst reducing any unwanted noise.

“The other issue is when pointing the camera upwards the light will be extremely bright with blazing

shards of sun hitting the surface but when you tilt the camera down, it’s a very dark sea below. The wide dynamic range of the GEMINI really helps because you can’t usually open up or close down the iris during a shot.”

Another essential function of the RED DSMC2 range is the pre-record, which gives a minimum of 4 seconds (up to 20 seconds) for insurance. “That is one of the key advantages of shooting on RED cameras for wildlife. You haven’t got unlimited card space and often you’re waiting with your finger on the trigger for a particular action or behaviour to happen. You can’t keep rolling for minutes on end, so to have the ability to set the pre-roll even when shooting high frame rate off-speed is a big advantage and it has helped capture some big moments!” n

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 75

CINEMATIC CLASSIC / BILL POPE ASC / THE MATRIX / BY MATT TUFFIN

BULLET TIME

D

P Bill Pope ASC has a long, varied career starting in the 1980s, and travelling through some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. But his movie career started with a pioneer of the action sci-fi genre, known for its innovative effects and high-concept narrative: The Matrix.

Bill Pope ASC’s path into production was far from direct. A DP with mostly music video credits, Pope’s resume was somewhat lacking high-profile motion pictures in the 1990s. But a dose of good fortune (and low rates) eventually led him to the debut film of the Wachowski siblings.

Bound, a modern noir starring Joe Pantoliano and Jennifer Tilly, had begun production with another DP, who lasted only a day after finding the $1 million budget far too restrictive.

“Fortunately for me, his agent was my agent. So, they went back to our agent and said ‘who’s at the other end of the ladder? Who’s the bottom DP, the cheapest guy?’ and that was me. So next thing I knew, I was there.”

While shooting Bound, the initial idea of The Matrix was shared with Pope, years before it would be close to becoming a reality. “By the time I got the script, I understood the story. We’d all been watching mainland and Hong Kong movies and Japanese anime by that point for years, and we’d see something that we really loved, something really cool, and they’d go, ‘Hmm’. So, I already knew what was in the script because I saw them think of it.”

The first challenge for Pope to overcome was creating an obvious, visual split between the real world and the world within The Matrix.

“The computer-made world was to have a slightly “wrong” and ominous tint based on the colour of cursors at the time. The real world had no sunlight, and so yellow was missing, replaced by a slight cold blue.”

Before the production started in earnest it had already gone through a fair share of leading men.

Some had walked

away due to the delays in getting production off the ground, others because they didn’t buy into the concept.

“We started preproduction a couple of times; both were because one of the earlier Neos had signed on. These include Johnny Depp, Val Kilmer, and Will Smith. I was involved in all those efforts over the course of two years.”

But once Keanu Reeves was confirmed, the production could start in earnest. Costs were limited, even with a bankable A-list start, which meant the revolutionary bullet time effects would need some forethought, ingenuity and more than a fair share of luck. A key hire was John Gaeta who, in spite of his youth, was brought on board as special effects supervisor because he could make the bullet time effect a reality.

“We knew that we had to have a rig and a path for a camera to follow. It was John Gaeta who made the simple observation that a motion picture camera is just a bunch of still images stuck together.

And he could break them down into as many still images, then morph between them.”

Although the theory was sound, the limited budget meant some corners still had to be cut.

“So, we designed one path of the camera around Neo, leaning over to let the bullets go by, and another path of the camera where Neo and Agent Smith jumped up and put their guns against each other’s heads in an homage to John Woo. And if you look at them, they’re exactly the same path the camera takes because we could only afford one rig.”

The effects shots required 300fps, meaning fluorescent bulbs were used throughout the shoot. In case Bullet Time didn’t work, and for other last-minute shots in slow motion, the Wachowskis had another request: “Each set was lit to allow for 300fps. So, all the practical lights, including fake streetlights and Laurence Fishburn fluorescents, had to be manufactured out of (Morpheus) filming e a Pyrex. Sets had to be fireproofed. And yet scene for The

Matrix (Credit: Copyrigh t (c) 1999 Warner Bro and Village Roads s. how Films Limited (BV I))

Keanu Reeves (Neo) and Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith) filming the bullet time scene for The Matrix (Credit: Copyright (c) 1999 Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Films Limited (BVI))

it all had to look super casual. It was a giant engineering effort by the art and lighting departments.”

And, of course, the almost 360-degree camera movement meant lighting had to cover all the bases. This led to every light being configured for f/16 so, in Pope’s own words, it was “cluttered as hell in there.”

The restrictions of the visual effects also influenced the choice of lenses, as Pope had to rely on spherical lenses rather than anamorphic. “I would have shot it on anamorphic lenses, but digital was in such early stages that it was not possible to map the lenses, and all their aberrations, onto the image. So that’s my regret when I [went to] watch those movies. I shot on spherical lenses and cropped. The quality could have been a lot better and much more fun with real anamorphic lenses.”

Even though the inexperience of the creative team may have been apparent, their passion for the martial arts film genre led them to a serious coup: BILL POPE ASC director and stunt coordinator Woo-Ping Yuen.

“We noticed that [we were watching] half of the movies that we really loved were directed and [the stunts were] choreographed by Woo-Ping Yuen, so the Wachowskis asked him [in] to do the choreography for our movie. It was a big honour for us, and a big chance for him to do a Western movie. And he’s the master. He’s literally referred to as the Master by his team.”

The headline-grabbing computer-led effects did draw attention away from some of the more spectacular practical effects, though. “I get the most pleasure out of thinking of the film as mainly practical, shot with practical solutions, and having well-chosen, very selective CG enhancement. For instance, when Trinity runs into a phone booth as Agent Smith drives a massive truck at her to crush her. We put the sidewalk, phone booth and camera on a huge dolly and drove it at the g Bill Pope BSC shootin stationary truck. That way we could ons oluti The Matrix Rev take her right up to the bumper s.

Bro rner Wa 1 © 202 and still be safe. No CG at all.”

Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved The popularity, and legacy, of the film came as a shock to many people, Pope included. “Did we imagine that many people would enjoy a sci-fi, Kung fu movie, with western stars performing martial arts in a plot that no studio could understand? No.” n

“IMAGINING IT WAS THE HARD PART. BUT THE ACTUAL EXECUTION OF IT WAS REALLY QUITE SIMPLE.”

The Matrix is available now on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD. 76 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

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INNOVATOR / ROB DREWETT / MOTION IMPOSSIBLE / BY KEVIN HILTON

FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT

F

inding what one wants to do in life is not always straightforward. Rob Drewett, co-founder and chief executive of Motion Impossible, knew he wanted to travel and work outdoors but could not foresee that would lead to becoming an underwater and wildlife cameraman, which led to developing free moving camera support technologies.

Drewett had an interest in photography and natural history when he was young but never thought they could be of use to him in the future. After various post-school jobs, his passion for being outside led him to train first as a sports turf technician and later a tree surgeon. Following the theft of his truck and wood chipper, Drewett used the insurance money to go travelling. In Thailand he started scuba diving and “fell in love with being underwater”.

During this time Drewett bought a camera and underwater housing to film his students diving, which built up over the next six or seven years of travelling to him gaining more experience as a cameraman. On returning to the UK, he was selected to work on the 2011 documentary Desert Seas, after which he won a BBC bursary and joined the Natural History Unit in Bristol. “I worked on some amazing shows, cutting my teeth not just underwater but also topside,” Drewett says. “What I loved about underwater work was the freedom of moving cameras, just floating around and feeling weightless. You’re able to move the camera around in such a cinematic way without any obstacles.”

Due to problems with his ears, Drewett developed his ‘topside’ shooting skills. “I took a Steadicam course and looked into ways to make sequences more immersive,” he explains. “When I worked on the BBC series Africa [2013] I filmed a rock python, but to make that come alive on film you can’t be on a tripod. You’ve got to slide with the snake, so I set up sliders and robotic arms to get immersed in that world.

Motion Impossible BuggyCam

This was the first Eureka moment topside for me - that I could do this but had to think outside the box.”

Drewett began experimenting with different movement and stabilisation techniques, including gimbals: “I used those on Planet Earth II and was one of the first people within the BBC to use gimbals. I then thought about putting a camera on a remote control car, which I thought would be a pretty cool way to get close to animals.” To make that happen, he called a remote-controlled car club near where he lives in the West Country and left a message saying what he wanted to do. “This guy phoned me back and said, ‘It sounds a crazy idea but I love it.’”

The caller was Andy Nancollis, a product design engineer of 20 years’ experience who is now chief development officer of Motion Impossible, which he co-founded with Drewett in 2014. “Together we made the first system, which was called BuggyCam,” Drewett says. “He’s now been my business partner for seven years.”

BuggyCam was originally designed for Drewett’s own purposes, not as a commercial product, but on advice he took it to the IBC Rob Drewett filming Holi and NAB shows, leading to several sales. At s rie se for BBC that stage the unit was a low-level camera Monsoon car but was redesigned to allow the camera to move upwards. “People were calling it the Shin Cam, which was horrible, so we put a telescopic pole and a gimbal on it to get the camera up to eye height.”

78 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

AGITO Trax in a stadium

Around this time virtual 360-degree shooting was emerging, with the inherent problem that there was no way to move a multiple array camera without the support being visible. Motion Impossible addressed this by using a Kenyon gyro, allowing the camera to be supported from below. The result was the Mantis 360 (now branded and expanded as the M-Series), which sold approximately 150 units in two years. “We worked on some amazing shows and sold to the likes of Facebook, MTV and GoPro,” Drewett says. “We started to see the value of moving cameras remotely but needed to get our technology into more mainstream markets, because we had pretty much saturated 360.”

A larger, empty chassis featured in the Futures Park section of the 2017 NAB Show, generating a lot of information about what users wanted. “We had to stop at a certain spec but even that did not prevent it from being too heavy to get on an aeroplane, which, as a wildlife cameraman, I see as a priority,” Drewett says. “That’s when we decided to split the system into three parts, with a centre core section and drive-ends either side.

That allowed us to take the drive-ends off for travelling but we realised we could put on other drive-ends to do different things. That’s how the whole modularity of the AGITO family came about.”

This range includes the AGITO Sports, which can travel at up to 30mph but also at one centimetre per second; and AGITO Trax, with a different drive-end that allows it to work on rails. “It’s a system that can work on lots of different types of filming,” Drewett says. “It could shoot concerts as Trax during the week and then change to Sports mode at the weekend to cover a football game.”

AGITO has also been used on feature films including for a chase sequence in Tom and Jerry (2021 DP Alan Stewart BSC) - due to its ability to produce dolly shots without tracks. “That will be important for the future because budgets are getting smaller,” Drewett says. “AGITO can mimic moves from a traditional dolly without any set-up time. A dolly grip can train with it in 10 minutes to make moves that it can take an experienced grip years to finesse.”

Filmmaking is becoming a major focus for Motion Impossible due to increasing demands from directors and cinematographers to move the camera in ways that have not been seen before. “There is a hunger for innovation all the time,” says Drewett. “Technology is advancing so fast, especially in robotics, and cameras are getting lighter. Robotics are getting faster and cheaper to utilise. I doubt we’ll make a humanoid robot camera but in the future we’ll certainly be able to move things around more organically.”

Whatever the form of such technologies, with Motion Impossible’s twin influences from the natural and the robotic worlds, filmmakers are likely to get the new movements they are looking for. n

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CUTTING EDGE

R

oughcut TV’s comedy series Bloods for Sky was graded at Molinare by colourist Vicki Matich on Baselight. Shot by DP Duncan Telford on location in South London during lockdown, the brief was to inject as much colour and light into the locations, particularly the exteriors which were on occasion quite overcast and/or rainy.

“This was achieved by Bloods creating a LUT that really brought out the greens, blues and yellows associated with the paramedic uniforms and ambulance vehicles,” Matich says.

“It was then just a matter of keeping the look consistent on the in-ambulance footage and the drone shots.

As the main deliverable was SDR and we were remote grading, we graded the SDR first to get client sign-off and then did an HDR pass.”

Mission provided DIT services on Sony Pictures’ superhero sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage, directed

by Andy Serkis, starring Tom Hardy and lensed on Alexa 65 by Robert Richardson ASC. The DIT was Alex Golding. Behind Her Eyes, a six-part psychological thriller for Netflix, directed by Erik Richter Strand and shot by Felix Wiedemann BSC on Alexa LF 4.5K with HDE was DITed by Mission’s Patrick King. Mission also provided digital dailies for the show. Tony Miller BSC brought another Netflix show, The Irregulars, to Mission earlier this year. Shot on Sony Venice on location in Liverpool, Mission provided near set dailies while King was DIT on this project too.

Eight-part extreme sports adventure, Extreme Iceland, tracks athlete Michael Wilson’s exploits as he bikes and paraglides his way around the perimeter of the glacial country. Envy’s Dicky Everton handled online for Insight TV’s show, managing GoPro, DSLR and iPhone sources into a UHD HDR deliverable.

“Taking the graded conform as a starting point, I always work through, shot by shot, performing various clean-up tasks,” he says. “Some shots required sky replacement or retouching to remove drone rotors, others

Molinare graded Roughcut TV’s comedy series Bloods for Sky

required detailed despotting to reduce the appearance of sensor dirt spots. I then perform a horizon-fix pass, and a stabilise pass, before rendering and re-watching.”

The timescale for the project was one day on each for online and review. Everton used Avid Symphony, working in Rec 2020 HLG outputting to a Sony X300 reference picture monitor. With production based at Insight TV’s office in Amsterdam, he used the Streambox Chroma 4K to provide them with a permanent video feed, in UHD HDR, at 50p, for the online session. “The footage was shot at various frame-rates, but delivery was always to be at 50 frames per second. All non-50p material was converted via our Alchemist standards converter. Usefully, we have operational ‘watch folders’ which allow for ‘drop-and-convert’ of clips from one frame rate to another. So, it’s relatively easy for me in the online to replace a shot, even if it’s not 50p, by using the appropriate Alchemist watch folder.”

OnSight took charge of Endangered Species, a survival-adventure feature about a wealthy American family on vacation in Kenya produced for Lionsgate.

While enjoying the safari, their vehicle is attacked by a rhino, they are left stranded miles from help and in a world where they are now bottom of the food chain.

extreme Envy handled online for Iceland sports adventure Extreme

80 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

Through her work, writer and director, MJ Basset is hoping to raise awareness of the state of the planet and humans’ impact on the natural world. DP Brendan Barnes shot the film on location in Kenya. Senior colourist Andy Lee, who graded Basset’s previous film Rogue, explained; “The grade was provided locally at OnSight with coordination with VFX in South Africa and then providing Frame IO links for reviews to MJ in Los Angeles for feedback.”

As for Rogue, OnSight is providing full postproduction, courtesy of dubbing mixer Andy Coles, senior colourist Andy Lee, online editor Adam Sample and post producer Jeff Halsey.

SUPERHOE HIJACKED

Hijack has begun work on Superhoe for Bonafide Films which is shooting from April through to mid-July. This six-part music-based drama for BBC is based on Nicôle Lecky’s one-woman Royal Court show of the same name, being shot by DPs Molly Manning-Walker and Nick Morris on Alexa Mini.

Ahead of the shoot, Manning-Walker worked with Toby Tomkins at Cheat to develop SDR and HDR LUTs. DIT Nic Turton is working on location in Hijack’s custom built near-set mobile lab. “The mobile lab keeps processing while moving between locations, meaning zero down time during the shoot and rushes delivered on wrap,” says Hijack’s Rich Simpson. “A dailies grade is also being handled by Nic in the mobile lab, with CDLs delivered to Cheat along with the rushes.”

Hijack is providing a complete streaming solution.

On set viewers are able to access picture on their Interior of Hijack’s own devices via the Local custom built nearArea Network, and further set DIT lab afield through its Remote Filming global streaming system. Hijack is providing the location internet, rushes upload, LTO archival and lab services from its East London studio.

The Almond and the Seahorse is shooting in Liverpool starring Rebel Wilson and Charlotte Gainsbourg. For this, Hijack is providing a local area network streaming solution complete with iPads for DP Tom Stern who is also co-directing alongside Celyn Jones.

OnSight took charge of the grade of Endangered Species

CINELAB ADDS ON SET TECH

Cinelab London has merged with On Set Tech to form a new venture at Cinelab’s base in Slough that creates the only full-service film lab and dailies facility in the UK. On Set Tech is a digital imaging and dailies facility founded in 2013 by Joshua Callis Smith, who becomes Cinelab CTO. Its projects include features Operation Mincemeat, Rocketman and episodic series The Witcher.

Cinelab has collaborated with On Set Tech for several years and together they have already completed multiple projects including Rocketman, Edgar Wright›s psychological horror Last Night in Soho and Will Sharpe›s historical drama The Electrical life of Louis Wain.

Also new at Cinelab London is an enhanced ability to rapidly digitise releases at 2K, 4K and 6K, often for overnight turnaround. It has bought a license to use Pixstor, a data management solution from Pixitmedia, to help handle the growth in volume of work and day-to-day data storage system management. “The rate of scanning and writing data scales to massive levels when delivering for a big studio production,” Cinelab CEO Adrian Bull explains. “There is complexity in dealing with hundreds of thousands of individual files when scanning film, with folders of anything up to 40,000 .dpx files. A classic issue with directory listings of these files is speed - you need to be able to find a directory quickly, see what›s in it and manipulate it.

Pixitmedia›s central storage can store, organise and handle that write-heavy workflow.

“The timeliness of turnaround between us processing the film, scanning it, transcoding it, and then getting the digital assets to the production teams is a vital piece of the puzzle. Whether it›s file-based or tape delivery, time is critical. From our client›s perspective, they need to know they have got every shot required or if they need to re-shoot. That speed in delivery to them is everything.”

12K COMEDY SHOW – NO JOKE

A show about the history of comedy for Sky Deutschland’s new thematic HD channel Sky Comedy was shot almost entirely in 12K resolution. Eine kleine Geschichte des Humors was produced by Berlin-based B28 Produktion for Sky Comedy’s launch in Germany at the end of March. The 3 x 20-minute doc was

Left to right Simon Chubbock, Adrian Bull, Joshua Callis-Smith of Cinelab London

filmed almost entirely on the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K against greenscreen for VFX insertion but principally in order to save time setting up multiple shots. Head of post Marius Fischer was able to crop into the 12K frame, sometime up to 900% and still output a 4K image.

Fischer was also DIT and managed recording to Cfast cards and a compression ratio of 5-1 equating to a data rate of about 390MB per second – or 11 minutes of footage per card. Media was saved to a Pegasus32 R8 RAID and Samsung T5 SSD for backup.

He verified the material using Pomfort software Silverstack. He admits to having doubts about the workflow until he got the media into post. “I didn’t know what would happen when we took 12K into the timeline. When we got into post we plugged in the RAID, created a new project in Resolve and put the 12K material into the timeline and it worked. No prerendering, no caching. It just auto-synced with audio into the timeline. Even if we made a colour grade with 10 nodes or keying with eight power windows open it worked immediately. The only rendering was for VFX. I was relieved.”

Fischer edited on Resolve 17 running on a 2019 Mac Pro 12-Core with 196GB RAM and using 32GB Radeon Pro Vega II GPUs, although he suggests 64GB cards offer better capacity. To the Resolve he attached an editor keyboard and a Mini Panel plus the Thunderbolt 3 capture and playback solution UltraStudio 4K Mini. The delivery was only for HD broadcast though it is available on-demand at 4K via Sky Ticket.

Focus Canning

DIGITAL ORCHARD CELEBRATES 10 Back in 2011, the digital revolution was only just beginning, and the Digital Imaging Technician emerged as a new role on-set to cope. A group of those DITs decided to pool resources and form a supportive community. A decade on, Digital Orchard is celebrating a landmark anniversary.

“I’m extremely proud of what the company has achieved,” says MD Sam Margaritis. “Most importantly the consistently high level of customer service, our ethos of plain speaking and transparency and our ability to adapt and grow in such a competitive and changeable market.” In 2015, DO “decided to take a huge risk and invest heavily in the R&D on a new 65mm scanner from LaserGraphics.” This was to support the 65mm shoot of Murder on the Orient Express during which they also forged a partnership with Kodak which is still going.

The company has expanded its Foundation activities from tackling gender inequality to bridging gaps into the industry for people from all underrepresented groups. Digital Orchard Foundation has helped more than 500 people work towards achieving equity and to take action to make film and TV productions truly inclusive.

Never having been a ‘traditional’ Soho facility, DO’s new base is a 26-acre farm outside Chalfont St Giles, a short ride from Leavesden and Pinewood.

The facility is looking to expand its services from this strategic relocation and has committed to becoming net zero by 2023. n

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British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 81

LETTER FROM AMERICA / STEVEN POSTER ASC

IT’S A NEW DAY AGAIN We are artists. We are technicians.

We are inventors. We are teachers.

We are business people. We are traffic cops. But most of all we are story tellers. And we have vision.

W

e are the only people on a production that have a consistent photographic vision from beginning to the end of a show. But sometimes we are shy, too shy to get in the mix to protect our photographic imperative. That vision starts developing from the first time we read a script. And that vision doesn’t stop until those images are seen by an audience.

Of course, traditionally, it seemed to be an easier process from beginning to end. When everything was photochemical we could wait for the editing to finish and then come in for a few hours over a period of three or four days, screen with a timer and see the results the next day until we were satisfied with the print. If there were special effects involved, we might be asked to approve a few Sinex strips. But that might have been the extent of our involvement.

It got a little more complicated when Telecine was involved. It wasn’t always easy for us to get invited to these sessions but as more people started watching our work on TV, either through broadcast, VHS tape, DVD and finally Blu-Ray, it became more important for us to try to be at these sessions.

Then the world started changing to digital processing. As more people got their hands on our work, the technology developed to where it became much easier to manipulate and change the images we so carefully made. We somehow became more removed from these processes. Only the very top echelon of cinematographers got to be involved with post-production.

There was a growing need for the world of cinematography to get involved with the development and control of the images. When I was president of the ASC in 2002 I formed the New Technology Committee (now called the Motion Imaging Technology Council, MITC.) with the concept that our whole industry should come together to decide and develop the tools and methods capturing and controlling the images we made to tell our stories. This ad hoc group has been responsible for the Standardized Evaluation Material (StEM) to judge the qualities of projectors as they became digital, the Cinematographers Color Decision List (ASC CDL) embedded grading instructions that can follow the images all through post, assuring the cinematographers that their intent is followed through the many processes before it goes to the screens. This and other initiatives bring us closer to the goal I expressed in the mid-’90s, “The holy grail of digital imaging is an end to end, device independent color management system.”

The movies we made often developed much more complex problems that required previsualization, complex compositing, and sometimes even post-visualization and as the complexity increased, these jobs were frequently done by people who never even considered the cinematographer’s 82 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

input. As the visual effects departments grew to unfathomable sizes, on movies just a few decades earlier, these people became further removed from the initial intent of the image. I remember, in the early days of digital filmmaking, I had to fight my way in just to be involved with these departments.

As these trends began to take hold, I felt the widening gap in a very uncomfortable way.

Fortunately I was asked in 1989 to do some experimental work in early hi-def with a camera that was developed by Sony NHK and Panavision. I gained enough knowledge from that experience to be just a little dangerous. So over the next decade, I attended many seminars and conventions, sat in on Visual Effects Society symposiums and started attending the Hollywood Post Alliance Tech Retreat.

When I first attended the HPA retreat in Palm Springs, people actually asked me what I was doing there. Why would a cinematographer be interested in this technical world? Along the way I started bringing more people with me and was able to start participating on some of the panels. It actually got to the point where the HPA changed its name to the Hollywood Professional Association because it was clear that the technology discussed worked throughout the production of every movie and the industry became more aware that cinematographers were not only part of the process, in many cases they were the drivers of the vision and the language of movies and television. This year, Mandy Walker, ASC ACS gave the keynote speech. We’ve certainly come a long way in the eyes of the technology community and now there’s even a more important development

in our expanding toolbox. With the advent of virtual production, and the use of game engines and video walls, we are seeing real-time compositing become an important part of our production methods. And yes, it takes seven or eight technicians running computers to accomplish this technique, which is in some ways similar to rear screen projection.

But as it turns out, before video walls and game engines the process of creating composite images was removed from the set and the artistic hands of the cinematographer and was given to a myriad of technicians and artists doing the compositing, often in sweatshop warehouses, having no connection to the final presentation. Now, once again, the cinematographer has the opportunity to be the lead compositor because it is our artistic abilities that is driving the real-time final images.

There is much to learn about these methods as a cinematographer. Last month, the American Society of Cinematographers put on a three-day, intensive seminar very well put together by Dave Stump ASC, a masterclass for masters, to make sure that we all understood enough about these systems to accomplish and enhance the work of photographing and compositing scenes in camera using this technology to accomplish our artistic goals.

In many of these situations, we are now brought in to the pre-visualization and pre-production so that we can enhance the director’s vision from the beginning to the end of our storytelling adventure.

So one again the circle is complete. Somehow the ‘vision thing’ always comes back to the artistic intent of the cinematographer. n

IMAGO NEWS / IMAGO DIVERSITY & INCLUSION COMMITTEE / BY NINA KELLGREN BSC AND ELEN LOTMAN ESC

MARKING CHANGE

I

n 2016, at one of the first meetings of a newly elected IMAGO Board, Nina Kellgren BSC proposed an additional committee to start tackling the lack of diversity within cinematography. The IMAGO Diversity and Inclusion Committee was established, with Elen Lotman ESC and Kellgren as Co-Chairs.

Co-incidentally, the ASC Vision Committee was also established in 2016, as were illuminatrix and multiple other groups with a similar goal. The time was ripe for a bigger change.

Subsequent years since the formation of the IMAGO D&I Committee have brought many grassroots viral actions, which all signal that humanity at large is ready for a change. But, for more experienced changemakers, a question may arise - why would this time be different to any other time of civic awakening? Nina Kellgren BSC - the most prolific female cinematographer in UK film history, according to the BFI - has seen the industry take steps forward in the past, working in the 1980s with more diverse crews in the early days of Channel 4 and with director Isaac Julien CBE. “Such crew changes were neither inevitable nor straightforward and subsequently many emerging diverse cinematographers found themselves stalled at a certain level of work, unable to progress and became discouraged,” she says.

As the IMAGO D&I Committee reflects on five years of work and the D&I events at Camerimage, it is examining how change happens and what works.

When asking why this time would be different to any other time of change that many female and other minority cinematographers have experienced, the

IMAGO’s D&I Committee joined forces with Digital Orchard Foundation at last year’s virtual Camerimage for a diversity panel

IMAGO Diversity & Inclusion Committee panel debate (Credit Paul René Roestad)

answer is globalisation. “Humanity has never been so interconnected globally with the viral explosions of the #meetoo movement, BLM movement, and Fridays for Climate, all showing us that in the future no-one, no-where can say about no-thing that it is not my problem,” says Lotman. “Everything is everybody’s problem in a global world and the ones who fail to understand the gravity of the change will notice how the non-problem suddenly arrives in their backyard, be it in the form of climate change, change of human migration or change of established cultural norms.

“So, if the time is now, the change will come and will be big, because we have fully entered an era of globalised humanity. IMAGO is perfectly placed as the international federation of cinematographers’ societies. It is the only global organisation in the field, and with over 50 member countries, it can inspire the industry and communicate information in a continuous way.”

The D&I Committee was ELEN LOTMAN ESC established with the notion that cinema and cinematography are too influential not to reflect the diverse society we live in, on every level. “The Committee aims to address the striking historical lack of diversity in cinematography internationally, the impact of which represents inequities of gender, race, ethnicity, and other discouraged and marginalised groups. Our goal was and is to spread the change and ultimately to make ourselves redundant,” says Kellgren.

There are many excellent international actions, initiatives, training schemes and organisations working to encourage and support under-represented groups, create access, and diversify the face of cinematography, both within the Societies and in collectives and platforms such as illuminatrix (UK), Sporas (US),

The Hue list (UK), Cinematographinnen (Germany), Apertura (Mexico), The International Collective of Female Cinematographers (ICFC), DAFB (Brazil).

These offer excellent models of how to increase the visibility of diversity in cinematography and how to tackle unconscious bias. There are also many cinematographers’ societies that have a Diversity and Inclusion Committee or an equivalent. For example, the ACS’s Diversity, Inclusion and Reconciliation (formerly known as the Women’s Advisory Panel).

IMAGO D&I Committee is celebrating its five-year anniversary with a process of remodelling its structure.

“The aim is to be more effective and fit for purpose in the online world of 2021, with more open and accessible communication which will work as an information sharing platform and as a resource, an information and inspiration network,” explains Kellgren.

The D&I committee currently has two co-chairs and active members from 17 different countries, and the list is ever-expanding – Chile, Spain, NZ, Australia, Estonia, UK, Mexico, Austria, Sweden, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Russia, Argentina, USA, Bulgaria. It is also talking with the ASC Vision Committee, Co-Chairs John Simmons and Cynthia Pusheck, about future collaborations. At the Committee’s last virtual Camerimage event it partnered with Digital Orchard Foundation and it is preparing for an exciting exhibition at Camerimage 2021 to celebrate the change.

“We, in the IMAGO D&I Committee, at our fiveyear anniversary, realise we don’t need to create the change anymore. The change has been created and it is happening. Now we see our position as an initiative that can spread the change,” says Lotman.

“Spread the change with us. Cinematography is no different from anything else in our society and the people who have the immense privilege to spend their lives telling stories through moving images should be as diverse as the society whose stories they are telling and to whom they are telling them.” n

“THE CHANGE HAS BEEN CREATED AND IT IS HAPPENING. NOW WE SEE OUR POSITION AS AN INITIATIVE THAT CAN SPREAD THE CHANGE.”

British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 83

GBCT / NEWS FROM THE GUILD / BY TIM POTTER - CHAIR - GBCT

BE MINDFUL OF MENTAL HEALTH

Are you mad? Are you just as mad as you were before? Or are you just mad as hell? We have all become more aware of the toll that the last year has taken on our mental disposition. We all remember that the best way to get a shot of a group of mad men and women is to turn the camera on the knackered crew.

The freelance life has always had its maddening qualities, but now, more than ever, we should turn our minds to our mental health.

T

he various lockdowns and self-distancing have had an often-subtle effect on our health.

Few of us have experienced such extended periods without work. Some have been lucky enough to fall within the narrow parameters of the various schemes to financially support workers during this time of want, but many have not and are thrown onto what meager resources they have put aside for what has turned out to be a torrential year rather than a rainy day. Periods between jobs are the norm in our life and we all have different coping mechanisms, but few of these mechanisms are up to the task of such a prolonged drought. I was once told that with my last £300 I should buy three influential colleagues lunch. A great idea when restaurants are open! Some of us get temporary jobs in other walks of life, and end up managing the stores we once stacked shelves in. Some of us let rip with our literary talents and end up as successful authors. However, for most of us the distraction is only temporary, and the angst will still build up the longer things continue.

The resulting problems can manifest themselves in many ways. Depression is not always visible. Rarely is wailing and gnashing of teeth the symptom of note.

Depression can sometimes show itself in simple changes in behaviour, like sleeping longer than is normal or its opposite. In fact, the symptoms are many and varied; both physical and psychological. Feeling hopeless; feeling guilt ridden; moving or speaking more slowly than usual; changes in appetite or weight (usually decreased, but sometimes increased); constipation; unexplained aches and pains; and lack

waiting for life to return to what you were familiar with is no answer. I doubt we will ever return to that before world. If you do detect some of the signs of depression then the first stop is your local doctor, but there are other sources of help if things are not so drastic. The key is to talk to someone. There are many organisations and charities that are there to help with advice and more. Our own industry has its dedicated organisation, The Film & Television Charity (FTC), which has a helpline (0800 054 0000) and schemes that can support workers in many forms of distress.

When things do start to approach normal, and we are again allowed to meet other people, then that very social interaction can be the key to better mental health. When we meet others, we do not dwell on ourselves. Meeting friends and colleagues is a medicine in itself. This can be helped by any number of organisations like clubs and pubs. Our industry has its TIM POTTER - GBCT CHAIR own organisation that helps long-term workers (over 30 of energy. It’s a merry soup of different and seemingly years) to meeting and socialise with like-minded souls, unconnected signals. Just put, “Symptoms - Clinical the British Film & Television Veterans (BCTV). Where depression - NHS (www.nhs.uk)” into your search the FTC has a role in dealing with the more serious engine to get the full panoply. cases of distress, the BCTV is in its own subtle way

While getting back to normal working patterns ministering to the softer level of mental wellbeing. may put you back to rights, it will not work for all

The answer is, as soon as you can, get out there of us. If the symptoms are bad now or they persist, and talk to one another! n

“IF YOU DO DETECT SOME OF THE SIGNS OF DEPRESSION THEN THE FIRST STOP IS YOUR LOCAL DOCTOR, BUT THERE ARE OTHER SOURCES OF HELP IF THINGS ARE NOT SO DRASTIC. THE KEY IS TO TALK TO SOMEONE. THERE ARE MANY ORGANISATIONS AND CHARITIES THAT ARE THERE TO HELP WITH ADVICE AND MORE.”

84 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

GBCT / NEWS FROM THE GUILD / BY JOHN KEEDWELL GBCT / UAV PILOT

ART REFLECTS LIFE John Keedwell GBCT examines how this year’s BAFTA results mirror the wider world.

“B

oom, Boom, Boom, Boom,” in the words of Baldrick from Blackadder 4. The sounds of the 41-gun salute were still ringing in our ears in respect for His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, on Friday 9 April. Then came the BAFTA ceremony on the same weekend, with His Royal Highness a longstanding patron and supporter. The Duke was BAFTA’s very first president over 60 years ago and was the first of a line of royal patronage all the way through to BAFTA’s current president, his grandson, the Duke of Cambridge. It was Prince Philip and Her Majesty The Queen’s support throughout these years that in many ways allowed BAFTA, a leading charity in the arts, to continue in difficult times and to be here today in 2021, celebrating another outstanding year of achievement in film. He will be sorely missed.

And what a strange start to the week the day after the BAFTA ceremony. A lovely sunny day, the birds were singing, and the lack of car chases and stunt work in the films this year were taken to the streets and jammed up the road network near where I live. Is the desire to get a haircut so pressing that it means accidents? I guess it is now back to “normal” to a degree, after more than a year of relative peace and quiet. I am not sure I like the “normal” anymore.

The usual high-energy, huge budget blockbusters we are all used to seeing at the BAFTA awards were replaced by some more thought-provoking and slower paced films. The decision to move the distribution and cinema release of the next Bond film to later this year means it will now qualify for 2021 and be seen at the 2022 awards. Other films with similar huge budgets, supreme cinematography and spectacular stunts have also been moved. Next year will be a quite different awards ceremony, mark my words!

There were a few films such as Greyhound and Tenet that made the BAFTA nominations, of course.

They had hugely different stories and set at different times, yet both visually spectacular, and both worthy of their nominations. Both left the viewer exhausted in different ways, Greyhound for the relentless action of a convoy of ships with supplies for Britain crossing the Atlantic in the Second World War. Tenet is more of a

cerebral exhaustion along with the visuals. There were also events going forwards and backwards, so it takes a lot of mental concentration to fully comprehend the enormity of what we are watching.

How fitting then, that the winner of the BAFTA Best Film was Nomadland, a simple story about a woman travelling through the wilderness of America following the economic collapse of a company town in rural Nevada. Fern (Frances McDormand) packs her van and sets off on the road exploring a life outside of conventional society as a modern-day nomad. Many of the actors were real-life nomads, mostly people who had not been able to keep up payments due to losing their jobs. This eerily echoes the issues the world will have when we return to somewhere resembling normality (whatever that is), going forward.

Most of the film was shot in lowlight conditions and has natural colours and qualities only seen when the sun has gone down and are now obtainable with modern day cameras with highly sensitive sensors. In an interview for collider.com, the DP Joshua James Richards says, “When you rate a camera like we did on Nomadland at 1280, that’s like night vision, dude. You’re bringing shadows in.

And so, here’s the thing, that takes less crew, which is great for Chloé (Chloé Zhao, Nomadland director) and I, the way we want to make Nomadland films, but not necessarily great for the Hollywood industry, if our crews are getting smaller and smaller. But I care a bit more about the storytelling getting better and better, and visually more exciting.”

Camera crews hearing this said by an award-winning DP may bring shivers to your back, as smaller crews and multi-tasking means less >> British Cinematographer | May 2021 | 85

GBCT / NEWS FROM THE GUILD / BY JOHN KEEDWELL GBCT / UAV PILOT

>>

The visually spectacular Tenet won the Special Visual Effects BAFTA © 2020 Warner Bros.

Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved

work for some areas of the crew. Yet this approach fitted with the mood and content of this film, using natural light with extremely sensitive digital cameras to capture the mood. The colours and feeling of this approach certainly feed the story and makes it feel more like a documentary, which in many ways it is more than a drama. It pushes technology to many limits, and in that respect, it has successfully communicated the story that moves the viewer in so many ways. It has hit home and captured imaginations and made people think.

Considering this original book was published in September 2017, it was written with extreme foresight by the author Jessica Bruder. Indeed, one of the IMDB reviews of the film says, “Watching this film will make you question modern life”. Exactly.

Other films looked more closely at everyday events yet are as devastating for the characters in the films as an action-packed blockbuster. Perhaps one of the most fitting and poignant films was The Father, with Sir Anthony Hopkins playing an older gentleman with dementia who is becoming confused. I will not say any more for fear of a spoiler alert, suffice to say, he was a worthy winner of his acting award, and it is a remarkably interesting and sensitive way of portraying dementia.

Sir Anthony said it had not been a challenge to play an elderly man suffering from dementia in the film version of Florian Zeller’s play. “I didn’t have to act old - I am old,” he explained. He also likened the experience of dementia to the difficulties the world has faced during the pandemic, saying both involved “losing your senses and anchors”. He said, “It is a mess, and it is scary for billions of people. I hope it helps us to pay attention and to not take everything for granted. Hopefully, we’ll come through it. I hope we all come through this with a sense of triumph and hope for the future.” Hear, hear.

86 | British Cinematographer | May 2021

DOCUMENTARY

Another film to capture the attention in the awards was in the documentary section. I was sure David Attenborough was a certainty to win with his superb film David Attenborough: A Life on our Planet. Based on his book from 2020, this was a fantastic visual journey through what has happened to the planet within his lifetime. With a crew of 136 people, shooting around the planet, this was a statement as well as a magnificent film to learn about the planet.

Attenborough describes the film as his “witness statement” and gives an impression of what could happen to the planet over the course of a lifetime, beginning in 2020 and lasting as long as his own, were human activity to continue unchanged. The Amazon rainforest could degrade into a savanna; the Arctic could lose all ice during summer; coral reefs could die; soil overuse could cause food crises. As David heads towards his 95th birthday in early May, this must be noted as a defining piece of work after a lifetime in his unique position. He is, after all, a national treasure. The film is a must-see.

It was with a huge degree of amazement as well as shock we saw David Attenborough not win the award, and a relatively small film about an octopus and a diver called My Octopus Teacher take the Best Documentary award. It was 11 years ago that South African filmmaker Craig Foster’s life changed forever.

While free diving in an underwater kelp forest in False Bay near Cape Town, he encountered a courageous, inquisitive young female octopus. For the next year, he went every day to win her trust as he chronicled her life on film and the two formed a strong bond as he learned about the delicacy of life and the humanity’s link to nature. Anyone who has seen My Octopus Teacher (lensed by Craig Foster and Roger Horrocks), the documentary chronicling their relationship, has been moved by their story. It r My Octopus Teache goes to show a well told, great story will grab an audience’s attention. This film is also a must-see.

So, in many ways the films written two, three, four or more years ago and released for cinemas in 2020 were as applicable and relevant to 2020 as a script written with the full knowledge and experiences as someone who had lived through the 2020 pandemic.

It will no doubt create a different set of films for the next awards this time next year, and the competition will be very different. The cinemas will be opening, to show the latest content, if there is any to show. I feel they may have a more challenging time to get audiences to sit in a darkened room next to many people, so they have a big challenge to convince the cinemagoers to suddenly leave the comfort of their home cinema and Netflix to go out and spend a lot more money to see the latest films at the cinema.

Although the difficulties of making the films will have taken a toll on the 2021 productions too. I hear from many in the know that it is an extremely busy time in all camera and lighting rentals. Yet buying new gear is difficult due to the lack of raw materials in other countries and the lack of ability to manufacture many pieces of kit because of the lack of a single part such as a switch. The kit cannot be sold until it is fully safe and functioning properly, of course. There are opportunities out there ahead and when we turn the corner, as we seem to have done today. 2020 will be a memory, yet the effects will be lasting for years to come.

CINEMATOGRAPHY AWARD

What was fitting to see the Cinematography category award shown in the main events on the broadcast show. For many years, the Cinematography award had been shown at the end of the proceedings as a sort of “by the way” category, and extraordinarily little attention was given to them by the viewer. It seemed to be seen as a lower importance to many other branches of the filmmaking process. Scriptwriting, production design, direction and other departments were given the full attention of the television highlights programme, and cinematography was placed at the “make a cup of tea before the next programme starts” spot. It was through lobbying by the BSC and many other cine craft organisations that BAFTA now includes cinematography as a major part of the filmmaking, and rightly so! I am not really sure why the successive previous TV companies decided it would only be seen at the very end of the BAFTA Awards programme whilst the end credits were rolling. I hope this has now set the precedent, and it will continue.

Let’s look forward to 2021 as a great year of filmmaking, and a great 2022 awards. Good health to you. n

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