British Cinematographer
Simon
Duggan ACS details how stereoscopic 3D was used to craft a greater
connection with the film's performance and storytelling for Baz
Luhrmann's majestic The Great Gatsby.
Filmed
four times previously, notably in 1949 and 1974, F Scott Fitzgerald’s
1925 literary masterpiece The
Great Gatsby
is retold by Baz Luhrmann as a parable for our times. Starring
Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan it charts the
lives and loves of an elite and the impact on them of sudden wealth,
staged with the director's characteristically flamboyant visual
style.
Speaking
from the set during filming in late 2011, Luhrmann said he approached
the adaptation, not “as a much-loved museum piece” but in the
spirit in which Fitzgerald may have written the original, “as a
piece in an age full of new possibilities enabled by new ideas and
new technologies.” Seen this way, he stressed, “shooting in 3D
made perfect sense."
That
sensibility also informed his choice of cinematographer. Simon
Duggan, ACS (Australian Cinematographers Society) had previously
lensed VFX-heavy action films such as Die
Hard 4.0, I Robot
and Knowing.
“Baz
wanted Gatsby
to have a sense of reality and modernity, of being present in the
Jazz Age where everything felt new, technologically advanced and
sophisticated,” reports Duggan, speaking to British Cinematographer
from location and also this March in the final stages of the grade.
“Visually, we created the opposite of an expected period treatment
with scenically aged sets, static cameras, and classic lighting.”
Having
convinced executive producer Barrie M Osborne and Warner Bros, that
Gatsby
should be a native 3D shoot, Luhrmann got the go-ahead in 2010. Red
Epic cameras were chosen as they were at the time physically the
smallest camera to fit the lightweight 3Ality TS5 rigs and of filming
120fps 2.35 5K.
“I'd
used the Epics before and was very happy with the look and image
quality,” says Duggan. “On set you can get very close to your
desired look through colour temp, tint and exposure settings on the
camera leaving your DIT to fine tune on Redcine and keep a general
log of settings.”
By
shooting 5K they got the maximum quality out of the sensor and then
downsized to 2.5K for VFX. “Having the ability to go back to the 5K
image meant Baz could do large blow-ups such as additional close ups
from existing medium shots, or grab a tighter background plate for a
keyed foreground when he required them.”
With
no prior experience of stereoscopic filming, Duggan took an
introductory course at the Sony 3D Technology Centre in Culver City
to learn basic technical and creative aspects. “I then immersed
myself into the world of 3D, so by the time I joined Baz for tests
[at Bazmark's New York office] I had a pretty good understanding of
the opportunities of the format,” he recalls.
Luhrmann's
lab-style tests with a twin-lens camcorder conducted with key cast,
in the autumn of 2010, helped him grasp a visual grammar that would
capture a performance using stereo cameras.
Dial
M For Murder,
Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 3D suspense drama was screened as inspiration
for Gatsby's
creative quartet which included Duggan, stereographer Alonso Homs and
production designer Catherine Martin.
“That
film proved for me, how fundamentally different 3D is in terms of
dramatic staging,” says Luhrmann, also an accomplished theatre
director. “It has a force that is born quite simply from its
ability to capture great actors playing against each other in a tight
space and toward the camera, something like the theatre.”
According
to Duggan: “Baz and I wanted the viewer to be in among the
performances and to really feel an intimacy with the actors. Baz
loved the similarities that 3D filming had to staging a theatrical
performance where he could create depth by blocking actors and
designing set pieces.”
That
stereoscopy could be used to enhance performance and draw out the
humanity of a character was the single biggest take away from the
development stage. Broadly, the idea was to allow a character to feel
excluded from the story world and by implication draw the audience
closer (literally) to the emotion in the actor's performance by
making subtle use of negative parallax.
Translating
it into practice, when principal photography began at Fox Studios
Australia and locations in and around Sydney, meant confronting key
conventions of filmmaking notably, the over the shoulder shot for
two-person dialogue and the close-up.
“In
3D there is nothing like being right in the face of the actor or
close-up on a detail with a wide lens,” says Duggan. “A close-up
with 3D volume and detail is incredible since it heightens the
viewer’s access to the actor’s emotions. You can read the
subtlest of expression and look straight into their eyes. It probably
felt slightly invasive at the start but once the actors saw the
results, they loved it.
“We
really had little choice of what lenses to use with the more compact
3Ality rigs as we required a lens system with a smaller front
diameter to enable us to use wide angles on the smaller mirror box
such as the 16mm. We generally used from 16-21mm for our wide shots,
21-40mm for our medium shots and between 40-85mm for our tighter
shots. Rarely did we go much longer as it starts to counter the
effect of creating 3D depth as little stereo separation can be wound
into the shot before positive parallax causes eyestrain.”
Although
the mirror boxes on the rigs are already fairly small (412mm length x
350mm wide), lighting the actor’s faces in close-up to avoid
shadows was a challenge. Solving this, Duggan created a special
eye-light with an LED strip that lined the perimeter of the mirror
box.
“For
extreme close-ups, Baz was interested in using lighting to reflect
the mood or situation of the actor, so while this was as unobtrusive
as possible we would be in close to the actor, much like lighting a
commercial pack shot,” explains Duggan. “The way the human brain
processes and fuses stereo images together is the first part in
convincing the viewer that the images are real. We wanted to maintain
this sense of reality using lenses similar to the human field of
view, and to use a natural depth of field to give a more immersive
experience than possible in 2D,” he explains.
They
soon found that the medium shot, capturing more volume of an actor’s
body in a more realistic way, meant that they didn’t necessarily
require coverage of a conventional close-up. In one scene, Tom
Buchanan (played by Joel Edgerton) joins Jay Gatsby (Di Caprio) at
his mansion for a party. They are sitting together when Gatsby’s
butler comes in to tell him that someone is on the phone.
“As
the butler comes close to Gatsby’s ear and gives him the message,
there is a perfect layering of Tom and Jay and the butler so that you
can easily read the emotion passing across their faces,” says Homs.
“It feels like three close-ups in one. The physicality of the
performance is much more readable. You don’t need to go as close to
the face, and you don’t necessarily need to go to the eyes, but
when you do close up on the eyes in 3D it makes that shot all the
more powerful. You are then looking at a face that has volume, where
there is more information to scan and more emotion to read.”
Extreme
close-ups were selected for intense moments, while mid-shots with two
or three characters in frame at varying distances from the lens
conveyed “not only the interaction between the characters in frame
but additional detail and volume, so that the viewer can find their
own close-up on any character within the frame,” says Duggan. “An
actor’s body language is amplified in 3D. The shot is easier to
read because you are a lot more aware of detail.”
He
continues: “There are common techniques in 2D filmmaking to direct
the viewer to an actor or point of interest, or to create depth by
using devices such as a shallow depth of field, soft focus foreground
objects, long lenses, and backlighting that verges on silhouette. But
these are often less effective in 3D as they go contrary to the
effect of creating a convincing realistic world for the viewer.”
Duggan's
approach to lighting was to accent the volume of the stereo image by
maintaining a certain amount of roundness to the lighting and to show
detail by adding layers from foreground to background.
“I
found that a backlit foreground image against a dark background looks
like a cardboard cutout,” he says. “In most cases Baz had freedom
to move the camera anywhere he wanted. Many times we would start with
a wide shot, such as a party scene, and end up on a close-up, often
employing handheld lighting starting outside of the wider frame with
the gaffer running in behind the camera and landing on the close-up.
We also had all of our lighting running through dimmer boards so at
any time we could cross-fade it as the camera moved around the
scene.”
Lurhmann's
style, from Strictly
Ballroom
to Moulin
Rouge,
is to keep the camera constantly on the move, placed on telescoping
cranes, dollies, and Steadicam with Gatsby
no exception. Depth perception was increased within each scene
by having the camera travel through architectural features such as
arches and doorways or exterior foliage.
“The
weather and seasonal changes play an important part of Gatsby's
storytelling with snow, rain, blowing leaves, and smoke additionally
used to enhance dimensionality,” says Duggan. “The camera even
passes through tunnels of people to create a continuous reveal of
characters and the spaces they inhabit.”
The
latter is a part of a scene in which Nick Carraway (Maguire) enters
Gatsby’s mansion for the first time. A party is in full swing and
the excess of the period is on display, illustrated by a richness of
texture and colour in set and costume. There’s a flurry of movement
as Carraway enters the main hallway, tracked on Steadicam and from
his point of view.
Since
fast movement of objects across the camera in stereo can cause a
disconcerting strobing effect (overcome by higher frame rates), yet
wanting to maintain the sense of bustling activity with lots of
foreground crosses, Luhrmann choreographed actors to move either on a
diagonal line towards and past or away from the lens.
Dailies
were created on set using Redcine for colouring and projected files
on the studios 3D projector. DIT [Brook Willard] and Data Manager
[Stephen Freebairn] worked out a LUT for the projector working from
the MFX editorial files they were also providing.
The
VFX department received a copy of the original 5kK Red files and
downrezzed to 2.5K for post work, final grading and stereo geometric
adjustments were done using Baselight 8 and Mistika software.
“We
aimed to match the look of the US in the 20s, at it's height of
wealth and decadence, when everything was almost brand new,” says
Duggan. “Baz wanted to put the audience right there and then,
rather than have the feeling of nostalgia. The look varied from
exaggerated, colourful and glossy party scenes to monochromatic
landfill dumps, all of which the Epics captured beautifully.”
