RED Digital Cinema
Cinematographer George Steel and director Tom Harper have
been frequent collaborators since pairing to make the original BBC drama Peaky
Blinders and on subsequent projects including miniseries War and Peace. During
that production Steel had heard an account on the radio of James Glaisher’s
1862 ascent with balloonist Henry Coxwell to a record altitude of 37,000 feet.
Harper liked the idea of a 19th century ballooning adventure
and turned to Jack Thorne (who wrote Harper’s first directorial features The
Scouting Book for Boys and War Book) to pen the script. To help the story
succeed as a drama, his treatment swapped out Coxwell for a female partner
based on a French ballooning pioneer Sophie Blanchard.
With actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones on board and
Amazon Studios backing the release, Harper and Steel embarked on the
production, aiming for authenticity. “Tom was determined not to create a
fantasy world but to make the story as true to life as possible,” Steel
explains. “That was because the script grounded the story in the context of its
period setting (late 19th century London), but we also needed to sell the VFX,
make it believable.”
From that tonal conceit stemmed a decision to shoot as much
practically in camera as they could. Steel tested combinations of cameras and
lenses to gauge look design, as well as camera movement flying in a hot air
balloon high across the Oxfordshire countryside.
“The odd thing about being in a wicker basket 3,000 feet in
the air is that there is so little movement,” Steel reveals. “The feeling was
incredibly smooth and when we reviewed footage it looked like VFX, everything
was just too crisp and even. The way focus fell off looked unnatural. “That
informed us what stop to shoot at so we could have more of the background in
focus during close-ups and it led us to create a look that ends up somewhere
neutral – in between reality and fantasy.”
The authentic feel of the project meant performing as much
balloon filming in the sky as the weather and safety would allow. This included
footage taken from a helicopter of a life-size replica of the original 1862
craft with the actors on board, as well as by Steel from within the basket
rigged to a crane and extended 200 feet into the air. Even on stage, the action
was recorded airborne with the camera swooping around on a 90-foot crane. Steel
chose the RED DSMC2 camera with the MONSTRO 8K VV sensor for its small size,
saying, “When you’re in an 8-foot wide basket with two actors – and I’m not
exactly small – having a more compact camera has to help! It also has the
ability to capture skin tones, color and texture, capturing the change in hues
from terra firma to the heavens.”
Steel tested a number of digital cameras alongside 35mm film
and MONSTRO was the format that won the blind tests. “People reacted most
favorably to it,” he says. “The full-frame sensor really captures color in
clarity and detail. Data size wasn’t a factor because of the way REDCODE
manages data.” He paired the RED camera with Panavision Primo 70s, which Steel
felt offered a very sharp, but not too harsh picture with a gentle focus fall
off. “We knew we were going to shoot spherically to give the aerial sequences a
wide-open vista in 1.85 and to contrast this with cropped aspect ratio of the
flashback scenes in 2.39,” he explains.
Steel and Harper favored wide encompassing shots - often
360-degree views - and lighting was key. The illumination for earthbound
sequences was softer and grainier whereas the light nearer the sun was harsher,
more mercurial. Steel worked with his team to invent a vast lighting rig
designed by gaffer Wayne King that was positioned at the top of the bluescreen
stage, using an array of fixtures from SkyPanel LEDs to HMI Molebeam and a box
full of gas that could be colored in different ways to mimic the particular
atmospheric conditions.
This was most challenging and creatively gratifying aspect
of production for all concerned. The flight not only passes through different
altitudes with light changes at different heights and at different times of day
but with weather conditions (and even migrating butterflies) to contend with
too. “All these factors came into play and we needed to help the audience
believe that we’re entering clouds or a storm on the way up and on the
descent,” explains colorist Simone Grattarola, another serial collaborator with
Harper and Steel. “Our characters reach the top of the world where they are
looking up to the stars with clouds far below them and, as they descend, they
are going through snow and the harsh daylight transitions to dusk.”
Steel elected to shoot at 8K raw compressed 7:1 largely to
accommodate VFX. The raw files were converted to EXR for export to the VFX
teams at Rodeo FX and Framestore, and to Grattarola who was grading in parallel
on Resolve. “We would review VFX one day, then be sent new VFX shots which we’d
refine again and feedback to VFX,” Grattarola says. “That process between VFX
and color grade built up over a few weeks and had everyone working to create
something that felt very realistic.” Steel concludes, “When I watched the
finished picture, I found myself carried away by the story.”
No comments:
Post a Comment