British Cinematographer
Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones,
co-stars of The Theory of Everything, were reunited for director Tom Harper’s
adventure-drama The Aeronauts, about a historic balloon expedition in 1862.
Briskly told in something very close
to real time, this Amazon escapade, scheduled for theatrical and streaming
release, is a bracing tale of scientific and personal endeavour.
Headstrong scientist James Glaisher
and wealthy young widow Amelia Wren mount a pioneering balloon expedition to
fly higher than anyone in history. As their perilous ascent reduces their
chances of survival, the unlikely duo soon discover things about themselves –
and one another – that help both of them find their place in the world.
“The initial excitement of telling
the story quickly turned to ‘how the heck are we going to do that?’”
recalls the show’s cinematographer George Steel. “The film is set in a
balloon at 35,000 feet. That was a challenge.”
Steel is a frequent
collaborator with Harper on shows such as the BBC TV drama War and Peace and Peaky Blinders, as
well as the feature Wild Rose.
The filmmakers chose Red’s DSMC2 camera with the Monstro sensor to capture all
the high-flying action.
“Tom (who co-wrote the script with Jack Thorne) was
adamant he didn’t want it to be as fantastical as Around The World In 80 Days,
particularly with a flashback structure where we needed to understand the
period context for the flight,” notes the cinematographer.
To ground the account in the realm of
reality, rather than fairy-tale, the filmmakers considered shooting on a
glacier at the top of a mountain. “We would have hung the balloon on a crane,”
explains Steel. “It’s very hard to replicate altitude and the outdoors in a
studio, but when we found out we had ten weeks for principal photography, we
went back to the drawing board.”
A lengthy pre-production period
involved all hands on deck, including the first AD, the production design, VFX
and special FX teams, as well as the director and cinematographer. “It was one
of the most rewarding experiences of my filmmaking career,” Steel says.
“Everyone was working out how we were going to do this.”
He adds, “We wanted to hold on to the notion of
shooting as much in-camera as we could. With the amount of VFX, we were wary of
making the look too modern, which wouldn’t sell the time period. It was a
juggling act between fantasy and documentary.”
Accordingly, production itself had
one foot in the air and one on terra firma. They built a life-size replica of
the original hydrogen balloon and flew it with Redmayne and Jones aboard (along
with a stunt co-ordinator and pilot) from an Oxfordshire airfield to capture
air-to-air pictures from a helicopter.
In the film, one shot from the
helicopter (filmed by Flying Pictures’ cinematographer Adam Dale, piloted by
Marc Wolff) depicts the characters in the wicker basket as a VFX shot of 1862
London unfolds beneath them.
For the balloon’s take-off from the
perspective of its basket – with Steel and the actors aboard – it was rigged to
a crane and extended 200-feet into the air.
Then at West London’s LH2 Studios, on
a 100 x 100ft bluescreen stage rigged for 360-degree shooting, the production’s
main set was an 8 x 8ft basket that could be raised 35ft and lowered as the
story went through different phases of flight. The basket was designed to tip
and shake as the actors moved and their weight redistributed to mimic real
motion.
“Sailing in a balloon is remarkably
serene,” says Steel. “There’s such a smooth movement that we worried the VFX
shots would look too clean.”
Attention to detail included the
special effect of a cold box to chill the temperature just enough to capture
the actor’s breath.
A complicated lighting set-up circled
the basket rig for Steel to populate with a variety of light sources depending
on the scene and enabling him to shoot from any angle.
“The main thing for us was light direction – where
was it coming from, and how to match background plates that were yet to be
built,” Steel notes. “Our camera view was such that as the balloon rises
higher, the light becomes harder, so we had to use a number of different
types of fixtures.”
Steel constructed a chart of colour
temperatures and softness for fixtures including SkyPanel LEDs, and HMI and
Tungsten Molebeams, and an LRX remote head.
“In theory we journey from multiple
light sources to a singular source while also accounting for time of day,” he
continues. “We start with softer colours – light blues. Then we breach clouds
and enter storms. As you rise higher, the light pollution lessens and the light
is harder, like looking out of a plane window. Then we’re high above the clouds
at the top of the world where light has a space-like quality. Lastly, we
reverse that for the descent.”
Working from VFX plates shot of skies
in New Orleans and South Africa, lead VFX vendor Framestore created a
visualisation of the skyscape. Using an iPad, Steel could pan 360-degrees
around the studio and see the comped-in backgrounds animated on the bluescreen
in real time. “That was incredibly useful,” he notes. “We knew, for
example, that when we’re at a certain point, the sun is in a certain position,
and when we’re about to enter a cloud, the colour temp needed to be ‘X.’”
Different climatic conditions mean
different light settings, but doing that with HMI means loss of colour
temperature with every change. “Panalux came up with an ingenious box that we
could place in front of the light and fill with smoke,” Steel relates. “As we
filled it, the light changed and it felt like you were going into a cloud. You
could almost see the edge of the cloud on the actor’s face. We also
experimented with different colours of smoke, for instance, to convey a
snowstorm.
“That homemade Heath Robinson-style invention is
what I love about moviemaking. The whole thing is a grand illusion.”
Aerial tests from the balloon helped
Steel determine his lens, camera package and shooting style. Steel shot in 8K
RecCode RAW compressed at 7:1. The Red’s compact body helped with the need to
go handheld in the confines of the basket with the actors.
“I actually think it is the camera
Red has gotten right,” Steel observes. “The full-frame sensor really captures
colour in clarity and detail, and its ability to capture skin tone is
extraordinary. We tested alongside other digital cameras and 35mm film and it
was the format that, when we put it to a blind test, people reacted most
favourably to.”
Clean air images in the skies
contrasted with the dirtier environs of period London. “Here, we softened the
image with a bit of grain, and I used diffusion to take the edge off the
image,” he notes.
During tests in the balloon, Steel discovered
something odd about depth-of-field. “It’s almost unnatural how the focus falls
off when 3,000 feet in the air. We found that a base of about 5 to 6 stops
enabled us to shoot close-up and have enough fall off to see the background.”
Scenes in the basket were
predominantly on 24mm glass, with some scenes utilising a super-wide 14mm lens.
He tried Leitz and a set of Zeiss glass before settling on Panavision Primo
70s.
“The Primos give a very sharp but not
too harsh picture,” Steel remarks. “The fall-off from focus is gentle and
smooth, and had that slightly 3D feeling. More importantly, our focus pullers
liked them.”
The decision to shoot spherical with
Anamorphic Panavision G Series lenses on the flashbacks was made early-on,
since a version of the film being made for IMAX in territories such as the UK
has a dual aspect ratio. These scenes start 2.39:1 and open to 1.85:1 as the
balloon rises into the sky’s wider vistas.
Steel designed just one LUT, which
DIT Tom Gough would run through Pomfort's LiveGrade to manage the colour workflow
on-set. “With 666 VFX shots, the files would be transformed and converted
multiple times from RAW to EXR, so we wanted to keep the procedure as simple as
possible,” says Steel.
On seeing a screening of the film, Steel concludes,
“When I watched the finished picture, I found myself carried away by the story
and at moments wondering how that was ever possible. It was amazing. I felt
like I was in the clouds.”
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