RedShark News
All the swords and all the
sandals. How tough and tactile practical filmmaking yielded dividends for
cinematographer John Mathieson when it came to shooting Ridley Scott’s
epic Gladiator II.
article here
John Mathieson BSC won a Bafta and was Oscar nominated for
his work on Gladiator in 2000 and returns to the arena for
Ridley Scott’s hugely entertaining shock and awe sequel.
It’s his sixth film for the director which have mostly been
sword & sandal (Hannibal, Kingdom of Heaven) or bow ‘n’ arrow &
sandal historical epics (Robin Hood). The outlier is crime comedy Matchstick
Men starring Nic Cage from 2003.
Over the course of that journey and in particular for
Scott’s historical dramas the sets have got bigger as have the number of
cameras with which the director likes to cover a scene.
Gladiator, the original, was of course a 35mm shoot
but even here Scott was using two or three at a time. He staged even dialogue
scenes in Gladiator II with four digital cameras and up to 12
for gladiatorial sequences of which there are many.
“We established the visual language for this film when
shooting the first one,” Mathieson said after a screening of the film at
Camerimage, Poland. So much so that Scott incorporates wide shots of the
Colosseum used in Gladiator into scenes in Gladiator II.
In addition to the ‘Orientalist’ paintings of snake
charmers, courtesans, and gladiators in exotic locales, Mathieson referred to
the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites’ romanticised neoclassical subjects and jewel
toned palette. It was a time when ‘The Grand Tour’ of Europe was a rite of
passage, with Italy often as its centrepiece.
“Our template is Las Vegas. It’s gaudy, wild, vivid and just
a little camp,” he said. “The result is a mixture of what Scott knows from his
research and what he thinks is right for the image. It’s a Rome with the
glamour we expect, but it’s not always squeaky clean. He somehow makes the real
world disappear and you become a part of the story. His Rome is just better
than anybody else’s because of the way his mind works. I like to say the rest
of us read left to right. Ridley does it the other way. And if you ask him why,
he’ll tell you to just do it.”
With the look and the style agreed and understood the
challenge for the DP was delivering that for set pieces and on sets that would
several times the scale of Gladiator.
Ave! Qui facturi movies te salutant
The main set in Malta recreates many of Rome’s impressive
historical settings in an area approximately eight kilometres long. The sets
were built to a height of around 46 feet, which was doubled digitally in
post-production. The set for Macrinus’ (played by Denzel Washington) luxurious
home alone covered almost 11,000 square feet, with an atrium open to the sky, a
courtyard, a pool and an enormous staircase. It contained over 1,000 pieces of
hand-painted faux marble.
In Morocco, there were over 80 huge tents dedicated just for
the extras’ hair and makeup, and to house countless props and costumes. Here
they shot the opening scene’s sea ‘battle of Numidia’ repurposing a set they
had used for Kingdom of Heaven.
“This was about logistics. And reliability. This was not
about crafting bokeh or customising a lens. There’s a time and a place for that
but this show was not it. We wanted reliability of cameras and lots of them as
well as compatibility between cameras and lenses. It’s about the gear being as
easy as possible to handle.”
He shot mostly with ARRI Alexa Mini LF with additional Alexa
LFs for higher frame rates augmented with crash cams and a drone.
“We had primes (Panaspeeds and Leica Summilux) but we rarely
used them. I wanted zooms to bring out the scope and size of the sets. Our
priority was to record enough shots of the right size, dynamic, composition,
character and story.”
The zoom list included Angénieux EZ 1 45-135mm, EZ 2
22-60mm, Optica Elite 120-520mm and an Optimo Ultra 36-435mm; Primo 70 28-80mm
and 70-185mm.
“I used the 36-435mm and Elite for close-ups and pushed
those cameras further back because Ridley likes to shoot wide.
“The sets are so huge and so detailed that I wanted to bring
that background to life as much as possible. I wanted the audience to see the
person behind the person behind the person, even if they are out of focus. To
do that I shot deep stops, T8.5 or T116, so we really feel the space and the
textures of the background.”
The Colosseum itself was built on the same set that served
the original at Fort Ricasoli in Malta, with a practical build one third the
correct height of the real Colosseum, and between a quarter to a third of the
span. Mathieson hung banks of ARRIMAX 18Ks overhead and asked production
designer Arthur Max to render the sand in the arena a brilliant white so he
could throw black shadows, reflections and contrast.
For the wider vistas and exteriors he didn’t use much
additional lighting at all, partly because of a camera plan which delivered
coverage in nearly 360-degrees. Some camera ops were even dressed in costume in
case they were caught in coverage.
A dream sequence was filmed in a studio, or rather a
warehouse in Malta. This depicts hero Lucius (Paul Mescal) seeing his dead
lover transported across the river Styx. There’s a vogue for this style of
infra-red look which has also been seen in Dune II and The
Zone of Interest. The scene was achieved here against bluescreen with the
floor comprised of mirrors and silver pebbles.
Keeping it real
Of course, it’s a VFX heavy show too. The first film landed
Mill Film the UK’s first Oscar for visual effects. Even if the majority of the
baying spectators in the Colosseum are digital, Mathieson and Scott revel in
shooting as much in-camera as possible. Indeed, the DP who is never shy to
speak his mind, has previously been dismissive of studio shot VFX franchises
for Marvel or DC (although he did shoot Doctor Strange in the
Multiverse of Madness for Sam Raimi).
“I appreciate what you can do on sound stages but I always
feel like it’s clocking in and out of a factory. I like to be out on location
and be inspired by what’s around me,” he said. “So for this film we’re working
in heat and dust and there are mosquitos and somehow that sweat and that effort
pays off with what you see on the screen. Ridley gets this too. He is tough.
The shoot is tough but it yields things that are unpredictable and tactile.”
No comments:
Post a Comment