BTS: Nobody 2

IBC

Cinematographer Callan Green on the colourful visual aesthetic of action comedy sequel

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Universal Pictures’ 2021 action film Nobody took $57 million on a budget of $16 million trading on the unlikely premise of suburban family man Bob Odenkirk as an undercover special ops agent. The sequel, also from writer Derek Kolstad and producer David Leitch - the creators of the John Wick franchise - dials up the slapstick as trouble follows Odenkirk’s ‘Hutch’ even while he tries to relax on holiday.

Whilst the fight action scenes are staged with typical aplomb, the job of director of photography Callan Green ACS NZCS was to elevate the look of scenes deliberately set in an unremarkable water park.

“When I first got off the bus for the recce, having previously only seen photos, my first reaction was how are we going to shoot this and make it interesting?” recalls Green who began his career as a clapper loader and assistant camera on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. “The script had a whole summer vibe and that was a massive change from the first film.”

The first film’s visual aesthetic was influenced by the signature styling of Korean action movies, with rich, vibrant colours and deep, inky blacks. Nobody 2 had scenes set in the countryside and in daylight neither of which are conducive to high octane suspense.  With director Timo Tjahjanto, Green decided to juxtapose calmer sunlit family scenes with percussive action sequences.

“For my first camera test I just started playing around with colours. I decided to go with pink and mauve and deep blue and green. Basically, I threw a bunch of colour at it and spoke with production designer Michael Diner about including these colours into the set.”

Like the first film, the sequel is shot Winnipeg, central Canada, with a principal location at an actual RV waterpark called Lilac. A small funfair at the park was enlarged as a set construction on site with studio interiors. This amusement park, its arcades and strings of neon lightbulbs, provided Green with the opportunity to play with colour.

“My gaffer (John Clarke) came up with the idea of using a new LED rope light that we could put on each side of the cages that contained the arcade machines. I thought for a second that it might be a little bit overkill but it definitely added to it.

“Then, for the showdown which is set at night, we had multiple Creamsource Vortex8 LED lights dotted around the whole location that we were able to use as backlight or a side light. We had overhead cranes carrying dozens of Astera LEDs to give us a soft overhead ambience and lighting on the ground for faces to balance the contrast. When you’re surrounded by almost like tennis court lighting you can then just bring the colour and volume of the illumination up or down as suits.

“I wanted to add a lot of haze, potentially too much at times, because there's so much blackness around you that without it you don't have that 3D kind of feel. That, mixed in with anamorphic lenses helped it come to life, I felt.”

Since Nobody was shot (by Pawel Pogorzelski) on anamorphic lenses Green settled on this choice before choosing his camera.

“We definitely wanted widescreen and also to lend the film the cinematic quality of a big, bold action film.” He changed up the camera package from Hawk V-Lite 2x with RED HELIUM to Panavision T-Series anamorphic with ARRI Alexa 35 which Green calls “a beautiful combo.”

With colourist Dave Hussey at Company 3 Green created a set of LUTs from which he selected one and then tweaked it slightly after a camera test.

“The way I like to work is to get as many stills references as I can and I'll go to the director and present them with a overall view of what I feel the film should be like, colour wise. I would have read the script at least once by that point, and so I'll be picking ideas from particular scenes and using still references from Shotdeck and Pinterest which have the right colour and vibe. From that I can figure out if we're on the same page or not. I tend to work from stills rather film references because I find it much easier to find the right options.”

Green has also begun using AI as inspiration for looks. “It’s a more specific way of looking at colour, tone and vibe. I don’t really know yet quite how to use AI but it is something that I want to do to be able to create a scene or a storyboard and to just throw up some ideas.”

The choreography of the action scenes were led by Leitch’s 87North Productions and second unit director Greg Rementer were shot multi-cam including an extended fight scene on a pleasure cruiser which is perhaps the most slapstick in the film.

“I was originally pushing to do it all on a gimbal on green screen but we didn’t have the budget,” he says. “Doing it on LED [Volume] would have been even better but there’s no way that was going to happen because the quote we got was something ridiculous like $800,000, so we bit the bullet, and shot it over five days on the water. It was two or three days of main unit, and then two or three days more of second unit with stunt doubles.

“Luckily, the weather held up the whole time. It rained one morning, but they graded it through for consistency. It was difficult because we had to drive the boat down one direction and then I couldn't turn the boat when I wanted to keep it backlit or side lit and also we were in and out of cloud.”

Green requested that the solid metal roof of the boat be removed to permit more light and, since the boat is themed as a rubber duck, he leant into duck yellow, replacing the roof with yellow perspex.

“The one thing I'm really comfortable with is framing. I love to get right in there, especially on anamorphic to really show off what's happening. I also like to keep the camera moving. So that was the choice that Timo and I made, to generally keep the camera moving, maybe add a little bit more handheld and just get in close where we can.”

Green grew up in a suburb outside of Wellington, NZ and began taking stills when his mom bought him a camera. When his brother got into acting his interest in filmmaking was sparked.

In 1993 he helped shoot a commercial for peanut butter “voted the year’s worst ad in New Zealand” he smiles, but encountered an ARRI film camera for the first time. Asking the key grip on set how he could break into the industry the advice that came back was ‘A lot of hard work mate.’”

Green studied photography at high school and got a job as a video split operator (now known as VTR operator) immediately on leaving.

Shortly afterward he found himself part of the rapidly growing local filmmaking scene jumpstarted by Weta and LOTR. “Peter Jackson used to get me to clean his glasses for him. He was really lovely to me. He’s one of many people I’ve met along the way who took me under their wing.”

He won a place at Sydney’s prestigious national film school, leaving in 2003 with a Masters in arts and cinema and never looked back.

Based in London since 2015 Green’s work has included second unit on Christopher Robin, Fast F9 and Fast X, The Witcher and on all nine episodes of Masters of the Air. He shot four episodes of Guy Ritchie’s crime caper series The Gentlemen, a block of Gangs of London (season 3) and another block of four eps of BBC crime drama Guilt.

“Filmmaking for me is about having fun and it's about making a happy set. That’s why the prep work is so important so that on the day everyone knows what we're doing. I've done a lot of TV and the schedules are insane. Everyone wants everything to be bigger and better, so it all happens in prep.

“I’ve noticed that the more that I prep, the happier I am on set. I've also stopped drinking coffee! It was a happy set for Nobody 2 and you get that from a brilliant crew who are just top of their game, and that also comes from selecting the right people in the interviews at the beginning.

“I don't necessarily select gaffer, grip, A camera and so on by what they’ve done before. It’s more about the vibe that I'm getting from them when I interview them. For me, the best crew is a crew that gets on well.”

ends