American Cinematographer
My interview and words article here
The action-thriller's cinematographer shares a lighting plot and details his use of strobes, practical rain and a global shutter to capture a blizzard-bound set piece. By Armando Salas, ASC
In my first conversation with director Ben Wheatley
about Normal, he said, “Think High Noon shot in
the '70s, and all the action takes place in a blizzard during a power outage.”
Given that many of the sequences would naturally fall into the same lighting
palette using candles, flashlights, moonlight and a lot of atmosphere, our
second conversation was about how we would avoid action fatigue. Ben was
adamant that each action beat needed its own visual stamp. The hardware‑store
fight is the clearest example of how we approached that.
This sequence takes place in the middle of the night as
Sheriff Ulysses Richardson (Bob Odenkirk) and a pair of bank robbers (Reena
Jolly and Brendan Fletcher) — both of whom have become Ulysses' unlikely allies
— are being hunted through the blizzard. Bob is shot at and blown through the
window of a hardware store. That impact sets off a backup alarm system and
triggers slow-firing strobes throughout the store. He has an extended
hand-to-hand fight with the hardware-store owner (Carson Nattrass), during which
a sprinkler head gets knocked off. So, now it’s raining inside while a blizzard
rages outside. The combination of strobes, rain and snow created a completely
different look from the rest of the film.
The blizzard that serves as the backdrop for the
hardware-store fight sequence was captured on a 150' street set built on
soundstages at Manitoba, Winnipeg. Night-gray backings and heavy atmosphere
allowed the actors to disappear in 40', helping to depict the scale of the
snowstorm entirely on stage.
Setting the Stage
All of this was done on stage. Production designer
Jean-Andre Carriere oversaw the build of 150 feet of street and storefronts on
soundstages at Manitoba, Winnipeg. That, in and of itself,
presented a challenge because the set was built fire lane, so I shot some
“visibility tests” during prep to make sure I could make the street recede into
nothingness.
We hung night-grey backings at either end of the street and
filled the stage with enough atmosphere that an actor could be perfectly
resolved in a medium shot on a wide lens, turn and run from camera, and
disappear in 40 feet. Since that look defined several sequences, the hardware‑store
fight needed to feel completely different.
Early on, I pitched the notion that the store might have a
backup battery powering its alarm system. Ben immediately said, “I love it —
and you know what looks great with strobes? Rain.” My first reaction was, “Rain
from where?” His answer: “We’ll knock out a sprinkler head.”
Special effects had to plumb the sprinkler system and
engineer a practical gag where a crowbar strike would break the vial in the
sprinkler head and start the water flow.
We tested water pressure extensively. Too much and it looked
like a monsoon, too little and it was just mist. Then there was the constant
battle of keeping lenses from fogging and balancing the temperature of the
water with the temperature of the stage.
Lighting and Programming Cues
For the strobes, the art department cut four‑by‑six‑inch
holes into the set and installed glass diffusers so they looked like part of
the alarm system on screen. Behind each diffuser, we mounted Prolycht LED
Fresnels, pushed right up against the glass.
Gaffer John Clarke and I tested a variety of burst patterns.
What worked best, especially once we added rain, was a fast burst with a slow
chase across the set. It took just under a second for all five strobes to fire.
The effect was chaotic but readable, and it gave us those beautiful flash
frames that freeze the action mid‑impact.
Ambient room tone came from Arri Orbiters bounced into white
cards, with selected ceiling tiles removed to create soft overhead ambience.
But the strobes alone weren’t enough to light faces, so we added fixtures that
operated at low intensity for modeling, then jumped to full output when the
strobe chase passed through them. Every light had to be tied into the cue. Ami
Buhler, our console programmer, was instrumental in making that system work.
Why Global Shutter Was Essential
The combination of strobes and rain made camera choice
especially important. We chose the Red V‑Raptor XL (X) specifically for its
global shutter — essential not only for strobes, but for rendering flashing
police lights in a snowstorm.
I wanted to avoid broken frames where half the frame
rendered frozen, backlit snow, the other falling to black. Fixing that in VFX
would have been prohibitively expensive; the V-Raptor held captured the frozen
snow in a very natural way.
To help capture shots such as this, which depicts the
hardware-store owner (Carson Nattrass) amid the rain, the art department cut
holes into the set walls and installed glass diffusers to mimic an alarm
system, behind which the lighting team mounted Prolycht LED Fresnels that fired
in a fast-burst, slow-chase pattern — all five strobes completing their cycle
in just under a second.
I shot 8K for a 4K finish to get the benefit of low noise,
the full sensor use (supersampling) and a really beautiful image even at 1,600
ISO.
We primarily shot two cameras but in the hardware store, the
action was so specific and the aisles so tight that we could only squeeze in a
second camera for a handful of shots. My A‑camera operator, Matt Schween, was a
key collaborator and shot mostly handheld for this sequence. The camera becomes
a third participant in the fight, and Matt had to anticipate movement without
revealing that he knew what was coming. His instincts were impeccable.
I shot the show on T-Tuned Tribe7 Blackwing7 primes. This
was my first time using that lens set, and I loved the character they brought
to the image. For longer focal lengths in exterior work, we carried Arri
Signature Zooms, but the hardware‑store fight was all primes.
In-Camera Effects
The show LUT was developed with my longtime collaborator Ian
Vertovec (supervising colorist, Light Iron). We built a film emulation LUT with
deep shadows and noticeable grain which was very much the aesthetic Ben wanted
for the 1970s and '80s films we were referencing. The atmosphere from the
blizzard lifted the shadows and added texture. The final look was very close
tour show LUT. For final color, we graded in London. I worked remotely with Rob
Pizzey, using Sohonet’s ClearView sessions and Frame.io reviews.
Ben wanted the action in this scene to escalate through the
props, which also allowed the comedy to emerge. The stunt team would pre‑shoot
the fight on video while we were filming on another set, and we’d refine the
set pieces based on that. It helped that Bob is incredibly skilled at selling
choreography and giving the camera exactly what it needs.
There’s a grisly practical gag right at the end involving a
penny nail and a prosthetic eye piece which I love. Every film Ben referenced
was from the '70s and '80s, built on practical effects so shooting effects
in-camera was baked into his vision. CG was always the last resort.
It’s a fight in the middle of a blizzard, inside a store
that’s raining, lit by strobes. It’s chaotic, but it’s controlled chaos.
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