From the Bridge

In 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, U.S. Naval Commander Ernest Krause (Tom Hanks) is tasked with leading an escort group to 36 Allied cargo ships across the North Atlantic. Although he’s a career officer, Krause has no military combat experience, and now as the skipper of the USS Keeling, he must navigate waters patrolled by the infamous and ruthless German U-boat Wolfpack, in the Columbia Pictures and Playtone release Greyhound.

The rousing adventure story is derived from the pen of C.S. Forester, creator of the Horatio Hornblower series, the Oscarwinning adventure story, The African Queen, and the non-fiction documentary Sink the Bismarck! Visualizing the script by Hanks (who adapted the story from Forester’s novel, The Good Shepherd, and served as producer/ screenwriter/actor) proved challenging for cinematographer-turned-director Aaron Schneider, ASC (Get Low) and his Director of Photography, Shelly Johnson, ASC (Captain America: The First Avenger, Jurassic Park III). Johnson, for one, says there was a deeper layer at play.

“The film is a procedural view following Captain Kraus into a dangerous unknown,” he describes. “Most captains at the beginning of WWII had little or no battle experience. So, Kraus had to rely on gut instinct and a limited understanding of his conditions.”

The film had two principal sets – an exact recreation of a destroyer’s pilot house, inside and out, on a gimbal, and the USS Kidd in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a World War II museum ship moored in the Mississippi River. Schneider wanted to shoot almost all of the film from Krause’s POV in the pilot house; and he had another interesting take that came up when he interviewed Johnson for the job. “Aaron said he wanted a DP willing to learn the intricacies of how to locate a sonar contact, how they evaluate its threat level, how they map it, how they follow it and how they plan a strategy to engage,” Johnson shares. “He was very insistent that First AD Kim Winther and I learn about maritime target tracking, navigation, and weather. If we could provide the audience with the needed situational awareness, they would begin to be able to understand Krause’s decision-making and connect with this inner drama.”

Schneider’s example to Johnson for the film’s tone was the opening scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which features a flight controller and a lot of procedural dialog between the control tower and the pilots.

“Inside the procedural world of this control tower,” Schneider offers, “the audience has no idea of how things work. Despite all the procedural dialogue, the underlying drama of the UFO is palpable. It’s an amazing opener – authentic and spellbinding. You’re thrown into the pilot house of a destroyer with this captain, and forced to pick up on how things work as the drama plays out around him. I think it will be incredibly engaging for an audience.”

In fact, Schneider was so intent on total immersion (no pun intended), he did copious research on sea conditions, and with the help of game technology leader Nvidia, guided the development of a new plug-in that simulates physically-based oceans in Maya.

“Aaron’s a brilliantly mad scientist,” Johnson describes. “He’s a self-taught visual-effects expert. Using the 3D program Maya, he created the desired sea state and put a ship on these waves to observe the forces in movement, then he put a camera on a virtual chase boat. So, now, we have all the waves affecting the camera boat, while it tosses in open sea with our Destroyer. He wanted to take that dynamic motion file and translate it to camera movement. This way, we could shoot a stationary ship with the camera performing all the X/Y axis... all the ins and outs, from that motion file Aaron created in Maya.”

Johnson praises Schneider’s efforts with Maya, saying they were crucial when shooting the USS Kidd with a 75-foot Technocrane on a barge. “Thanks to Aaron’s prep,” he adds, “we knew exactly how to move that crane. We knew what the ship would do when hit with 10 to 15-foot waves on a six-second cycle. Our grips were very good. A 75-foot Techno weighs a lot, and for them to do 30- and 40-foot rises and falls in six seconds was mind-blowing.”

Johnson shot with Panavision’s Millennium DXL and Sphero 65 lenses. Aside from a few flashbacks, most of Greyhound is handheld; the DXL and Sphero 65 lenses worked well, particularly given the small set and rocking and rolling of the gimbal.

Schneider wanted to shoot in the 65 format, noting destroyer pilot houses were often very small – 10 by 18 feet – and filled with as many as 16 crewmembers.

“He said: ‘We’re going to be very close to these faces. Instead of shooting with a 35mm gate and wide lenses that might distort, doesn’t it make sense to shoot large spherical format, so we can get close with a big negative, longer focal length, and less distortion?’” Johnson relates. “I was in agreement and saw we needed a lensset that would focus closely in addition to making a contribution in tone and feel.” (Dave Dodson at Panavision in Woodland Hills located a set of Spheros just before shooting began.)

“I didn’t have a lot of time to test them,” Johnson adds. “Getting to know them in a lighting environment more or less happened on the set. I dove into the shark tank, but I was delighted.”

The gimbaled pilot house allowed the team to replicate the sway and surge the destroyer would encounter through a variety of sea and combat conditions. They could shoot inside and on the bridge wing outside the pilothouse. Although it had a low ceiling that Johnson didn’t want to fly out, it did have removable panels. A-Camera Operator Don Devine, SOC, says that the entire team understood the challenges of shooting in such a confined space.

“We recognized that we would be facing very close quarters with the cast and that there was the potential to become very claustrophobic,” Devine describes. “I think we all knew it was going to be a handheld show, but it was never discussed in the beginning. After seeing the main set, doing it handheld made the most sense.”

Devine says the ceiling was too low for an Easyrig, and not a good choice in any event with the pilot house on a gimbal. “Ultimately we decided to shoot off the shoulder and a camera with as small a profile as possible,” he continues. “I found the Panavision DXL to be a well-balanced body, left to right, a little front heavy, although that seems to be the norm for a digital body.”

Because of its size and layout, “half the size of a hotel room with nine portholes,” Johnson says, it presented the team with lighting challenges. Gaffer Bob Bates says he’s worked with Johnson before and appreciates the cinematographer’s micro attention to detail.

“Shelly does lighting plots that take a lot off my shoulders because I know what he’s going for,” Bates recalls. “On Greyhound, all of the ocean-going shots would be visual effects.”

Johnson says he had to think a lot about weather and what the colors were in that moment.

“I needed to provide interactive light,” he states. “So, I broke it down into one long document, literally scene by scene, exactly how I wanted to track the light and experience the sea state... show the audience horizon's visibility and atmospheric effects for each scene.”

Johnson opted for a white screen instead of green screen, something he’d first asked the Captain America effects team about owing to that film’s dark bomber set with surfaces that would reflect green. Because Greyhound was a similar situation, the pilot house set was surrounded with a U-shaped bleached muslin backlit with ARRI SkyPanel S-60c’s. This was augmented with Kino Flo Celebs and Freestyles, LiteGear LED cards controlled by Ratpacs and Lumen radio devices. “The muslin also played as our skylight,” Bates notes. “From where we were on the top of the bridge, you wouldn’t see the water until deep horizon.”

Johnson’s visual breakdown and Schneider’s desire to shoot in chronological order allowed Bates to plot the use of the SkyPanels. “There are a few scenes where some of the other ships in the convoy are under attack, and our ship is under attack at one point,” Bates explains. “So we created interactive lighting with the SkyPanels and all the way around the U-shape. We were able to create an explosion effect and have that travel from the starboard to the bow to the port so it looks like our ship is turning away from or into the explosion. We had a great [lighting board] programmer in Dana Hunt.”

Steadicam Operator George Billinger, SOC, describes a conversation between Hanks on the bridge and actor Stephen Graham playing a lieutenant colonel. “Charlie Cole was on the non-gimbaled set, the CIC or Combat Information Center, at the same time,” Billinger begins. “Don [Devine] was on the bridge, and I’m down in the CIC. I had been on the gimbal set, so I was able to simulate the roll of the ship on the nongimbaled CIC.

“For another sequence,” Billinger continues, “I’m outside on the bridge, and Tom is walking inside the Pilot House looking in and giving battle commands, with the portholes towards the bow. The Steadicam follows him through each porthole, left to right, right to left, as he’s pacing. We realized with the Steadicam everything would look too perfect; Aaron wanted to get away from that and have the big swells making everything roll and pitch. So instead of locking off on the Steadicam, we were always floating.”

Of course, being on a moving gimbaled set for eight to ten hours a day is challenging. “You’re basically at sea the whole time,” Bates laughs. “When I got home, I was having leg cramps at night realizing it was from trying to hold my balance all day.”

First AC Michael Charbonnet says the simulated roll was surprisingly more realistic than he first imagined. “I literally fell off my apple box, and a few times from the gimbal set,” he chuckles. “I was stationary, under a black cloth, watching my focus monitor. I didn’t have any bearing of where I was. All I’m looking at is the monitor, but it looks like I’m on a rocking boat! But all that was easy compared to Don [Devine], who was on the bow of the ship with the water hitting him so hard from the fans. He is an amazing operator.”

Devine says his most challenging moments were shots that started outside the pilot house with wind and sea spray blowing in his face, and then moving into the pilot house and back out the other side. “In order to maintain my balance on the gimbal,” he describes, “I found myself using many different muscles. I couldn’t just concentrate on framing the shot because I also had to figure out how to stay on my feet.”

And with so much CGI being used, Devine says imagining the shot in his head for the framing was difficult. “I had to frame the non-existent boats that would ultimately be out on the ocean in the distance, using lights or signs for reference. I really look forward to seeing those finished shots as it all comes together with the effects.”

Fortunately, Visual Effects Supervisor Nathan McGuinness had previous sea experience on Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. And with some 1,200 VFX shots in play, Greyhound’s filmmakers opted to stay with a single vendor – Double Negative.

“Digital effects producer Mike Chambers had done all the digital effects for Christopher Nolan,” McGuinness relates.

“And we both agreed because of the quality and the schedule it was best to roll the dice and go with one house.”

At one point, the filmmakers were able to actually capture footage of the Kidd’s guns firing, which McGuinness said was a very useful tool.

“The best way to generate digital effects is from using actual reality,” he notes. “Being able to capture real references of guns and star shells was great for us to recreate the simulation of what actually would occur from that event.”

In addition to the preplanning, another key to making the CGI work, for not only the camera operators but also for the actors, was the incredible detail in the actual Forester novel.

“C.S. Forester was a sailor,” Schneider describes. “We brought in a technical advisor and it turns out all the bearings in the book add up to a battle. So if you go through the book and transcribe the bearings and the turns, you can actually draw out a map of the naval engagement!

“That was quite helpful,” he continues, “when you get to the set, and the actors ask, ‘What am I reacting to? Where do you want me to look? How long do I look there? And how far away is the submarine so that I know how fast to pan my binoculars?’ And these questions were not just about one shot – this was our whole movie. It was quite a challenge and Shelly and his crew were right there beside me the whole time.”

“It really captures the time and place,” Billinger concludes. “When you read about how the ships were crossing, the amount of deflection in the rudder, how far the ship is heeling, left or right, the nomenclature and seamanship, Aaron made it all so well lived.”

Schneider, who was 2nd Unit Director of Photography on Titanic, says there are vast differences as to how the sea affects ships. “The destroyers are a lot smaller than people think they are,” he reveals. “They kind of gnaw around the sea, push it out of the way and get pushed around by it, unlike the Titanic, which was this elegant lady skating across a glassy ocean. Greyhound is more about how the ocean can be as treacherous and unpredictable as the enemy.”

Johnson calls the Greyhound experience a “career high point” and one that owed a lot to the Local 600 camera team who supported his efforts. “We all needed to show up with the same amount of preparation as the actors,” he concludes. “And, a primary component of this film is camera performance. Two handheld cameras, operated by two very talented operators – Don Devine, who’s been my operator for more than 30 years and George Billinger – I couldn’t be luckier. If Tom Hanks was the star, Don and George are co-stars, because their performances in the film were equally meaningful.”

LOCAL 600 CREW

MAIN UNIT

Director of Photography Shelly Johnson, ASC

A-Camera Operator Don Devine, SOC

A-Camera 1st AC Michael Charbonnet

A-Camera 2nd AC Jonathan Robinson

B-Camera Operator / Steadicam George Billinger, SOC

B-Camera 1st AC Ry Kawanaka

B-Camera 2nd AC Taylor Fenno

Additional B-Camera 2nd AC Hai Le

Loader Melanie Gates

Utility Eric Van der Vynckt

Still Photographer Niko Tavernise

Unit Publicist Rachael Roth

2ND UNIT

C-Camera Operator Joe Chess, SOC

C-Camera 1st AC Maricella Ramirez

C-Camera 2nd AC Harrison Reynolds

D-Camera 1st AC Taylor Fenno

D-Camera 2nd AC Caitlin Trost

Utility Sydney Viard