F9: THE FAST SAGA•STEPHEN F WINDON ACS ASC BTS photo – DP Stephen F. Windon ASC ACS and director Justin Lin on the set of F9: The Fast Saga
second unit stunt action sequences with the first unit photography for those scenes. For example, the camera starts beside a fast moving-vehicle careering through explosions in the jungle, before it cranes-up and pushes-in towards the windshield and the actors, all as one seamless shot. Of course, shooting that for real would have been hugely problematic and dangerous for the cast. So working with Peter Chiang and Igor Meglic, we came up with a great solution.” This involved shooting the second unit action sequences with devices that could record the fore/aft and side-to-side motion data of the vehicle, capturing all of the bumps, bangs, jolts and judders, as well as the moves of the camera. When it came to shooting
I had full trust in my amazingly-talented crew to do what was needed on the jungle set at WBSL, this data was then fed into a SISU Cinema Robots motion control camera rig, and a motion control base holding an identical vehicle, so that that camera and car movements could be replicated during the first unit photography. “Motion control has been around for a long time, but the way in which it allowed us to marry and blend the second and first unit action shots together was a new things for us,” says Windon. “I did not attend the second unit photography abroad, as I was in the UK with the first unit. But I had complete confidence and belief in Igor to capture what we wanted. He and I spoke together everyday during those shoots, and he would send me photographs of the set-ups and stills from footage, so that we were all on the same page. We used this sort of process multiple times in the movie, and it allowed us to do some truly astonishing shots that the audience will love.” Windon hails from a long-established filmmaking
50 JULY 2021 CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD
family. His grandfather shot silent movies and early talkies during the 1920s and ‘30s in Australia, and his father was a stills and newsreel cameraman, who had to grapple with the move from B&W to colour acquisition on film during the 1950s and ‘60s. “They both worked during times of great transition in film and TV technology, and I feel very lucky and grateful to have been around to see a couple big changes myself in the way films are now made,” Windon remarks. “During the first part of my career I shot on analogue film, but then came digital. The other big change has been the advent of LED lighting. Along with digital capture, it is one of the most exciting developments in modern filmmaking, quite a watershed. “The lovely thing about LED lighting is that, with the increasing pressure to shoot quickly nowadays, with seven major characters and often a special guest actor, your gaffer and lighting programmer can rapidly show you different lighting set-ups, colours and intensities very quickly. “I like to layer the lighting in live-action shots – between fore, mid and background. Whilst you can equally do that with older lights and gels, it just takes a few seconds to dial-up a warm colour on an ARRI SkyPanel, or similar fixture, in the foreground, put a cool blue/green in the mid, and something neutral behind. I really love that. We used a ton of ARRI SkyPanels on F9, along with Astera tubes, that you can either use in-shot like a practical or a fluorescent, or hide around the set. We even used the Asteras fixed on long parallel poles beside a car and programmed-in chase effects to simulate movement, as if the vehicle was passing street lights.” Windon attended the final DI grade F9: The Fast
Saga, partly in-person and partly remotely, due to the pandemic – starting-out working at Efilm in LA with colourist Andre Rivas, before finalising the picture via a live 2K link between LA and a post-production facility based at Fox Studios in Sydney. “Andre is a great young colourist with a bright future, and we managed to get through a lot of the grading when we were together in LA,” says Windon. “Of course, in the latter stages of the DI we had a lot of final VFX coming-in from the different VFX vendors around the world, so most of the work was about getting those shots to sit invisibly with the main picture. I tend to stay-on for a few extra days after principal photography and set-up a look bible that the VFX teams can reference in terms of image colour and density. This helped to give a very high level on consistency across the final VFX shots, and the DI went very smoothly.” He concludes, “I am delighted by the final result,
and was very happy to hook-up with Justin and many of our collaborative partners once again to make a film filled with new energy and excitement.”
