STUDENT UNION•TISCH SCHOOL OF THE ARTS NYC

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

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 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.”

I had full trust in my amazingly-talented crew to do what was needed

TIME-LOOP

Photos: Cinematographer Autumn Durald, on the set of Marvel Studios’ Loki, exclusively on Disney+.

Photo by Chuck Zlotnick. ©Marvel Studios 2021. All Rights Reserved.

Cinematographer and California native Autumn Durald has come a long way since she graduated from AFI just over a decade ago. She began shooting microbudget films and commercials, quickly gained attention for her bold visual style and attention to detail, and got her first big break when Gia Coppola hired her to shoot Palo Alto, the 2013 indie drama and festival favourite.

Since then, she’s shot many features, including Ry Russo-Young’s The Sun Is Also A Star, Max Minghella’s Teen Spirit, Emma Forrest’s Untogether, and Coppola’s Mainstream, which premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival. Durald has also collaborated with director Spike Jonze on Apple TV+’s Beastie Boys Story and the Netflix comedy special Aziz Ansari: Right Now, shot music videos for the Jonas Brothers, Janelle Monáe, Solange Knowles, and London Grammar, and lensed commercials for Samsung, World Market, Red Cross, Lipton, Coca Cola and Nike.

So maybe it was just a matter of time before superheroes and Marvel also called on her talents, teaming Durald with director Kate Herron on Marvel Studios’ highly-anticipated live-action time-travelling television series Loki. The series stars Tom Hiddleston as Loki, the adopted brother of Thor and a previous antagonist to the Marvel Universe’s Avengers, as he has an unlikely influence across human history. Here, in an exclusive interview, Durald talks about the challenges of the monster shoot and her approaches to the cinematography and lighting.

Loki must be the most ambitious project you’ve ever shot and a big change of pace for you?

For sure! I veer towards moodier naturalism and realism and smaller projects usually. I’d been asked to meet about bigger shows before, though not as big as this, and had not been able to commit the time they take – months and months – as I have a family and a young son. But I loved this and the vision Kate Herron had for it, and we had similar references, so I was excited to be involved.

How did you and Kate Herron approach the look of the show?

Kate’s done a lot of shorts and loves horror films, and she has great taste when it comes to contrast and mood and tone. So when I went into the meeting she had a lot of references that were movies I also love and consider a lot, such as Zodiac (2007, dir. David Fincher, DP Harris Savides ASC), Se7en (1995, dir. David Fincher, DP. Darius Khondji AFC ASC), Barton Fink (1991, dirs. Joel & Ethan Coen, DP Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC) and Blade Runner (1982, dir. Ridley Scott, DP Jordan Cronenweth ASC). I felt it was meant to be as they were exactly what I would have used, and that we were on the same page. scope and time put into them as if they’re movies, and we’re delivering a far bigger story over six episodes than you’d get in a two-hour movie. There’s a lot involved technically with all the action sequences and VFX and stunts and so on, but you have this great support structure from people who’ve all done this sort of production before. So it was great to come on and have all these methodology meetings with people who are well-versed in doing this stuff, and so creative and collaborative.

Doing something so huge and ambitious was new to me and Kate, and you don’t always have the answers right away for how you’re going to execute these big sequences. For instance there was a long sequence that takes place on some planet, with a lot of VFX work in it, and we did a lot of previz and methodology about how it should look and how we were going to shoot it. It takes time to problem-solve those kind of complex sequences. Loki is full of huge action scenes and cinema-level VFX that look like they could have come straight out of the Avengers films. Did you study-up on all that?

Yes, and even though I was already very familiar with those films and Thor, I brushed-up on the whole storyline, and Tom Hiddleston gave a great talk about his character’s whole back story which was amazing. Lighting is my favourite thing. I feel it should always be emotional and that character moments should be driven by lighting, so Tom’s talk was very helpful.

How long was the prep and did Covid interrupt the shoot?

It did, and it was crazy. I had about ten weeks prep, and I spent two weeks with Kate here in LA, before she left for Atlanta where we shot it all. I had eight weeks in Atlanta to prep all six episodes. Then we shot for five weeks before Covid hit and we then took a hiatus, not knowing what would happen. That stretched into six months ultimately. That was pretty gnarly, but then it gave me family time and we all picked up very smoothly where we left off.

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?

I mostly shoot with ARRI Alexa in my feature work, but I also do a lot of commercials, and a director introduced me to the Sony Venice on a commercial we did. That was the first time I’d used it, and as someone who usually shoots with one camera I was very open to it, and I loved it. I fell in love with the way the Sony Venice renders colour and image, and the lenses I could use. So after that, I began using the Venice mostly, and when I came on-board for Loki I suggested using it and we did some tests.

Interestingly, Marvel had never used the Sony Venice before, except once on Black Widow, and because of all the VFX on this they wanted to make the right choice for everyone involved. For lenses I used Panavision. I’ve had a relationship with them for the past ten years and they’ve been so supportive. I’m a big Anamorphic shooter, so we ended-up shooting with the T-series Anamorphics. Panavision and Dan Sasaki really helped by working on the lenses to give me the look I wanted, given how I like to light and shoot, and tweaked and modified them. We’d do tests, and I ended up with a great package.

You mentioned earlier that lighting is your favourite part of the job. Talk about what was involved on this show.

It was great as Kate was such a fan of my lighting style and very supportive of the moody, dramatic look I wanted. It helps so much when you work with people who share your taste, because at the end of the day there are so many layers and choices that go into the final image – from the camera and lens to the lighting, what you put on the lens, the frame, costumes, production design, and so on – and everyone on this show had really good taste.

I worked very closely with my longtime gaffer Brian Bartolini. This was our first job lighting on such a huge scale. We pretty much took over all the stages at Pinewood Atlanta, and had a lot of huge sets to pre-light.

It also really helped that we built so much, so it wasn’t all bluescreen, and that they planned to have real ceilings on this show. I know that sounds funny, but I like to shoot low and a lot below the eye-line, so on this you see all the ceilings and they’re all real.

Our lighting package was mainly Astera Titan tubes, Litegear units plus ARRI Sky panels. We used a 4x8 RGB Source Maker soft box through magic cloth on a Menace arm for close-ups, and a few Dino light rigs with narrow spot globes on Manitous for some of the large day exterior work.

Tell us a little about your colour pipeline and the final DI?

I do a lot of commercials in between all my film projects and work a lot with British colourist Tom Poole. We talked a lot about Loki and he made me a LUT for the show. Then I had my DIT Zach Hilton. The way I work is that I like to colour as much as I can on-set after each set-up, so that dailies match that look which then carries through editorial and post. But the final colourist was Matt Watson who works at Marvel’s own new post and DI facility. I have OCD so at times I find the DI very tedious (laughs), and when you have so many VFX like this, you can do passes but you’re still waiting on shots to come in and constantly having to go back. It helped that we did as much as possible in-camera, but as we speak I’m still grading. It’s been a marathon, but I’ve really loved doing it and working with such a great team, and I’m very happy with the way it looks.