LAST CRUSADE

By Iain Blair

When writer-director James Mangold was entrusted with helming Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, the long-awaited final chapter in the beloved saga which stars Harrison Ford reprising his iconic role as the whip-smart archaeologist one last time, he quickly reteamed with his regular, go-to cinematographer Phedon Papamichael ASC GSC.

I saw three birthdays, from prep to the final colour correction, on this movie

The film marks the Papamichael’s sixth film with Mangold – their previous collaborations include Identity (2003), Walk The Line (2005), 3:10 to Yuma (2007), Knight And Day (2010) and Ford v Ferrari (2019) – and the DP, twice Oscar-nominated for The Trial Of The Chicago 7 (2020) and Nebraska (2013), brought decades of experience to shooting this new globe-trotting adventure, which was filmed on location in Morocco, Sicily, Scotland and England, in addition to stages at Pinewood Studios. Here, Papamichael talks about the challenges of making the ambitious movie, and his approach to the cinematography and lighting.

What were the big challenges facing you when you took this on?

The enormous scope of it all, plus the responsibility of shooting the final film in the franchise. It was quite daunting but we embraced it.

How did you and James approach it and find the right look? What were your reference points?

We’ve always considered ourselves as classic filmmakers, so in that sense this wasn’t a huge stretch for us.

A movie like Ford v Ferrari is in a similar vein, an action film but very much character-based. So once again, with this film the camera’s constantly moving, people are on the run, they’re in trains, planes, boats and underwater, and you have to capture all that as well as the quieter emotional moments and the humour.

It’s a huge technical challenge, so you need to really plan out all the shots. And we do use a lot of Spielbergian shots in our films. We love that style and wide angles and being close to actors. We still very much try to cover single camera and stay close to the lead actors with wide lenses – not as extreme as in The Revenant, but have them come in for close-ups, turn around and do a little shift, and then an overthe-shoulder and a tight profile.

So the approach was the same as for other dramatic stories we’ve done, and as a cinematographer, I loved the huge variety of all the different visual environments we were working in, from Scotland to Morocco, all with their very own specific lighting and palettes. And, of course, we went back to look at the other Indiana Jones films for reference.

I heard that you and James also wanted to pay homage to the work of Oscarwinning British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe BSC, who shot the first three Indiana Jones films?

That’s true. We wanted to stay in the same spirit and, as you know from all my past work, I’m very much into natural light and a logical approach to lighting. But this definitely leans a bit heavier into the stylisation of the franchise and plays with shadows and the classic Indiana Jones images. The colour palette is very vivid and really embraces the well-established visual language that’s been handed down from film-to-film in the Indiana Jones franchise, and that was a fun challenge for me, to lean more into that and explore it and have fun with it.

What camera and lens package did you use?

It was basically the same package I used on Ford v Ferrari – the ARRI Alexa Mini LF in combination with Panavision Anamorphics. On the Anamorphics were prototypes, as they needed to be expanded by Panavision’s lens guru Dan Sasaki in order to cover the larger sensor. But, by a couple of years later, they’d expanded quite a few of their Anamorphic sets as a lot of people loved the look. I chose to lean more heavily into the T-series as they have a slightly closer focus, and we liked to be really close on Indy and the villains.

Talk about the lighting. What was your approach?

As everyone’s constantly on the move, when we shot on location it was very important to note the conditions in the real world and reproduce that when we had to do coverage back at Pinewood.

So, for the opening sequence on the train, we were on a huge stage and I relied a lot on my bigger LEDs, like ARRI S360 SkyPanels and Creamsource Vortex units, which had a little more punch. I also discovered a new tool, a DMX-IT, a small wireless 12-channel lighting controller, which I could walk around with through the set and adjust the light levels myself by eye.

Also, I could make constant level adjustments from the DIT tent off the OLED monitors during the scene and control kinetic lighting cues manually, adjusting to the actors’ timing, versus pre-programing everything and tying-in the actors to our preset cues.

So I’d ask my gaffer, David Sinfield, to give me a row of 100 Vortexes on the left of the train on channel 1, and another 100 on the right on channel 6, plus individual lights on other channels. For harder lights I’d use Maxi Brutes and also dim them, like in the whole plane sequence. We also used Tungsten sources, also on dimmers and swinging on cranes, and I’d control all that too, like a sound mixer.

Another good example is the tuktuk chase through the streets and alleys of Tangier, shot by second unit director Patrick Loungway. Later, on stage, we did a lot of coverage and closeups of the actors. I’d already have the location coverage which was previz’ed and already assembled, and I’d watch that play back on my monitor in the DIT tent as I was shooting close-ups and so on, and try to match the location lighting. So the lighting was always very kinetic and also constantly moving.

Besides the train and tuk tuk sequences there are some huge set-pieces, including the horseback chase through the New York ticker tape parade that ends up in the subway, and the underwater dive in Greece. What was the toughest to deal with?

The parade sequence was a huge challenge. We shot Glasgow for New York, with over 1,000 extras, plus cars and the horse. We had to prep it all for a month and then we shot for two weeks in perfect, bright sunny weather, which was ironic as later we had rainy overcast weather for Sicily and did a lot of the boat coverage back in England.

But Glasgow was great and like the tuk tuk sequence, we had it assembled by the editors while we were in production, so when we did pick-ups and coverage of Harrison we had all that as a reference. Our production designer Adam Stockhausen actually built a full-scale replica of a subway station on the 007 Stage at Pinewood, and for that I went with a grittier look to the lighting.

I assume you did a lot of previz on all those action sequences?

Yes, you have to, especially when you have so many extras, cars and elements to coordinate and schedule. But often we end-up using it more as an editorial guide to understand the pace and length of a shot. Typically James and I don’t rely heavily on previz, especially for dramatic scenes. We prefer seeing the actors rehearse and how they block it, and then we create a shot list on the spot.

Integrating all the VFX with visual effects supervisor Andrew Whitehurst must have been crucial?

Yes, and he was a key person for me and I insisted he was in the DIT tent with me and Ben Appleton, my DIT. I don’t like to isolate myself in the DIT tent and I always make sure we’re set up next to the director’s monitors with an open wall, so I’m really connected to James and what he’s saying.

All of the VFX had to be carefully planned and we needed to consult a lot with Andrew, as often the backgrounds would have to be augmented and skies replaced, and we’d talk about the lighting and what he’d need later.

It’s a delicate balance as you’re committing to what the lighting will look like, but you need constant feedback from the VFX department to approve what you’re doing and make sure you’re not painting them into a corner later. There are a lot of VFX shots but it’s not like a Marvel movie. As a fan you could visit every location, and while we added a ton of things to each place, it’s still really a location picture.

Tell us about the DI grade?

We did it with Skip Kimball, our regular colorist at variety of looks and locations, in the end it felt like doing four movies.

How would you sum up the experience of making this film?

Before I started, I spoke with my good friend Janusz Kaminski who shot the last one, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, for Spielberg back in 2008, to get some insight from him. Janusz said, ‘That was the hardest movie I ever did.’ And I can confirm that it was the same for me. I’ve shot some very big movies, but this was definitely the biggest, and with the longest schedule, I’ve ever had. I saw three birthdays, from prep to the final colour correction, on this movie, so it was a real marathon, but I’m so proud of what we

Company 3 here in LA, and we spent about four weeks doing a lot of detailed work and dealing with all the VFX shots which took a while to come in. Because of all the