I’m in awe of all those who lay down their lives, understanding the importance of capturing images in our troubling times
Bradford Young ASC
THE CHAMPIONS
Whilst every year is nicely punctuated with expeditions to cinematographic expos and events right around the calendar, the stand-out sojourn has to be the annual trip to Poland for Camerimage. This year marks our 21st visit to the festival, which is now 32 editions young.
We look forward very much to meeting our many friends and supporters around the world, to making new acquaintances, watching new films, the learning opportunities in an industry of continual change, and generally absorbing the cinematographic zeitgeist, around the festival centre and the city of Toruń.
You can read about some of the festival highlights in this magazine, but there’s plenty more in store, that’s for sure, and we can’t wait to get there.
Along with our special preview, we hope you enjoy the other articles inside this edition. They have been written and designed with love, by a dedicated team, and champion the creative and technical artistry of moving imagemakers, with the same spirit that Camerimage holds dear to its heart.
As 2024 comes to a close, we thank the festival organisers, our supporters, partners, contributors and readers, for their belief in us, and look forward to a buoyant 2025 – where there’s lots to look forward to.
Wherever you are, we wish you peace and happiness. Take care, and keep being the brilliant you!
EDITORIAL TEAM
Ron Prince has over three decades of experience in the film, TV, CGI and VFX industries, and has written about cinematography for 20 years. In 2014, he won the ARRI John Alcott Award from the BSC. He also runs the international content marketing and PR communications company Prince PR. “Count” Iain Blair Our Man In LA, is a British writer/musician who lives in LA and writes extensively about film/entertainment for outlets including LA Times, Variety and Reuters. He interviews movie stars and Hollywood’s top filmmakers.
Darek Kuźma is a film and TV journalist, translator/interpreter, and a regular collaborator/programmer of the EnergaCamerimage Film Festival. He is an ardent cinephile who has a lifelong romance with the visual language of cinema.
David Wood is a freelance journalist covering film/TV technology and production He was a former technology editor at Televisual, and is a regular contributor to Worldscreen, TVB Europe and Broadcast.
Kirsty Hazlewood has over two decades of editorial experience in print/ online publications, including the IBC Daily, and is a regular contributor to the folk/roots music website Spiral Earth.
Natasha Block Hicks iis an artist/designer/maker, who spent a decade as a freelance film and TV camera assistant, and indulges her love for cinema and cinematography through research and writing.
Cover Image: Selena Gomez, pictured in director Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Pérez, shot by DP Paul Guilhaume AFC. Image courtesy of Netflix.
Ron Prince Editor in Chief
Ron Prince
photo by Joe Short www.joeshort.com
Official Media Partners
True Cinema. For All.
ZEISS Nano Prime Lenses
ZEISS Nano Primes are cinema lenses designed for modern full frame mirrorless cameras. The six focal lengths all feature a high speed of T1.5 in a small and robust real cine lens housing. Nano Primes are lenses for all cinematographers, budgets and projects. Lenses that check all the boxes when it comes to look, ergonomics, size and weight or lens data workflow. Lenses that you can afford. Lenses that won‘t let you down. Go-to cinema lenses for every day.
zeiss.com/cine/nanoprime
JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX
EMILIA PÉREZ
TIME FOR SOLIDARITY
The film industry is undergoing rapid changes affecting the cinematic image, its content and aesthetics. One of the most significant changes is the growing recognition of female cinematographers and directors. This evolution is crucial, as it rectifies the obvious injustice present in societal development. However, it also raises a question: can the pursuit of change exclude what is good? Can we sacrifice works and artists with outstanding artistic achievements solely to make room for mediocre film productions?
EnergaCAMERIMAGE, as a festival promoting the art of cinematography, has always defended under-appreciated and excluded creators – both male and female cinematographers. However, in the face of these societal changes, we must consider whether rushing to correct past wrongs threatens the artistic evaluation of film as an artform. Should we reject what is esteemed and valuable just to “make space” for the necessity of social change?
Maintaining high standards of artistic evaluation is of immense importance and must not be marginalised or overlooked. After all, the essence of cinema is not just the literary message, content or the context of a film’s production conditions, which are often overemphasised by critics, but primarily the aesthetics and emotional-expressive power of the moving image, conveying to the viewer what words cannot – sensory emotions.
Historically, the film industry was dominated by men, especially in technical roles like cinematography. Today more women have entered cinematography as a career path, bringing new ways of seeing, feeling and expressing the world on-screen. More and more women are achieving significant success in our industry, proving how unfair the long-standing gender inequality in film professions has been.
Cinematographers like Ellen Kuras ASC, Mandy Walker ACS ASC and Rachel Morrison ASC – the first woman nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography – are leaders representing these positive changes. Even before their successes, the EnergaCAMERIMAGE festival, set this important trend, promoting and recognising the works of female cinematographers.
In 2011, Jola Dylewska received the prestigious Golden Frog for her work on In Darkness, long before any female cinematographer received such recognition from the broader film industry. Dorota Kędzierzawska’s film Jestem was awarded at Camerimage in 2005. Since the beginning
The festival has never glorified some at the exclusion of others
of the festival, we have invited women not only to present their films but also to serve on various competition juries. Agnieszka Holland chaired the main Camerimage jury in 1997, as did Mandy Walker ACS ASC in 2023.
Further efforts to include more female cinematographers and directors in the festival presentations are indisputable, but they must not come at the expense of what is truly important to the festival: evaluating artistic merit and selecting valuable films for competition.
While EnergaCAMERIMAGE strives to acknowledge the contributions of women in cinematography, it also aims to maintain artistic integrity. Change? Yes, but let’s remain decent and honest. It’s about rapid evolution, not a fanatical revolution that destroys the cathedrals of art and throws out its sculptures and paintings.
Camerimage was founded to celebrate artists behind the camera, often wrongly-dismissed as mere technicians. Like the creators of Gothic cathedrals, these artists collaborate to create moving images that transcend simple film recordings. The festival has never aimed to glorify some at the exclusion of others, nor to recognise works lacking artistic value.
HU
Change? Yes, but let’s remain decent and honest
criticised for their selections due to succumbing to or promoting such trends, Camerimage remains committed to artistic values as the foremost criterion for qualifying and promoting film art.
Despite efforts to promote diversity, support creators, and create an incubator for young filmmakers and ideas, EnergaCAMERIMAGE faces significant challenges. One of the most serious issues is the lack of spaces for professional film screenings, workshops, and masterclasses. Currently, we have only one screen for professional film projection and no space for workshops or film exercises. Festival guests know that for 30 years we have been advocating for the creation of such a film centre, which does not yet exist in Poland. This is crucial to ensure the festival’s survival and enable it to continue growing for the benefit of all cinematographers!
Unfortunately, as the construction of the new centre progresses, threats to its full realisation have emerged. There are reports questioning the value of this investment for Poland, the city and the region. The public is being misled about the alleged unfeasibility of the investment costs. This is not true. Our documentation and the arguments of professional firms responsible for the project are being ignored. We fear political decisions rather than substantive ones. We need the support of all film communities and artists for whom EnergaCAMERIMAGE matters.
Please write letters of support to the Ministry of Culture, the City, and the Marshal, and send them to the following addresses: prezydent@ um.torun.pl, esp@kultura.gov.pl, mw.sekretariat@ kujawsko-pomorskie.pl and to us as well.
By remaining true to its mission and values, the festival can continue to serve as a leading platform for artistic dialogue and innovation. It is crucial that we create solidarity, an environment in which artistic excellence is not only recognised but celebrated too, and is not sacrificed for commercialism or a merchant mentality. We must ensure future generations of filmmakers have a place and platform for international exchange of ideas and artistic development.
Marek Żydowicz Founder & Festival Director EnergaCAMERIMAGE
The film selection process at EnergaCAMERIMAGE is guided by a principle of harmony between meaningful content and the aesthetics of the moving image. This principle has remained unchanged since the festival’s inception. Every year, we watch thousands of films, seeking those that best embody this balance, regardless of current political or ideological trends. Whilst festivals like Cannes, Berlin, or Venice are
ASC TO BESTOW ANDRZEJ BARTKOWIAK ASC WITH 2025 LIFETIME AWARD
The American Society Of Cinematographers (ASC) is set to honour five distinguished members, including Andrzej Bartkowiak ASC for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography, at the 39th Annual Awards Gala on February 23, 2025.
Known for his evocative visual style, Bartkowiak’s breakthrough film was the gritty urban thriller Prince Of The City (1981), which marked his first collaboration with director Sidney Lumet. Over the next 12 years, Bartkowiak shot 11 of Lumet’s films, including Deathtrap (1982), The Verdict (1982), Daniel (1983) and Family Business (1989). His taut camerawork on Jan de Bont’s blockbuster Speed (1994) further elevated his profile.
“ Throughout Andrzej’s illustrious career, he has crafted unforgettable visual narratives that have resonated with audiences and inspired countless filmmakers,” said ASC president Shelly Johnson ASC. His remarkable body of work stands as a testament to the power of visual
storytelling, leaving an indelible mark on the art of cinematography.”
The ASC Awards Gala will take place at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, and will be live-streamed globally, allowing cinema fans and industry professionals to join in the celebration of excellence in cinematography.
Michael Goi ASC ISC will be recognised with the Career Achievement in Television Award.
John Simmons ASC will be awarded the
FRANZ KRAUS HONOURED AT 2024 SMPTE SUMMIT
SMPTE honoured some of the industry’s top minds and organisations at its annual Awards Gala, on October 24th, at the 2024 SMPTE Media
President’s Award, and Joan Churchill ASC will be celebrated with the Lifetime Documentary Award. Pete Romano ASC will be honoured with the Curtis Clark Technology Award.
Technology Summit. This year, honorary membership was conferred on Franz Kraus, who is acknowledged for advancing the cinematography vision of the ARRI corporation. Kraus successfully led the company into the digital age by developing digital film scanners and cameras, resulting in the ARRI Alexa camera suite becoming one of the most popular products in the entertainment industry today.
SMPTE executive director David Grindle stated: “ This year ’s SMPTE honourees have touched every corner of the industry from artificial intelligence to archiving. The strength of SMPTE lies within its members, and the annual awards gala is our chance to celebrate them.”
SOC OPENS SUBMISSIONS FOR OPERATOR & TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
The Society Of Camera Operators has opened submissions for its 2025 awards, which are given to feature film and TV fulltime camera operators who have operated on distinguished projects of considerable quality during the previous year.
Anyone in the film/TV community may nominate a camera operator for this award including, but not limited to, SOC members, directors, producers, production crew members, studios, and production companies. Camera operators may also submit themselves.
Submissions for Camera Operator Of The Year will close on December 31st, 2024. Once submissions close, the list of submissions will be sent to the voting members
of the SOC to select five in each category using the web-based ballots.
The submissions will then be vetted for their qualifications by the SOC ’s awards committee and a distinguished jury of committee members will then select nominees in each category. The list of the final nominees in each category will be sent to all voting members of the SOC in good standing for a vote by web-based ballots.
For this award, there will be no consideration of any director of photography who also operated the camera on the same project. The recipients will be announced at the SOC Awards Celebration on February 15th, 2025, and will be kept private until that time.
Working towards a greener industry.
FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE
Panalux’s new home in West London has been designed with sustainable practices top of mind, providing a cleaner footprint for our operations today and a foundation for building a greener tomorrow.
CLEANER OPERATIONS
Our new building earned an EPC rating of A+. The roof-mounted photovoltaic array powers the backbone infrastructure, and the parking lot features electric-vehicle charging points for customers and employees.
POWERING YOUR PRODUCTIONS
The Panalux fleet includes all-electric and hybrid vehicles. HVO is used in all our generators and fuel-consuming vehicles, reducing greenhouse emissions.
ERNST LEITZ WETZLAR RENAMED LEITZ
CINE AS HUGO LENS FAMILY GROWS
Cine lens manufacturer Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH has changed its name to Leitz Cine GmbH. The name change aligns more with the company’s lens brand Leitz, which has become an industry-standard over the past 15 years.
Leitz has also expanded its Hugo lens family, with the addition of Hugo II lenses, so-named for their slower aperture, which introduce new options that offer some size advantages and slightly different looks from the 75mm and 90mm focal length optics, whilst the 66mm fills the gap between 50mm and 75mm.
The Leitz Hugo 66mm T2.1 lens is based on the fabled ‘spy lens’, created by legendary Leica lens designer Walter Mandler for the US Navy during the Cold War. Built for ultra-high-resolution imaging and never intended for the public, it is estimated that less than 200 were ever produced.
By only slightly modifying the simplicity of Mandler’s original design, this lens sits alongside its modern siblings as a great pairing with an impressive pedigree. Whilst considered extremely sharp for
its time, the images match remarkably well with the strong character of the modern day Hugo lenses.
The Leitz Hugo 75mm T2.1 and 90mm T2.1 lenses come from the Leica Summicron-M lenses. Being one stop slower than the T1.5 lenses allows them to be significantly shorter and lighter, nearly matching the dimensions of the rest of the T1.5 set wider than 50mm. By designing housings for these lenses Leitz will now be able to convert full sets of Leitz M 0.8 lenses to Hugo without sacrificing the longer focal lengths.
With the addition of the Hugo II series, the Leitz Hugo family of lenses now includes 13 focal lengths from 18mm to 135mm. The lenses are available in LPL or L mounts.
SONY TO SHOWCASE CINEMA LINE PRODUCTS AT CAMERIMAGE
Sony will return for the sixth time as the main official industrial sponsor of the EnergaCamerimage festival of cinematography, showcasing its latest technological developments for the cinematography industry, whilst connecting with DPs, camera and filmmaking professionals.
Attendees will be able to get hands-on with Sony’s shooting solutions and attend Sony-led seminars on different themes across the duration of the festival. Seminar details will be confirmed
at a later date.
The full CineAlta family of high-end digital cinema cameras will be on display - including the Venice 2, Venice Extension System 2 and Burano, the versatile, lightweight and compact full-frame 8K cinema camera specially designed for single-camera operators and small crews.
Sony will also exhibit its complete line-up of lenses and professional monitors including the new grading monitor, the BVM-HX1710, announced in September this year.
DP DAVID WELLS LENSES THE RAPPER/ACTOR LUDACRIS WITH ZEISS NANO PRIMES
When DP David Wells was handed the treatment for the C4 Energy sweepstakes featuring rapper and actor Ludacris, he selected Zeiss Nano Primes with the Sony Venice 2 Rialto to realise the project.
Wells had encountered the Zeiss Nano Primes for the first time at the 2024 South By Southwest Film Festival. “ The Nano Primes are small, clean and fast – they checked all the boxes.”
He acquired a pair to test with experienced Austin, Texas, operator, James Navarra, and it is Navarra’s own hand that reaches out to fist-bump in the commercial.
“Our actor/operator was able to move his head easily. We mounted the Venice 2 to an Easy Rig with a little plate that fits on the back, using the tension to help hold-up the operator’s head. We added a monitor in front of his eyes with a focus motor on rails, lenses and a matte box for filtration.
“ What really sets these lenses apart is how fast they are. I don’t think there’s anything like it below a T2 anywhere else. The difference between a T2 and a T1.5 is huge, especially in large format” said Wells.
After days of prep and hours on-location settingup, it only took five takes to capture the sequence.
“ There are so many things I like about the
Nano Primes,” reflects Wells. “ They are like smaller versions of Supreme Primes. They’re a fantastic choice when you need a small, compact lens. They give us the opportunity to get closer in tight spaces and maintain a high-quality look.”
Advanced Digital Film Camera!
Blackmagic URSA Cine is a revolutionary digital film camera that introduces new advanced digital film technology combined with total integration into the post production workflow. That means it’s the first digital film camera with fast high capability storage built in, plus high speed networking for on set media sync. You can also swap between PL, LPL, EF and Hasselblad lens mounts.
Cinematic Large Format Sensor
URSA Cine features a revolutionary new sensor designed for incredible quality images at all resolutions from 4K to a massive 12K! The larger sensor builds on the technology of URSA Mini Pro 12K with larger photo-sites leading to an astounding 16 stops of dynamic range. Now you can capture more detail with a wider dynamic range than ever before!
A Camera Body Optimized for High End Productions!
The evenly weighted camera body is built with a robust magnesium alloy chassis and lightweight carbon fiber polycarbonate composite skin to help you move quickly on set. There’s a 5” fold out touchscreen for reviewing shots and accessing camera settings, plus a dedicated assist station on the other side of the camera, with 5” LCD and full camera controls.
High Performance Internal Media for Recording
URSA Cine is the first digital film camera with ultra fast high capability Cloud Store technology built in. Blackmagic Media Module is fast, rugged and includes a massive 8TB of storage. The module can be easily removed from the camera and loaded into a Blackmagic Media Dock for transferring media to a network or to Blackmagic Cloud for instant global collaboration!
Live Sync and Edit Media While the Camera is Rolling!
URSA Cine records an HD proxy in H.264 in addition to the camera original media. The small proxy file can upload to Blackmagic Cloud in seconds, even as the camera’s recording, so your media is available back at the studio in real time. If you have multiple cameras, then the new multi source feature in DaVinci Resolve’s Cut page will show each camera angle in a multiview.
Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K
From £11,655
The G6 Color is a cinema-grade 180W full-colour ellipsoidal with razor-sharp cuts and a unique 360-degree rotating barrel. The beam produced from either the 10°, 19° or 36° lens tube is uniform and bright without any colour fringing.
At the core of the G6 is the latest generation of Fiilex’s patented Dense Matrix LED that adheres to the
EMG/Gravity Media has purchased its single largest order of Fujinon lenses including the latest, cutting-edge UA125, UA107, UA23x7.6 and UA14x4.5 lenses.
Pete Newton, EMG/Gravity Media director of media services and facilities, explained, “Our decision to purchase and use these Fujinon lenses was driven by a combination of strategic planning, technological advancement and our long-standing relationship with Fujifilm Australia. Fujinon lenses have consistently met our high standards for quality, performance and reliability making them a natural choice for this upgrade.” The
highest standards of dimming and colour calibration. The G6 ellipsoidal allows full control and can be rigged and hidden anywhere on production sets.
Key features include high-CRI white light output (2000-10000K), 8 and 16-bit colour modes: CCTRGBW, CCTHSI, CIExy, etc., CRMX wireless control via integrated LumenRadio, and an IP-X5 rating.
MEDIA MAKES
company undertook a significant and comprehensive evaluation process to assess which lenses would best meet their requirements for this sizeable upgrade.
Newton added, “Our primary requirements were exceptional image quality and versatile zoom capabilities which were required to provide flexibility for various shooting scenarios. We also wanted lenses with a robust and dependable construction and superior optical performance. Finally, we also required a comprehensive support package that included maintenance and ongoing expert advice. All of this was and is supplied by the Fujifilm team.”
MARK MILSOME FOUNDATION EXPANDS BOARD & CREATES ADVISORY COUNCIL
As part of The Mark Milsome Foundation’s (MMF) continued evolution in the fields of on-set safety and well-being improvement, it has added three new trustees –James Layton ACO Associate BSC, camera operator/ Steadicam operator, Junior Agyeman-Owusu ACO and stunt coordinator Abbi Collins – to its current board of eight. MMF has also created a new advisory council, comprising of eight specialists and experts from across the creative media landscape.
Incoming trustees Layton, Agyeman-Owusu and Collins are three respected film and TV professionals, who provide lived-experience of the safety issues that MMF is committed to improving. Layton was a close friend and film industry colleague of Mark Milsome and two years ago, became a mentor for MMF’s Foot In Thee Door training initiative. He is keen to further Mark Milsome’s legacy and has a strong interest in improving well-being and work-life balance for those working in film and TV.
Agyeman-Owusu is involved with ACO training and hosts his own podcast. Collins is a stunt co-ordinator and horse master with more than 37 years of industry experience. She is a founding member of The British Stunt Register and has collaborated with MMF on health and safety panels. She is particularly interested in addressing the issue of film and TV’s culture of excessively long working hours. The newly formed advisory council will provide trustees with specialist expertise, knowledge and skills.
SMALLHD INTRODUCES ULTRA 10
SmallHD has announced Ultra 10, the new 10-inch smart monitor with optional Bolt 6 integration, up to 2000nits of brightness, touchscreen camera control, WiFi 6 connectivity, user-customisable dials, 6G-SDI architecture, and an IP54 rating in a slender and highly mobile form factor.
“Ultra 10 is a new class of monitor with the versatility of a touchscreen handheld, combined with the powerful processing and larger viewing area of our 4K production monitors,” said Greg Smokler,
Small HD’s VP of cine products. “The larger 10-inch screen size really makes an impact on visibility and the ergonomics are so well-executed that you can use it in almost any conceivable production situation.”
Ultra 10 is the largest ultra-bright monitor SmallHD has ever made, featuring sturdy multi-function knobs that enhance PageOS efficiency and navigation, daylight-viewable brightness, a camera ID and tally light module (sold separately) for multi-camera switching in studio mode, and 6G-SDI architecture for modern 4K video workflows.
designed for harsh production environments, features internal Bolt 6 antennas on RX models, offers optional camera control, and comes loaded with the nextgeneration PageOS 6 software toolkit.
Ultra 10 integrates with Teradek’s Bolt 4K and Bolt 6 wireless platforms, has an IP54 weather rating
Teradek’s CTRL.5 is an extensivelycustomisable lens control handset with its own operating system: CTRL.OS, a proprietary software toolkit that evolved from sister company SmallHD’s PageOS.
“CTRL.5 is the project that we’ve been dreaming about releasing ever since Kris Bird and RT Motion joined Creative Solutions; a culmination of design and development effort across so many of our teams,” said Greg Smokler, VP of cine products at Creative Solutions.
“ The result is a next-gen focus-pulling platform with open ergonomic design, built around a powerful technical architecture that will keep the system futureproof with new
features and integrations for years to come.”
CTRL.5 is the new heart of the Teradek RT wireless lens-control system. It combines an ultra-bright five-inch SmallHD display with CTRL.OS, a custom iteration on SmallHD’s PageOS page-based software toolkit, specifically-designed for camera assistants and focus-pullers.
A new graphic-rich lens mapping tool allows users to create, browse and select lenses mapped to pre-printed focus rings, allowing for rapid changes in the heat of production. Users can access saved configurations faster via the touchscreen or one of eleven programmable user buttons.
PROTON EXTENDS CAMERA RANGE WITH PROTON FLEX
Proton Camera Innovations launched its Proton Flex at IBC 2024, a miniaturised camera that uses a flexible design to maximise performance in any live production that requires heat and space management.
The Proton Flex has an overall profile which measures just 28mm x 28mm and weighs just 37g, and which separates the lens from the main body using a flexible flat ribbon cable. By separating the lens with the sensor on one side from the video processing chip with the power supply on the other side, the Proton Flex achieves the best performance from both elements, whilst maintaining a discreet profile that can be flexibly integrated in a range of operational contexts.
PAG used IBC 2024 to launch its new 150Wh MPL150 battery, an addition to its MiniPAGlink range of smaller, lighter, intelligent linking batteries.
The MPL150 is versatile when it comes to powering cameras, production accessories and personal devices. No other broadcast camera battery boasts as many output options. It features a built-in USB type C (5V, 9V or 12V 30W); USB-A (5V 2.4A)and D-Tap (12V unregulated). In addition, it has a plug-in USB type C PD 36W output unit, which can be swapped for other output unit options that include Hirose, Lemo and 2.1-2.5mm DC (available separately).
The MPL150 can be linked with other MPL batteries, of any rated capacity, for discharge or
The Proton Flex provides a level of operational flexibility which significantly increases the creative potential of the camera. The standard lens, that can be easily replaced by other lenses, offers a 97°-degree view, whilst the 12-bit sensor and camera body operate to deliver exceptional image quality. The Proton Flex incorporates two separate PCBs, leveraging the power of a VEGA microprocessor to deliver crisp full-HD 1080p images.
The product is suited to live broadcast with a particular applicability in sports productions.
Marko Hoepken, CEO for Proton, said, “ We continue to be amazed at the ways in which people are using our flagship Proton Cam. We developed it with creative potential as the central consideration, but even we hadn’t anticipated how it would be used and how visually stunning some of the result would be.
“Now, with these extensions to our range – in the form of the Proton Flex and Proton Rain – we allow users to leverage that potential in even more challenging contexts; sensitive temperature, rugged terrain, or weather-dependent conditions.”
PAG LAUNCHES 150WH BATTERY
charging. Batteries with flight-friendly capacities can be linked on location to provide longer run-time or an increased current-draw of up to 12A.
The 14.8V 10Ah MPL150 is available in V-Mount and Gold Mount formats. It features PAG’s modular battery design which enables the authorised replacement of an expired cellpack whilst maintaining the battery ’ s flight-safety credentials. Case parts and electronic modules can be reused, reducing e-waste for greater sustainability as well as reducing the cost of your next battery.
PROPERTY EXPERT SARAH BEENY LAUNCHES STOKEFORD STUDIOS
Renowned UK property expert and TV presenter Sarah Beeny has launched her biggest project to date, Stokeford Studios. Located in Somerset, Stokeford Studios is a purpose-built facility offering a 6,000sq/ ft main studio with overlooking production gallery and a range of state-of-the-art workspaces and resources to support emerging and established creative talents.
Beeny, best known for her property television shows has long-championed entrepreneurship, creativity, and sustainable living.
“Stokeford Studios has been a long-time dream of mine, combining my passion for property with my love for filmmaking and engaging the next generation,” said Beeny. “I wanted to create a space where musicians, artists, creators and visionaries can come together, collaborate and push the boundaries of their craft.
Stokeford Studios is designed to do just that – offering a dynamic environment with all the tools needed to bring ideas to life.”
Beyond Bi-Color
The STORM 1200x utilizes the new BLAIR light engine that delivers full spectrum white light with greater CRI & SSI.
ProLock Bowens Mount
The STORM lights feature the ProLock Locking Bowens Mount, a more secure clamping design for attaching modifiers.
IP65 Rated
Head-to-toe IP65 dust and weather protection means the STORM 1200x can work in extreme environments.
DEDOLIGHT EFLECT USED ON COMMERCIAL STUDIO SHOOT
It was a three-day shoot. The mission: to create different seasons and to emulate scenes found in both nature and urban environments. The gaffer had specified they needed Dedolight Eflect boards – the new Tropical Blue and Tropical Orange patterns. Dedolights with parallel beam intensifiers –DLH4s and a Dedolight DLH400D HMI – were included in the lighting package.
Over three days four different models were filmed in many set-ups with different visual effects created specifically using the Eflect system.
“What attracted me to using the Eflect system is the ability to be creative with the lighting and manipulate it in a way which kind of coincides with the natural world. With a few tools we’ve been able to create some very beautiful vivid colours and patterns,” said gaffer Will Churchill.
The still images only show part of the creative results achieved. The Eflect system can be used to create a myriad of patterns, which can be static or moving – dappled light, textures on subject and background, or background only. By gently moving the reflectors, nudging the light stand, or by shifting the light shining into the reflector, this creates realistic moving patterns across subject and background. The results can be subtle or intense.
Commenting on the result of working with Eflect and the Lightstream system, Churchill added, “I think the technology of reflected light, especially the way that Dedolight does is it, gives the illusion that the source is much further away. You know it’s not a direct source.
“When you direct a source at a subject it becomes very ‘sourcey’ and fake in a way.
With bouncing light, especially with Eflect and the other mirror systems that Dedo provides, it creates that illusion that the source is much further away giving more naturalistic and realistic tones.”
There is more detail to come from this shoot, filmed with a Red Komodo digital camera, including behind-the-scenes footage. Thanks to: gaffer Will Churchill, cinematographer Philippe Steiner and director Owen Vince and Black Tomato.
ARRI SOLUTIONS & ROE VISUAL DELIVER
VP
FACILITY IN GRAN CANARIA
The initial phase of Gran Canaria Studios, one of Europe’s largest virtual production stages to date, has been completed, offering a cutting-edge environment for international content producers looking to leverage Gran Canaria’s film location incentives.
Located on the 1,200sq/m stage 1 of the Gran Canaria Platos studio lot, the virtual production infrastructure has been designed and delivered by ARRI Solutions, integrator Video Cine Import (VCI) and Roe Visual, a manufacturer of premium LED products.
The Economic Promotion Agency of Gran Canaria (SPEGC) commissioned the studio to accommodate both independent and high-end national and international productions. It will strengthen the island’s reputation as a thriving film production hotspot.
“The film industry is one of the region’s economic pillars, we are committed to the development of this industry on the island and Gran Canaria is spearheading efforts to become a leading hub for TV and film, stated Cosme García Falcón, managing director of the SPEGC.
“Creating this virtual stage offers new services to content
companies from across the world, with stateof-the-art studio technical and operational services, created by companies of recognised prestige such as ARRI, VCI and ROE Visual.
“Gran Canaria Studios will help production companies develop their stories and position the island, the region and Spain as one of the best prepared and most profitable audiovisual production hubs in the market.”
FILM & TV STUDIOS ANNOUNCED IN TELFORD, WEST MIDLANDS
Aplanned film studio development in Telford, Shropshire, UK, at a currently vacant 60,000sq/ft warehouse in the Hortonwood area will aim to complement the county’s growing appeal as a filming location.
Already named as First Central Studios, the project is being spearheaded by London based independent film production company AIB Live, which has engaged the services of renowned Lichfield based BHB Architects to oversee the work on the new studio.
The project to convert the property into a high-spec film and TV studio is scheduled to start the autumn, with the studio complex set to fullyopen by spring 2025. The facility is planned to
contain four sound stages of over 40,000sq/ ft, workshops, production offices, dressing and make-up rooms with all necessary support facilities.
A spokesperson for AIB Live said, “ The British film and TV industry stands as one of this country’s great on-going success stories and we are committed to building the creative sector in the West Midlands with First Central Studios and
promote the stunning locations that are readily available in this region many of which have never been shown on the big screen.”
cutting-edge lens technology
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DP FABIAN WAGNER BSC ASC & GAFFER
JONNY FRANKLIN TEAM-UP FOR VENOM: THE LAST DANCE
When cinematographer Fabian Wagner BSC ASC was looking for a gaffer to work on Venom: The Last Dance (2024), the final instalment of the Venom trilogy, directed by Kelly Marcel, he contacted Jonny Franklin after hearing about his glowing reputation in lighting. The firsttime collaborators hit it off straight away. From early-on the pair decided to mainly use LED illumination on-set, with the idea of making the filming process more efficient and opening an array of opportunities for stylistic lighting choices.
“The best part of shooting a movie is the preparation process,” says Franklin, who credits include productions such as Phantom Thread (2017, dir./DP Paul Thomas Anderson), The Creator (2023, dir. Gareth Edwards, DPs Greig Fraser ACS ASC/ Oren Soffer) and the Star Wars series The Acolyte (2024, DP Chris Teague).
“I enjoy testing and trying-out different fixtures, and also getting to know the style and workflow of the cinematographer. As I didn’t know Fabian yet, I had to get acquainted with him, his style and get a feel of how he wanted the project to look. But we quickly got on the same page and came-up with some really creative ideas”
Working on shows such as Game Of Thrones (2014-2019), Sherlock (2012) and The Crown (2019), which earned him two Emmy nominations, Wagner’s last few projects were more of a traditional approach to lighting using Tungsten and HMI sources. Although he wasn’t a stranger to using LED lighting onset, the sheer volume of LED that was used on Venom
was more than the DP was used to.
“I love using Tungsten lamps, but in certain situations on the floor it’s just much quicker and easier to have an LED fixture that is easily-adjustable from the console,” says the DP. “I know the benefits of being able to move them around quickly on-set, which is always important, especially on big sets like Venom: The Last Dance.”
Introducing Wagner to LED lights, including Aputure products, didn’t prove as difficult as Franklin initially expected. Coming off the back of The Acolyte he had an arsenal of fixtures to show, including a host of LS 600c Pro lamps with all different adapters and modifiers, and Wagner was sold right away.
“The functionality and range of possibilities, from sticking a Fresnel on it, then changing it over for a softbox in an instant, was great”, Wagner admits. “We used it right away during principal photography at Los Mateos in Cartagena, Spain. The first location was meant to replicate the Mexican slums and we had to recreate a lot of streetlights, practical sources and splashes on the walls, and at some points it also involved diving into people’s houses at the drop of a hat to add a light source.”
Franklin adds, “That’s where the LS 600c Pros really shone, because we could have a lamp ready on a stand, stick it on a battery, and already be network-connected to the lamp so we could control the colour and dimming on-the-go and move quickly.”
Next to the floor kit – which travelled everywhere with them, and which mainly consisted of LED lighting sources, including a big chunk of Aputure lights – the production also made use of a pre-rigged location package, set-up by the lighting team beforehand.
“These were huge,” exclaims Franklin. “In Spain we had to light such a vast area that we had lamps on mountains lighting the background. The sheer scale of the sets was one of the hardest parts of the production.”
Wagner agrees, “We used lots of big sources, but had to combine them with heaps of small sources that were really powerful in order to create some interesting flares and movement. It was no surprise that most of the kit was shipped from the UK, as we would have cleared-out every rental house in the local area with the number of lights we required.”
As well as using LS 600c Pros, Wagner and Franklin also regularly employed Aputure MC Pros to create little highlights, which both of them really enjoyed.
“You can just place an MC Pro anywhere lastminute to lift a dark area, to enhance a practical or even as a highlight in shot. They always find a way to be useful”, explains Franklin.
Every LED fixture from Aputure proved right for the job
Wagner concurs with his gaffer, when he remarks, “Every LED fixture from Aputure proved right for the job and a good fit for the Venom production.”
Finding a fitting visual tone and lighting philosophy together with the director wasn’t much of an issue for Wagner, as he had already worked on reshoots on the prequel, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, together with DP Robert Richardson ASC.
“For Venom: The Last Dance, we were looking for a slightly darker style – a bit more gritty, edgier, and with more contrast, but still fitting with the Venom character.
We would have cleared-out every rental in the area with the number of lights we required
However, at the same time, we had to contend with very bright sets, so getting that look-and-feel in there was challenging but fun. For both Jonny and myself it was about making everything look as big as we could and the LED fixtures really helped to achieve this.”
Wagner admits that he usually has a classic approach to lighting, but also understands the downfalls, such as electrical and heating issues, which LEDs simply don’t experience. “Plus we shared the same cool ideas for this last movie in the series that would really make it look different.”
In one particular scene, where a symbiote moves towards the heroes, the ease of programming and changing the LEDs really came into play. As it passes certain fixtures, the lights come on and flicker, change colour and then go off again.
“We thought it was very cool to use four different colours, utilising the range of possibilities of the lights in a very effective way. By being able to show it to
Marcel quickly, we could get her on-board and she went with it,” Wagner explains.
With everybody in tune with Wagner’s and Franklin’s creative ideas, which because of the use of LEDs also helped to fit within the timeframe and budget, there was no stopping them during the shoot at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, London.
“Before LEDs came along, we had to light big stages with space lights, which took a lot of time and effort. By using LED sources we could change a scene from day to night-time in a matter of minutes and Jonny made this process very easy,” Wagner recounts. “This way we managed to keep it within the realm of the Venom franchise, but definitely made it look like a unique movie with some exceptional lighting aspects.”
One of those aspects Wagner is hinting about, has to do with a construction Franklin made for a bunch of INFINIBARS to hang overhead during a lab scene.
“We went through so many iterations and designs of what we would have in the ceiling, and even talked about building an augmented rig that moves,” Franklin explains. “But in the end, we created a rig that was shaped almost like petals on a flower with multiple video panels. We could display different content on the video panels that was provided to us by the VFX department.
“On the day we could change the content, dim and also turn-off the screens , when we were trying to control the contrast of the shot. It meant that if we ever shot looking upwards, we had something really visual to look at. On the ends of each petal we attached multiple INFINIBARS to give another layer to the imagery. We had to 3D-print our own brackets so that we could clip the INFINIBARS onto our rig. The INFINIBARS look very modern so they fit in perfectly with the set design.”
Eventually Wagner also used INFINIBARS to replicate emergency lights and enjoyed their flexibility. “We could have a day scene and make them bright, dim them in an instant for a night scene, or have them
flash. We actually decided to keep them in certain shots as well because they look modern and digital, which was in keeping with the look of the set in general.” Having lights in the shot is a recurring theme in Venom: The Last Dance, because, as Wagner puts it, “Aputure lights look good”.
However, because they shot at so many different locations, this recipe didn’t always work. Every set received its individual look from the team, whilst keeping the overall feeling the same.
The functionality and range of possibilities was great
“I suppose that was one of the most challenging parts of shooting this film,” says Wagner. “We couldn’t follow a certain aim, but had to improvise a lot. You have an idea, but need to be able to rock-and-roll back-and-forth a bit when it comes to the lighting when you’re actually there. The LEDs from Aputure gave us the freedom, flexibility and capability to get the job done.”
Follow Fabian Wagner on Instagram @ fabianwagnerdop/
Follow Jonny Franklin on Instagram @jonny_franklin
For more information about Aputure aputure.com
Watch Venom: The Last Dance trailer VENOM: THE LAST DANCE – Official Trailer (HD)
The rig Franklin build that with multiple INFINIBARS attached at the end
PICTURE FRAMERS
Our regular round up of who is shooting what and where
LOOP TALENT:
Denson Baker is prepping for a feature shooting with director Claire McCarthy. Ryan Eddleston recently wrapped on BBC series Death Valley, and is in prep for the feature film Let’s Love starring Martin Freeman. Lorenzo Levrini is shooting the feature The Kidnapping Of Arabella with director Carolina Cavalli, starring Chris Pine. Iikka Salminen’s feature Sebastian, directed by Mikko Mäkela, was screened at LFF. Bertrand Rocourt is in prep for the feature The Last Moon directed by Sean McConville. Matt North is collaborating with director Ruth Carney again for a BBC series. Emma Dalesman is shooting the feature 90 Feet Ali Asad recently wrapped on the horror flick Bjorn Of The Dead and getting ready to shoot The Tunnel with director William Brooke. Martyna Knitter is shooting a documentary in Europe. Tom Turley is lensing a documentary with previous collaborator Anjali Nayar. Dave Miller has been lighting food commercials. Nick Bennett has been shooting commercials with Ollie
Parsons and Markus Meedt. Chris O’Driscoll has been framing for Soho House. Kyle Macfadzean is back from shooting two documentary projects in Europe and South America, and has been lighting spots. Olly Wiggins has been shooting short form. Marti Guiver worked alongside director Kassandra Powell on an experimental music promo and has been collaborating with director Charlie Scowsill on a commercial project. Natalja Safronova shot
with director Mehek Azmathulla on a TVC shooting in Paris. Paul Mackay recently won an award for Best Cinematography for his work on Morning Star Jon Muschamp has been shooting short form. Chris Fergusson is shooting commercials. Camera operators Jack Smith and Alice Sephton have been operating on short form projects. James Anderson ACO is B-cam on a new series shooting in Cardiff for Bad Wolf. Ben Eeley ACO was camera/ Steadicam operator on Outrageous Michael Eshun-Mensah ACO has been operating dailies on a thriller feature. Sebastien Joly ACO is working in his native France on a Netflix series as a B-cam/Trinity operator. Grant Sandy-Phillips ACO is in prep for a new series for Firebird Pictures. Gary Kent, Laura Seears and Michael Vega have been operating Steadicam on commercials.
PRINCESTONE:
Of the agency’s talented camera/Steadicam operators Junior Agyeman-Owusu ACO is framing on the six-part Sky drama, Under Salt Marsh, written/ directed by Claire Oakley, with second director Mary Nighy, and DP Adam Scarth. Simon Baker ACO Associate BSC is shooting Death By Lightning, a Netflix series about the assassination of President James Garfield, filming in Budapest with DP Adriano Goldman BSC ASC. Michael Carstensen ACO is shooting The Witcher S4 with DP Scott Winig and director Sergio Mimica Gezzan, starring Henry Cavill, Freya Allan and Anya Chalotra. Matt Fisher ACO recently wrapped as Steadicam/AR on Bugonia, a Focus Films feature with DP Robbie Ryan ISC BSC and director Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Emma Stone. Matt has since started shooting Borge & Me for Paramount Films for DP Christopher Norr ASC and director Marc Turtletaub. Rob Hart ACO is also shooting as second unit DP on The Undertow, directed by Jeremy Lovering with Ben Wheeler BSC the DP. Rob also shot dailies as Steadicam operator on Riot Women. Justin Hawkins ACO is currently shooting on The Undertow. James Layton ACO
Associate BSC was B-camera on Young Sherlock with director Guy Ritchie and DP Mark Patten BSC. Dan Nightingale ACO is lensing on The Night Manager S2 in the UK, Columbia and Spain with director Georgi Banks Davies and DP Tim Sidell BSC, starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. Peter Robertson ACO Associate BSC is filming on The Department, with Joe Wright show-running the ten-part series for Paramount/101Films, based on the French series The Bureau and written by Jez Butterworth. The series stars Michael Fassbender. Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere, and the DPs are Jakob Ihre FSF, Balazs Bolygo HSC BSC and Chris Ross BSC. Fabrizio Sciarra ACO SOC GBCT Associate BSC was in Glasgow shooting Blood Of My Blood – Outlander as Steadicam operator. Fabrizio then returned to Ireland to shoot on the final block of Wednesday, directed by Tim Burton and starring Jenna Ortega. Peter Wignall ACO went to Tbilisi to shoot on the feature Hotel Tehran for DP Larry Smith BSC ASC and director Guy Moshe, starring Liam Neeson and Zachary Levi.
Michael Carstensen kneeling for a shot on Gangs Of London S3; Tony Jackson under the umbrella; Matt Fisher at the wheels; and Michael Carstensen at the camera on Gangs Of London S3, with key grip Elliot Polley Key grip, director Kim Hong Sung, and B-cam operator Lars Cox, photo by Phil Smith 1st AC.
Images: (top) Nine Bodies In A Mexican Morgue crew, featuring Elisa Martin Gomez, operator Tony Kay ACO, DP James Mather ISC, Chemo Ferreiro, Guillermo Gil, Martin Roja, Alejandro Marote and Mario Oliva. (Clockwise from left) DP Chris O’Driscoll on a commercial;
Production Technology
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SARA PUTT ASSOCIATES:
Aga Szeliga has been operating B-camera dailies with Greig Fraser ACS ASC on Project Hail Mary Akhilesh Patel operated Steadicam on commercials and promos, working with Bold Studios and Heritage Music. Alastair Rae has wrapped on Brian And Margaret for C4. Andrei Austin recently wrapped on After The Hunt, directed by Luca Guadagnino, where he operated A-camera/Steadicam. Andrew Bainbridge continues with Two Brothers on The Hermit for Amazon, a six-part thriller set in Greece. Ben Mankin has wrapped on The Sandman S2 where he operated B-camera for DP William Baldy. Chris Maxwell continues operating A-camera/Steadicam The Buccaneers S2 for Apple TV+. Dan Evans has wrapped on the sixth and final season of Malory Towers, where he operated B-camera and worked with DP Jason Webber. Danny Bishop has wrapped on The Ballad Of A Small Player, a Netflix feature was filmed in Macau and Hong Kong. Ed Clark is in
prep on Warner Bros.’ on The Fixer, shooting at Leavesden Studios. James Frater has wrapped on Netflix feature Frankenstein with DP Dan Laustsen DFF ASC, releasing next year. James Leigh has completed his work on Mammoth Screen’s Toward Zero with DP Laura Bellingham. Julian Morson continues with Greig Fraser ACS ASC on Project Hail Mary as A-camera on the second unit. Rick Woollard recently worked as second unit DP on Out Of The Dust, as well as operating Steadicam on projects for Park Pictures, Paradox House, Prod Co and Outsider. Tanya Marar did B-camera dailies with Greig Fraser ACS ACS on Project Hail Mary, and picked-up some DP work with the insert unit on Pale View Of The Hills Tom Walden has wrapped on Drama Republic’s Haven, where he operated A-camera on block two with DP Giulio Biccari. Vince McGahon continues on Apple TV+’s formidable series Slow Horses S6 Will Lyte operated A-camera/Steadicam for second unit on The Terminal List Prequel in Hungary, and recently worked on a Harrison Ford/Glenmorangie Whisky commercial in Scotland.
Zoe GoodwinStuart was the A-camera operator on the Doctor Who spin-off The War Between Land And Sea with DP Dale McCready. Giulio Biccari has wrapped on Drama Republic’s Haven, working on block two alongside director Hetti MacDonald. Jan Jonaeus is working on In Flight with director Chris Baugh, a six-parter for Buccaneer that will air in 2025 on C4 . Toby Moore continues for Fred Films on the feature Mother’s Pride with directors Meg Leonard and Nick Moorcroft. Yinka Edward has wrapped Boarders S2 for BBC Three, where he worked with block two director Sam Masud.
Images: (top) Michael Carstensen at the camera, and on the stairs with dolly grip Jamie Starr and A-cam 2nd AC Daisy Allen, on Gangs Of London S3, photos by 1st AC Phil Smith; (centre) Will Lyte; Tony Moore with the bunting; and three shots of Andrew Bainbridge.
WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE
ECHO ARTISTS:
Carlos Catalan has graded Dope Girls directed by Miranda Bowen and Shannon Murphy, to be released later this year. Rachel Clark has finished lighting on CC Emily, directed by Alicia MacDonald for Working Title Films/Parkville Pictures. Andrew Commis ACS is shooting Extra Geography, and had Inside released recently in Australia, a film directed by Charles Williams. Bring Them Down, lensed by Nick Cooke and directed by Chris Andrews, premiered at London Film Festival (LFF). Nick has also been shooting Larkin block three, directed by Borkur Sigthorsson Ruben Woodin Dechamps wrapped on A Life Illuminated with director Tasha Van and recently shot a documentary directed by Rosa Barba. Edgar Dubrovskiy lit a documentary for Keo Films, plus commercials. Will Pugh has been shooting the documentary Flintoff and Rising Phoenix Witches, lensed by Chloë Thomson BSC, directed by Elizabeth Sankey, premiered at LFF. Felix Wiedmann BSC is lighting the series Babies, directed by Stefan Golaszwski. Korsshan Schlauer has graded Odyssey and has been shooting spots. Directed by Sarah Adina Smith, A Knight Of Seven Kingdoms is being shot by Federico Cesca ASK Nadim Carlsen DFF has wrapped on Clerkenwell Films’ six-part series The Death Of Bunny Munro Stuart Bentley BSC, Patrick Meller, Noel Schoolderman and Toby Leary have all been shooting commercials and music videos.
INDEPENDENT TALENT:
Dan Atherton is shooting Riz Ahmed’s new TV show, Quarter Life, directed by Tom George. Ole Birkeland shot an NHS spot with Tom Tagholm. Eben Bolter BSC ASC BSC is shooting on the latest season of Slow Horses Caroline Bridges is prepping on Famous Five S2, directed by Tom
Vaughn. Jordan Buck has been lighting spots for directors Emil Nava, Tom Brown, Roman Rutten and Femke Huurdeman. Jermaine Canute Edwards recently filmed Imran Perretta’s BFI feature, Ish Miguel Carmenes has been lighting ads with directors That Jam, Sye Allen, Lu Xiao, Carly Cussons and Eros V. Chris Clarke collaborated with Rosie Gaunt Mathieson and Adam Wells on commecrials. Ben Davis BSC is shooting The Woman In Cabin 10 with Simon Stone. Anthony Dod Mantle DFF BSC ASC has been shooting commercials with Ben Quinn and Juan Cabral. Toby Elwes was in Colombia shooting Justine Chadwicks next
film, Sierra Madre, starring Kiefer Sutherland. Arni Filippusson ÍKS has started shooting on The Hermit, directed by Daniel Netthiem. Michael Filocamo is lensing The Witness, directed by Alex Winckler. Sam Goldie recently wrapped on Karen Pirie S2 with Director Amanda Blue. Catherine Goldschmidt BSC is shooting Out There with Simon Ryninks. Rick Joaquim SASC lit Bad Influencers in South Africa. Billy Kendall has been shooting commercials and music promos with directors Bedroom, Charlie Rees and Relta. Eric Kress DFF is framing on Silo S3 with director Amber Templemore. Suzie Lavelle recently
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wrapped on Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy and the shot a commercial with Traktor in Toronto. John Mathieson BSC is shooting Jurassic World: Rebirth with director Gareth Edwards. Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC is collaborating with Lynne Ramsey on Die, My Love Bani Mendy lensed on Death In Paradise S14 with director Jennie Paddon. Mark Patten BSC is lighting Young Sherlock Stephan Pehrsson BSC is prepping for The Donovans Tat Radcliffe has been shooting commercials with directors MJ Delaney and Ninian Doff. James Rhodes is shooting James McAvoy’s California Schemin’ George Richmond BSC is in Budapest on Now You See Me 3 Christopher Ross BSC is on The Department. Martin Ruhe ASC is lighting The Department with Grant Heslov. David Ungaro has recently wrapped on Department Q with director Scott Frank. Mark Waters is shooting Grantchester directed by Rob Evans. Erik Wilson BSC is in LA on Bart Layton’s Crime 101 Mark Wolf has started shooting on Marc Munden’s Lord Of The Flies Linda Wu has just joined the agency. She was the second unit DP on We Live In Time, and her short Jellyfish & Lobster recently won the BAFTA for Best British Short.
WORLDWIDE PRODUCTION AGENCY:
Stephen Murphy BSC ISC is shooting the horror feature Primate from Paramount Pictures and director Johannes Roberts. Mattias Nyberg BSC continues shooting with director Robin Wright on The Girlfriend for Amazon. Meanwhile, Paul Morris has wrapped his block with director Andrea Harkin. Tony Slater Ling BSC shooting C4’s The Undeclared War S2 with director Paul McGuigan. After recce-ing in Jamaica, Pedro Cardillo ABC returned to London to prep on Sky’s limited series Inheritance Narayan Van Maele has started principle photography on Blumhouse Productions’ newest horror feature Soulm8te with director Kate Dolan. Ruairí O’Brien ISC BSC has wrapped additional photography with director Leigh Whannell on the Blumhouse horror Wolf Man for Universal. Joel Honeywell is lighting the Netflix feature/documentary Ghost Baz Irvine ISC BSC has graded the upcoming second series of Silo for Apple TV+. Dan Holland joined the crew of Mutiny starring Jason Statham to shoot splinter unit. Both Jamie D. Ramsay SASC and Adam Bentel SASC continue shooting Working Title and Studio Canal’s highlyanticipated war film Pressure, with Jamie leading the main unit, and Adam shooting second unit. PJ Dillon ISC ASC continues on Wednesday S2 with director Tim Burton. Anna Patarakina FSF continues shooting on Down Cemetery Road for 60Forty and Apple TV+ with
WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE
Hard to believe
Opposite: Ruben Woodin Dechamps shooting in the city; and Korsshan Schlauer in goggles and facemask. This page: a trio of photos of DP Jaime Ackroyd shooting on Glenrothan, directed by Brian Cox.
WHO, WHAT, WHEN & WHERE
director Samuel Donovan. Ed Moore BSC is lensing on Apple TV+ series Hijack S2 with director Jim Field Smith. Catherine Derry continues shooting the first block of the new Netflix series Out Of The Dust with director Jim Loach. Nathalie Pitters is filming Hat Trick’s How To Get to Heaven From Belfast with director George Kane for Netflix. After a successful second unit shoot for Amazon’s next season of The Terminal List, Matt Windon finished-off the series as main unit DP on the final episode. Playground TV and PBS’s new series Maigret continues its international shoot, with Emily Almond Barr leading the main unit. Jake Polonsky BSC shot additional photography on a Richard Avedon documentary for Imagine Docs and director Ron Howard. Callan Green ACS NZCS has concluded on the action feature Nobody 2 with director Timo Tjahjanto for 87North/ Universal Pictures. The BBC’s new drama This City is Ours wrapped in Liverpool with Joel Devlin BSC finishing the shoot with director Saul Dibb. Richard Donnelly ISC has finished on the final block of Netflix’s The Witcher S5 with director Alex Garcia Lopez. Scott Winig remains on the next block as the main unit DP and Robert Binnall joining to shoot second unit. Manoel Ferreira SASC worked on the five-part limited series Atomic as second unit director/DP with Pulse Films for Sky. Jaime Ackroyd has finished his work on Brian Cox’s directorial debut Glenrothan in Scotland. Vanessa Whyte lit the feature, The Nest, with director Paul Andrew Williams. Ziga Zupancic travelled to Mallorca to shoot Kia campaign with You Are Here director Joshua Vii. Thomas Tyson-Hole shot with director Ben Lankester and Form London in Edinburgh for a Debbies spot. Sy Turnbull shot the latest TVC for VHI with Furlined director Niall O’Brien in Dublin. Stefan Yap was in Dubai with director Chris Ranson and Truffle Films to shoot Puma’s latest ad. Jake Gabbay shot with director Aube Perrie and Pulse in Bucharest for a Tonal spot. Kanamé Onoyama wrapped for Aviva with Novemba and Academy, and then shot with Partizan director Michael Gracey for Argos. Courtney J. Bennett shot in Sofia for JPMorgan with Charlie Sarsfield at Untold Studios. Carl Burke shot with director Ozzie Pullin and The Production Factory for Freemans Brandon Hoeg flew to Spain with New Land director Leonn Ward for Lego’s latest spot.
WIZZO & CO:
The agency welcomes Maximiliaan Dierickx
SBC to its roster, who recently shot the opening block of noir thriller Virdee alongside director Mark Tonderai. Congratulations to Henry Gill who was Young British Arrow nominated for his work on a commercial directed by Jess Colquhoun. Tim Sidell BSC continues to shoot The Night Manager 2 directed by Georgie Banks Davies. Luke Bryant has graded The Seven Dials Mystery directed by Chris Sweeney. Gary Shaw has completed the grade on Coolie, directed by Arvin Chen. Franklin Dow is grading Sky’s The Gunpowder Seige directed by Mark Everest. Nicola Daley ACS is shooting the final series of The Handmaid’s Tale, directed by Elisabeth Moss. Steven Ferguson is lighting a continuing drama for Apple+. Simon Stolland has graded Nick Love’s feature, Marching Powder Ryan Kernaghan ISC is shooting Trespasses, directed by Dawn Shadforth. Ashley Barron ACS recently wrapped on the opening block of How To Get To Heaven From Belfast, directed by Michael Lennox. Charlie Goodger has graded Big Boys S3. Scott Coulter has completed the DI on The Feud Susanne Salavati is shooting a feature in Sweden, directed by Josephine Bornebusch. Oli Russell has graded The Gold S2. Nick Dance BSC is shooting an embargoed documentary. Carmen Pellon Brussosa lit Disability Benefits, directed by Sophie King. Jan Richter-Friis DFF has done the final colour on Netflix Original La Palma Chas Appeti is filming an embargoed project. Hamish Anderson is lensing a documentary. Aaron Reid is shooting Nicôle Lecky’s The Perfect Town alongside director Toby Macdonald. Darius Shu shot days on the feature Last Days Karl Oskarsson IKS has graded Cheaters S2. Christophe Nuyens SBC is shooting an embargoed drama. Matthias Pilz continues on a documentary. Sverre Sørdal FNF is prepping a feature. Fede Alfonzo shot with Will Thacker, Aman K Sahota with Emily Freda Sharp, and Murren Tullett with Louis Bhose. Theo Garland lit for Dom & Nic, and Joe Douglas with Harry Cauty. David Procter BSC lensed for Thor, Ben Magahy for Zac Ella and Dmytro Nedria for Sam Preece. Arran Green shot with Daps, and Will Bex with Guy de la Palme.
UNITED AGENTS
Remi Adefarasin OBE BSC is shooting My Oxford Year with director Iain Morris for Netflix. Søren Bay DFF has graded the Outlander prequel Blood Of My Blood. Adam Etherington BSC is a new client. Philippe Kress DFF is shooting Out Of The Dust for Netflix with director Philippa Langdale. John Lee BSC has graded Band Of Spies for Archery Pictures. Mark Nutkins’ short, Lullaby, has been nominated for a BSC Club Short Film Award for Best Cinematography. Donna Wade’s short, Fuzzy Feelings, won an Emmy for Outstanding Commercial. Danny Cohen BSC is filming series four of Slow Horses Damian Paul Daniel is filming the art fraud documentary For The Money Matt Lewis has completed the Di colour grade on Jack Thorne’s Adolescence, directed by Philip Barantin. Laurie Rose BSC graded Mad Fabulous. Bet Rourich AEC prepping on Rosebunchpunning for Karim Ainouz. John Sorapure is directing and lighting second unit on Project Hail Mary. Simon Tindall has graded Sally Wainwright’s series Riot Women. Ollie
Downey BSC is lensing The Fires, directed by Ugla Hauksdóttir, has started prep for Silo S3 and has graded the series Reunion Laurens De Geyter SBC is lighting the Belgian feature, Foley Man, with the director Frank van Passel Sam Heasman has graded the series Lazarus with director Wayne Yip. Si Bell BSC is prepping to light blocks two and five 2 Paramount+ series, The Donovans, for director Anthony Byrne. Sam Chiplin is lighting block two of Netflix miniseries East Of Eden for director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. Charlotte Bruus Christensen ASC is shooting the feature H Is For Hawk for director Philippa Lowthorpe. Neus Ollé AEC BSC is framing the feature Amoeba in Singapore for director Siyou Tan. David Raedeker BSC is getting ready to shoot the feature & Sons for director Pablo Trapero. Niels Reedtz Johansen is prepping the feature Sigmund for director Hayley Easton Street. Ed Rutherford BSC is shooting on block two of Under Salt Marsh with director Mary Nighy. Juan Sarmiento G will lens director Simón Mesa Soto’s feature, A Poet, in the new year, and then will light director Kaouther Ben Hania’s feature You Shall Not Make An Image Ben Wheeler BSC is lighting for director Jeremy Lovering on The Undertow, a series by Complete Fiction for Netflix. Alex Barber shot a Visit Britain commercial around the UK, via Smuggler, and a Hyundai spot with director Jeroen Mol at All Of Us. Laurent Barès has wrapped on The Hermit for director Lisa Mulchay. Alfie Biddle is shooting Coldwater with director Andrew Cummings in Glasgow. Philipp Blaubach BSC is prepping for the feature Fackham Hall with director Jim O’Hanlon. Simon Chaudoir collaborated with Ben Whitehouse on an TVC for Go Compare via Stink, and lit a spot for director Dan Opsal at Hungryman. Brendan Galvin is shooting the feature Mutiny for director JeanFrancois Richet. Julian Hohndorf was in Belgium for an Orange ad with director Julie Navarro, via Big Productions, Paris. Stephen Keith-Roach recently lit a Morrisons ad for Michael Gracey, via Partizan. Ali Little lit a Reckitts TVC for director Michael J Ferns, via Shutterstock Studios. Tim Maurice Jones BSC is shooting the feature Flavia De Luce with Bharat Nalluri. Alex Melman recently shot a Sky Vegas ad with Sean Thompson for WhoWotWhy. Diana Olifirova worked on a Hilton project with director Florence Poppy Deary in Budapest and Casablanca, through Biscuit. Simon Richards recently filmed an M&S spot for director Gus Filgate at Bite, and a Santander ad with Guy Manwaring, via Merman. Miles Ridgway shot the feature Love, Lanre for director Stephané Alexandre. Chris Sabogal lit a spot for director Chris Hewitt at Knucklehead. Glynn Speeckaert ASC AFC lensed an Albert Heijn ad for Matias Schut in Slovenia for Holy Fools, Netherlands. Marcel Zyskind was in Istanbul with Depo Films, shooting a commercial for Adam Hashemi.
MCKINNEY MACARTNEY MANAGEMENT: Stuart Biddlecombe BSC recently wrapped Mr Burton for BBC Wales, and is prepping The Handmaid’s Tale S6 for Hulu in Toronto. Ben Butler and Alessandra Scherillo have been lensing commercials. Sergio Delgado BSC is shooting All Her Fault for Peacock in Australia. Gavin Finney BSC completed additional photography on episodes 3 and 4 of The Diplomat S2 for Netflix. Jean Philippe Gossart AFC is shooting on Silo S3. Steve Lawes is working on NCIS Europe in Budapest. Dale Elena McCready BSC NZCS is shooting The War Between The Land And Sea for Disney. Sam McCurdy ASC BSC is filming Peacemaker S2 for HBO Max. Andy McDonnell is shooting Boarders S2 for BBC Three. Richard Mott recently wrapped on Silent Witness S28 for BBC One. Richard Stoddard is shooting The Guest for BBC.
Images: DP Jaime Ackroyd with Brian Cox directing on Glenrothan
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Looks like a traditional bulb, works like a professional luminaire. Designed to filmmakers’ requirements for practicals on camera, delivering perfect skin tones and the same controls as any other wireless DMX fixture. LunaBulb expands Astera’s smart ecosystem with the battery-powered PrepCase. Let your creativity shine wherever there’s a lamp socket.
Classic to Slim Look
Choose between a classic and diffused look or a slim and brighter hotspot.
PrepCase Kit
The quickest way to set up 8 bulbs: assign DMX address, pre-configure dimming and color, pair them at once.
Preplnlay Kit
Simply add PrepInlays to your custom flightcase to use and prepare LunaBulbs in volume.
PRIME MOVER
By Natasha Block Hicks
Michael Eshun-Mensah ACO is on a weekend break from filming dailies on Amazon MGM Studios’ comedy drama Quarter Life, created by Riz Ahmed, and reminiscing how – as a child – Saturday mornings were sacred.
“I’d wake up really early and binge-watch Bucky O’Hare,” he recalls. “I dreamed of becoming an animator.”
Resisting family pressure to study either medicine or law, Eshun-Mensah enrolled for the BA in Animation at The University For The Creative Arts (UCA) in the mid-2000s. He experimented with techniques such as stop-motion, claymation and Maya 3D animation, but some work experience on Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, dir. Wes Anderson, DP Tristan Oliver BSC) made him reconsider his initial ambitions.
“I discovered that I didn’t like the broken-down process of being an animator,” Eshun-Mensah reveals.
This triggered a period of soul-searching,
myself how to operate it,” he relates. “Eventually I had experimented with every kind of shot and discovered everything that could go wrong.”
When Outsider TV approached Panavision for a precise, repeatable camera system for a DFS commercial, Eshun-Mensah and the TechnoDolly were tentatively offered-up.
Operating is the best seat on-set
“Everyone was nervous,” recalls Eshun-Mensah, “but we nailed the shot. And when the DP, Theo Garland, recognised how easily reprogrammable the TechnoDolly could be, he was converted.”
The TechnoDolly’s reputation started to pick up, with Eshun-Mensah’s name attached to it.
He was sent to Spain to support TechnoDollytrained operator Thomas Hübener on a Renault Clio commercial under the “very meticulous” DP Glynn Speeckaert ASC AFC, a successful assignment which sparked a continuing collaboration and friendship between the two TechnoDolly operators. Alan ‘Wolfie’ Smith, director of Panavision Grip & Remote Systems was also vocalising his support for EshunMensah’s expertise.
“He’d say to potential clients, ‘If you have any questions, all I’m going to do is go and ask Michael, so you might as well go straight to him.’ Wolfie told me to keep my head down and ears peeled: advice I’ve stuck to as a camera operator. I don’t superimpose myself on the scene, I just watch how things are working and then slot in to keep the day ticking over.”
As a vehicle for his burgeoning career, the TechnoDolly proved itself to have flexibility and range. Eshun-Mensah visited film, commercial and high-end drama sets across the UK and abroad, collaborating alongside DPs, 1st ACs and grips on projects such as Paddington 2 (2017, dir. Paul King, DP Erik Wilson BSC), Jungle Cruise (2021, dir. Jaume Collet-Serra, DP Flavio Martínez Labiano AEC) and seasons 5 - 8 of Game Of Thrones (2015-2019), which Eshun-Mensah states was “surreal”.
“I never imagined I could take the TechnoDolly on a production like Game Of Thrones where they would use it,” he reveals, “but it wasn’t a case of capturing one novelty shot; they kept on giving us more and more challenging things to do. I particularly enjoyed attaching a flame thrower to the front of the TechnoDolly!”
during which Eshun-Mensah helped his director-friend Ebele Tate with her London Calling short Cocoa (2010, DP Brian Fawcett), where he met gaffer Alex Stevenson, who subsequently invited him as a spark onto some commercials, then a feature production.
“I found I preferred the hands-on nature of liveaction filmmaking.”
Eshun-Mensah’s attention kept drifting over to the camera department, so he approached Panavision for work experience. Camera being extremely popular, Eshun-Mensah was directed towards the “very welcoming” grip department who offered him a technician’s position which allowed him to take up freelancing work when it was available.
At Panavision, Eshun-Mensah discovered a littleused TechnoDolly, which he realised – having mined YouTube for information – he could control solo to build himself a showreel.
“I plotted moves, created sequences and taught
MICHAEL ESHUN-MENSAH
When Eshun-Mensah accompanied the TechnoDolly onto Beauty And The Beast (2017, dir. Bill Condon, DP Tobias Schliessler ASC), he found himself working directly with 2nd Unit DP Dino Parks.
“Beauty And The Beast was very technical, especially the ‘Be Our Guest’ musical sequence which had around 80 set-ups, but to see the result –knowing that much of what you see on-screen was actually done ‘in camera’ – was really cool.”
The TechnoDolly was speedy compared to traditional motion control and when Eshun-Mensah was booked onto commercials, he often completed the sequences ahead of schedule.
“Then the TechnoDolly could be used like a regular crane with a remote head,” he reveals. “If the DP wasn’t comfortable with the wheels or a joystick, they’d ask me to operate.”
Several years later, other camera operators such as Chris Plevin ACO on Game Of Thrones and Peter Taylor ACO SOC on Mowgli (2018, dir. Andy Serkis, DP Michael Seresin, ONZM BSC), all recommended Steadicam as a way that EshunMensah could transition solely into camera operating.
He undertook a Steadicam course under Danny Hallett at Tiffen, and after six months practising with a borrowed Master sled, invested in a second-hand Shadow.
“The Steadicam didn’t give me one big break, it was more like lots of mini fractures,” divulges Eshun- Eshun-Mensah. “It was a slow burn, doing lots of dailies. Dailies are useful though, because you meet lots of people and can remind crews you’ve worked with before of your new role, like a pop-up advertisement.”
Eshun-Mensah was taken aback when Tom North, a key grip he’d met whilst working at Panavision Grips and who he’d operating the TechnoDolly alongside on Breathe (2017, dir. Andy Serkis, DP Robert Richardson ASC), put his name forward for Steadicam on Gangs Of London
(2022, DPs Martijn van Broekhuizen NSC, Laurent Barès AFC, Petrus Sjövik).
“I played it cool,” confesses Eshun-Mensah, “but I was desperate not to disappoint anyone.”
The schedule had plenty of single-shot ‘oners’ to test him, including a lengthy multiple-character scene featuring a gangster moving into his new mansion.
“I’m still pleased with how that one came out,” Eshun-Mensah reports.
“With camera and Steadicam operating, for me it is about observation. Sometimes I view the monitor
I’m proud of my achievements, but feel my journey has only just begun
like it’s a TV screen, and I’m watching the show as a fan, framing the shot as I would like to see a scene like this play out in front of me in the cinema or at home.”
Eshun-Mensah discovered that the nerves of steel he forged from his time with the TechnoDolly put him in good stead to take on camera operating.
“There was a VFX night sequence we did on Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021, dir. Andy Serkis, DP Robert Richardson ASC) where cars were dropping out of the sky into the TechnoDolly’s wake as it tracked back,” he relates. “If the timing was off by a millisecond, the camera and Technodolly would be destroyed. Everyone was visibly nervous, but I stayed ‘poker face’. When they called action, everything worked as it should, and it was amazing.
“It helps now, in a high-pressure job, having done shots like that where a million pounds was on the line.”
DP Laurent Barès from Gangs Of London, called on Eshun-Mensah again for B-camera/Steadicam on Apple TV+ crime series Criminal Record (2024, DPs Barès, Jan Jonaeus), starring Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo.
“Laurent gave me the freedom to frame and shoot how I wanted, which was nice,” Eshun-Mensah relates.
“It’s also interesting to work on other projects with people who have contrasting approaches on how to shoot things; it rounds you out as an operator. Some DPs and directors I’ve worked with can be very rigorous.”
Longer contracts for Eshun-Mensah on B-camera/Steadicam are becoming more frequent, such as episodes 1-4 of Mr Bates vs. The Post Office (2024, dir. James Strong, DP Matt Gray BSC) and episodes 5-8 of Queenie (2024, dir. Makalla McPherson, DP Nathalie Pitters).
With operating, Eshun-Mensah has found – for now – the road he wishes to travel.
“I’m proud of my achievements so far, but I feel that my journey has only just begun,” he remarks.
“I wouldn’t change the way I entered the industry, or the departments I navigated through, because of the people I met early-on in my career and the experiences that have shaped me into the person I am today.
“Operating is the best seat on-set,” he continues. “Often the stress and politics of filmmaking happen behind you. You can just enjoy collaborating with the actors and the other departments to make the scene work.”
When he’s off-duty, Eshun-Mensah practises Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, for its physical and mental conditioning. And – even though he didn’t make it his career – animation is still a big feature in his life.
“I watch it with my kids,” he says warmly, “it is one of my biggest joys.”
THE POWER OF LIGHT
Selected Filmography (so far)
Music videos: Mission To Mars by New Seven (2024, dir. Daniela Stephan). Shorts: A Modest Agony (2024, dir. Anton Blaubach), Passer/By (2024, dir. Benjamin Sivo), Thread Tension (2023, dir. Ruby Mastrodimos), Brothers Keepers (2022, dir. Fergus Neville), Bona Vacantia (2021, dir. Shezah Salam) and The Vagina Musical (2020, dir. Abigail Quinlan).
Accolades: winner of Doug Milsome Best Cinematography Award at British Independent Film Festival 2024 for Thread Tension. Nominations: Best Student Short at Zsigmond Vilmos Film Festival 2024 for Passer/By ; 2023 Best Student Short at Norwich, Bolton, Beeston, London Indian, Tasveer South Asian and New Renaissance Film Festivals, for Bona Vacantia
When did you discover you wanted to be a cinematographer?
Cinematography was an unexpected path that unfolded. As a child, I would lay in bed at night, reimagine entire films and recut them, fitting them to
my fantasy. I thought actors were the heart of films, so I took the main role in every school play and even acted in the first musical in Mumbai as a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. Soon after, I discovered the director’s role and, as a teenager, brought friends together and made films.
My first job came at 16 when I became a director’s assistant for a Hindi TV soap opera. That’s where I first encountered a DP in the wild – a man lost between the camera and lights and an army of men each anchored to a different light. There was little, if any, female presence on-set, and it was all too easy to feel there was no space for me in that cosmos.
Around the same time, I taught myself photography using my grandfather’s 35mm Canon camera, with a broken light meter. Back then, film photography was dying, with only one lab in Mumbai processing negatives, so I learned through trial and error and the Sunny 16 rule.
Given my tendency to be incredibly critical of my own photography, I was surprised to find myself
drawn towards cinematography, instead of direction, when I later pursued a masters at London Film School (LFS). With every project, I felt more and more drawn towards the camera. Direction made me feel isolated when I was in the chair. My urge was to translate ideas into images. Maybe I have been practicing cinematography my whole life!
If you don’t ask, the answer is always no
Where did you train?
Discovering the cinematography itch at LFS, I dove into any set I could find, working in camera or lighting. Most of my training happened on-set, where we all made plenty of mistakes, but had the freedom to experiment without the fear of failure. While LFS provided valuable resources and a platform, my biggest asset was the network I built – people who are now life-long friends and incredible collaborators too, who I hope to continue growing into the industry with.
The skills I gained at LFS allowed me a degree of confidence, but it was only when I started trainee-ing that I learned the professional discipline required of a camera/lighting technician. The advanced techniques, equipment and fast-paced environment of a professional set was daunting, but the learning curve was exciting. I love the growth that comes with every job.
Who are your industry role models?
James Friend BSC ASC. I met James in 2020 at a pre-light he was overseeing for LFS, around the time he was the Education Head for the BSC. I had no idea who he was, nor the impact he would have on my life. I spent all afternoon picking his brain about the first proper short I was about to shoot, The Vagina
Musical. He was passionate about the idea and gave me so much feedback. To my surprise and disbelief, he generously also offered me his own set of Tribe7 lenses for the shoot.
James now lovingly calls me his “padawan” which feels appropriate, especially since he filmed The Acolyte. He has been the guide and mentor I needed and consider myself fortunate to have him.
Give us three adjectives that best describe you and your approach to cinematography?
Tenderness. Emotion. Instinct. If Wong Kar-wai, Abbas Kirostami and Lynne Ramsay were to somehow have a love-child, I would be that child. I am not hugely technical, and realise my strength lies in the tenderness with which I approach a story. I consider the frame as a canvas and the camera, lights and mise-en-scene my tools to paint a picture.
I rely heavily on instinct and emotion to lead and guide me through constructing scenes. There’s a sweet space that lies between real life and fiction and that is where I like to tread. My approach lies closer to capturing genuine and authentic moments rather than constructing them.
What are your favourite films?
In The Mood For Love (2000, dir. Wong Kar-wai, DP Chris Doyle) made me fall in love with cinema. It led to a long-running, almost borderline obsession with Chris Doyle and his work with Wong Kar-wai and that era of neon-noir films from Hong Kong in the ‘90s. It’s a masterclass in craftily manipulating time, using the medium so skilfully to transport the audience into its world, immersing me completely in the plight of the characters.
Subsequently the works of Chantel Akerman, Celine Sciamma, Bradford Young ASC, Natasha Braier ADF ASC and Lynne Ramsay have all been pivotal in moulding my artistic pursuits.
What quote / mantra do you live by?
“If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.” What is one thing you wish you knew when you were starting out?
I feel I was a lot braver starting-out than I am now. This might have been ignorance that I confused for bravado, but I really wish I could retain some of that in my current self. Growing up and “adulting” puts a lot more into perspective.
I want to be unapologetic about occupying and making space for myself in this industry. If there’s something I tell myself for days when I feel like an imposter, or that I’m not worthy or that things don’t seem to be moving, it is to be patient, to believe in my passion and trust in the power of light to take me where I need to be.
Where do you get your visual inspirations?
My favourite hobby is people-watching and most of my inspiration comes from that.
Tell us your most hilarious faux pas?
My first time ever as a camera operator on a feature, I was asked if I knew how to operate a Ronin. Having had a training day at film school, and with the
support of an experienced first AC, I impulsively said that I could (fake it till you make it?). This led to multiple sequences being shot using the Ronin, something my back never forgave me for and which should have been done by an experienced Steadicam operator. What’s the hardest shot/thing you’ve had to light/frame?
One of the hardest set-ups I’ve had to light was for a film where the director wanted to use Steadicam extensively to evoke the ghostly feeling of death and repentance. We decided to shoot on particular scene in a single continuous take, drawing inspiration from Béla Tarr’s long, deliberate shots with subtle camera movements that shift at key moments.
I love the growth that comes with every job
Halfway through the scene, we wanted to break from this restraint and let the camera take on a life of its own, shifting focus dynamically and subjectively to different parts of the set. This required me to light the entire room for 360-degree movement, which was a huge challenge.
To make things even tougher, three sides of the room had large windows, and we only had about three hours to pre-light the entire space. The combination of limited time, complex camera movement, and needing to control natural light, made it one of the most challenging set-ups I’ve faced.
Tell us your hidden talent/party trick?
I am a polyglot. I can speak six different languages, including Spanish.
What’s the best freebie you’ve ever bagged?
James Friend gifted me his copy of the BSC’s Preserving The Vision. It sits fondly on my coffee table as a reminder of my ambition to feature in its next editions. In the entire history of filmmaking, which film would you love to have shot?
Y Tu Mamá También (2001, dir. Alfonso Cuarón, Dp Emmanual Lubezki AMC ASC) is masterpiece, showcasing the styles of the young Cuarón and Chivo.
What fascinates me is how it blends the personal with the socio-political, using the road-trip format to explore friendship, sexuality and class disparity. I wouldn’t want to remake it, but I’d love to create a sequel or similarly inspired story, deep diving into a country’s culture, using naturalism to make it feel raw and intimate.
What are your aspirations for the future?
I am seeking an agent who can recognise my potential and help propel me toward projects that challenge me creatively. My goal is to continue evolving as a cinematographer, working with diverse people and teams and to be a relevant contributor to cinema. What is your URL/website address?
Stills from: (this page) Mission To Mars; Twelfth Night Afternoon, Thread Tension; and (opposite) Passer/By.
GREAT GEAR GUIDE•
COOL TOOLS…
Reporting & photos by Ron Prince
APUTURE
Tim Kang, principal engineer for imaging applications at Aputure, gave us the low-down on the Storm 1200x, the first in a new generation of lights. Chief among its features is the new BLAIR light engine (Blue/Lime/Amber/Indigo/Red), developed by Kang, which produces outstanding full white spectrum light, with all emitters contributing across a wide CCT range (250010,000), and fine-tune adjustability of +/- Green plus other colours.
Compared to traditional bi-colour technology, the result is a brighter, better-quality of white light, with the Indigo emitter outputting near-ultraviolet light like real daylight. Clothes, skin and other
ARRI
ARRI introduced the SkyPanel S60 Pro, with gaffer/senior trainer Craig Gambell, who has worked on commercials, features TV series over the last decade and specialises in high-speed lighting, giving demos most ably.
SkyPanel S60 Pro is an update to the now discontinued SkyPanel S60 Classic. The new softlight comes with the power supply built-in, wireless CRMX and Bluetooth, DMX and Ethernet in and out, and improved dimming . It is also lighter, at 1.6kg, making it easier to transport/manage with fewer
ASTERA
natural surfaces react to this light in ways that traditional LED lights cannot replicate. Using the mix of five coloured emitters, the Storm 1200x maintains its output across its colour temperature range while matching natural light more easily.
With its ProLock Locking Bowens mount, it can accept modifiers to become a Fresnel, a soft light, a projector, or a hard open-face par. The Storm 1200x offers an IP65 weather rating, and a full range of connectivity, with CRMX, DMX in and out, sACN and ArtNet over etherCON, and Sidus. One to watch!
cables and rigging materials needed. All of the front and yoke accessories – egg crates and snoots – that users might have purchased for the outgoing S60 Classic are compatible with the new lamp.
SkyPanel S60 Pro is set-up with four LED zones
for improved pixel control, colour accuracy, and light distribution. With its RGBW LED light engine, the soft light is now 20% brighter, can easily adapt different styles, whilst enhanced low-dimming performance allows users to achieve smooth, flicker-free dimming at lower levels. Based on LiOS software, SkyPanel Pro users will benefit from the latest software features such as the ARRI Alexa Modes.
Building on the success of its LunaBulb, Astera has expanded creative/technical potential with the LunaBulb Accessory Kit, which incorporates a range of snap-on (four of each) blockers, diffusors, reflectors and lenses within a single, lightweight portable case. These were shown to us by Ben Díaz, head of product management. The LunaBulb is an advanced LED luminaire, but maintains the shape of a traditional Tungsten bulb. Each LunaBulb Accessory Kit includes LunaShades –two blockers and two diffusors – inspired by James Friend BSC ASC, which change the direction of the light or create a more diffused appearance. LunaReflectors increase the light output of the
ATOMOS
Marketing director, Steve Wise, gave us the low-down on two new products, one quite a departure from the company’s usual fare. First-off, and released earlier this year, the Ninja Phone is a 10-bit video co-processor that lets you record/monitor from professional HDMI cameras on to the OLED displays that feature asstandard in smart phones and tablets. The Ninja Phone encodes the camera’s HDMI signal to ProRes or
LunaBulb by reflecting it forward and narrowing the beam angle. The domed LunaDiffusor not only diffuses light but also maintains the same look and diffusion density as the existing Astera NYX Bulb.
LunaLens is an optical device with a slight diffusion that is added to the LunaReflector, and which imitates the front look of a Par 16 bulb. It blends colours effectively whilst offering only a slight reduction in the output of the LunaReflector. The white snoot can be screwed onto the LunaReflector to avoid glare in-camera or the viewer’s eyes. Gaffers, lighting designers and DPs are going to enjoy these new tools!
H.265, both formats at 10-bit quality for HDR, and the encoded video is sent via Ninja Phone’s USB-C output the phone/tablet’s USB-C port. Used with an iPhone 15 or 16, the in-built chip decodes the pristine camera sensor image to display on the high-resolution screen, with zero latency thanks
to Atomos’ efficient pipeline.
Also on show was Sun Dragon, a waterproof, wireless DMX, 2000 lumen, five-colour RGBAW LED, mount-anywhere, lightweight rope light, measuring 5m in length – available in two flavours, diffused and non-diffused. A CRI Ra >= 97 and TLCI of 96 are designed to produce faithful reproduction of the entire light sun spectrum. Wise says the plan is to give Atomos users control of the Sun Dragon from their Ninja or Shogun units, providing a useful tool especially in HDR productions.
BLACKMAGIC
Our visit to Blackmagic was quite something, where the new URSA Cine 17K 65 was without doubt an eyecatcher! The extremely large format camera – with a 2.2:1, 17520 x 8040, 65mm, RGBW sensor and a pixel pitch of 2.8 microns – offers 16 stops dynamic range, a built-in cloud storage module with 8TB of memory, interchangeable lens mounts and more.
The camera is still under development and won’t start shipping before the end of 2024, but that didn’t stop technical sales director, Craig Heffernan, from giving us a great overview.
The URSA Cine 17K 65 has the same camera body, profile, size and weight, and uses the same connectivity, monitoring, battery and power systems as its URSA Cine 12K cousin, but the key difference
CREAMSOURCE
Freelance lighting technician, Dan Walters ICLS, who’s been working on the latest Mission: Impossible movies, gave us a whistlestop tour of the powerful CreamOS v3.0 firmware. The headliner for CreamOS v3.0 is the multi-lingual web interface which lets users manage all connected Vortex fixtures from any web browser.
Especially handy for large-scale arrays, this interface simplifies control with: a discovery feature, that automatically detects and lists all connected fixtures, enabling fixture identification and management; bulk configuration, allowing users to adjust multiple fixtures simultaneously, and change settings such as dimming curve, fan mode, colour space, DMX modes and addresses; remote
DISGUISE
Disguise is powering spectacular visual experiences in live events, virtual production and broadcast around the world, and whilst IBC is primarily a broadcast show, Camilla Powell, the company’s head of product, took time-out to cover how the company is embracing film/ TV cinematography and lighting into its product developments.
Colour consistency is critical to maintaining the visual integrity of any LED wall/volume project, and Disguise’s native support for the OpenColourIO (OCIO) pipeline within its virtual production workflow, offers a seamless and standardised solution for managing complex colour workflows, and marks a significant step for filmmakers wanting colour accuracy and consistency.
Whether working in Unreal Engine, Maya,
MOTION IMPOSSIBLE
Founded in 2014 by wildlife
DP Rob Drewett and product design engineer Andy Nancollis, the Bristol-based company is recognised for its clever camera movement and stabilisation technologies, and had its full range of Agito remote-controlled systems on-display in celebration of its tenth anniversary.
Chief amongst these was the Agito Gen 2, the company’s nextgeneration system featuring an advanced Core and Master Controller, set to ship around now. It supports up to 100kg (220lbs) total payload, with speed ranges from 1.5mm/s (0.05in/s) to 27mph (43.4km/h), and
is that whopping sensor which can capture up to 60fps at 17K. The camera was shown with Leitz
Thalia and the new Tribe7 Blackwing Ezana lenses (pictured), and will be available with either ARRI LPL or Hasselblad mounts and industrystandard Lemo and Fischer connections.
The URSA Cine 17K 65 is designed to give highend digital productions, already shooting in 65mm/
or other popular film production software, users can now maintain a standardised colour workflow across platforms, eliminating the need for manual colour matching. This means fewer discrepancies in colour across devices, ensuring that the final product matches the original creative vision.
Other advances include support for Anamorphic lenses, to crop the camera feed so that DPs don’t need to concern themselves with black bars and de-squeezing, plus additional options for plates/backdrops in LED volumes –such a 2.5D, connections to AI-generating tools like Kubrick, radiance field experimentation, and content engines including Chaos’s Project Arena, which aims to give directors, cinematographers, virtual art departments and VFX teams fully raytraced environments for LED walls.
offers silent steering/ drive mechanisms, a turning circle of 2.4m (7.9ft), direct Ethernet connection for remote operation/ management, plus IP54 weather resistance.
specialist capture device alongside existing technology, as well as being entry point to large format production, but on a budget.
management from any location, ideal for hard-toreach set-ups; and troubleshooting, to identify and resolve issues directly from the web interface with instant feedback from the fixtures. The firmware offers flexible methods for updates and Vortex users can update all connected fixtures simultaneously. CreamOS v3.0 also introduces native support for various colour spaces including uncalibrated (RAW) RGBW, calibrated RGBW, sRGB, Rec.709, D65-P3, DCI-P3, display P3, and Rec. 2020. Lights can be set to a specific colour space directly from the fixture, using the Control channel (accessed via standard DMX, CRMX or sACN), or the new web interface, ensuring precise colour reproduction, critical in virtual production environments.
Drewett reported that MagTrax, launched three years ago, has really taken-off. The system uses a magnetic strip, which can be laid directly on the floor or concealed, enabling for all sorts of linear/curved track
configurations for an Agito dolly to move along. It’s become particularly popular in live entertainment and Adele’s recent European tour used 320m worth of MagTrax stage-side. He also revealed that he had captured footage for a natural history programme himself, using the firm’s flagship Agito Cine, fitted with a Shotover M1 6-axis gimbal and a 1,500mm lens, rambling over various terrains, and believes it will open-up a world of possibilities to capture animal behaviours in the wild.
IMAX, the option for a B-camera or
GREAT GEAR GUIDE•IBC 2024
MRMC
Mark Roberts Motion Control, a Nikon Group company, unveiled its Cinebots for cinematography. Dan Brooks, the firm’s head of marketing, said the Cinebot Mini and Cinebot Max have been engineered for simplicity, with the key USP being PushMoco, a technology that allows the rig’s arm to be manoeuvered by hand into a series of keyframes. This camera movement can then be edited and played-back using the latest Flair v7 software, whether that’s for tabletop work or
live-action. Cinebot Max operates to a height of 3.2m, maximum 20kg payload, and was shown with Red Komodo X and V-Raptor cameras and Cooke SP3 lenses.
The company also launched Super Milo –where macro precision meets high-speed. It’s four time faster than the original Milo, with increased acceleration, a max speed of 5m per second, a reach of 6.1m that can be extended to over
NANLITE/NANLUX
Amongst the burgeoning portfolio of fixtures on the Nanlite/Nanlux stand, the show saw the introduction of the new generation of Alien LED full-colour panel lights, with the Alien 150C and Alien 300C, which have respective power ratings of 175W and 350W. The Alien 150C can deliver outputs of 13,050 lux at 1m and weighs 3.6kg (7.94lbs). The Alien 300C provides 28,630 lux with a lamphead weight of 6.6kg (14.55lbs), representing weight reductions of 13% and 45%, respectively.
The new Aliens offer dimming from 0.0% to 100.0% in 0.1% increments and a wide CCT range of 2700K to 12000K with ±150 green/magenta adjustment. These lights feature impressive colour rendition with a CRI/ TLCI average of 96 and 97, TM-30 Rf average of 94, and TM-30 Rg average of 100.
SONY
Control methods are comprehensive, including on-board, a remote controller, Nanlink App, DMX/ RDM, and LumenRadio CRMX. They also offer
The forthcoming Burano v2, plus the latest virtual production software, were the hot items from Daniel Listh, cinema business development manager at Sony Professional Europe.
Planned for a March 2025 release, Burano Version 2.0 will offer many new features and improvements, including recording formats, 1.8x desqueeze and monitoring improvements.
New recording formats include a new 3.8K Full Frame (FF) crop, leveraging nearly the entire sensor up to 120fps. Other new recording formats include: the addition of 24fps to X-OCN 16:9 imager modes; FF 3.8K 16:9 mode, up to 120fps; Super 35, 4.3K 4:3 mode (for Anamorphic), up to 60fps; and Super 35, 1.9K 16:9 mode, up to 240 fps. Monitoring improvements encompass standardised SDI video output for monitoring across X-OCN and XAVC and an improved on-screen display which places camera status information outside of the image.
Sony will offer the v2 version of its Virtual Production Tool Set from winter 2024. It includes a Camera & Display Plugin for Unreal Engine and a Color Calibrator Windows 10 application for colour correction. The Camera & Display Plugin allows users to simulate on-screen the lookand-feel of the chosen camera in a virtual space, prior to shooting with a LED wall. In addition to the
Venice digital camera series, the v2 will add Burano, FR7, HDC-3500, HDC-5500, and HDC-F5500 to its list of supported cameras. The Virtual Production Tool Set also supports Epic Games’ Unreal VCam, making it possible to control cameras in virtual space using an iPad.
Color Calibrator creates correction LUTs to achieve high colour reproduction in virtual production stages and performs colour correction/calibration of the installed LED wall via the newly-added camera
versatile power options – AC, DC, and V-mount battery – plus multiple lighting modes including CCT, HSI, RGBW, Gel, XY Coordinates, and Effect. Equipped with five fan modes (smart, full, low, pause and off), the Alien series can meet a wide variety of shooting and audio recording needs. The lamp heads are IP55-rated, and a rain cover is included for the control unit.
models. It also has a user guide function to make it easier to perform relevant adjustments.
10m, and a payload of 35kg for pretty much any cinema camera.
CINEMATOGRAPHY WORLD PAVILION
Once again, the Cinematography World Pavilion was an IBC highlight, drawing attention from filmmakers, DPs and lighting professionals across the film and TV industries, and giving visitors hands-on experiences with the latest high-end gear.
CINEO LIGHTING
The always affable Joseph Mendoza, VP of sales for Cineo Lighting, gave us an update on the Cineo Reflex R10 1000W hard light, launched at the 2024 BSC Expo. One hundred units have since been shipped across the US, plus 50 to the UK and Europe, with a further 50 ready for dispatch soon.
The R10 utilises Cineo’s patented liquid-cooling to keep the ultra-high density of pixels on the bi-colour LED tower at optimum performance, and the modular design means the tower can be easily replaced if necessary on-set without sending the unit off-set for repair.
The tower itself maximises the output of the light so that at 900W, the R10 truly does output 900W of 5600K white light. Using advanced colour science, it, like all Cineo fixtures, creates a rich white light that
CINTEK
Whilst the UK’s Cintek offers a range of optics, the focus was on Caldwell’s Chameleon Anamorphic lenses – modern optics that deliver a retro look –as Cintek’s Will Bartleet was keen to highlight. Designed by lens-making legend, Brian Caldwell, the Chameleons have the distinctive aberrations one would expect from Anamorphic optics, but with subtle elegance. The flare characteristics are reminiscent of Anamorphic lenses of yore, but show restraint and are readily controllable.
The 1.79x Anamorphic squeeze ratio offers the perfect balance of Anamorphic look and maximal use
DE SISTI LIGHTING
De Sisti reported a busy time on the Cinematography World Pavilion, meeting new and existing customers. Along with its popular Fresnel and softlight ranges, the company showed Giotto, its brand new 1200mm-long fixture for illuminating green/bluescreen, cycloramas and backdrops, and revealed large orders from some of the UK’s top TV soaps.
of sensor area. Having two series with different image circles allows DPs to embrace character and edge aberrations, or opt for a cleaner, more restrained image, depending on the shot or project.
The fixture’s optical system modulates the emission of light intensity to achieve the necessary asymmetry for uniform backdrop illumination from above/below. Free from hot spots, the Giotto allows for even lighting schemes for tall set-ups, up to approximately 9m in height.
compliments skin tones, as well as a multitude of other hues and colours. And with an IP X5-rating it can be used in the harshest of weather conditions.
In other news, we learnt that over 300 Cineo Quantum IIs were used to illuminate the massive sets involved in the making of Wicked (2024, DP Alice Brooks ASC).
The Chameleons were selected by DP Neville Kidd to switch-up the look on season four of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, and are currently being used by DPs David Klein ASC and Sean Porter ASC on Star Wars: Skeleton Crew
GYRO MOTION
Sergey Tartishnikov of Gyro Motion – where the mission is to set new standards in userfriendliness when it comes to camera stabilisation and movement control – showcased the company’s Levelling Head and Genesis Gimbal, connected devices that can be powered by one power supply.
The Levelling Head comprises a high-power actuator with proprietary control board and inertial sensors, in one flight-case, and provides advanced control of rotation for high-weight payloads, as well as precision control of speed and position.
The architecture, electronic design, software and control of the 4-axis Genesis Gimbal mean it has accuracy and few limitations in terms of
ONE STOP/K5600
According to Marc Galerne of One stop/K5600, most recently-developed LED Fresnels fail in the task of single-shadow reproduction. Overcoming that shortcoming was a key aim when developing the newly-released Alpha
NESTOR FACTORY
picture stabilisation and camera control, for lenses up to 500mm, where the camera can move 360-degrees in continuous pan, tilt and roll.
Gyro Motion stabilisers are compatible with most telescopic and nontelescopic camera cranes, such as Service Vision Scorpio, MovieBird and Techno Crane, and all industry-standard digital camera systems, including ARRI, Sony, Red and Blackmagic.
300 LED, which delivers crisp highlight/shadow quality comparable to traditional Tungsten or HMI sources.
The Alpha 300 maintains the core principle of the Fresnel Lens, and an appropriate source-to-lens size ratio. Using an ultra-small light-emitting surface, the Alpha 300 provides spot-to-flood focussing of 10 to 50-degrees and, more importantly, delivers single, soft-edged shadows that you’d expect from traditional Fresnel instruments, thanks to planoconvex optics that properly project the light output/ dispersion from the bright LED source.
Mathieu Cauvin, founder/president of Nestor, a production/rental company film industry equipment, reported new prospects and several sales of its Nomad 110.30 mobile battery power unit, at the Cinematography World Pavilion.
Developed in collaboration with Ian Motion, the Nomad 110.30 has a capacity of 100kWh and can deliver up to 30kW of continuous power. It comes with two 90A sockets and two 50A Marechal sockets as well as 4 x PC16 sockets, each with its own circuit breaker. It connects to all electric car terminals, and with a supercharger (>100kWh DC) you’ll
ROSCO
Rosco displayed its DMG Lion, a powerful, 13-inch, all-weather LED Fresnel, which utilises cutting-edge technology to replicate the look-andfeel of the classic Tungsten Fresnel – but with the versatility that LED technology provides.
DMG Lion features two easyto-swap LED engines – one that harnesses Rosco’s patented Mix Technology for full spectrum output, the other a bi-colour LED engine that produces maximum intensity. We know gaffers and rental houses can’t wait to get their hands-on this exciting new Fresnel fixture, and being on the Cinematography World Pavilion allowed partner dealers and valued customers to do exactly that.
be able to charge it from 10% to 90% in one hour. Packaged in pallet format, it can be transported in a medium-sized van, and Nestor offers it for rent in a Citroën e-Jumpy.
EVERYONE CAN PLAY
By Natasha Block Hicks
In July 2024, Bristol Film School –Boomsatsuma (BFS) waved goodbye to its first cohort of BA (Hons) Filmmaking: Production graduates, who threw their mortarboards aloft alongside their fellow Filmmaking: Post Production, Photography and Print, and Game Design and Production degree colleagues, in an inaugural ceremony held against the grand backdrop of the majestic Ashton Court Estate.
“You don’t need a degree to work in film,” comments BFS’s head of production David Neal, a filmmaker and member of BAFTA, who formerly taught the MA Wildlife Filmmaking course at the University Of The West Of England (UWE), “but degrees can change lives.”
The school’s BA programmes are accredited by Kingston University. Like all UK-based undergraduate courses, the application process is conducted through UCAS and the standard yearly tuition fees for England apply. BFS holds an interview day for candidates, with some basic group exercises and a one-to-one interview.
“We’re less concerned about academic qualifications, but we do need to meet prospective students,” explains Neal.
“Filmmaking is a collaborative process; we have to see how prospective students get on with other people. It’s also a chance for them to work out whether this is the right place for them.”
The Production degree takes 30 students per year in a single intake.
“We are committed to small class sizes so that the student experience is more tailored,” explains Neal.
“Our aim is to find people who have a genuine desire to enter the film industry and will engage
We want our students to be the most useful person on-set
with everything we have to offer. Sometimes candidates have had a poor prior experience of education, but this doesn’t mean that they are not hard workers and highly-creative.”
A percentage of the students are already within the award winning Boomsatsuma organisation when they join the BFS degree programmes, having studied on the Level 3 Extended Diploma in Film & Television, which has been offering 16 to 18-yearolds an industry starter block since 2011.
“They’re often students that wouldn’t necessarily get on with traditional education,” points out Neal.
“We’re about championing everyone, regardless of background. As a film school we can intentionally model the representation we want to see in the industry. We make sure that the tutors we bring in, the films we show, and the images of DPs we use in our lectures are from a broad group of filmmakers.
“Our mantra is that everyone gets to play.”
Production degree freshers can expect to hit the ground running; after a mid-September start, they will have completed five films by Christmas, thanks to the curriculum designed by filmmaker and head of film school, Freya Billington.
“We love the mentality of learning to make films by making films,” enthuses Neal.
Industry work experience is actively facilitated from the start, with opportunities for runners or assistants posted daily in an internal Google virtual classroom.
“Often we get students placed at The Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol, helping-out on productions filming there,” explains Neal. “Teaching is very important, but what students can learn on a shoot is priceless.”
Cinematography is introduced from day one, with a session called ‘iPhone Versus...’.
“This covers key concepts such as focus, iris,
shutter, sensitivity and white balance by exploring how a phone will automatically decide these for you,” explains Neal.
“We compare this to production cameras with lenses where you control every characteristic of the image. This session is so important; it builds-up a value system that explains why and how we use certain equipment.”
There is a close collaboration between the Filmmaking: Production and Filmmaking: Post Production courses, with the Production students also delving deep into post production skills as part of their degree.
“I think it’s essential,” stresses Neal, “you can’t go into the industry and not know colour science for example, or why we use a shutter angle of 172.8 for 24fps in the UK.”
BFS’s HQ is located within Bristol’s famous Tobacco Factory, with productions undertaken at Boomsatsuma Studios: a warehouse containing a blacked out 26m x 12m studio with three-phase power, donated greenscreens, cityscape translight backdrops and numerous flats, editing bays, a photography studio and darkroom. There is a small interior scene with lights always set-up, so that teaching can naturally move between theoretical and practical.
We’re about championing everyone, regardless of background
us the two go hand-in-hand,” comments Neal.
The Tobacco Factory has two editing rooms with 40 machines running Avid Nexus, Adobe Suite, DaVinci Resolve and Maya, two specialist DaVinci colour grading suites and a large screening/teaching space
The school has various industry-standard cameras and lenses, which are introduced in a tiered structure. Students will start-off with one of ten Black Magic Pocket 6K cameras for example, moving on to a Sony FX6 with manual lenses – such as a Canon zoom – by the end of the first year. Second and third-year students generally shoot on ARRI Alexas or Red cameras. There are DJI gimbals, track and dolly and plenty of lighting including ARRI Tungstens and HMIs, Aputure Nova and Dedolights.
Much of the kit has been donated by BFS’s many industry friends, who also give students work experience opportunities and internships. This includes Films@59, VMI, Visual Impact, Silverback, Happy Hour, Gorilla Post and Doghouse, whilst CVP has loaned kit for specific workshops.
“Our industry partners and friends are very supportive of everything we do,” acknowledges Neal.
The Production degree has four full time staff including Neal and technical lead, Nirmala Valinčiūtė, who came from ARRI/CVP, plus four “industry specialists” who teach up to two days a week alongside their careers, which this year includes Horizon (2015-2017) director and DP Paul Dudbridge.
The school also brings in visiting tutors for workshops and masterclasses from all aspects of the camera department, such as DP Steve Annis who was nominated for an ASC Award for his lighting of the pilot of Foundation (2021); DP Sarah Smither, the founder of Bristol Crew, with whom the BFS is partnered; drone operator Ben Platts, known for His Dark Materials (2019-2022) and natural history cinematographer James Salisbury.
In one recent workshop BFS employed a small, professional film crew to shoot a few scenes from a drama script with the students watching.
“In the debrief, we just happened to point-out that
it was an all-female crew, though we were debating whether to mention it at all,” recalls Neal.
In the third year, every student will be partnered with an industry mentor from their chosen specialism, to start preparing them for life after BFS. They also work on their final films, with a ‘practise run’ short film before Christmas and their ‘zero budget’ graduate film thereafter.
“Even on big productions every penny counts, so getting students into a ‘beg and borrow (but no stealing)’ mentality is really valuable,” illustrates Neal.
“We give them £100 and tell them we want to see it on screen. Students will run Kickstarter or GoFundMe campaigns to pay for production design, costumes and props, etc.. We are lucky in that one of our partners is Bristol School Of Acting. Their students are keen to be in the films.”
Screenings for the Class of ’24 were held at the Watershed Cinema on the Bristol harbourfront.
“One of our own students created and tested the Digital Cinema Package files for us,” says Neal proudly.
BFS assists its students in entering their work into film festivals and awards, with BFS students scooping five Craft Awards at the 2024 Royal Television Society (RTS) West Of England Student Television Awards. Among the winning films were Katie Boyes’ visual drama Sunflower, Lucy Rowe’s light-hearted tale The Bristol Crocodile – which also screened at the Clevedon Curzon – and Jack Pitchford’s personal documentary Killing Bugs
Thanks to the BFS’s efforts in connecting its students to the industry from the get-go – with work experience, mentoring and CV-writing guidance alongside teaching, plus a private LinkedIn alumni group which links graduates to work placement opportunities – a large proportion of the school’s first cohort have already found full-time work at companies such as Gorilla, VMI and Picture House.
Neal believes that BFS’s degree programme
offers an essential conduit into the industry. He now recognises his own dyslexia – common among filmmakers – as a strength.
“We’ve had students that, when they started, couldn’t even look people in the eye,” he illustrates.
“It’s a real privilege to take people with low selfesteem and help them become problem-solvers and team players, through a value system that is based on thinking outside of the box.
“We want our students to be the most useful person on-set,” he emphasises.
“When productions are putting together a crew, we want them to say, ‘Remember that student from Bristol Film SchoolBoomsatsuma? They were brilliant!’”
FACE THE MUSIC
By Ron Prince
Critics have dubbed Emilia Pérez, director Jacques Audiard’s Spanish-language musical melodrama, as “a wild, gritty, glitter-soaked odyssey that defies both convention and classification”, and “a genre and gender-bending thrill that transcends typical movie construct, breathing new excitement into cinematic storytelling.” The film opened in select theatres on November 1st 2024, before streaming on Netflix.
Shot by French cinematographer Paul Guilhaume AFC, and featuring many song-and-dance routines, the film follows Rita, an overworked lawyer stuck in a dead-end job defending shysters and scumbags. She is kidnapped by Manitas, the fearsome leader of a
Mexican drug cartel, who persuades Rita to help him fake his own death. However, the reason he wants to retire and disappear from the world of crime isn’t what
The Tribe7 Blackwing7 T-tuned lenses brought a sense of style to the image
one might expect. He wants to change gender and live a new life as a woman, free from his villainous past.
Rita must supervise every step of the process, about which Jessi, Manitas’ wife, must never suspect. This involves her finding the surgeon, fabricating Manita’s death, procuring fresh passports, locating a lavish Swiss hideaway for the bereaved Jessi and her fatherless children, and establishing Manitas’s new persona as Emilia Pérez.
Spanish trans-actress, Karla Sofia Gascon, plays both Manitas and Emilia, with Zoe Saldana as Rita, Selina Gomez as Jessi, Manita’s wfie, and Adriana Paz as Epifanía, Emilia’s lover.
Emilia Pérez was an unexpected hit at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a 12-minute standing ovation, and where the four co-stars were jointly named best actresses. The film has since
Jacques wanted the film to be a combination of vivid musical moments and dark, gritty realism
PAUL GUILHAUME AFC•EMILIA PÉREZ
wanted the film to be a mix of emotions and sensations, a combination of vivid musical moments and dark, gritty realism. He wanted to keep the timeless imagery of an opera stage, with the characters occupying dark environments, but also to include modern elements of lighting, using LED, projections, lasers and very contemporary light fixtures. Essentially, he wanted to make a film for today’s world, with cinematography and techniques that would match that idea.”
Rather than trawling through Hollywood musicals in search of creative references, Guilhaume says Audiard had classic French-fare in his mind’s-eye, in the form of director Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies De Cherbourg) (1964, DP Jean Rabier) and The Young Girls Of Rochefort (Les Demoiselles De Rochefort (1967, DP Ghislain Cloquet), for their bewitching fusion of real-life emotion and cinematic illusion.
Seeking inspiration for more sinister aesthetics, the Safdie Brothers’ Uncut Gems (2019, DP Darius Khondji AFC ASC) and the Coen Brothers’ No Country For Old Men (2007, DP Sir Roger Deakins CBE BSC ASC) variously informed an organic and colourful approach to lighting, especially the use of practicals on the actors, as well as the interior and exterior scenarios.
Guilhaume says he also scrutinised the night-time photography on Zero Dark Thirty (2010, dir. Kathryn Bigelow, DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC) and Nope (2022, dir. Jordan Peele, DO Hoyte Van Hoytema NSC FSF ASC) for the film’s denouement, in which Audiard expressed a desire for the light to appear to come from nowhere.
been selected as France’s official entry in the best international feature category at the 2025 Oscars.
Audiard came up with the idea for the movie after reading a chapter in Boris Razon’s 2018 novel Écoute, about a drug lord who changes identity. However, he went a bold step further for his film, developing it into a musical.
“When Jacques first called me, he had two projects, both called Emelia Pérez. One was an opera with singers on the stage, the other was a realistic movie with a musical dimension, that would be fullyshot on-location in Mexico,” says Guilhaume, who had previously worked with Audiard on two episodes of The Bureau (Le Bureau Des Legends) (2020) and Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades, Paris 13e) (2021).
“We scouted four times together in Mexico over the course of two years. But, as we did that, Jacques gradually refined his thinking and he told me those projects had merged into one. His film would be much closer to an opera, and was to be shot in a studio, apart from a few documentary-style shots that would anchor the story in Mexico.
“For him, the film had so many elements of fantasy, that shooting on-location would feel too real. So why not go back to the essence of the project’s DNA and shoot on a soundstage where we would have more control over the environment, especially over the musical numbers and the choreography?”
In his conversations about crafting the visual world of Emilia Pérez aesthetically, Guilhaume says, “Jacques
Principal photography on Emilia Pérez took place over the course of 67 shooting days between April and July 2023 – 55 days across seven stages at Studios De Bry, Bry-sur-Marne, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, followed by 12 days on-location in Mexico City. The DP reports that during the studio-based shoot, “There was always something being either built, pre-rigged or pre-lit on the different stages, and sometimes we shot in two different studios on the same day.”
Guilhaume went with Sony Venice and Sony Venice 2 cameras, shooting in 2.40:1 widescreen at 5.6K and 8K, using Tribe7 Blackwing7 lenses for the mainstay of the production. Due to lack of headroom in the studio, an ARRI 12mm Signature Prime was used to achieve the rectilinear top-shot in the Bangkok clinic sequence, with the camera sited atop the studio rafters and the battery touching the roof. The camera and lens package was supplied by TSF in Paris.
“We shot in widescreen for its overall sense of drama, as well as the opportunities it enables for different framing opportunities with single or multiple characters,” Guilhaume remarks, “although that requires a lot of control and planning over things like the set design and the blocking.
“We shot with spherical lenses, as Jacques is very precise about the image he likes. He knows the tools and talks about the emotional impact they bring. He did not want the visual distractions of the edge-distortion and flaring that come with Anamorphic glass, especially with all of the practicals we were going to use.
“I went with the Sony Venice cameras for a variety of reasons. We had many daytime-exterior situations that covered thousands of square metres in the studio, which required large quantities of LED softlights for an even spread of illumination. By having the ability to shoot at 2500 ISO and above, instead of 1200 ISO, meant the costs of the lighting were significantly reduced.
“Conversely, we also had a lot of low-light and night-time scenes, where we wanted to be able to use just practicals to light a scene and the faces organically, such as our Mexican street market scene. Here again,
the ability to shoot at 2500 ISO meant we could capture colours, shadow details and shades of black, but without any loss of image quality.
“Additionally, the full-frame 8K image from the Venice 2 gave high-resolution pictures for the VFX teams to do their magic, and enabled our editor, Juliette Welfling, to reframe, zoom or pan-and-scan the image to correctly pace the cuts.”
As for his choice of optics, Guilhaume remarks, “Jacques and I liked how the Tribe7 Blackwing7 T-tuned lenses have good rectilinear imaging, with subtle halation, and how they bring a sense of style to the image, but without too much sharpness. They give an appealing kind of gloss to the image, but have a softness that helps the rendering of texture, especially skin, whilst also countering the extreme precision of the Sony Venice 2 sensor.
“The 37mm and 57mm Blackwing7 T-tuned lenses became our main focal lengths for medium and close-up shots. I also had a 57mm X-tuned lens, which is much more sensitive to flares than the T-tuned optics, when we felt the image needed to be elevated or more expressive.”
During prep, Guilhaume worked with freelance colourist Arthur Paux, to create a small number LUTs for the movie’s day/night, interiors/exteriors, and during production worked with DIT Julian Bachelier to pre-grade the rushes every evening.
“Whilst digital cameras record so much colour and image detail, you are in danger of your desired image getting lost. I brought Arthur into the project as I knew he could perform magic tricks on the colour palette, and on specific things like halations in the midtones, definition, grain and blooming highlights. Arthur helped us to establish a pipeline from camera-to-post, so that we had all the key elements we needed to keep the images looking organic from the camera, before we finetuned them in the final DI grade.”
To contend with the song and dance routines in the film, two cameras were always available. Guilhaume framed off a crane, dolly or his shoulder, assisted by Marine Goujet on focus, with Sacha Naceri working as camera/Steadicam operator, assisted by Cyrille Hubert. Gaston Grandin led the grip team, with Thomas Garreau heading the light department as the gaffer.
“The troops in my camera and lighting team were 100% committed to the project, but I was particularly impressed by the way Gaston and Thomas choreographed themselves with Sacha and myself, to bring the concepts of the camera movement and the lighting together.
“For example, in our Mexican market and gala scenes, Zoe moves from place-to-place, with the camera travelling along with her – sometimes framing tight on her face or seeing her head-toe –all the while with lighting cues and some dramatic changes to the illumination.”
Being shot in a studio environment, Guilhaume admits that finding the visual formula for the film actually came through testing, and from the imaginative, collaborative efforts of set designer Emmanuelle Duplay, artistic director Virginie Montel, VFX supervisor Cédric Fayolle, and gaffer Thomas Garreau.
As the DP explains, “During prep, we tested the kind of look you might see in a stylised operatic production, by shooting everything against a black background, lighting only the props and the space where the actors would perform, with the background disappearing into darkness.
“But the results were really disappointing, even when we added lighting cues, and it looked like a basic studio recording. That’s when we realised this film needed to have more vitality and life, to be bright and colourful, using sets and lighting that brought a kind of dreamlike realism.”
“Working with Alien Studio, a previsualisation and live-event lighting company, and my gaffer
Thomas, we loaded 3D models of different sets into Depence R3, a powerful show-design software tool, and investigated different lighting design options. For example, for the courtroom set, we didn’t have the budget to build an actual ceiling, just two walls. Using Depence R3 we found a way to create the ceiling through a trick of the light, by using a geometric shape of DMG Maxi LED lights.
“Working that way with Depence R3 gave us new ideas about staging other scenes – the number and types of fixtures we would need, the size of light bridges above the sets, and how to implement them. The final film has over 500 effects shots, some having full 3D backgrounds that we shot against bluescreen, others digital setextensions, and many of those the pre-visualisations look very close to the final on-screen result.”
On-set, Guilhaume says that Audiard was quick to embrace the possibilities offered by Thomas’s GrandMA lighting console to punctuate the storytelling with stylised changes in light.
We shot in widescreen for its overall sense of drama
“When Jacques realised that we could make the light evolve during takes on all our sets, he integrated that into his thinking,” says Guilhaume. “From our new perspective of ever-changing light to help the visual storytelling, we ended-up spending time programming all sorts of lighting variations – some subtle, others dramatic – in almost every scenario.
“To give the movie a colourful flourish during the opening scene in the Mexican market, we equipped the market stalls with practical lights – small spiral, low-energy light bulbs that we imported from Mexico, plus neon lights and fluorescent tubes – and controlled them from the GrandMA console in-sync with the Zoe’s movements and the choreography of the dancers
“We deliberately chose more dramatic changes in the lighting, for other key story points, such as the London restaurant scene where the light suddenly
drops away to leave just a powerful spotlight that bounces off the tablecloths and illuminate only the faces, with the walls disappearing into darkness.”
Guilhaume is delighted that Emilia Pérez has enjoyed warm-critical praise, but remarks, “Jacques knew it was a risky project, but he pursued his vision. Although it was an evolution for us every day to realise the film for him, and with no certainty as to what the result might be like, it was a great relief to see how well it holds together.”
PAUL GUILHAUME AFC•EMILIA PÉREZ
LA DIVINA
By Ron Prince
Realised on KODAK 35mm, 16mm and 8mm colour and 35mm B&W filmstocks, by DP Ed Lachman, director Pablo Larraín’s Maria depicts the beautiful, tumultuous and tragic story of Maria Callas, one of the world’s greatest female opera singers, fusing reality with illusion to depict her final days in Paris during the 1970s.
Angelina delivered a sublime performance, that was both enigmatic and mysterious
It is the third and final film in Larraín’s trilogy of 20 th century iconic women, following Jackie (2016, DP Stéphane Fontaine AFC) and Spencer (2021, DP Claire Mathon AFC), both of which also implemented Kodak film in their visual storytelling. Maria represents Lachman’s second collaboration with Larraín after their collaboration on the B&W El Conde (2023).
Set principally in Callas’ luxurious Parisian apartment, the week before her death from a heart attack, Larraín’s expressionistic, non-linear narrative relives and reimagines poignant moments in Callas’ life – such as her grand operatic performances, her lifestyle and love-affair with shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, and her childhood trauma with her mother in wartime Greece under Nazi occupation.
When high on tranquilising drugs during her last few days, the film depicts delusional reveries of her interactions with a fictional documentary film crew, as
For character-driven stories like this, I prefer to shoot on film
Maria pursues an overwhelming desire to recover her voice from a disabling disease, the voice that made her so famous and adored around the world.
The film premiered at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, where it received an eight-minute standing ovation, critical praise and awards-season buzz around Angelina Jolie’s performance of the tragic diva, along
with kudos for Lachman’s sumptuous cinematographic achievement.
Lachman always studies the subject matter of the films he shoots, in order to create the emotional structure for the project, and reveals that his own personal research encompassed contemporary historical, cultural, social and political references, along with the art, fashion and the cinematic language of the film’s time period.
He also made a point of learning more about Callas’ private and public life in advance of production. Along with taking-in recordings of her operatic performances, including the selection of music that Larraín chose for the film, the DP immersed himself in a multitude of biographies about the diva, as well as documentary/ archive footage and previous feature films.
“Maria Callas was one of the greatest coloratura soprano singers the world has ever known, where her personal emotions coloured her voice and her spirit.
This was a story of an artist who had devoted herself to her art,” Lachman says.
“There was a reserved grandeur about her and how she presented herself. As a diva she lived her life in a heightened sense of reality, but in private she struggled with her health and personal happiness.
“She was betrayed and manipulated in her closest relationships, by her mother and also by men in her life – her husband Giovanni Meneghini, who extorted her, and then her lover Aristotle Onassis, who left her for Jackie Kennedy. She tried to overcome all of that through her inner-strength and determination, through the music and her voice.
Images: (below right) director Pablo Larraín, DP Ed Lachman ASC and his daughter Bella, photo by Pax Jolie-Pitt. Photographs by Pablo Larraín, courtesy of StudioCanal. BTS Photos courtesy of Ed Lachman ASC.
MARIA•ED LACHMAN ASC
“However, the ultimate tragedy was that when she lost her voice, to a debilitating disease, she also lost herself and the power to resist her personal sufferings. The irony is that the story of Maria Callas’ life mirrors the tragedy in many of the great operas she graced. Maria stated herself that the stage and opera were her mind. Her life became a sum of the tragedies that she played on-stage.”
Film is like oil paint in the way it renders colour and mixes between the colours
Discussing the visual treatment of the movie with his director, Lachman recounts, “What I find compelling is that Pablo works in a different visual language for each of his films. Where El Conde was a chiaroscuro, gothicnoir vampire film, Maria was to be visually-operatic with a stylised expressionistic look.
“Pablo wanted to shoot this film as if it were an opera in itself, to have a proscenium of the stage in the
style of the framing and the movement of the camera, for our audience to inhabit Maria’s emotional space in the way a theatre audience would during a staged performance – through the mise-en-scène, the precise blocking with the actors, an observational camera that would move gracefully, along with expressionistic lighting to make the most of the sets, props and costumes. You can see and feel that mannered influence throughout the film.”
Speaking about visual inspirations, Lachman reveals, “I had a number of visual references, beginning with Antoni Taulé, a Spanish artist who paints the psychology and mood of his subjects through light, colour and space with a kind of impressionistic realism. John Stezaker, the British artist who uses collage, and Belgian artist Katrien De Blauwer who creates collages with appropriated photographic images, were both inspirations for the different colour and B&W formats – Super8mm, 16mm, Super 16mm and 35mm – we would use in the visual storytelling. I also looked at the work of photographer Todd Hido for the ethereal colour palette and cinematic quality he brings to the visual image.
“For the B&W flashbacks, I was inspired by Fan Ho, the Chinese photographer, who’s images are always contemplative with a feeling of isolation, even in busy urban environments. I also found the American art and fashion photographer Maura Sullivan with her use of layered abstract imagery.”
As for cinematic influences, Lachman says the visual style in movies by filmmaker, theatre and opera director Luchino Visconti, along with melancholic quality in features directed by Max Ophuls, and the luscious Technicolor visuals in melodramas by Douglas Sirk, were all reference points for giving a sense of heightened reality with the camera, light and use of colour.
“I took particular inspiration from two films about troubled performers in the twilight of their lives, George Cukor’s A Star Is Born (1954, DP Sam Leavitt ASC) and Bob Fosse’s Lenny (1974, DP Bruce Surtees ASC),” Lachman reveals, adding. “I also observed Andrei Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975, DP Georgy Rerberg) and Federico Fellini’s Juliet Of The Spirits (1965, DP Gianni Di Venanzo AIC) for their use of memory and dreams in representing psychic landscapes.”
Working out of production offices at Origo Studios in Hungary, with a camera and lighting package supplied by ARRI Rental in Budapest, filming on Maria got underway in October 2023 at interior and exterior locations around the city that would double for Paris, including several grand theatres to shoot re-enactments of Callas’ operatic performances. The production also shot in Greece, at the Trocadero in Paris, and at La Scala opera house in Milan. Production wrapped in December, after 41 shooting days.
For the later period in the film, depicting scenes in Callas’ life during the 1960s and ‘70s, Lachman
MARIA•ED LACHMAN ASC
employed an ARRICAM ST 3-perf 35mm camera, fitted primarily with his own set of Ultra Baltar lenses, switching to Canon K35 primes for evening scenes when needing an extra stop, and exposing on KODAK VISION3 35mm 50D 5203, 250D 5207 and 500T 5219 filmstocks.
To depict the documentary film crew investigating Maria’s life, the DP used his own vintage Aaton LTR and ARRI 416 cameras using a 10.4-52mm Cooke S16 zoom, filming on KODAK VISION3 16mm 250D 7207 and 500T 7219. Classic Pro and Kodak Super 8mm cameras, plus Cooke, Schneider and Angénieux zoom lenses, were used for the home movie footage and clips of private moments with the people Callas was closest to, using KODAK VISION3 Super 8mm 50D 7203 and 500T/7219.
The scenes depicting Maria’s past – such as her encounters with Onassis and her youth in wartime Greece – were shot on KODAK DOUBLE-X 5222
B&W 35mm negative using the Ultra Baltars.
“On character-driven stories like this, I prefer to shoot on film,” says Lachman. “There’s a life and depth to the film negative, through the exposure of the RGB layers and the random grain structure, that seems to breathe and feels very human.
“Also, for me, film is like oil paint in the way it renders colour and mixes between the colours. Digital just does not have the same depth or texture from the flat, pixel-fixated plane of the sensor.
“As Maria’s story takes place between the 1930s and 1970s, the 35mm, 16mm and 8mm colour filmstocks, together with the 1.85:1, Super16mm 1.66:1, 16mm 1.37:1 and Super8mm 4:3 aspect ratios, were ways to reference the times and the way she would have looked back then.
“I push-processed the 500T 5219 at the lab to give this material more of a feeling of the grain structure and colour saturation of filmstocks of the 1970s. The range of the tonal contrast and grain in the DOUBLE-X B&W negative has not really changed in 50 years, and I combined it with the Ultra Baltar lenses, which I created with Zerø Optik and deployed on El Conde, and shot using B&W filters.
“I used the Ultra Baltars as they were used over a similar time period on movies like The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, dirs. Orson Welles, Fred Fleck,
Robert Wise, DP Stanley Cortez), parts of Citizen Kane (1941, dir. Orson Welles, DP Gregg Toland ASC), and The Godfather (1972, dir. Francos Ford Coppola, DP Gordon Willis ASC). They have a six-element design, beautiful field curvature and fall-off on the edges. This, along with the early single-layer coatings, contributed to the period looks we could not have achieved with modern glass.”
Film-processing and 4K scanning was done at Magyar Filmlabor/Hungarian Filmlab in Budapest, with the final DI grade conducted by Joe Gawler at Harbor Picture Company in New York.
Maria was a single-camera shoot, with Diego Miranda from Chile operating Steadicam and 1st AC Daniel Erb, from Berlin, pulling focus. Attila Szücs led the grip team, and the gaffers were Thorsten Kosselek ICLS and Janosch Voss from Germany, and Daniel Toth from Hungary.
This was a story of an artist who had devoted herself to her art
“I was really impressed by my camera and electrical crew,” says Lachman. “Pablo always brings Diego with him for Steadicam work, as he is brilliantlypoetic in his moves. I was lucky to have Attila, the foremost key grip and dolly/crane technician in Budapest, who is another artist in movement. Likewise, my trio of gaffers, and their team – they were hardworking and great problem-solvers.”
In keeping with the Larraín’s proscenium style and operatic mise-en-scène, Lachman opted for gentle and elegant camera moves, frequently with imperceptible push-ins, as well as a number of long oners, using a Panther dolly, along with Technocrane 15 and Scorpio 45 cranes. Handheld was sometimes employed for more emotionally-connected scenes, but was again
used with graceful restraint.
Lachman describes his approach to lighting Maria as expressionistic naturalism, keeping the authenticity of the locations, whilst also being able to stylise the look with a heightened sense of reality. Always being aware of setting the time of day for each scene, the interiors of the Parisian apartment, ballrooms and foyers of theatres, were lit from the exterior, using 18K HMIs and the first of then brand-new generation of ARRI SkyPanel X LED softlights. The interiors were typically supplemented by China Balls judiciously placed over chandeliers above the actors and by practicals around the set.
Due to the cost and regulations of filming at La Scala, in Milan, the production was only able to shoot on the stage for four hours. To maximise the time, Lachman used the existing house and stage lighting, operated by the in-house lighting director. However, due to the need for additional ambient lighting, this was supplemented with Parcans bouncing off the ceiling. A higher-powered spotlight – a Robert Juliat Lancelot follow-spot – was used for Jolie’s stage performance, due to its longer-throw capabilities.
Looking back at his experience on the film, Lachman remarks, “At the start of this production Pablo said to me, ‘If there’s no mystery, there’s no cinema. If it’s all processed and explained it doesn’t allow the audience to participate in the story’.
“Maria was entrapped and betrayed by what she desired. She could never obtain in her personal life what she had in her public life through the adoration and love of her fans and the public. That was her ultimate tragedy. Angelina delivered a sublime performance, which was both enigmatic and mysterious. She encompassed her character so deeply that it was difficult not to be part of it.
“I think Pablo’s relationship to the material, to Angelina, and his contribution with the camera, created a certain emotional quality to what the audience will feel and experience.
“His trilogy of Jackie, Spencer and now Maria has depicted female characters that aren’t necessarily seen as feminist, but in his portrayal of them you see their resistance and strength to the society and times they’re inhabiting, and their capacity to be empowered.”
SKULLDUGGERY
By Darek Kuźma
French DP Stéphane Fontaine AFC imbued director Edward Berger’s captivating drama, Conclave, about an unusually-hectic election of a new pope, with a masterful interplay of light and dark.
The pope has died and the weary Cardinal Lawrence is tasked with running a conclave, a secretive gathering of the College Of Cardinals, to elect the new leader of the Catholic Church. Over a hundred cardinals from all over the globe are sequestered to the Vatican to vote without political interference or external lobbying. However, the assembly turns into a brutal power struggle between liberal and conservative forces wishing their candidates to be elected. Meanwhile, Lawrence’s neutrality is put to a series of tests when disturbing information about the frontrunners emerge.
With all of this intrigue going on, Conclave is not just the conspiracy thriller the film’s trailer promises it to be, it is also a multi-layered drama about deeply-flawed human beings struggling with their inner and outer demons.
What drew Fontaine – the DP behind A Prophet (2010, dir. Jacques Audiard), Jackie (2016, dir. Pablo Larraín) and Captain Fantastic (2016, dir. Matt Ross), and who revels in bringing-out nuances and the characters’ inner lives – to Conclave, was the chance to tell a story that was both epic and intimate.
“Edward called me in July 2022 and described the story in vivid details. I surrendered quickly,” he laughs.
“I love working with visual directors such as Edward who know how to express what they want, but who are also extremely open to any ideas you may have. That’s proper team work indeed! Three weeks after the call we met in Rome, and then intensely prepped for the next three months.”
The sense of power had to be translated by the composition of the frames
Principal photography commenced in January 2023 in Rome’s Cinecittà Studios and included locations around the city, including Palazzo Barberini, Palazzo Dei Congressi and Villa Borghese, and wrapped after 40 shooting days in March 2023.
One of the biggest challenges was to find subtle cinmatic ways to portray the cardinals’ shifting
allegiances that move the story forward.
“On one hand, we had lots of scenes where they speak whilst sitting or standing still, and we needed to create some kind of tension. On the other hand, we also had to deal with five ballots. The challenge then was to not make them look repetitive,” he explains, adding that he used shallow depth-of-field and film-noir tricks to depict the paranoia sinking in.
“We shot-listed all the scenes to make each one visually interesting. The Catholic Church has a strong hierarchy, which meant “The sense of power had to be translated by the composition of the frames. It has a lot to do with suggesting as opposed to emphasising what we thought the viewers should know.”
The cardinals are by definition quite composed characters who are not supposed to behave erratically, thus camera movement had to be restricted.
“We begin in a lively way. There is even a spectacular 360-degree pre-conclave Steadicam shot, thanks to our wonderful B-cam operator Alex Brambilla, depicting the chaos and pressure that Cardinal Lawrence is facing. But when the conclave starts and the plot buildsup, the camera goes gradually quieter,” he explains.
Fontaine says he was very happy to shoot Conclave with a Red V-Raptor 8K VV camera.
“I began working with Red cameras over a decade ago during Rust And Bone (2012, dir. Jacques Audiard), when it was Red Epic. Later-on I shot with their subsequent
STÉPHANE FONTAINE
cameras and now I pick the Raptor whenever I can.
“I’m used to tweaking the colours in-camera myself and I love its full-frame sensor. Here, it allowed me to play with framing during our mostly two-camera set-ups. Shooting at 6K, 7K or 8K gives the same lens a very different personality. Edward was not used to the Raptor, but became quite keen on it, especially the proximity you get when doing close-ups with a 27mm in 8K.”
Fontaine equipped the Raptors with a set of Tribe7 Blackwing lenses (T-tuned), ranging from 20.7mm to 137mm, his favourite lenses being in the 27mm to 57mm range.
“I love vintage lenses such as Canon K35s. With the Tribe7s it felt like I had the quality of the K35s, but with a broader range of options. They’re lively lenses with beautiful flaws, flares and a nice organic feel.”
Fontaine’s crew included 1st AC Dario Paolini and key grip Fabrizio Diamanti, and his kit was provided along with the lighting package by Rome’s D-Vision. The package also comprised a 19.5-94mm Angénieux Optimo zoom and occasionally an Ultra 12x Optimo, as well as a few ARRI Signature primes for super-wide angles in the Sistine Chapel. All lenses were filtered with Schneider-Kreuznach Radiant Soft diffusion filters.
All these creative and technical decisions contribute to an engrossing narrative, in which each random gesture, out-of-the-frame comment and curious look, add to Lawrence’s increasing emotional perturbance and sense of confusion as to what is the point of the conclave. And this is something that Fontaine masterfully underscored with detail-oriented lighting.
“The tricky thing was that when the conclave begins, they’re cut off from the world and even the natural light barely comes through the blinds and into sealed rooms,” he recounts. “Whatever daylight comes in is filtered and dim. The challenge was to avoid flat light and create some contrast. We relied on practicals and, as we shot mostly in a studio, we also pushed some light through the ceilings to give the images some depth and a certain airless quality.”
Most of the film takes place in the Sistine Chapel where the cardinals cast the ballots, and in the Vatican’s
Tribe7 Blackwings are lively lenses with beautiful flaws, flares and an organic feel
Casa Santa Marta guesthouse, where they stay and sleep. Both locations were shot on sets built on stages at Cinecittà Studios.
“During prep, we went to visit the Sistine Chapel early one morning and I was fascinated,” Fontaine recalls. “It resembled the low-light space Edward wanted, but more importantly, the film suddenly grew real. Everything we’d been discussing for weeks felt concrete and you could sense of the power of that place.
The DP and gaffer Alex Bramucci set their Sistine Chapel lighting with three Tungsten balloons and a series of ARRI SkyPanel 360s to replicate the light coming from each of the actual windows in the chapel, along with moving lights that would help draw attention to specific areas. Most scenes in the chapel have different light settings, all carefully saved by lighting console programmer Francesco Cruciani.
Fontaine recalls that discussing the Casa Santa Marta scenes was quite different. “The actual place is quite dull. In our reinterpretation of this location, the cardinals’ rooms vary in size, reflecting the different levels of power they have within The Vatican. The large hallways connecting the rooms were lit with practicals and SkyPanels so that the colour and the amount of light could change depending on whether it was day or night.”
Fontaine’s lighting schemes are perhaps the most impressive outside of Cinecittà, especially in the scenes
in Palazzo Dei Congressi’s aula, that has strikinglyblue seats and is where Lawrence often gathers with a number of concerned cardinals.
“We called it ‘The Blue Room’ and used its vibrant colour in contrast with the deep reds and blacks of the cardinals’ cassocks,” Fontaine explains. “I decided not to flood it with light, but to create a pocket of light. This allowed for expressive and contrasty framing that sustains the noirish atmosphere with the added blue element that felt beautifully out-of-place.”
Another notable location was Palazzo Barberini where Lawrence gives a vibrant homily about how certainty may be the greatest sin. “It was a very impressive room with walls of stretched golden fabric, which we lit with just one 18K ARRIMAX outside of a tiny window, complementing it with CL21 and CL42 Carpetlights for close-ups.”
Interestingly, Fontaine did not use a LUT (save for a very basic Rec.709), seemingly an essential tool these days.
“I do my best to get a satisfactory result on my calibrated monitor on the set,” he reveals. “I like spending some time with the DIT at lunch or after wrap to make sure the screen grabs and the dailies are not too far off.”
Thus, his philosophy for the DI was to keep it simple. “We graded the film in Goldcrest with Andrew Daniel and didn’t go against what was shot on-set. We cleaned the blacks a little bit, and made sure the reds and yellows still had a painterly quality, but overall nothing fancy.”
All-in-all, Fontaine is happy with how Conclave looks-and-feels and the decisions he made.
“I enjoyed collaborating with Edward as I knew that the journey would be an adventure, and not just work. Even if we did shot-list the entire film in prep and had strong options for each scene, Conclave was made on-set. The moment you see actors rehearsing, new ideas come-up and you adjust what you had in mind. Edward enjoys the process very much, and being his partner in crime was a real pleasure,” he recaps.
“More importantly, we kept in mind that this film was made for the big screen. And that’s where people should see it, if they can.”
Shooting on KODAK 35mm film, DP Drew Daniels summoned a spirit of the ‘70s for Sean Baker’s award-winning tragicomedy Anora.
Ani, a lap dancer at a Manhattan strip joint, gets the chance of her own Cinderella story when she meets and then marries Vanya, the spoiled son of a Russian oligarch, after a whirlwind romance at his luxury mansion and a hedonistic trip to Las Vegas.
But, when the news of their betrothal reaches his parents in Russia via social media, Ani’s fairytale is threatened. They put pressure on Vanya’s New York handler, Toros, and his local henchmen, Igor and Garnick, to get the marriage swiftly annulled, leading to a series of unexpected events.
Written, directed and edited by Sean Baker, the film stars Mikey Madison in the title role, alongside Mark Eidelstein as Vanya, Karren Karagulian as Toros, plus Yura Borisov and Vache Tovmasyan respectively as Igor and Garnick.
The film premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and won the prestigious Palme d’Or. It also received widespread critical acclaim, with major praise for Madison’s electrifying performance, Baker’s tragicomic take on the power of sex, beauty and wealth, plus the tonal shifts in Daniels’ cinematography as the drama unfolds.
Anora is also likely to feature prominently during the 2025 awards season, and is Daniels’ second film with Baker, following their collaboration on the 16mm film-originated Red Rocket (2021), itself a Cannes Festival nominee.
“Sean and I found it very easy to work together on Red Rocket,” Daniels reveals. “We really don’t do traditional prep, such as sitting around in the office and breaking-down the script scene-by-scene into shot lists. He would rather go on a scout together, take-in the environment and talk through ideas in general, especially the blocking at a location. It’s only when we start shooting that the movie really comes together. Although it is always riskier and can be agonising, I
enjoy that kind of filmmaking and feel it delivers authentic results.”
Recounting his reaction to Baker’s screenplay, Daniels remarks, “From my first reading of the script it felt that we were dealing with two different films within an overall story of different ups-and-downs. Initially everything is going just-right for Anora, and then all-of-a-sudden the carpet is ripped from under her feet, and the story changes completely.
more like a gangster film and by shifting into a colder and more austere colour palette.”
It was gruelling to shoot… but you can see the creative results on-screen
“We decided that the first part of this journey needed to convey a certain heightened reality, of youthful exuberance and vitality, via freedom of the camera and through colour and warmth in the image, almost like a romantic comedy. For the second part, we determined to punctuate the dramatic change in the story by shooting with quite a different visual language,
Daniels reveals that he and Baker reached a consensus as to how the emotional storytelling would be visualised. As he explains, “Sean is a more of an objective filmmaker, whilst I prefer shooting in a subjective manner, from a character’s point-of-view. Whilst Anora is a hustler, who gets down and dirty, she also becomes more intrigued by Vanya and his world, and I thought the film needed to show her curiosity by sometimes viewing things from her gaze.
“Consequently, a lot of our discussion was about balancing those two things in the visual language – on the one hand Sean’s desire to observe Anora and the ensemble, and on the other my eagerness for
experiential cinematography that would see the world from her perspective and connect the audience with her personality, attitude and emotional path. Sean is open to suggestion, and very collaborative in that way, and took my ideas on-board.”
When it came to visual references, Daniels says he and Baker channelled a spirit of the 1970s into their creative thinking, especially crime dramas set in New York, such as The Taking Of Pelham 123 (1974, dir. Joseph Sargent, DP Owen Roizman ASC) and The French Connection (1971, dir. William Friedkin, DP Owen Roizman ASC).
“We loved the way those movies looked and how they captured the gritty reality of New York’s run-down urban landscape – the Anamorphic framing and the dirty, beatenup quality of the 35mm film, which they achieved through flashing, shooting wide-open or pushing the film negative to get an exposure. We loved the blooming highlights of the fluorescents, and the noticeable bumps in the dolly moves. We wanted to include all of those kinds of imperfections into our production to really make it feel alive.”
Daniels says he also further absorbed the widescreen framing of the body as a landscape in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963, DP Raoul Coutard) for the movie’s more intimate moments.
Principal photography on Anora took place over the course of 40 shooting days from the beginning of February 2023, taking-in locations around the New York City borough of Brooklyn, including the seaside resorts of Coney Island and Brighton Beach, plus a plush gated-community in Sheepshead Bay. Production also took place in Las Vegas at the Palms Hotel, along Fremont Street in the city’s downtown area, and inside one of the city’s many wedding chapels. With support from the team at ARRI Burbank during testing, and ARRI New York when production commenced, Daniels selected an ARRICAM LT 35mm film camera for the shoot, framing in widescreen 2.40:1, 4-perf Anamorphic, using vintage Lomo prime and zoom lenses for the mainstay of production. The lens package was supplemented with Atlas Orion optics for low-light situations, such as the nighttime car interior shots.
“Apart from the obvious connection of Soviet-era glass and the Russian DNA in our film, the Lomo lenses bring softness and a kind of timeless character to the image,” says Daniels. “They are very distorted on the edges in Anamorphic, and in certain situations, which you can see in the film, they flare with a circular cascade of colour, rather than the harsh blue flares you get with some modern-day Anamorphic lenses. To our eyes they kind of embodied the attitude of Anora herself and helped to bring a heightened sense of reality to the visual storytelling.”
Daniels selected KODAK VISION 3 200T 5213 and KODAK VISION 3 500T 5219 filmstocks for the shoot. Processing was done at Kodak Film Lab New York, and then scanned to 4K at FotoKem in Los Angeles, before the final grade at the company by colourist Alastor Arnold.
“I appreciate the range of Kodak’s Daylight stocks, but felt they would be a little too clean, warm and true-tothe-eye for this production,” says Daniels. “I love the way Kodak’s Tungsten stocks react to colour across the range of day/night, interior/exterior situations, and how they do something a little unpredictable when you start under/overexposing or push/pulling them.
“I especially love the 500T when it’s over-exposed, or when it’s used in scenarios where you don’t know exactly how a fluorescent tube, a practical in a strip-club or storefront in travelling car shot is going to look. In those
Images: photos by Augusta Quirk. Images courtesy of Neon.
ANORA•DREW DANIELS
We were dealing with two different films within an overall story of different ups-and-downs
kinds of circumstance, the way it accentuated things like that was always a surprise to us in a really good way.”
“I knew the 200T and 500T would render the richness of colour we wanted for the heightenedreality in the first part of the movie, but equally how shooting un-corrected they would also deliver the colder colour palette in the second part of the film.”
Wanting to keep the strip-club and night car-interiors suitably dark and brooding, but being aware of needing enough exposure on the characters, even when shooting wide-open, Daniels employed an ARRI Varicon filter on the camera.
“Essentially, the Varicon works in a similar way to the old technique of pre-flashing the film negative that Owen Roizman ASC used on The Taking Of Pelham 123,” Daniels recounts. “At the correct level, the added light from the Varicon only registers in the shadow areas, in the toe of the curve, and does not affect the midrange or highlights. The result is that you get one or two stops of extra detail in the shadow areas, and a slight milkiness the blacks, which Sean really liked.”
Daniels says the movie’s 28-minute “home invasion” sequence, in which Anora and Vanya are confronted by Toros, Igor and Garnick, was one of the most challenging scenes he has ever had to shoot.
“That was a big set-piece for us, and we spent a considerable amount of time on blocking the action around the space before we actually started filming. As it was such a long and pivotal moment in the
story, it needed to have its own visual arc. And, as it was going to take ten days to shoot, it had to feel consistent from start-to-end too.
“The fact that we were shooting in widescreen, in a room that had a row of tall windows on one side, plus mirrors and reflective marble on the other walls, didn’t make the task any easier. Neither did the fact that we were shooting in winter, with only seven hours of usable daylight.
“So we set the action during the middle of an overcast day, which gave us a base to work from in terms of the consistency of the light, and, by shooting uncorrected we got the colder, more naturalistic feeling we wanted to introduce, baked into the negative.
“Of course, when we shot, we had every imaginable type of weather – on-and-off sunshine and torrential downpours – and I had to mitigate that by either suspending 20x20 butterflies to diffuse the sunlight, or by pushing-in light from an HMI when it rained, whilst using a small number of LED softlights to wrap light around the space.
“I was always taking meter-readings and making detailed notes on exposures to make sure we had the right amount and quality of light at any given moment during the shooting day. It became quite a technical exercise in how to maximise the shooting day.
“For example, this involved push-processing the negative by one stop to enable us to shoot at 8am in the morning or 3pm in the afternoon. We filmed takes that looked away from the windows when I had to light from the outside, or lit night-for-day with the HMI. We also used different focal lengths on wides, mid-shots and close-ups so as to avoid getting caught in reflections from the windows, mirrors and marbled surfaces.
“In keeping with the story arc in scene, from chaos to calm, we transitioned from handheld to more stable moves on the dolly, and embraced the bumps as it was manoeuvred without tracks over the marble floors and carpets, whilst graduating from short to longer focal lengths.”
As for lighting, Daniels says he and Baker would have loved to have used traditional Tungsten fixtures to echo the ‘70’s films they so much admired. But, needing to keep a small footprint to the illumination due to the restricted nature of the locations, along with wanting to remain nimble amid the number of scene changes, whilst also keeping an eye on power consumption, meant necessarily resorting to LEDs.
“We based the lighting very much around the environmental lighting we found at our locations,” says Daniels. “For the strip-club, this involved lots
of practicals and enhancing the existing red, cyan, magenta and violet colours, using moving lights, Creamsource Vortexes and carefully-concealed Astera tubes.
“The night-time car exterior scenes were lit using the existing street lights, plus the illumination for random stores and food wagons along the way, as there was no way we could, or even wanted, to illuminate whole streets. We subtly supplemented the car interiors with small, rectangular, home-made light pads, and shot wide-open, with me paying strict attention to the exposure on faces. Even though the levels were four times under on most occasions, the 500T delivered the dark and realistic feeling we wanted.”
He also adds, “I really enjoyed lighting the sunset scene, when Anora and Vanya get out of bed following the New Year’s Eve party, with the warm orange glow from a Prolight LED EclFresnel, shaping and cutting the light with barndoors. That’s one of my favourite-looking scenes in the movie.”
Looking back at his experience of shooting Anora, Daniels concludes, “I loved shooting on film, and would love to have that stipulated in my contact. But it was hard being away from my family for three months, and gruelling shooting long days and long nights. Although it was pretty wild in keeping a handle on all the technicalities and logistics, you can see the creative results on-screen. And like Anora herself, it has a lot of heart.”
CELEBRATION OF CINEMATOGRAPHY
By the EnergaCAMERIMAGE Team, with additional reporting by Kirsty Hazlewood and Ron Prince.
For 32 years, the EnergaCAMERIMAGE Festival has celebrated the art of filmmaking and the recognition of cinematographers. It is largely thanks to them that cinema continues to captivate audiences, bringing to life stories that take shape through the camera lens. Cinematographers masterfully use the tools that make film one of the most important forms of art.
EnergaCAMERIMAGE is not only a celebration of cinematic imagery, but also a meeting place for different cultures, diverse perspectives and artistic visions. It serves as platform for the exchange of experiences, a space for dialogue, learning and inspiration.
The founders, Marek Żydowicz and Kazik Suwała, along with the festival team, are driven by a passion and love for cinema. Despite unfavourable conditions and sometimes inadequate infrastructure, the event has reached a world-class
level, becoming one of the most important dates in the calendar for cinematographers and drawing people from all over the world to Toruń.
Just a year ago, it seemed that the project to build the European Film Center Camerimage was well on its way. Today, however, whilst one can already admire the rising structure of the ECFC Film Studio, the realisation of the second part of the investment – which was to include a 1,500-seat premiere hall, exhibition spaces, cinema halls, a museum dedicated to the art of filmmaking, and an education centre – is now uncertain.
The floods that hit Poland during 2024 are reportedly the reason for the suspension of the funding investment by the Polish Ministry Of Culture & National Heritage. As a result, Camerimage may still not have access to the infrastructure it deserves, but the festival will be a good as ever, and uncertainties around the new film centre will most likely be clarified in the coming months.
Who will win the Golden Frog?
Films in the Main Competition…
Films in the Main Competition…
u Emilia Pérez – DP Paul Guilhaume AFC, dir. Jacques Audiard
u The Girl With The Needle – DP Michał Dymek PSC, dir. Magnus Van Horn
u The Fire Inside – DP Rina Yang, dir. Rachel Morrison ASC
u Conclave – DP Stéphane Fontaine AFC, dir. Edward Berger
u The Brutalist – DP Lol Crawley BSC, dir. Brady Corbet
u Vermiglio – DP Michaił Kriczman, dir. Maura Delpero
u Small Things Like These – DP Frank Van Den Eeden NSC SBC, dir. Tim Mielants
u The Devil’s Bath – DP Martin Gschlacht, dirs. Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz
u Cabrini – DP Gorka Gómez Andreu, dir. Alejandro Monteverde
u Gladiator II – DP John Mathieson BSC, dir. Sir Ridley Scott
u Dune: Part Two – DP Greig Fraser ACS ASC, dir. Denis Villeneuve
Emilia Pérez
The Girl With The Needle
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR EDWARD LACHMAN ASC
Ed Lachman ASC is a true master of the moving image, and his creative approach, inspired by painting, photography and European cinema, has led to collaborations with directors such as Todd Haynes, Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh, Ulrich Seidl, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard, earning him three Oscar nominations, among other accolades.
Lachman was born on March 31, 1946, in Morristown, New Jersey, and grew-up surrounded by the world of cinema, due to his
family’s involvement in managing movie theatres. His father was a film theatre distributor and also worked with carbon arcs used in film projectors. However, it was his parents’ passions for painting and photography that influenced Lachman’s early interests. Initially, he pursued art and art history, without planning a future in cinema.
During his student years in France, and then at Harvard and Ohio Universities, Lachman was influenced by Dada artists, colour theory and German Expressionism, which shaped his interest in visual art and emotional responses. Film courses at Harvard and discovering Robert
Frank’s photographic book, The Americans, deepened his appreciation for the artistic intent behind film imagery. This period marked a turning point in his career, as Lachman began to see the cinematographer’s role as an imagemaker, focusing on creating visual aesthetics with psychological depth and emotional impact.
While pursuing his MFA at Ohio University, Lachman began making documentary shorts, gaining practical filmmaking experience. This led to professional opportunities and a two-year internship at the Maysles Brothers’ studio. During his studies, he focused on Italian neorealism and modern Italian cinema, particularly Bernardo Bertolucci, basing his graduate thesis on Bertolucci’s Before The Revolution (1964, DP Also Scavarda). Lachman met Bertolucci at a New York Film Festival screening in 1970, forming a lasting friendship that continued until Bertolucci’s passing in 2018, though Lachman never completed his thesis.
After college, Lachman worked at the cinéma vérité documentary film studio of David and Albert Maysles, where he managed the office, operated a second camera, and handled sound recording on films like Christo’s Valley Curtain and Grey Gardens. This experience gave him a solid foundation in documentary filmmaking and prepared him for his future as a cinematographer in both documentaries and narrative films. Throughout his career, Lachman adapted to different directors’ styles while maintaining a strong affinity for the documentary approach, even in narrative storytelling.
In the early 1970s, he collaborated with numerous cinematic legends. He worked with the Maysles Brothers, Bernardo Bertolucci on La Luna (where he met Vittorio Storaro AIC ASC),
El Conde
Photo by Roman Bosiacki
Robby Müller on Wim Wenders’ The American Friend and Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed, and Sven Nykvist on King Of The Gypsies and Hurricane. He also collaborated with Werner Herzog on documentaries like La Soufrière and Stroszek, and worked with Jean-Luc Godard on The Anatomy Of A Shot. Though invited to be one of three cinematographers on Godard’s Passion, the project didn’t materialise as planned.
Lachman’s career bridges European cinema and American independent filmmaking, both known for their experimental and personal narratives. His extensive filmography includes collaborations with directors such as Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Carol ), Ulrich Seidl (The Paradise Trilogy), Steven Soderbergh (The Limey), Gregory Nava (Selena) and Paul Schrader (Light Sleeper). He also served as the cinematographer for Sofia Coppola’s debut The Virgin Suicides and films like True Stories and Mississippi Masala. His first narrative feature was The Lords Of Flatbush (1974), and his most recents are El Conde (2023), and Maria starring Angelina Jolie in the lead role.
In addition to his career as a cinematographer, Lachman has directed films, including his feature debut Ken Park (2002), co-directed with Larry Clark. He has also contributed to documentary filmmaking, working on projects like Lightning Over Water (dir. Wim Wenders and Nicholas Ray), Ornette: Made in America (dir. Shirley Clarke), and Collapse (dir. Chris Smith). Lachman has independently directed documentaries such as Report From Hollywood, Cell Stories, Life For A Child, and In the Hearts Of Africa
Lachman’s exceptional cinematographic contributions have earned him numerous prestigious accolades. He is a three-time Oscar nominee for Far From Heaven, Carol and El Conde, and received an Emmy nomination for his cinematography in the HBO’s miniseries Mildred Pierce
He holds the distinction of being the sole American cinematographer to have received the Marburg Camera Award in Germany in
recognition of his outstanding body of work. He was also honoured with the BSC Award for his work on Carol, and received the Pierre Angénieux ExcelLens in Cinematography at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Additionally, in the preceding year, he was bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). In 2019, he also received an analogous accolade from the IMAGO International Federation Of Cinematographers.
Lachman’s films have competed at Camerimage several times. He holds the distinction of being the only DP in the festival’s history to have received four main awards: the Bronze Frog for I’m Not There, two Silver Frogs for Far From Heaven and El Conde, and the Golden Frog for his outstanding cinematography in Carol. In 2011, he was also honoured with the festival’s Cinematographer-Director Duo Award, which he shared with Todd Haynes.
With all the different film images he has created, Lachman has shown himself a versatile cinematographer, who utilises a broad spectrum of skills, artistic sensibilities and methods for creating imagery that defies easy classification. Lachman aptly describes himself as a “visual gypsy” who draws from the wealth of experience and numerous journeys he has undertaken around the world in pursuit of his craft.
In addition to his work as a cinematographer, he has maintained an active presence in various forms of visual art. He is a skilled photographer with a portfolio that includes book projects and exhibitions of his photographs and video installations in museums around the world, including New York’s MoMA, The Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain, and a permanent collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
CATE BLANCHETT IS JURY PRESIDENT OF THE MAIN COMPETITION
There are artists who need no special introduction. One of them is certainly Cate Blanchett, the Australian film and theatre actress, holder of two Oscars, and dedicated member of the arts community.
A true icon of our times, Blanchett is one of the most outstanding actresses in the history of cinema, with an acting career spanning more than 30 years.
She first gained worldwide acclaim for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in the film Elizabeth (1998, dir. Shekar Kapur), earning her first Oscar nomination. For this title DP Remi Adefarasin BSC took home the Golden Frog in 1999. In 2008 she received two Oscar nominations – Best Actress for Elizabeth: The
Golden Age by Shekhar Kapur (with whom she collaborated 10 years earlier in Elizabeth) and best supporting actress for I’m Not There by Todd Haynes, a motion picture that earned Ed Lachman the Bronze Frog in 2007. Blanchett was also nominated for her performances in Carol (2015, dir. Todd Haynes) and Tár (2022, dir. Todd Field), both of which she served-on as executive producer. These titles earned huge recognition and each won Golden Frogs –Ed Lachman, this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award laureate, received the honour for Carol, and Florian Hoffmeister for Tár
Blanchett is a co-founder and principal of Dirty Films, the production company behind, among other films, Warwick Thornton’s The New Boy (which she also appeared in). Last year Thornton was awarded the Golden Frog for the film, marking the first time a DP/director has won the top prize.
Vermiglio
The Devil’s Bath Small Things Like These
Carol
Far From Heaven
STEVE MCQUEEN RECOGNISED WITH SPECIAL AWARD
Academy Award-winning British filmmaker Steve McQueen is to be recognised with this year’s Special Award For Outstanding Director.
“Steve is an artist known for his uncompromising engagement in tackling difficult social and political issues,” said Marek Żydowicz, festival director at EnergaCAMERIMAGE. “His vivid filmmaking style explores the problems of racism, violence, addiction and inequality, constantly moving and provoking discussion, which situates him as one of the most important contemporary film creators. We couldn’t imagine a better laureate for this special award than Steve McQueen”
McQueen’s 2008 feature film debut, the critically-acclaimed Hunger, starring Michael
Fassbender as a starving IRA hunger-striker, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Camera D’Or. McQueen teamed up with Fassbender on his second feature, Shame in 2011. Fassbender received a Volpi Cup, and the director of photography, Sean Bobbitt BSC, was honoured with the Carlo Di Palma Award for Cinematographer Of The Year.
In 2013, McQueen directed Academy Award and BAFTA-winning 12 Years A Slave, based on the true story of Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped and sold into slavery. The film dominated the awards season, winning the Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA and AAFCA Awards for Best Picture while McQueen received DGA, Academy, BAFTA and Golden
Globe directing nods. Sean Bobbitt BSC, who once again collaborated with McQueen on 12 Years A Slave, saw the film compete once more for the Golden Frog. McQueen went on to co-write and direct Widows (2018), as well as his anthology series Small Axe, comprising five original films about resilience and triumph in London’s West Indian community from the late 1960s through the early ‘80s, which was awarded Best Picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and was also the recipient of fifteen BAFTA Television nominations.
Most recently McQueen has teamed with cinematographer Yorick Le Saux AFC for his latest film, Blitz, which follows the epic journey of a 9-year-old boy whose mother sends him to safety in the English countryside during World War II. Written and directed by McQueen, the film stars Academy and BAFTA Award-nominee Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Elliott Heffernan, and will stream globally on Apple TV+ from November 22, 2024.
GIANFRANCO
ROSI AWARDED FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS IN DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING
This year’s Award for Outstanding Achievements in Documentary Filmmaking will be presented to the visionary director Gianfranco Rosi. Known for his deeply-humanistic and visually striking films, Rosi has consistently pushed the boundaries of documentary filmmaking, crafting works that not only illuminate pressing global issues, but also offer profound insights into the lives of those often overlooked by mainstream media. Gianfranco Rosi moved to New York and graduated from the New York University Film School in 1985. Following a journey to India in 1993, he produced and directed Boatman, about a boatman on the banks of the Ganges,
which he showed with success at various international festivals including the Sundance Film Festival, the Locarno Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.
After the short film Afterwords, that was shown at the 57th Venice International film Festival, in 2008 in Slab City, California, he shot the documentary Below Sea Level about a community of homeless people who live on a desert plain 40-metres below sea level: the film won Best Film in the Horizons section of the Venice International Festival and at Doc/ It. It also took the Grand Prix, the Prix des Jeunes al Cinéma du Réel, the prize for best film at the One World Film Festival in Prague, the Vittorio De Seta Prize at Bif&st 2009 and was nominated for Best Documentary at the European Film Awards 2009.
His film El Sicario – Room 164, a film interview from a story by Charles Bowden about a hitman on the run from Mexican drug cartels, won the Fipresci Award at the Venezia Film International Festival. In 2013 he won the Golden Lion at Venice with Sacro GRA , a film where he told the story of hitherto unseen humanity that lives around the Grande Raccordo Anulare (the ring road highway) that circles Rome.
In 2016, Rosi won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Festival with Fuocoammare, stories from the island of Lampedusa, about its inhabitants, fishermen and migrants. It also won the Italian Golden Globe, received two nominations for the David of Donatello Awards and won a Nastro d’Argento.
Presented at the Venice Film Festival in 2020, his feature-length documentary, Notturno, was shortlisted for the Academy Awards 2021, for Best International Feature Film. Notturno was shot over three years along the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, and Lebanon, a region where tyranny, invasions and terrorism have fed off each other in a vicious circle, to the detriment of the civilian populations.
To celebrate Gianfranco Rosi’s remarkable contributions to documentary cinema, EnergaCAMERIMAGE will host a special retrospective of his work, featuring five of his most influential films: Below Sea Level, El Sicario – Room 164, Sacro GRA , Fuocoammare, and Notturno
Cabrini
Gladiator II
Dune:
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NATHAN CROWLEY TO RECEIVE SPECIAL AWARD FOR PRODUCTION DESIGNER
Nathan Crowley will be honoured with this year’s Special Award for Production Designer. Crowley, an eminent production designer, began his career in Islington, London, and honed his skills at the Brighton School of Art in the UK. In the early 1990s, he moved to Hollywood, where he quickly made his mark as the second unit art director on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, utilising practical techniques executed directly in front of the camera.
Crowley’s career led him to Dublin, Ireland, where he worked on films directed by Barry Levinson and Joel Schumacher. His return to the United States proved pivotal, as he began a significant collaboration with Christopher Nolan on the film Insomnia. This
partnership resulted in a series of successful projects that forever changed the face of contemporary cinema.
Crowley’s work has earned him numerous awards and nominations, including Oscar nominations for The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, Dunkirk , First Man and Tenet. He also received BAFTA nominations for Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, First Man, and Dunkirk . He was also recognised with an Emmy nomination for the HBO series Westworld
Recently, Crowley has expanded his portfolio with film adaptations of Wonka and Wicked 1 & 2. He is now booked to design the new Avengers films for the Russo Brothers at Marvel Films. Known for his practical approach to production design, Crowley excels at creating immersive, detailed worlds, blending traditional and modern techniques.
OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
World premiere screening of Rust, in-remembrance of DP Halyna Hutchins
Almost three years after the tragic death of Halyna Hutchins, the Ukrainian cinematographer who was part of the festival family, Camerimage is set to honour her memory and remind the world of her legacy.
During this year’s edition a special world premiere screening of the film Rust will take place, followed by a unique panel discussion with the film’s director Joel Souza, cinematographer Bianca Cline, and Stephen Lighthill ASC, Halyna’s mentor from her beloved film school, AFI.
During the panel, following the screening of Rust, the filmmakers will discuss events surrounding the film, offering insight into continuing production after Halyna’s death on-set.
Maintaining Hutchins’ artistic vision, as tremendously challenging as it was for the entire crew, was really important to the filmmakers, hoping to fulfil their duty to complete her work. During the panel, they will discuss the visual style that Halyna developed and explain how Cline, who took over her work, managed to replicate Halyna’s style.
The discussion will also touch on important issues in the film industry. Halyna’s story will serve as a starting point for a conversation about women in cinematography as well as safety on-set.
FilmLight Colour Awards: Celebrating the Art of Colour
Join us along with special guests to celebrate the 2024 FilmLight Colour Awards. Acclaimed cinematographers, directors and colourists will come together to award the best grades in across six categories.
NFTS Seminar: Why go to film school?
A discussion involving past and present students from the National Film & Television School (NFTS) hosted by Oliver Stapleton BSC, the current co-head of cinematography at the school. as well as an alumni.
UK-based NFTS is one of world’s top film schools, with alumni going-on to become internationally-recognised industry professionals across all departments, garnering prestigious awards the likes of BAFTAs and Oscars.
This panel discussion will be an excellent opportunity to gain some insight into the workings of a renowned film school and will focus on the advantages and disadvantages of attending film school. Questions from the audience will be encouraged. The panel is programmed alongside the National Film And Television School Student Etudes Review, a screening showcasing a selection of outstanding NTFS student shorts.
AFI Conservatory: Cinematography Programme by Stephen Lighthill ASC
Stephen Lighthill ASC, head of the American Film Institute Conservatory Cinematography programme, welcomes all festival attendees to a discussion of the AFI conservatory approach to filmmaking education with an emphasis on the Cinematography discipline. Lighthill will be joined by recent alumni at this reception and conversation about AFI.
For over 40 years, the AFI cinematography programme has been one of the few offering an advanced Master of Fine Arts degree in cinematography. During that time, an amazing group of alumni have gone on to prominent careers. Join the session and enjoy some Visual Essays from Cinematography Fellows at AFI, and a discussion of the evolving environment of filmmaking in general and cinematographers in particular. All festival attendees welcome.
Mythbusting: Colour, Cinema, Camera – by BVK & CSI
Discover the truth behind colour science, cameras and cinema at this insightful session with a world leading vision researcher, a renowned colour scientist responsible for the number 1080 and square pixels in the Rec. 709 standard, and two award-winning colourists. Together, they bring along their favourite myths and misconceptions, to be busted live-on-stage in this fun and educational seminar.
Ed Lachman ASC Masterclass
Join the Ed Lachman ASC Masterclass and learn from the recipient of 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award and the legendary cinematographer behind Carol, Far From Heaven, and The Virgin Suicides, known for his collaborations with directors like Todd Haynes, Ulrich Seidl, and Paul Schrader.
A three-time Oscar nominee, Lachman has also made history at the festival by winning four bronze, two silver, and one golden frog… the coveted Golden Frog for Carol. Don’t miss this rare chance to learn from a true cinematic master!
Rust
Visualising Emotion: The Cinematography of Inside Out 2
Join Adam Habib and Jonathan Pytko, the cinematographers behind this year’s critical and commercial hit, Inside Out 2, as they share their creative process working with virtual cameras and lighting. Through examples, behind the scenes imagery, and pre-production materials, Pytko and Habib will explore the creative and technical strategies they employed to intentionally expand the visual language established in the first film.
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The discussion will also offer insights into the evolving role of cinematography in animation, as well as practical career advice for those navigating this specialised field. For both students and seasoned professionals, this is an opportunity to gain first-hand knowledge from the frontlines of animation cinematography.
Camerimage Consulting Centre: Income as a Challenge: Initial and Subsequent Payments for the DP European legislation requires that the creators of works receive an appropriate share of the proceeds from the exploitation of their works. Even if the concrete implementation in
the community countries still differs - and some countries have not yet implemented the EU requirements at all - principles can be derived from the EU requirements and the practice of many EU countries that can also be helpful for cinematographers.
Given the regularly low initial fees in Europe, a share in evaluation revenues is almost mandatory. Collective bargaining agreements can help where they already exist - individual contractual solutions are also conceivable - at least in the (rather rare) cases of a relatively strong negotiating position. In addition, the payments of the collecting societies are important, which are to compensate private copying and cable retransmission, but also partly cinema box-office takings. What is largely missing is a share in streaming revenues.
The seminar is aimed at DPs of all ages who want to understand why payments must/should be made by various parties for the creation, distribution and utilisation of cinematography. The aim of this event is to encourage colleagues to focus not only on the initial fee in negotiations, but also to take into account the economic opportunities and possibilities of the project guided by knowledge of the European legal framework.
Cinematography of Win Or Lose
Pixar Animation Studios’ original series Win Or Lose follows the intertwined stories of eight different characters as they each prepare for their big championship softball game. The series reveals what it actually feels like to be in the shoes of each character with incredibly funny, emotional and uniquely animated perspectives. Dive deep into the series’ cinematography with DP Patrick Lin and find out how the unique approach to camera and lighting helped define and separate the two worlds: the real vs. the subjective.
EXHIBITORS:
At the time of writing, confirmed exhibitors at this year’s festival included: Aputure, Astera, Atlas Lens Co., Blackmagic Design, Creamsource, HD Air Studio, Leitz, Nanlux, Panavision, Prolights, Sumolight, Sunbelt Rentals, The Studio B&H, Vantage Film (Hawk) and Zeiss.
WIZARD WHEEZES
By Iain Blair
American cinematographer Alice Brooks ASC has been collaborating with director Jon M. Chu for well over two decades. They first met as film students at USC where she shot his musical short, and that led to In The Heights (2021), the acclaimed film adaptation of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical.
So, when Brooks, an avid musical fan who grew-up watching “all the classic musicals on TV all the time”, got a call from Chu some three years ago asking her to shoot Wicked, she must have felt like she’d made a wish, clicked her heels three times and landed in Oz.
Wicked, the first of a two-part film adaptation of the hit stage musical, stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, and is one of the most eagerly-anticipated releases of the year.
“It was like entering a dream, I was so excited,” recalls Brooks whose last film was another musical, Tick, Tick…Boom! (2021, dir. Lin-Manuel Miranda). “It’s the biggest musical ever, and there’s just so much love for it in the world. So many people connect with it on so many different levels. It’s not for one specific age group or gender or background. The story transcends everything.”
That story reimagines the original Wizard Of Oz, and instead focusses on the initial friendship – and then bitter rivalry – between two witches, Elphaba (Erivo), who becomes the Wicked Witch Of The West, and Galinda (Grande), who becomes Glinda The Good.
Bringing that titanic struggle between good and evil to life, a battle both intimate and epic, was also a filmmaking experience that embraced extremes.
“It was like making a small independent movie with your friends,” she recalls. “But then you’re in the middle of an enormous set that is the size of four American football fields, and you’ve got an army of people around you.”
So how did Brooks and Chu approach the look of the ambitious film?
“When we first talked about our goals for the movie, I said I wanted it to be the greatest, most beautiful love story ever told between these two women, these two best friends,” she explains.
“But, visually, it’s this huge world that this very intimate story is told in. So how do we create the vastness and the smallness at the same time? We realised it was going to be all about the close-ups, and how these women connected. The other thing we talked a lot about was the theme of light and shadow, that the light is not always the light, and the darkness is not always the darkness. Good is not always good, and evil is not always evil. What we perceive can be very different from what reality is.
“I asked Jon if I could go through the script and make time-of-day suggestions, because I had this idea where the sun would always rise for Glinda and set for Elphaba. So, throughout the movie there are several long sunrise and sunset sequences, and the last 40 minutes of the movie is all one long sunset. As Elphaba finds her power, she jumps off the Emerald City tower as the sun finally sets for her. Those are the broad strokes of
ideas that we started with.”
Before official prep even began, Brooks started doing her own series of camera and lens tests at Panavision in Woodland Hills
“First, we tested every single camera, and initially I thought we were going to shoot on the ARRI Alexa LF, and Panavision’s lens guru Dan Sasaki had this idea for lenses. So we started developing this lens set together,” she reports.
“But after going to Company 3 and watching the test dailies projected, Jon and I realised we wanted to shoot on the ARRI Alexa 65 as we needed that scope for this movie, but then Dan said he couldn’t make the lenses to cover that sensor in time.”
As fate would have it, the schedule was pushed back and Brooks called Sasaki on the same day, and I enquired, “Can you develop those lenses now for the Alexa 65? To which he replied, ‘Let’s go for it,’” she recalls.
“We ended-up shooting on Panavision Prototype
Ultra Panatar IIs, which we called ‘Unlimiteds’ because they didn’t even have a name when we started using them. We’re the only film that’s ever shot on those prototypes and they’re still locked in a closet in London. We didn’t even have a full set of lenses when we started the movie because Dan was still making them. It was wonderful to have him starting from scratch, looking at my lookbook, discussing the emotion of the movie, and then to
have him developing lenses specifically for Wicked, with us picking the colour of the lens flare. Instead of Panavision blue we picked an amber.”
Brooks notes that embracing such an untried lens package wasn’t the big risk it might have been on another production.
“Jon said very early-on that he wanted to develop and create a world with a group of craftsmen and artisans that looked like no other movie. He also asked
us not to make the obvious choices. So I think if we had just gone with a set of established lenses we wouldn’t have had those wonderful imperfections.”
To build their LUTs for the film, Brooks worked with Company 3 and dailies colourist Lucie Barber.
“Finding the right dailies colourist is really important,” Brooks stresses, “and I kept interviewing dailies colourists, but no one was clicking. Although Lucie actually wasn’t in-house at Company 3, they asked me, ‘Do you want to try her?’. We met and I saw that she ‘got’ the movie. She understood what we were trying to do, and she became incredibly instrumental to making this movie.”
The shoot was based at the newly-renovated Sky Studios Elstree outside London. Brooks had 18 weeks of prep and started tests during week two.
“Those were make-up and lighting tests to begin with,” she reports. “They were crucial, because the green make-up for Elphaba’s skin was going to change based on how it would be lit. So I worked really closely with Frances Hannon, our make-up artist, to figure-out how we were going to light Elphaba and Glinda. We then started phasing-in lens tests, and then started doing specific lens tests on Cynthia and Ariana. We did a camera test almost once a week and endedup shooting two different lenses for their close ups –Cynthia with a 65mm and Ariana with a 75mm.”
Partly because of the Hollywood strikes of 2023, the shoot ultimately took over a year to complete.
“The plan was always that we’d shoot the two movies together as if they were one, and that we were going to shoot for nine months, starting December 2022 and wrapping August 2023,” Brooks reports. “ We shot for 145 days and were almost done, but then the strike happened when we had just nine days to go. So we went back this last January for another five weeks, and finally finished.”
The filmmakers faced other challenges. “We were on the brand-new stages at Sky Studio that Universal had just built. We were the first production there, and it was still a construction zone,” she says. “But they’re beautiful stages now.
“The second big challenge was the sheer scale of the sets – they were so gigantic. I know 155 days seems like a long time, but for what we wanted to accomplish it felt like not enough time in some ways. Because of the schedule, some weeks we were shooting on four different stages. We had 16 total stages (ten at Sky, two at Platinum, four at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden) and four huge backlot sets. We ended up pre-lighting both Saturdays and Sundays almost every weekend. Working like that that was really intense. But it also was so exciting and rewarding. Every morning I’d wake-up and pinch myself and go, ‘Is this really happening?’ And everyone was working to their highest potential.”
Brooks’ core crew included gaffer David Smith, DIT Jay Patel, key grip Guy Micheletti, A-camera operator Karsten Jacobsen, and final colourist Jill Bogdanowicz. Lighting was provided by Universal Production Services, and illuminating the huge sets presented yet another big
The lighting was a lot more involved than any movie I’ve done before
challenge for Brooks.
“The lighting was a lot more involved than any movie I’ve done before” she admits. “For example, to create the lighting cues for the idea of the sunrise and the sunset took weeks to develop, and for the scene in a forest featuring Elphaba and Fiyero and a cub, we
had an eight-minute sunset, so the sky was constantly changing. We shot it on a double sound stage, and in the deep distance I had two Dinos on a lift that had to slowly lower.
“However, we needed to know where the sun would be and where in the lighting cue it needed to be, because we never started at the beginning and ran the full thing. So we were dealing with the colour of the lights, the ambient shifts, and the warmth of the sun as it was drifting. And then, Jon also wanted to do all these 360-degree shots, which meant we were constantly chasing the light because I never wanted to be on the on the flat side of the light.”
Brooks had over 300 Cineo Quantum II LED lamps on Wicked, which she used on many sets including the forest set, “for the long sunset scene where the colour
temperature of the sky was constantly changing,” she reports. “We also used them on the backlot for all the Shiz night work, because with the huge size of the set the Quantum IIs were a good choice for how much light they output and their weather resistance.”
Another key piece of gear for lighting such complex sequences was a Mini Desk, made by Anytronics
“It’s a wireless dimmer-board that you can walk around with, and it enabled David Smith, my gaffer to constantly move the dimmers up and down as the camera was moved around,” she explains. “It was all carefully choreographed, but sometimes he didn’t have enough hands. So I also adjusted some of the dimmers, and sometimes my assistant or an AD would help out too, as we had so many lighting cues in this movie.”
All the musical numbers and performances were shot live, instead of being dubbed in post, notes Brooks.
“It’s demanding on the actors and on the crew because there’s only so many takes they can do, and you want to make sure everything’s technically perfect. It also was emotional. You’d see the grip team lined-up next to the crane, just crying as Cynthia or Ariana belted out a song. Doing it all live was pretty incredible.”
The hardest scene for Brooks to shoot was the Ozdust Ballroom sequence.
“I started those lighting tests very early, as the set was all made out of clear resin, because it’s supposed to be an underwater cave,” she explains. “The clear resin gave me complete control over what colour it was going to be, because I could backlight it, but finding the right colour took a long time. Whilst we were doing the make-up tests, we found that the cyan blue was the perfect colour to make Cynthia’s green skin pop.
“The ballroom scene is the heart of the movie, as it’s where Elphaba and Glinda become friends, falling in love with each other. It was important that we got this right, especially with the 360-degree shots during the eight-minute dance between the two women, which starts with Cynthia alone.
“Jon wanted the camera to constantly be circling them. So first we shot Cynthia, because it was emotional for her. She comes into the Ozdust Ballroom Everyone’s making fun of her and laughing at her as she wears her witch’s hat for the first time.
“We circled around her on the 65mm lens for eight minutes with the Steadicam operator and the focus puller, Lewis Hume. We shot at a very shallow depthof-field, and afterwards Lewis came up to me and said that was the hardest shot he ever pulled-focus on.
“Then we did Ariana’s close-up, before pulling back and doing 360-degree wide shots or medium shots. And while all that was happening, the gaffer was doing his dimming lighting cues on his Mini Desk. I think all those things combined – the technical and extremely specific choreography of lighting and camera – made it the biggest challenge of the whole shoot.”
Gaffer David Smith was faced with choosing the right key light for his design for the upcoming Universal film, Wicked.
“I was skeptical to use a new fixture that I was not too familiar with but once I started using the Cineo Quantum II, I was converted. The color temperature, form factor and weight played a huge role in my decision to use the QII as a key light for most of the filmmaking,” said David. The Quantum II is a 4’ x 4’ soft panel light that delivers the high-quality film production lighting that one expects from Cineo.
The challenging nature of the sets used for the film made the decision to use the Quantum II fixtures even more crucial.
“With 1500 watts of output, they had the push to carry the talent across large portions of the set and provide the soft quality of light I was looking for,” explained David. With 300 Quantum II lights used during the production of Wicked, David was able to consistently provide a powerful, but soft wash or key light as needed. When creating these massive lighting designs, David said,
“I tend to think of the whole picture first and then hone in on the specific lighting needs. I found the Quantum II helpful in the fact that I could make the source larger and know that it would have the output I needed.”
David, along with Cinematographer Alice Brooks, chose innovative Cineo products for the Key and fill lighting in Universal’s Wicked.
To learn more about Cineo products visit CINEOLIGHTING.COM and UNIVERSALPRODUCTIONSERVICES.COM
Cineo Lighting fixtures provided by Universal Production Services UK, the exclusive Set Lighting & Rigging Supplier for the film.
Photo courtesy of Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures
SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS
By Darek Kuźma
DP Jomo Fray collaborated with photographer-filmmaker RaMell Ross to adapt Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Nickel Boys into a poignantly beautiful work of cinematic art.
When discussing Nickel Boys the first thing to acknowledge is the way it was shot by Fray. Shooting in 4:3 aspect ratio, Whitehead’s evocative tale of two African American boys, Elwood and Turner, and their abusive ordeals at Nickel Academy, a notorious 1960’s reform school, was translated by the DP into a mesmerising first-person, point-of-view experience.
Apart from a single scene when we see Elwood and Turner together, having mere seconds to witness both of their smiling faces in the same frame, the film consists of a collection of their interwoven perspectives, as they try to survive abuse by the school and its corrupt administrators. We perceive the surrounding world through their eyes. We endure the agony of the hard labour and corporal punishments they are forced to endure. We feel the comfort of plain hugs, and the ordinary displays of their blooming friendship, that help them to persevere.
“We didn’t think of this production as a POV film, rather as a film shot with a sentient camera that immerses you in the characters’ lives,” Fray exclaims. “For us it was about capturing the feeling of sight. We wanted it to feel like there’s a world on either side and you don’t know what’s going into the frame next.
“We’re talking about two black men in the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the US. They can’t make eye contact with everyone, and can’t always be looking around. We were trying to mirror the visual experience of being and moving through an oppressive system.”
Fray admits that shooting this way was a daunting challenge but, as he was a fan of Ross’s kaleidoscopic and humanistic view of the Black community in Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018, DP RamEll Ross) documentary, he cherished every second of it.
“I remember leaving Hale County screening feeling changed. I felt I needed to understand the mind of the guy who made it and I’d do anything to work with him,” Fray reveals.
Fray values an extensive prep period to devise
a visual language that is right for a film and was elated to find Ross shared this mindset.
“RaMell and I had hours-upon-hours of discussions trying to think about the film at almost a subatomic level,” he recalls. “Normal aspects of filmmaking turned into questions. What is transition? What is coverage? What is an establishing shot when you have no wide to bounce off? How do we understand where the characters are in a space?
“We made a visual manifesto with a rule-set of how we wanted to approach the world or what we’d never allow ourselves to do. Our shot list was 35 pages, single-spaced, with every shot explained, for what we should feel and where our eyes should naturally go. During shot-listing we had a little DSLR and tested-out things like hugs or odd angles to understand what the perspective would feel like.”
As Elwood and Turner interact regularly with people and objects that are not within their sight, designing the right camera movement was essential. But there are not a lot of films similar to how Nickel Boys was going to look and feel, forcing Fray to explore different paths.
“We saw films in the vein of Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void (2009, DP Benoît Debie SBC), and Robert Montgomery’s Lady In The Lake (1947, DP Paul C Vogel ASC), which is considered the first POV-shot movie, but weren’t influenced by them,” he offers.
“If you think about how the human body goes through the world, our brain essentially stabilises images so that we perceive reality smoothly. We did countless camera tests to figure-out not how to make images that show what it is to be human, but rather to make image that look the way it feels to be human. Because of filmmaking grammar, handheld feels more inside a body than something more photorealistic to our experience, so that became our main tool.
“We ruled-out Steadicam, as it felt too much like a spirit moving through space, and we wanted people to feel there’s a body attached to the image. So we also tested Snorricam, a camera device used in filmmaking that is rigged to the body of the actor, facing the actor directly, so that when they walk, they do not appear to move, but everything around them does. And we tested other types of body and chest rigs, plus remote heads, and used a combination of
all of them. Each time we did that, my key grip, Gary Kelso, and his team engineered custom-builds to get the specific shots we wanted.”
Simultaneously, Fray and colourist Alex Bickel, at Color Collective in New York, worked on a LUT.
“Knowing how colour is going to be rendered in our world was as important to our way of presenting the characters’ perspectives as camera movement,” says Fray. “Due to our work in prep, when we went into post with Alex, 98% of the film had been done. We could focus on tweaking small things.”
The Nickel Academy in Colson Whitehead’s original novel was inspired by the soul-crushing events at the real-life Dozier School For Boys, but even though Ross’s version is largely abstracted from that infamous facility, the filmmakers wanted to create a sense of place for the audience’s sake.
“We shot in a former convent and created our own geography, but the camera was not to be manipulative, it was there to just gaze around the way a person would, with a bit of poetic sensibility to make it more cinematic. The film is about the abuses of the reform schools but retains a sense of wonderment in the face of inhumanity that is inherent to the human spirit.”
Principal photography started in the fall of 2022 in Louisiana, and lasted for 32 days, with production taking place mainly in and out of New Orleans, plus nearby towns like Thibodaux, with structures such as a boxing ring built by production designer Nora Mendis.
The extensive prep period made Fray and Ross realise that Snorricam was ideal to shoot a small
Every single take felt new and exciting
chunk of the film in a third-person’s point-of-view. We see Elwood in the 2010s, decades after his Nickel Academy ordeal, where the camera is rigged on his back, but we never see his face, only those with whom he talks.
“We talked at length about how to visualise Elwood’s trauma without having a rupture between the imagery we’d been seeing up until then.” Fray says. “What does such brutal abuse do to a man’s ability to understand himself in the world?”
This was one of the reasons Fray wanted to shoot on Sony Venice using the lightweight Rialto extension. “Having so many different type of camera systems within the film, we needed a modular camera with great parameters that would allow us to make shots that felt organic.”
The prep also brought a handful of surprises, as in the case of finding the lenses.
“I was testing like crazy at Panavision New Orleans. On one occasion, executive Steve Krul said he had prototypes of Panavision’s new VA largeformat spherical primes, and that I should really look at them. I did and, I’m not a religious person, but in that moment I truly felt like I saw God,” he enthuses.
“VAs are the first sets of lenses Dan Sasaki engineered from the ground-up in a long time, and there was something about them that felt tonally quite different from any other optical design I’ve seen. They’re lightweight and fast, more spherical and less telecentric in design, and they have this natural threedimensionality thanks to which things pop-out. They suited our modular camera design and 4:3 aspect ratio in a way no other lenses would, especially the 35mm, and the 50mm, our hero lens.”
Fray explains that one thing more important than immersing the audience in the world of Elwood and Turner was emotional honesty.
“The intense prep allowed us to be more improvisational on-set. I never give my first AC, Kali Riley, a mark of where I wanted to focus. We shotlisted everything to know what we were looking for and then explored different paths.
When operating the camera – whether it was A-cam operator Sam Ellison, RaMell, me or actors Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson equipped with chest rigs – we tried different things. Every single take felt new and exciting,”
Fray also discloses. “In my projects, I always try to imbue the camera with my sense of vulnerability and perspective, but this time I needed to channel Brandon and Ethan’s personalities and have the camera be as emotional, as invested, as vulnerable as they were.”
This approach obviously influenced how Fray lit the film.
“We didn’t have any lights built on sets. Almost everything was motivated from the outside with reflective light and different units. Every single set had to be 360-degrees and hold-up under the most intense scrutiny at every angle, because it was
We did countless camera tests to show what it is to feel human
impossible to say, we’re here, or we’ll go from point A to point B,” he explains.
“I’ve always been deeply influenced by cinematographers like Néstor Almendros who used a lot of mirrors. What he did to light and the spread of light was incredible. That’s why I never give actors any marks. I enjoy letting them go where their hearts are telling them and capturing the results in-camera. When they don’t have a leash, they can do and see things that are so special, specific and electric.”
Fray extensively used Dedolight’s Effect and Lightbridge’s CRLS systems to change the spread and the quality of light, and had 18K HMIs, ETC Source
Fours, Fiilex and Astera fixtures, plus Creamsource Vortexs and Rosco DMGs in his lighting package. MBS was the lighting vendor to the production.
“We were lucky to have Bob Bates ICLS as our gaffer,” says Fray. “He’s a true artist, always honest and sensitive with light. He worked with Gary Kelso and key rigging grip, Moses Mott, to implement regular and custom mirrors/reflectors, and to create some incredible set-ups using different sources. Sometimes it was just one or two 18Ks with a jungle of mirrors around them, ricocheting or pulling-off light and sending it into different places. A first-person based visual style is already so artifice-heavy that we needed every other aspect of the production to be as low in artifice as possible. Also for the sake of actors.”
Though Nickel Boys was not a walk in the park, Fray calls it a fulfilling experience.
“I’m an emotional DP. What’s amazing about cinematography is that it’s a tool for compassion, empathy and connection. Films like Lynne Ramsay’s Small Deaths (1996, DP Alwin Küchler BSC/Lynne Ramsay), Steve McQueen’s Hunger (2008, DP Sean Bobbitt BSC) and Wong Kar-wai’s In The Mood For Love (2000, DP Christopher Doyle), each took my breath away. I didn’t know you could articulate feelings in this way,” he admits.
“But I’m also a son of scientists – my father was a physiologist, my mother a neuroscientist. I enjoy the technical aspect of creating something emotional. This was such a beautiful challenge as it pushed me to do something poetic and emotional, but also engineered and technical. We needed to have dual-track minds when talking technically about tools we wanted to play like jazz instruments.”
And like jazz, impossible to describe to a person who have never listened to it, Nickel Boys is a film everyone has to filter through themselves.
American cinematographer Lawrence Sher ASC was nominated for Academy and BAFTA Best Cinematography Awards for the 2019, critically-acclaimed, billion-dollar blockbuster Joker – a bleak, intense, disturbing and chilling origins story, directed by erstwhile comedy director Todd Phillips.
Now the longtime collaborators have reunited to make Joker: Folie À Deux, the much-anticipated followup and their seventh film together in 16 years. It’s a creative partnership that includes such hit comedies as The Hangover trilogy, Due Date, and War Dogs, but their latest film leaves that comedy comfort-zone even further behind in the rearview mirror.
Set two years after Joker, Joker: Folie À Deux stars Joaquin Phoenix once again in his Oscar-winning dual role as Arthur Fleck/Joker, and starts with Fleck now institutionalised at Arkham Asylum awaiting trial for his crimes as Joker. Whilst struggling with his dual identity, Arthur not only falls in love with fellow inmate Lee Quinzel, played by Oscar-winner Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born), but he also finds the music, that’s always been inside him, transforming the ensuing psychodrama into a full-blown musical.
“When I first read the script, I was like, ‘Wow’!” recalls Sher. “It was not what I expected. But after reacting to the story, this idea of music and how it plays into the movie, I then got super-excited and also
scared – scared in all the ways you want to feel when you read something really good. You feel like, ‘I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do here’, and that’s the part that made me really excited.”
It was not what I expected… I was superexcited and also scared
If you can see this movie in IMAX, that’s the way to go
In choosing the camera packages and lenses, Sher reports that, “They were very similar to the first Joker. We did test some other things, but we went back to basically the same set-up because we liked the language of the ARRI 65, and we repeated a bunch of lenses from the first film.”
Whilst most of the film was shot with the ARRI Alexa 65s, the team also used ARRI Mini LF, Sony Venice 2 and Red Komodo cameras. The camera department started with over 200 different lenses by various manufacturers, whittled it down to 21, including lenses from Nikon, Canon, Leica and ARRI, and modified them to match “as closely as possible” with regard to warmth and sharpness.
“We also added a new set of Hasselblad lenses that were rehoused by my rental house, Otto Nemenz, that they’ve now branded as ‘Ottoblads’, which have a special ring which detunes the focus of the lens from the outside-in,” says Sher.
“As for the ‘hero’ lens, it was the same as in the first Joker, a 58mm Nikon T1.3 lens that could close focus to 11-inches for extreme close-ups on the actors. We also used a DNA 80mm, a 150mm Ottoblad, a 280mm Leica, and a Signature 350mm. So, we had lenses from a lot of different manufacturers and they all covered the large format of the Alexa 65, a huge criterion.
“Plus, they all are very close-focus in ways that allowed us to never be limited as we got in closer. There’s
a lot of stuff in the movie where sometimes it’s like Joaquin is drawing the camera towards him, and because we were doing it in real-time, I was going, ‘Just keep going.’ And I didn’t ever want to hear the focus puller go ‘We have to stop’ when we wanted to keep going.”
By contrast, the lighting package was different from Joker’s set-up, “because this was about big sets, and lots of pre-lighting,” he notes. “The biggest difference here was probably that we went into more of an LED space, for the very practical reasons of needing to control all the dimming and colour capabilities, and to have the absolute flexibility doing real-time lighting changes on a dimmer board as the take progresses. So, it wasn’t stuff we could pre-do and then go, we needed 20 minutes
to re-programme it all. We wanted to be able to cycle through a bunch of colour changes and changes in the quality of light.”
Lighting the courtroom set was probably the biggest challenge in that regard. As Sher explains, “It had these huge windows which provided different options. There was a nest of lights out there, and then we had different sorts of diffusion to change the light, based on the time of day or what we determined the look of the day was.
“And then the benefit of building the set was that we had these sections of the walls above the windows that we’d cut-out, so we could flap them open and cheat light, as the window light maybe only dug 25-feet into the space, and the other side of the courtroom where Harvey Dent and the prosecution sat would have no light on them at all. This allowed us to extend those window lights further into the other side of the room, using a cheated window that we could close or open, depending on the size of the shot and the needs.
“We did that throughout that space, and every once in a while, we’d roll in a big ARRI SkyPanel 360 with an OctaDome, which would help wrap some of that window light. But that was really the only thing we would bring in on stands inside the space. Everything we needed was from outside the windows or these little cheated portals above.”
In terms of the visual approach and palette, “we used a combination of the language from the first film and also some stuff which is reality-enhanced,” explains Sher. “So, for the film’s two main sets – the asylum and the courtroom – we had a lot of window light and fluorescents. It’s based in reality, with a touch of our design and our flavour, some atmosphere, all those things.
“When it came to music, it was an extension of the dialogue. So, if it was a scene, such as when he first sings
in front of his inmates, that’s a fantasy within the reality of the space. So, we were not going to suddenly change that room. That room was going to exist the same. He just happens to be singing in it.
“But, when we went into full-on fantasies, such as the big chapel and rooftop scenes, we expanded the colour palette, and the camera movement. We brought in dynamic lighting changes where things got revealed with lights coming on and off. And the colour palette would still be dirty. It still had the Gotham dirtiness, but that would be expanded to be more dynamic colours. That was the larger philosophy.”
Sher and Phillips also embraced a radical, freeform approach to the actual shooting, eschewing even the basics of a traditional shot list.
“Our biggest philosophy was the idea of going even further with this idea of jazz, which is ‘No rehearsals, no marks,’” he reports. “We would just shoot every scene starting with masters, discover what it was in real-time and give the actors the most amount of freedom possible. So again, it went back to environmental lighting in which the wide shot and the close-up might be in the exact same shot. It’s not like suddenly we shot a wide, then we moved in a bunch of lights and shoot a close-up. Never. That philosophy was a big part of the shoot.”
“It sounds like it was complete freeform,” he admits, “and yes, we didn’t have a shot list, but here’s how it works. What I tried to do was light the set environmentally before the actors even showed up, because there’s nothing worse than seeing actors talk through a scene in a space and not being able to discover in those moments if they stand where the light is. So, I got a little bit of information from that. And it was not a rehearsal, it was more that they read through the scene and they discussed what things they might change. What I learnt from that is how the light fell in the room, because I pre-lit it.
“So now I’m watching Todd and the actors sit in those spaces and I’m just walking around and looking at where the light is. And then what I’d usually do was just turn the sides over and jot down camera positions that I thought we could cover the scene in. Once Todd was done with the actors, I did some tiny tweaks to the environmental lighting to now work within that space. I showed my suggestions to Todd, he went ‘Great,’ or he might make an adjustment, and then we just started with that first set-up. They came on set, they yelled ‘Action, and then I watched it.
Now I didn’t know exactly what they were going to do, but I made some plan. It was very freeform, but it’s not like I didn’t have an opportunity to tweak it a little bit after the first take while they discussed it. And in those five minutes, sometimes I had a chance to continue to tweak.”
Principal photography took a total of 75 shooting
JOKER: FOLIE À DEUX•LAWRENCE SHER ASC
days – 66 shooting days in Los Angeles, nine shooting days in New York/New Jersey – and the film shot mostly chronologically. Exteriors were accomplished primarily in New York, for the courthouse and the Joker stairs, and New Jersey for Arkham Asylum. The Arkham prison-yard interior/exterior was mostly built around an existing structure at an LA location. The film utilised numerous stages on the Warner and Universal Studios lots, and shooting mostly on stages gave the production team the ability to quickly move between scenes and stages as needed on the day.
Much of the film was shot with a Scorpio 45ft Technocrane and a Matrix head, another “key element” of the shoot, reports the DP.
“The Matrix head is so amazing because it allows you to scrape over the top of people. It allowed us to move lightning fast, but it also gave us such flexibility to do things that you couldn’t do otherwise.
“So, if we wanted to come in on Joaquin over the defence table and wrap around behind him, we could –and a dolly or Steadicam can’t do that. It also allowed me to be really fast and not have to move a bunch of stuff. Todd, me and Joaquin don’t like to grind through long hours. It’s not being lazy. We want to be hyperefficient. So, every day we shot only ten-hour days, and we wanted to optimise every single hour that we had the actors and never send them back to their trailers. Usually, if we were going to do a big set change – say from a fantasy scene back to the normal courtroom – we’d
break for lunch early, spend half an hour making that adjustment, and then come back and be ready.”
The film also showcases “a lot of 360 work, which allowed us to go from wide shots into close-ups in realtime, and make long masters, which we always do,” says Sher. “Again, it’s challenging, as you need a lot of coordination with the production design. But working this way is a process that’s developed with Todd and me
This was the most creatively-satisfying project I’ve ever done
for 15 years, and we always go into every single set in every location thinking, ‘How we can see 360? How can we light from outside the space and yet still make it feel uncompromised?’”
Summing up, Sher says, “This was the most creatively-satisfying project I’ve ever done, because it took the same kind of elements of Joker, which I was very proud of, and we went to another level in terms of this jazzy, real-time filmmaking approach. I was able to be a lot more dynamic and creative in some lighting choices
because of the music and the fantasies.
“Another thing we did on this movie, that was different than Joker, is we shot it for IMAX and changed the aspect ratio to 1:4:3, and it was great to shoot specifically for IMAX. I’ve seen the film in every format, but if you can see this movie in IMAX, that’s the way to go. Just from a pure filmmaking experience, it was wildlysatisfying and I’m really, really proud of the result.”
UNCHARTED TERRITORY
By Darek Kuźma
Cinematographer Bradford Young ASC was brought on-board by writer-director
Asif Kapadia to shoot the narrative section of 2073, a documentary/live-action hybrid, inspired by Chris Marker’s iconic 1962 sci-fi featurette La Jetée (DPs Jean Chiabaut/ Chris Marker), about a time traveller who risks their life to change the course of history and save the future of humanity.
Young’s career has been fuelled by a wide range of visually-diverse projects, from collaborating with indie film auteurs on their singular visions, such as Dee Rees’s Pariah (2011) and David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), to shooting socially-engaged projects, like Ava DuVernay’s Selma (2014) and When They See Us (2019), to doing Hollywood tentpoles, including Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) and Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018).
Thus, it should come as no surprise that he agreed to take part in Asif Kapadia’s fiery, cinematic callto-arms and use his tools to forge narrative glimpses of Earth’s plausible apocalyptic future in support of the archive-constructed, horror story about how our dystopian present will lead to it.
Kapadia is an Academy Award, Grammy and four time BAFTA-winning producer, director and writer who works across film and television, known for emotionally-engaging, visually striking and genrebreaking films and his trilogy of narratively-driven, archive-constructed documentaries – Senna (2010), Amy (2015) and Diego Maradona (2019).
“I was enamoured with Asif’s documentary work, how spectacular it was in its storytelling and execution, how it transcended the people it was about. Then we had a chance to work together on a commercial in the UK and realised we had many
This film reflects my worldview… my sense of fear, melancholy, apprehension and betrayal
things in common. At the end of it, I told him, ‘No matter the circumstances, let me know when you need me and I’ll be there’,” recalls Young.
“When 2073 popped-up, I couldn’t believe how compelling the challenge it posed. We’re talking about the present by projecting what is happening in 2024 into the distant future, yet discussing all these big, ostensibly sci-fi ideas by keeping ourselves as well as the audience anchored in the current film grammar.”
The film is set in 2073 as a woman called Ghost (Samantha Morton) roams subterranean levels of the once-grand San Francisco, now a police state occupied by ubiquitous surveillance drones and cameras that make life exponentially hellish for everyone who has survived climate and societal collapse. Making ends meet, she treks this technofascist wasteland and recollects stories about the times when the human world could still have been saved from itself – stories presented via an unrelenting deluge of real-life footage from the 2020s, depicting the global rise of autocracy, waves of natural disasters and the myriad of ways that we passively tolerate our
freedoms being taken away from us.
Kapadia and Young acknowledge they were inspired by Chris Marker’s seminal La Jetée featurette, made almost entirely from still images that served as the basis for Terry Gilliam’s sci-fi thriller 12 Monkeys (1995, DP Roger Pratt BSC).
“La Jetée was one of my favourite films as a student. Chris didn’t perceive cinema in terms of stories told in 24fps, rather as a means of expressing oneself in multiple ways. He believed that given only a couple of dollars, you can tell a story that’s pertinent and important,” Young says.
“We wanted to infuse 2073 with his spirit of filmmaking. This film was never intended to be safe, and to me, when people run from a project, when there’s tension surrounding it, that’s a good sign.”
As a consequence, the film is burning with rage but at the same time exudes a certain sense of melancholy for something inadvertently lost that cinema is so adept in evoking in audiences.
Such uncompromising visions rarely get the financing they need and deserve, thus Young had to make do with only few of weeks of prep and five days of shooting in November 2023.
“We knew we wouldn’t have been able to build grand sets, so we chose to shoot on an LED volume at London’s Mars Volume Studio and created environments like the Earth’s surface, the library, and the underground this way.”
Luckily, he had the fortune of working with a near-final cut of the documentary part of the project. “I was able to see a lion’s share of 2073 before we shot the live-action. It was less about matching frames or angles or styles, and more about the context, the energy, the feeling.”
Out of the five days of principal photography, Young spent three on the LED volume, a day on a
LED volumes present wonderful opportunities to be creative
coming from, where its source was, what the light would look like in such apocalyptic times.
“The world we created for 2073 is engulfed in fires, the sun is blocked-out by smoke, everything is feverishly orange. This involved quite a lot of conceptualising, but ultimately it is something we’ve seen over the last couple of summers from Spain to Greece to Canada. Why would we try to imagine such tragedies having all those blueprints around? It was interesting to shoot the film with the assumption that we are envisioning what’s going to happen in the world 50 years from now, but actually it is happening right now.”
Young is usually recognised for keeping his lighting package fairly small and this film was no exception.
“You can’t have many big lights in an LED volume environment as you’d diminish the LEDs and get a lot of glare and reflection, etc.. You need to make sure that any LEDs you bring from the outside don’t bleed onto the screen. It’s hard, but when it hits, it hits,” he offers.
“Still, it is important to understand that you do need to light in the volume. Especially that, depending on the exposure, LED panels may not provide a proper amount of ambience you need. I didn’t have a problem with that, but I brought in other fixtures to be more expressive.”
Panalux provided the lighting package whilst the camera gear – Young shot on Alexa 35 – came
stage at Black Island Studios and one day on-location with bluescreen at Hackney Town Hall in East London to “take the viewers’ senses away from the virtual cinematography.”
Young admits that working in an LED volume and lighting/building sets in real-time via the magic of Unreal Engine was kind of terra incognita (uncharted territory).
“It presents wonderful opportunities to be creative, but there’s also cognitive dissonance in how human beings are presented. In order to blur those lines, you have to build interesting pieces of real foreground and know your camera limitations. And we did, yet we also often used this dissonance to express dramatic elements of the story.”
Young considered where the light would be
from Panavision.
“At the time, Alexa Mini was my go-to camera, but as I was planning to shoot in the 1600-2000 ISO range I was curious to see how much I could push the Alexa 35 in low light. It met all the expectations and its dynamic range was incredible,” he reminisces.
“When shooting in low light with all these LED screens that can only go up and down in brightness by so much, you really need a tool that gives you a wide dynamic range. The Alexa 35 made it a lot easier not to have to light the foreground as much and find the balance in the screens with regards to how and what the camera would see.”
When it came to choosing the lenses Young, co-founder of Tribe7 and its range of increasingly-
popular Blackwing7 glass, knew exactly what to equip the Alexa 35 with – a prototype set of Ezana’s, the company’s latest, still-in-development optics –nicknamed Frankies, short for Frankensteins – which can be personalised according to the needs of each cinematographer using them.
“I can’t really say much about the Frankies’ specs at this point, but it’ll be a surprise. We shot wides on the 27mm, but primarily stayed on the 47mm because it’s really volatile and that volatility helped us to take our eye away from the LEDs. There is a lot more flares and veiling, more activity in the lens. It made us realise that when you have something that volatile, it makes you feel like you’re in a real place, engaging with real life.”
Frankies also played an important part in finding a space for camera improvisation on-set.
“The LED volume doesn’t allow you to be flexible with blocking, so knowing we had this ‘force of nature’ in our lenses, we allowed ourselves this kind of Chris Marker free-spirit approach. My dolly grip Elliott Polley and operators Oliver Loncraine and Jason Ewart, were able to come up with amazing
The 47mm Ezana is really volatile
solutions for getting a lot in one or two shots without losing the sight of the art of it all.”
Young was less involved in the DI, done by colourist Paul Ensby at Picture Shop. “I had a pretty aggressive LUT and DIT Dan Carlin and I did a lot of live grading on the set. I spent three days in London and worked a bit remotely, but most of the grade was about bringing the stock footage into close proximity, so 80% of the grade happened without me.”
Be that as it may, Young considers 2073 an artistic success and is proud he could be a part of a community of filmmakers that brought it to life.
“I believe in everything it’s trying to say, it reflects my worldview, my sense of fear, melancholy, apprehension, betrayal. Cinema is a myth-making machine and people in power understand the importance of generating myths. That’s why I’m in awe of the Hong Kong kids going toe-to-toe with the government and all those who lay down their lives understanding the importance of capturing images in our troubling times,” he confesses.
“2073 was in many ways a culmination of many things I wanted to say but haven’t always felt safe to say. Such projects remind us that there are other people in the world that think the way we do. If anything, what we’re projecting to all the viewers is that you’re not alone.”
Images: BTS photos by Nick Wall. Images from 2073 courtesy of NEON
HISTORY IN THE MAKING
By Darek Kuźma
DP John Mathieson BSC, the cinematographer on director Sir Ridley Scott’s original Gladiator (2000) was eager to go back to antiquity and to write an equally epic second chapter.
It has been almost a quarter of a century since Gladiator took the world by storm. Even though most of the main characters perished on-screen, Scott thought to make some kind of sequel for the better part of the 21st century, finally deciding to depict the progressively decadent Rome through the eyes of Lucius, son of Lucilla and nephew of Emperor Commodus.
Gladiator II takes place some twenty years after the Colosseum duel that concluded the original and sees the adult Lucius taken from his placid life in Numidia and forced into slavery only to become – just like Maximus – a fierce gladiator who shall defy the Emperor. Or, in this case, the co-Emperors Caracalla
and Geta, whose inept reign has made Rome corrupt as never before.
“Ridley called me and said, ‘Hey, we’re going again. You in?’, and we picked-up from where we left off,” laughs Mathieson. “There were obviously new set-pieces to consider. When I joined the production, Ridley was already discussing with SFX super, Neil Corbould, about building three 30-metre long, 65ton trireme galley vessels in the UK to be assembled in Ouarzarzate on these huge SPMTs (self-propelled modular transporters). This was to be the opening scene, the naval siege of Numidia, on the Kingdom Of Heaven (2005) set.
The visual language for this film had been established on Gladiator and that’s where we picked it up. The second film is more vivid in colour, more lavish and vulgar in every way imaginable – it’s full-on Las Vegas decadence – but the language was there. The
real challenge was the logistics of it all.”
“Gladiator was shot on two, sometimes three, Super 35mm film cameras, and despite working on big physical sets, there was always time to wander to each camera to have a look at the frame,” Mathieson recalls.
“Gladiator II was shot on nine digital cameras on the massive 300-metre-long Kingdom Of Heaven
I shot this film with deep, heavy stops… I didn’t want soft mush in the background
With Ridley it’s different. He’s tough, but it’s real, unpredictable and intangible. I miss shooting this way
set that was altered and redesigned as a Numidian citadel, or the life-sized Colosseum and Forum, erected by production designer Arthur Max, in the huge imperial Fort Ricasoli on Malta.
“There were crews deployed everywhere, many grips running about under David Wells, I often didn’t see crews until the end of the day. It was like shooting a live rock’n’roll concert in a stadium.
“In Ouarzazate we were often 2,700 for lunch. Most of the people were construction, but still the shooting crew was in the hundreds. Grips, pre-rigging grips, lighting and pre-lighting crews, cameras, etc. Running something this big, it’s all in the preparation, trying to stay ahead, be ready for what’s happening next or more importantly – what might happen next, such as bad weather, actor availability, re-writes, strikes, Covid, loss of locations, new locations, more re-writes. One must be liquid.”
Though unmistakably bigger in scale and VFX work, the DP cherished the fact that it was shot as practically as possible.
“Gladiator was budgeted for 50 VFX shots,” he recounts. “There were other fixes or old-fashioned splitscreens, but it was physical photography on physical sets. We had days with 3200-plus extras, along with cardboard cut-outs in Colosseum scenes as the technology wasn’t there back then, and Ridley didn’t trust it.
“Now, it’s different, he loves and understands and revels in VFX, and the VFX crew have a lot more to say on film sets in general. Yet Gladiator II is still very physical. The vast majority of the Colosseum audience is digital, but in naval battles the ships and sailors were all there.”
The most important factor in picking the camera and lenses was logistics.
“I don’t want to disappoint the romantics out there, but it wasn’t about art, the bokeh, whatever that means,
high specs or the latest digital marvel. It was about quantity, reliability and compatibility. When you have so many cameras and set-ups, it is about the gear being as easy as possible to hand. My first AC Lewis Hume strongly hinted that manifesto to me.
“My lenses choices were all about the zooms – the faster and the newer the better. Primes never came out of their boxes. However, zooms are complex beasts and in terms of wide, medium and long zooms, you do need compatibility between them and to standardise everything – the cameras and the lenses.”
“With that in mind, for cameras I went to Panavision and asked, ‘What have you got lots of?’,” he laughs. “To which Charlie Todman replied, ‘ARRI Alexa Mini LFs’. So that’s what we got. We also had a couple of the bigger ARRI Alexa LFs for high-speed stuff, as well as Z Cams.
“For Ridley, and in turn myself, it was more important to get a volume of shots of the right size, dynamic and
composition, character and story shots, lighting too, that is what is necessary to construct a sequence. Fluffing around with some unique prime lens, with a bokeh of burgundy and which opens to T1.2 – as much as though that interests me – was definitely off-the-menu.”
“I shot this film with deep, heavy stops. So much effort went into the background, the art direction, the extras, and I wanted to bring that background to life as much as possible. We had 30 horses, dozens of gladiators and hundreds of people in the Colosseum bleachers, and I wanted the audience to sense that. I wanted people to see the person behind the person behind the person, even if they’re out-of-focus. I didn’t want soft mush,” he explains.
“I was shooting deep, T8.5, T11, or T16 to try and retain focus, and to feel the background. You’re doing these massive vistas and you want the audience to look into every corner and marvel, ‘Wow, look at that!’ Shooting like this, the iris is narrow, you are using the sweet spot of the lens, light is not bouncing around the barrel, and up comes the contrast. We all love a bit of contrast, well Ridley and I seem to, though it’s not currently in vogue.”
“We had two sets of Panaspeeds, and some Leica Summilux’s, and lots of zooms – Primo 70 28-80mm and 70-185mm, Angénieux EZ 1 45-135mm, EZ 2 2260mm, three Angénieux Optimo Ultra 36-435mm’s, and an Optica Elite 120-520mm zoom with a doubler which gave 240-1040mm. The zooms allowed us to bring-out the film’s size and scope. Ridley likes to shoot wider than I remember in previous films, so the close-up cameras were pushed further back to keep out of shot. That’s when the heavy Angénieux 36-435mm and the Elite 120-520mm came in.”
Gladiator II was shot mostly on location – Malta, Morocco and the UK – from June 2023 to January 2024, including a five-month hiatus due to Writers Guild Of America and SAG- AFTRA strikes in Hollywood. Mathieson says that surprisingly on a film of this size the use of blue/greenscreens and stage/ studio work was minimal.
“The only real exception was one day we spent at a warehouse on Malta to shoot the otherworldly sequence, when Lucius sees his love transported across the Styx by the ferryman. Ridley wanted this Bill Brandt, Man Ray-inspired solarised B/W and silver underworld for this sequence. We brought in silver pebbles, laid down a mirrorflex floor and hung huge bluescreens all around for a moody sky that was added later.”
Mathieson adds, “I appreciate what a studio stage can give you, but I always feel it’s like clocking in and out of a factory. I need to be out-and-about, stimulated by what surrounds me. Fortunately, Ridley always had the same attitude.”
The DP extended this approach to the way he and gaffer Chuck Finch lit various environments, trying not to over-stylise what was already alluring.
“The large scenes and vistas I didn’t bother lighting that much” says Mathieson. “I lit the Colosseum as the light was going high-up, out of the way, with powerful ARRIMAX 18Ks in banks of fours, fives and sixes, to give some edges. On the arena, I asked Arthur Max to make the sand really white, more brilliant than 25 years ago. I wanted black shadows, bounce and contrast.
“On the floor interior and exteriors, I didn’t put in
It was like shooting a live rock’n’roll concert in a stadium
much at all, because where are you to place the lights with so many cameras? In the arena I did wheel-in and good many 20x20ft ultra bounces between the camera and cranes to lift the faces hidden deep in the imperial box.
“For interior work, I always try to light from outside.
That can be a struggle with cameras all over the floor. But I refuse to push light in from the ceiling. Where’s it coming from? This was not a TV studio drama.”
“The interior night scenes we lit with Maxi and Mini Brutes back through DMX to dimmers all Tungsten, along with Creamsource and Rifa lights for close-ups. I think the camera responds better to colour from Tungsten, the tones are richer, the colour has more depth and fidelity. LED leaves me cold. To me LEDs put out a manufactured amber rather than a firelight,” he confesses.
“I believe Tungsten is superior. Just like 35mm film to digital. And you know what? Ridley insisted on using several Colosseum wides and Forum shots from Gladiator to intercut with the new footage. I said, ‘Oh no. Not a good idea.’ I told him that our original negative was tiny – Super 35mm is not much larger than a standard Royal Mail postage stamp. I believed it would not hold-up against these fancy ARRI digital large format cameras’. He did it anyway and… the shots look absolutely fine. The two formats come from miles in opposite directions, however, you cannot tell the difference. The size difference of the gates alone of the two cameras is enormous.”
The DI was graded by Stephen Nakamura, senior colourist at Company 3, when Mathieson was shooting Jurassic World Rebirth with director Gareth Edwards. At night, after a day with the dinosaurs, the DP went to CO3 in Chancery Lane, London, and graded with Scott and Nakamura in LA.
“There wasn’t much to do, really, on the cinematography end of it. Apart from the Styx B/W sequence and some flashbacks, that I confess I didn’t know what to do with, the sequel doesn’t have that many looks that diverge from the original Gladiator’s visual language.
“The initial sea siege in North Africa is a bit more dusty, with burnt out skies and brownish colours. Rome has a lot more vibrant colour, a fuller spectrum of chroma and lavish interiors, lit with that feeling of sun penetrating the spaces. The nights are filled with flames and flickering Tungsten lights or a cool moonlight. But that was it. The DI was really about tweaking and perfecting, and we probably did only a week of grading. Stephen has been with Ridley for years. He knows exactly what the rub is, and is best left alone. He will get there with an acute eye, regardless.”
The most compelling aspect of Gladiator II was, according to Mathieson, the ability to shoot onlocation and physical sets.
“One of the reasons I got into this game was to travel, to see the bits of the world I would have never seen otherwise. You go to shoot in Africa and it’s completely different, it’s alien to your Scottish sensibilities. The heat is killing you, it’s bright, then very dark. The mosquitos annoy you. You get fed-up with drinking so much water, and still you have to do your DP thing. And the result is – conscious or otherwise –something you just can’t produce in a studio.
We’ve all shot films that require you to go into a studio and live in a greenscreen world for months. Honestly, that’s my idea of a yoga retreat. With Ridley it’s different. It’s tough, he’s tough, but it’s real, unpredictable and intangible. I miss shooting this way.”
For all its gore and grizzly action, it seems Gladiator II was quite a romantic endeavour after all.
1.79X ANAMORPHIC
Elevate your visuals with Caldwell Chameleon, delivering a classic anamorphic look with subtle elegance. Their flares and image character, reminiscent of vintage lenses, maintain a restrained and controllable character, while their reduced moiré ensures seamless integration into virtual production.
Notable productions include: The Umbrella Academy (Season4),StarWars:TheMandalorian(Season 3),StarWars:Ahsoka,Silo,Mrs.Davis,TheGreat, Renegade Nell, The Pentaverate, Night Teeth, and The Perfect Couple
Chameleons are currently in use on Star Wars: TheMandalorianandGrogu(2026)
Cinematographers love lenses – both old and new – to help their creative visualisations. Adding to the wealth of vintage Anamorphic optics, a new-generation of Anamorphic glass has been developed of late, and amongst those creating a buzz for themselves are the Caldwell Chameleons. Designed and built in California by Brian Caldwell, they’re touted as ‘modern optics that deliver a retro look’.
The Chameleons were selected by DP Neville Kidd ASC to help to switch-up the aesthetic for season four (S4), the grand finale, of The Umbrella Academy, Netflix’s popular superhero comedy series, based on the graphic novel by Gabriel Bá and writer Gerard Way. The series was shot at locations around Canada
Kidd’s breadth of experience as a director/ cinematographer had paved the way for his creative approach to visual storytelling – whether it’s getting inside the frenetic genius of Sherlock: His Last Vow (2014), for which he won a Primetime Emmy for best miniseries cinematography, the grand sweep Altered Carbon (2018) or Outlander (2014-2016), or the handheld paranoic framing of Childhood’s End (2015), the Australian mini-series based on Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 classic. He is also a BAFTA TV Award-winner for A History Of Scotland (2009).
Between 2019 and 2024, Kidd shot a total of 19 episodes across all four seasons of The Umbrella Academy. He set the original look of the Umbrella Academy world and brought a ‘stylised believability’ to the final series, with Caldwell Chameleon Anamorphic lenses helping to do that. Kidd shot three episodes of S4 and directed one, with Mike Marshall working as
I moved the visual language of The Umbrella Academy into a new place with the Chameleons
The first three seasons of The Umbrella Academy were shot with spherical lenses on ARRI Alexa 65. Why did you switch to Anamorphic optics S4?
As this was the final season of The Umbrella Academy, I wanted to visually-change the look to show the contrast of emotions that our Umbrella Academy family were going through. We finished S3 with all our characters losing their superpowers, and I wanted the world to feel grounded and ‘normal’ at the start of the new series. My thinking was to use spherical lenses just for the first episode of S4 when, in story terms, the family were powerless, and went with Supreme Primes, which we had previously used on S2. Being fast spherical lenses, they gave us the Umbrella vibe and a true representation of the world, which was exactly what I was looking for to depict our unpowered superheroes in the first episode of S4.
However, for episode two and all the remaining episodes of the season, I chose Caldwell Chameleon Anamorphics for when our characters regain their superpowers and realise they are actually even more powerful than before. I was looking for a lens with a heightened appeal, and think I tested nearly every Anamorphic in Canada to find this look, and found it with the Chameleons.
Given your background with series that involve mystery, sci-fi and cyberpunk, tell us about your previous experience of selecting lenses?
On Altered Carbon I used the ARRI Alexa 65 as the main visual medium to tell the story of a world 350 years in the future. I enjoyed using the large-format sensor to create a visual vocabulary that was larger than our world and had a large, focus fall-off for our wide-angle lenses, which we needed for the huge sets.
In 2016, the lens choices for large-format cameras were very limited, and we needed fast lenses to get minimal depth-of-field. I went with Canon Cine Primes, which had a fast stop and large coverage.
Prior to this I’d only used Anamorphic lenses for flashbacks in narrative drama sequences and commercials, so I was keen to use them for a whole show. On top of this I’d only used them stylistically, and was really keen to explore how they could be used psychologically.
Describe your lens testing process?
I did genuinely test all the Anamorphic lenses I could get my hands-on in Toronto, with the help of all the camera facility houses there, for which I am very grateful. With the assistance of DIT Sandra Lombardi and 1st AC Barrett Axford, we filmed tests of them all, carefully
the DP on two episodes, and Fraser Brown shooting the one that Kidd directed.
documented our findings and kept stills of everything.
We compared sharpness, Anamorphic bend and colour rendition. The priority for me was skin tone and an overall new look that I hadn’t seen before. We also compared Anamorphic lenses that were expanded for large-format cameras and unexpanded Anamorphic lenses.
I wanted a strong, different aesthetic for the final season, and when I came across the Caldwell Chameleons I knew I had found the look that I had in my head. The way skin was rendered by the lenses was like a painter finding his colour palette. I also loved the how the flares are restrained and controllable, and how, combined with the edge aberrations, the pictures had the painterly quality I was looking for. What was your experience of shooting with the Chameleons?
The Caldwell Chameleons were great to shoot with and survived filming in the Toronto winter, especially on night shoots where the temperatures plunged to numbers you don’t want to mention. The lighter weight of the Chameleons was also important as we were doing a lot of fight sequences, shooting handheld and on Steadicam. We had a lot of explosions, fires and stunts, and frequently would spin the cameras or have them on car rigs, techno cranes and U-crane arms, and the lenses worked without complaint.
We had a lot of explosions, fires
and stunts… and the lenses worked without complaint
Were there any new technologies/ techniques you implemented for the series?
We used a lot of speed motion trick shots on S4 and used the Chameleons with Phantom high-speed cameras to shoot stuntmen and stuntwomen being thrown through windows, smashing on to tables and being on the receiving end of extreme shoot-outs, all whilst having the joy of witnessing (sorry, spoiler alert)
the end of the world.
One of my favourite scenes was in the final episode, where our Umbrella family try and rescue their brother Ben from an old, abandoned department store. It was a scene that had remorse, emotion, love and full-on action.
I enjoyed using the longer lens in a three-camera set-up that was designed to keep the drama feeling emotionally-heightened, and contrasting that with wider lenses for the dramatic ending of the scene, with full-on action, using speed ramps, spinning rigs and the blowing-up of the whole building. I think we used every lens size to cover the emotional rollercoaster the family was going through.
What were the most challenging shots?
One of the most challenging shots was for the sequence where the van gets smashed in a sideon collision. The script described the car and the characters rolling over-and-over and coming to a stop in the middle of the road. We wanted to keep our stunts very physical in design, and so we devised a spinning rig to spin three cameras – one being a Phantom running at 935fps – and our real van in the studio like a theme park ride.
What apertures and format size did you use with the lenses?
I kept my love for shallow depth-of-field by mainly filming with the Chameleons fully-open. As we had to film so much night work and stunt work on the show, the light levels were important to us and the budget. The Chameleons kept all the qualities I love even at fully-open.
I moved the visual language of The Umbrella Academy into a new place with the Chameleons, without losing the strong, stylistic, graphic-novel look of the previous seasons. I was looking for a strong heightened look for the finale of the series, and really feel I found it with the Caldwell Chameleons.
Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022) Cruella (2021)
Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)
Men In Black: International (2019)
Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (2019)
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald (2018) Justice League (2017)
Darkest Hour (2017)
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (2016)
Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)
Anna Karenina (2012)
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince (2009) Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire (2005) Harry Potter And The Chamber of Secrets (2002)
Starting out:
My dad was an electrician, so it ran in the family really. Like some of my brothers, I did an apprenticeship and started work as a qualified electrician in Germany, a bit like the workers in the old TV series, Auf Wiedersehen Pet
But then my life took a bit of a detour. My dad, who did some work in the film industry, said one day, “Do me a favour and pop into MoleRichardson (the lighting company) and pick-up some money for me.”
It turned out to be one of those pivotal moments – I met somebody there and got chatting. He asked if I wanted to do a job on a children’s TV series Follyfoot Farm, and I found that being part of a crew on a production was really good fun. Next they sent me to Paris on a job with actor David Niven, where the per diem was more than the money I would have earned as a contracted electrician. I thought to myself, “OK, I’ll have a crack at this,” and it just went from there, starting at the bottom of the pile.
Styles of lighting:
Since my early days working with cinematographers like Geoffrey Unsworth BSC,
who really taught me about cutting light to eliminate shadow, and David Watkin BSC, who was one of the first DPs to experiment heavily with soft sources, I have always been into soft and natural light. I’m still really interested in what light does. Put simply, it’s about how you duplicate what you see when you walk into a room every day and ask the question: “Where’s the light coming from?” What I enjoy most is gaffing on films like Darkest Hour (2017), about Winston Churchill’s early years as Prime Minister at the start of World War II, which was wonderfully shot by DP Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC. I’d like to do more of that kind of filmmaking, productions where there are a large number of sets to light, rather than the VFX heavy films which always involve a lot of greenscreen. I spent my whole career learning how to make sure lamps and cables are out-of-shot, but on VFX heavy films you get told, “Don’t worry about it”, which always seems odd.
Lighting technology:
I have seen Arc lights become extinct, HMIs go from 8K to 12K to 18K, and the recent growth of LEDs. These days you walk on a set and the first question the rigger asks you is how many lightboxes you want. Don’t get me wrong – LEDs are really useful, but at heart I’m old-fashioned, and I prefer doing it the old way.
The way I look at it, lighting with a Creamsource Vortex, or any LED source, is a bit like making Caravaggio or Renoir paint with a six-inch brush. The problem is, in my opinion, you can’t shape LED lighting like you can with incandescents.
Lighting Gladiator II :
A good example was my recent work with DP John Mathieson BSC on the new Gladiator sequel. I’ve been working with John for 20 years and, to be fair, he uses both digital and incandescents. But when it comes to shaping light there’s no doubt that we prefer incandescent Fresnels to control and shape when lighting night interiors.
In Gladiator II we needed to create ambient firelight in a lot of scenes. In the old days you’d have used a rag on a stick in front of a light source to create movement, but we’ve moved on a bit
from that! We used Fresnels and things like that. Everything would go back to boards and we would flicker mini-Brutes – going from 80% to 60% for firelight. We made egg boxes up with a softer bulb and flickered those, while always keeping one light constant. All done with conventional lighting. I certainly wouldn’t want to try replicating that with Vortexs or ARRI SkyPanels.
I started at the bottom of the pile
Working with John Mathieson BSC:
I’ve been working with John for over 30 years – on films such as Kingdom Of Heaven (2005) through to King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) and Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022), and more recently Gladiator II (2024) and Batgirl (2025). He’s one of the best and he’s become a great mate of mine. So over time I have been able to work out a rough idea of what he wants. I suppose it’s just experience really. That makes the job of being a gaffer seem easy.
Working with other leading DPs:
I’ve also worked extensively with top DPs such as Bruno Debonnel AFC and Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC and Philippe Rousselot AFC ASC, and as a general rule I discuss with the cinematographer what they want and try to anticipate what they will need. But you don’t want to second guess too much because you don’t want them to think, “Who’s
CHUCK FINCH•GAFFERS
lighting this film?” Lighting is a collaboration between two people who work together closely and are good friends, really.
Key crew:
As a gaffer you are really only as good as the crew you work with. It doesn’t matter how good the kit is, you can’t get the most out of it if you don’t have a great crew. After the cinematographer discusses a lighting rig with me, my next stop is my rigging gaffer who has to put it all into place in good time. That’s why they are one of the most important members in my team.
Rise of the desk operator:
The growth in the importance of desk-op has also changed the world of film lighting. Once all the lighting has been put in place and tested, we can hand over the to the desk-op who controls everything from an iPad. In today’s world of filmmaking, there’s no doubt that good desk-ops are worth their weight in gold.
Best thing about the job:
I still really enjoy going to work. If I stopped working tomorrow, which I’m not planning to do, most of all I would miss the buzz and the cameraderie of it all. My dad once told me that if you do a job you love, you’ll never have to do a day’s work in your life.
Advice to would-be gaffers:
I think it’s harder to break in to the industry now that it used to be. I would say to anybody who wants to become a gaffer to first of all become a qualified electrician. Then get on-set and observe what happens closely and try and understand what light does.
If I was giving a young gaffer some advice it would be take it all just one day at a time. Don’t worry about it, and l don’t have sleepless nights, get a good crew around you and treat every day like a commercial. Do a small section at a time. That’s the best way to look at it.
Lighting is a collaboration
As one of the industry’s premier rental resources, we are extremely proud to support crews around the world with an unrivalled collection of production solutions which embrace both the conventional and the very latest in advanced lighting technology.
Whatever your production type, wherever you are, when it comes to lighting - we’ve got the lot.
Opposite: Chuck pictured with Brad Pitt. This page: (clockwise from top) pictured with actor Ben Mendelsohn and DP Bruno Delbonnel AFC ASC on the set of Darkest Hour; with John Mathieson BSC on Ridley Scott’s Kingdom Of Heaven, with Tom Cruise on Edge Of Tomorrow; with Fabian Wagner BSC ASC on Justice League; and Seamus McGarvey BSC ASC on Anna Karenina.
Cats
Now you see her… now you don’t – Claire
in hats…. Ron Prince of Cinematography World &
Photos and words by Ron Prince.
Saunders of Cinematography World!
DP James Friend BSC ASC –enjoying Cinematography World
Ediola Pashollari – ICLS (International Cinema Lighting Society) executive director
Pat McEnallay founder of Greenkit Film Lighting
Maggie Chen, Risa Jiang who is measuring the softness of light
Jim Bouchie (l) with Alexander Schwarz and Philip Vischer (r) from Second Reef
DP Stijn Van Der Veken SBC ASC
Jon Fauer ASC – Film & Digital Times
Charles Poynton PhD - colour science guru & associate of IMAGO’s Technology Committee (ITC)
Cheese at the airport – Aputure’s Tim Kang might like these for his next lighting demos!
Kirsty Hazlewood of Cinematography World – snaffled-up by the IBC Daily
Henning Magee and Sean Magee of GFM (Grip Factory Munich)
Vicci Clayton of LCA/Creamsource with Sean Goosen Spencer Newbury of Creamsource Lighting
Martin Luther King
Steve Bannerman of Amazon
Siobhan Daly – marketing executive at ARRI
Marc Galerne of K5600 and One Stop – showing-off an LED Fresnel
Previous panels and workshops presented by James Friend, ASC BSC, Dion Beebe ACS ASC, Fabian Wagner ASC BSC, Roberto Schaefer ASC AIC, Bojana Andric SAS, Claire Pijman NSC, to name a few at this must-attend event
