02-15_jupiter ascending_x

I
t’s the spring of 2014,and JohnToll,ASC has just returned
from a day of additional photography in Spain, where the
exterior of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao provided a
suitably extraterrestrial background for the feature Jupiter
Ascending. This particular day’s work, for a scene that wasn’t
John Toll, ASC and a team of
veteran collaborators help directors
Andy and Lana Wachowski elevate
the action of Jupiter Ascending.
By Jon D. Witmer
•|•
conceived until well into postproduction, came together
quickly, but the cinematographer notes,“We came to expect a
certain level of spontaneity on Jupiter Ascending. The whole
film was a great combination of very specific sequence design
and a good deal of creative improvisation.”
The film tells an interplanetary tale of familial infight-
ing, swashbuckling derring-do and interspecies romance, with
the fate of humankind at stake. Royal siblings Balem (Eddie
Redmayne), Titus (Douglas Booth) and Kalique (Tuppence
Middleton) vie for control of the universe, only to discover
that an unwitting human named Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) is
in line to inherit the throne. Disguising his motives, Titus
dispatches Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered
member of a quasi-military group, to protect and retrieve
Jupiter, and eye-popping action — including an elaborate
aerial chase through downtown Chicago — ensues.
“The story doesn’t lend itself to an easy, one-line
High-Flying
Heroics
28 February 2015 American Cinematographer

www.theasc.com February 2015 29
Jupiter. “I’d become comfortable with
the Alexa, and I learned to trust it,” he
says. “Once I became familiar with it, I
was never hesitant to put it into any
kind of day or night situation.”
Working out of Panavision
London, the production carried Alexa
Plus 4:3 cameras in the U.K., then
switched to Alexa XT systems for the
second half of our schedule was being
reworked even as we were shooting,”
says Toll.“We prepped what we needed
to begin production, and then we were
shooting and prepping as we went
along.”
Toll had employed Arri Alexa
cameras on Iron Man 3, and he elected
to continue working with the Alexa on
description,” Toll concedes. It’s no
wonder, seeing as the film is both writ-
ten and directed by siblings Andy and
Lana Wachowski, who have consis-
tently pushed technical boundaries and
defied genre categorization with such
work as The Matrix (AC April ’99) and
Speed Racer (AC May ’08). Toll, a two-
time Oscar winner for his work on
Legends of the Fall (AC March ’95) and
Braveheart (AC June ’96), first teamed
with the Wachowskis for their portions
of the sci-fi/action/reincarnation dram-
edy Cloud Atlas, which the siblings co-
directed with Tom Tykwer.
The Wachowskis, Toll says,
“seem to go out of their way to do things
they haven’t done before. On Jupiter,
they were constantly looking for an
unusual approach, and this often
became very challenging. For me, this
sometimes meant using tools that were
familiar, but using them in a different
way.”
Toll jumped into Jupiter’s prepro-
duction immediately after wrapping
Iron Man 3. Most of his six weeks of
prep was spent at Warner Bros. Studios
Leavesden, and roughly two-thirds of
principal photography took place in the
greater-London area before the produc-
tion relocated stateside, where the film-
makers worked in and around Chicago,
Ill. (Principal photography began in
mid-March 2013 and continued
through the end of August.) “The
UnitphotographybyMurrayClose.PhotosandframegrabscourtesyofWarnerBros.Pictures.
Caine (Channing
Tatum, opposite)
arrives on Earth to
protect Jupiter
Jones (Mila Kunis,
above), the
unwitting heir to
the galactic throne,
in Jupiter
Ascending. The
feature marks the
second
collaboration
between sibling
directors Andy and
Lana Wachowski
and
cinematographer
John Toll, ASC
(left).

Chicago-based portion of the shoot. A
and B cameras were consistently
employed throughout the production.
Daniele Massaccesi served as A-camera
operator on both sides of the Atlantic,
with David Cozens and Sacha Jones
working as the A-camera 1st and 2nd
ACs, respectively. In London, Toll also
worked with operator Graham Hall, 1st
AC Kenny Groom and 2nd AC Alan
Hall on the B camera, and in Chicago,
B-camera operator Faires A. Sekiya and
C-camera operator Kim Marks joined
the production.
The cameras were typically set to
640 ASA — although “it wasn’t a hard-
and-fast rule,”Toll says — and the oper-
ators framed for a 2.40:1 release. “We
never talked about anything else,” the
cinematographer recalls. “It’s a
widescreen movie. Lana and Andy
wanted to use that aspect ratio composi-
tionally, and I agreed it made sense for
the scope of the story.”
The lens package included a full
complement of Leica Summilux-C
primes, supplemented with Cooke S4
primes, a Fujinon Premier 18-85mm
zoom (T2.0), and three Angenieux
Optimo zooms: 15-40mm T2.6, 28-
76mm T2.6 and 24-290mm T2.8. Toll
primarily shot with the Leica lenses,
which he had also employed on Iron
Man 3. “They have great contrast and
great resolution, but there is also a sort of
‘roundness’ to the edges that I like,” he
explains. “They’re somehow just more
Q High-Flying Heroics
Top: The film’s
interplanetary
environments
were in part
realized by an
expansive visual-
effects team
supervised by
Dan Glass. Middle
and bottom:
Large set pieces
were also built
onstage at
Warner Bros.
Studios
Leavesden.

‘sympathetic’— which I know isn’t a very
technical description.” (Toll eschewed
any filtration beyond IR NDs.)
Further helping to define Jupiter’s
visuals, Toll says, “much of the film was
meticulously storyboarded months in
advance, and this served as a basis for
detailed previs of many sequences.”Once
into production,Toll says the decision to
stick with or abandon any specific plan
always came down to “being practical
about what seemed appropriate at the
time. Lana and Andy are incredibly
creative, and as technically competent as
anyone I’ve worked with. Once we were
committed to an idea,technical ideas and
issues were discussed quite efficiently and
openly. There was a real technical short-
hand that was enjoyable.”
In London, Toll’s crew included
gaffer Chuck Finch, with whom the
cinematographer had previously worked
on Braveheart, and key grip Kenneth
Atherfold, who had worked with Toll on
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (AC April
’01). “Chuck and Kenny are excellent
technicians and great fun to be around,”
the cinematographer enthuses. “Nearly
every location we shot in and around
London,they’d been to before.That kind
of experience was absolutely invaluable.”
The U.K.crew also included light-
ing programmer Stephen Mathie. “The
most demanding stage was a large green-
screen stage we would nip in and out of,”
says Mathie. “The whole [greenscreen
was lit with 5,500K] Kino Flo Image
Top: Balem
(Eddie
Redmayne) plots
his own
ascendancy to
the throne from
his home base
on the planet
Jupiter. Middle:
Balem’s
environment was
realized with set
pieces that were
expanded with
CG backgrounds.
Bottom: Camera
operator Daniele
Massaccesi takes
flight in pursuit
of Tatum, who
was suspended
from a separate
harness, for a
sequence in
which Caine flies
into and then
back out of a
cruiser. Toll
explains, “[Caine]
was followed by
the camera all
the way in a
single shot.
When Daniele
entered the
cruiser, he
needed to be
unhooked from
his wire to make
the interior
moves, and
then had be
re-hooked for
the exit.”

80s, and we had Par cans rigged all the
way around.At any point we could go in
and create anything against green; we
would watch the previs to know what
was needed, and I just programmed
accordingly.”
When the production eventually
crossed the pond, Finch came along to
collaborate with Chicago gaffer Rick
Thomas and key grip Art Bartels.
Thomas supervised the rigging of
another massive greenscreen stage,
which was made to match the green-
screen stage at Leavesden, inside the
armory at 52nd Street and Cottage
Grove Avenue. As in the U.K., a light-
ing-console programmer was crucial for
the Chicago-based work; to meet the
task, Thomas brought in Benoit
Richard, who had collaborated withToll
on Iron Man 3. “Anything John wanted
to change, Benoit could make it happen
quickly,” says Thomas. “Benoit was also
in charge of controlling the brightness of
the LiteRibbon LEDs on Channing’s
costume, which they had to do in
London, too. Anytime we saw
Channing, we had to control those
LEDs.”
The crew also had to keep tabs on
CG characters that would be added in
post. One such character was Greeghan,
a member of the lizard-like Sargorn
Top: Caine shoots
at a group of
bounty hunters in
a Chicago alley.
Middle: The crew
works with one of
the bounty
hunters (played
by Doona Bae,
left) atop
a building.
Bottom: A wire
rig holds Bae
above a cornfield
outside of Chicago
for another
action sequence.

species. Visual-effects supervisor Dan
Glass, who’s been working with the
Wachowskis since The Matrix Reloaded
(AC June ’03), explains, “It’s tough when
you have a lot of interaction between a
CG creature and a human, and it’s
tougher when [the creature] isn’t sized
anthropomorphically.Greeghan stands 7
or 8 feet tall and has wings and a tail.
“We mixed our approaches, and
sometimes we did have an actor to repre-
sent [Greeghan’s] size and bulk,” Glass
continues. “We also used on-set perfor-
mance capture with stuntmen standing
in for other Sargorns, to give the camera
operators something to frame and the
animators movements to build off of.
And we also built a head and tail, made
to scale and painted and textured to look
like the ‘real’ thing, that we could put in
for reference with each take. We shoot
HDR calibration spheres to capture the
lighting, and we can then re-create that
lighting and put our CG character in it,
but having a physical maquette is great,
because it reminds everybody where [the
creature] is standing and how tall he is.It
also provides something for John to actu-
ally build his lighting around.”
The film’s CG menagerie also
included the Keepers, whom Toll
describes as being “only about half
human size. They have arms and two
legs, but a head that looks like an octo-
pus.”
As with Greeghan, Glass says
there were reference maquettes of the
Keepers. Additionally, the crew utilized
the Ncam camera-tracking system.
Glass explains,“It effectively does a real-
time 3D track, and if you’ve pre-built
some action, like a creature animation,
you can line it up in the frame.That feed
goes back to the directors and can go
into the eyepiece of the camera. If you
can literally see [the creature] in the
eyepiece, it really makes a lot of differ-
ence.”
The whole film, Toll emphasizes,
called for a mix of “high-tech and low-
tech” approaches, and he reiterates that
“familiar tools”needed to be employed in
“different ways.” As an example of the
latter, he points to a night exterior in a
Top: Jupiter
stands ready for
a wedding
ceremony
aboard Titus’
spaceship.
Middle and
bottom: The
scene was
primarily staged
inside the Ely
Cathedral in
Cambridgeshire,
with additional
shots captured
against
greenscreen.

Chicago alley that serves to introduce
Caine. The character wears boots that
allow him to fly, and in the alley, Toll
explains, he “bursts out of a door,
bounces off the wall and jumps about 20
or 30 feet in the air, then lands on a fire
escape and has a gunfight.”
On the receiving end of Caine’s
guns are three intergalactic bounty
hunters,one of whom (played by Doona
Bae) rides what looks like a flying
motorcycle affixed with a spotlight. In
order to create the interactive lighting
effect on location, an electrician first
operated a 400-watt Jo-Leko with a 14-
degree barrel as a follow spot from a
Condor. However, the Condor had to
be removed when a wire rig was
installed to fly Tatum. Onstage in
London, the crew had utilized a Clay
Paky Sharpy moving light to create a
transport-beam effect, and here again
the crew opted to use the fixture, this
time mounting it — along with a small
witness camera — on a Libra head on a
Technocrane. Toll explains, “Camera
operator Faires Sekiya operated the light
as if it was mounted on Doona Bae’s
flying device and chased Channing with
it as he flew around the alley.”
The alley location,Toll adds,“was
great in terms of storytelling, but it was
extremely difficult to shoot. It was very
narrow, and locked between 10- and 15-
story buildings. It also had a curve in it,
and because of that construction, one
typical lighting approach — getting a
light down at the end as far away and as
high as possible — was out of the ques-
tion.”
The alley runs beneath Michigan
Avenue, where the crew was able to
place a Bebee Night Light.“We brought
the Bebee light as close to the set as
possible,” Toll notes. With only a few of
the Bebee’s globe’s illuminated, he adds,
“we took the light as high as we could
and then leaned it in over the set until we
were essentially using it as a straight-
down toplight.”
“Some guys are very formulaic,
but John’s not that way,”Thomas opines.
“He carefully thinks about what we’re
doing, what he would like it to look like,
and what’s the most efficient way to get
there. Even with all the pressure of
getting through the day,John would take
a second and think about it. He took a
very practical approach. He never let
anything rattle him — and he was
thrown a lot of curveballs on this
project!”
The U.K.portion of the shoot also
provided its share of challenging loca-
tions, among them the Ely Cathedral in
Cambridgeshire and London’s Natural
History Museum.The first provided the
backdrop for a wedding ceremony
aboard Titus’ spaceship. Finch explains,
“We blacked out the whole cathedral
and lit from one side with 18K HMIs on
the top triforium. Then we had 6Ks on
the next two levels down, so it was all
hard, directional light [motivated] from
the windows.”Running the length of the
cathedral,Finch adds,“we also had six or
seven 5K HMI balloons [each contain-
ing four 1.2K globes].”
The Natural History Museum
had to remain accessible to visitors
during normal operating hours, so the
crew could only occupy the facility from
6 p.m.to 9 a.m.“Nothing was allowed to
be left in there [during the day],” says
Finch. The museum’s Hintze Hall
TopphotocourtesyofPictorvisionandLewisCommunications.
Top: To capture the necessary plates for an aerial
chase through downtown Chicago, the production
worked with Pictorvision and devised the “Panocam”
six-camera array. Bottom: A rooftop camera gets
another angle for the “Shadow Chase” sequence.

served as part of Kalique’s extraterres-
trial environment for a scene in which
Caine flies from one level down to
another. The stunt, Toll explains, was
achieved practically. With the space lit
primarily by 5K HMI balloons, the
crew installed an approximately 40'
ramp to cover the hall’s staircase, termi-
nating at the museum’s life-size cast of
“Dippy” the diplodocus. A stunt
performer on in-line skates then “skated
down,launched himself into the air over
the dinosaur, and landed on some air
bags,”Toll recalls.“It was unbelievable. I
couldn’t help but wonder how it might
be described in the London tabloids if
he landed short — would it be, ‘Movie
stuntman injured by dinosaur,’ or
‘Dinosaur injured by movie stuntman?’”
The cinematographer stresses
that a primary concern for the produc-
tion was “to make [Caine’s] movement
through the air look spectacular,but also
as realistic as possible.”This was partic-
ularly important for a nearly six-minute
sequence the crew refers to as the
“Shadow Chase,” comprising 120 shots,
every one of which involves a visual-
effects component. During the chase,
Keepers fly spacecraft through Chicago
in pursuit of Caine, who uses his rocket
boots to weave between skyscrapers,
beneath El tracks and over the Chicago
River, all while carrying Jupiter, who’s
either clinging to his back or cradled in
his arms. “The Shadow Chase was such
a complicated sequence,”Toll says,“with
a combination of live-action stunt
people hanging on wires beneath a stunt
helicopter, composites of the actors and
stunt people on wires shot on the streets
in Chicago as well as against green-
screen, and total CG characters and
aircraft, all composited with aerial plates
shot from helicopters and ground
cameras. Lana, Andy and Dan Glass
started working on it at least a year
before we shot it.”
Early in the sequence’s design,
there was a preliminary scout in
Chicago, as well as a proof-of-concept
test shoot in California with Jupiter’s
aerial director of photography, Phil
Pastuhov. “We shot a test with a stunt-
man suspended underneath a helicopter,
with a stuntwoman in his arms, just to
see how they could respond as the heli-
copter made turns as if it was going
around buildings,” Pastuhov explains.
“We determined that it was possible,
and that both Lana and Andy really
liked it.”
Even as principal photography
began in London,prep continued on the
Shadow Chase, with visual-effects
supervisor Jim Mitchell coming aboard
to handle the day-to-day planning in
Chicago. Mitchell collaborated with
supervising production manager L.
Left: A beam draws
Jupiter and Caine
toward a waiting
spaceship. Below:
The Shadow Chase
includes live-action
footage of stunt
performers
suspended beneath
a helicopter and
shot from a camera
helicopter rigged
with a Pictorvision
Eclipse system. “The
whole concept for
this sequence was
to do as much of
it as we could
practically,” says
Toll.

Dean Jones Jr.; among their concerns,
Mitchell says, were “the logistics of
working with the city. We were picking
up stunt players right in the middle of
intersections and closing off [three or
four square] blocks at a time. For some
of the shots,we were hovering above the
El tracks, so the [Chicago Transit
Authority] had to be there. And when
you get up on these tall buildings, you
have to be harnessed for certain situa-
tions. All the safety was top-notch;
nothing happened without all the
correct personnel.”
“What made this sequence even
more interesting was the time of day,”
Toll observes. “In the story, this all
happens just before sunrise, basically at
dawn. We shot some early aerial tests
and Lana and Andy decided that the
city looked so great at dawn that this
would be our target. We did quite a few
light studies and decided there was a
shooting window of 15 to 20 minutes
when there was a good lighting balance
between the interior lights of the build-
ings, the sodium-vapor streetlights, and
the ambient blue dawn skylight. So we
made plans to shoot the entire
sequence, including the plates, at that
time of day.
“Dealing with that limited
amount of shooting time was definitely
challenging, but we were absolutely
right to go for it,” Toll continues. “It’s a
great-looking sequence.The time of day
and the feeling of the light in that envi-
ronment made all the difference in the
world. Even though the principal flying
work was shot over many days and the
plates over several more, there is a defi-
nite sense of continuity to the light. It
feels like it’s one event happening at one
specific time.
“Coincidentally, shooting at that
time of day was also one of the main
reasons we were able to get permission
to do it,” the cinematographer adds.
“We shot Saturday or Sunday mornings
[over the course of three weekends],and
for safety reasons the streets had to be
locked up and absolutely clear of pedes-
trians and traffic. The shots we were
trying to accomplish were very specific
Top: The Shadow Chase also features street-level action, which the production staged at the
intersection of Lake Street and Wells Street. Middle: The location work was complemented with
material shot on the greenscreen stage. Bottom: The crew readies an Allan Padelford Biscuit
trailer on location beneath the El tracks.

so we could position the work and do it
safely. We had four cameras on buildings
that were able to get some shots with
longer lenses, but [the sequence
comprises] primarily aerial footage and
visual effects.”
Although the times would vary
depending on the specific action on the
call sheet, certain crew might arrive on
location as early as 1 a.m.,and by 2:30 the
requisite PAs — who totaled more than
200 some mornings — could be report-
ing for duty alongside a police presence
of approximately 40 officers. The streets
would be given a wet-down around 3:15
a.m., the same time the rooftop camera
crews began to set up. A safety meeting
would happen shortly after 4, and a “test
hang” was executed with the stunt chop-
per, piloted by aerial coordinator Cliff
Fleming, and stunt performers Michaela
Facchinello (Jupiter) and Antal Kalik
(Caine) 15 minutes on the dot before
“action” was called.
“It was such a narrow window of
shooting time that it was tricky to make
the call when the choppers should lift
off,” Toll notes. “Too early and Mickey
and Antal would be hanging on wires
several hundred feet off the ground
‘waiting for the light’; too late and we
would limit our shooting window.
Cloud cover on the individual shoot
days also affected this, so there was a
certain amount of seat-of-the-pants
guesswork involved. But based on the
light studies we had shot our first week
in Chicago,we had it down pretty well.”
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a
little apprehensive that first morning,
dropping in between the buildings with
just the slightest bit of light in the sky,”
Pastuhov recalls. “It was like dropping
into a black hole, with no margin for
error. I was framing, zooming, pulling
focus, talking to the [camera-heli-
copter] pilot, Craig Hosking, who was
next to me, and Lana and Andy, who
were in the back the whole time. I was a
very busy guy.” Shooting with a Fujinon
Premier 18-85mm zoom on the Alexa,
which was rigged in a Pictorvision
Eclipse gyro-stabilized aerial mount,
Pastuhov says he shot the chase footage
around a T2.3.
In addition to the live-action
stunt photography, the Shadow Chase
called for extensive aerial plates, most of
which were shot with what the produc-
tion dubbed the “Panocam,” a custom-
designed camera array made up of six
Red Epics, rigged three across and two
high, in a modified Pictorvision Eclipse.
(Pictorvision now brands the Panocam
system as the Eclipse Multicam Array.)
When stitched together in post, the six-
This diagram illustrates the lighting that was necessary for the action at Lake and Wells, where the crew rigged Par cans
and sodium-vapor units for blocks in every direction from the intersection.
LightingdiagrambyBenoitRichard,courtesyofRickThomas.

camera array provided a 140-degrees
horizontal by 60-degrees vertical field of
view.
“The whole concept for this
sequence was to do as much of it as we
could practically,” says Toll. “We wanted
live-action plates, as opposed to CG
plates,to make it look as real as possible.”
Mitchell adds, “The idea with the
Panocam was that we’ve only got so
much time to be up in the air, so how do
we shoot as much as we can and give
ourselves the flexibility in post to put
this sequence together? It was critical to
get Pictorvision involved.Working with
[Pictorvision President] Tom Hallman
and engineer Grant Bieman, we ulti-
mately decided on six cameras, which
was the limit given the physical size [of
the rig].
“The Epic was the most practical
camera for what we wanted,” Mitchell
adds.“Each camera had its own 512GB
RedMag [SSD and recorded] 5K with
5:1 compression.”The six cameras in the
Panocam rig were slaved to a seventh
Epic, which provided master control to
Pictorvision tech Eric Dvorsky inside
the helicopter.
Each camera was fitted with a
Canon EF 24mm f1.4 L II USM lens.
“Once you stitch [the six frames]
together, you have [the equivalent of] a
12,000-pixel-wide by 5,000-pixel-
vertical 5mm lens,” Mitchell notes.
“You can push in to 4K,which gives you
about an 18mm; that was great for flex-
ibility in post.”
The Panocam “was a huge time-
saver,” Pastuhov enthuses. “It allowed us
to capture these plates in one or two
passes in real time, and in the same light
so it would match the live action. We
could do the whole run we wanted, turn
around and do it again; we did in 15
minutes what would normally take us
well over an hour.”
Mitchell was also tasked with
shooting panoramic plates from atop
buildings within the pre-dawn shooting
window. For these plates, he explains, “I
had a couple Canon 6D [DSLRs] and a
computer-controlled nodal head called a
GigaPan, which could basically tile all
these high-resolution stills together.”
Mitchell shot with Canon EF primes,
mostly the 24mm “or, if I needed to
shoot something closer, the 100mm or
135mm.”
Another crucial participant in
realizing the Shadow Chase was stunt
coordinator R.A. Rondell, whose contri-
butions included a rig for “flying” Caine
and Jupiter at street level. Toll explains,
“R.A. built a pipe rig on a pickup truck,
and by extending it out, he could get the
pipe far enough from the body of the
truck so we could hang Mila and
Channing on wires 2 or 3 feet off the
ground. It worked great.”
Glass praises the rig for providing
“a really amazing body language. We
used the truck on location and also on
the greenscreen stage. Channing could
physically skate along the ground, and
then there’s a sort of pendulum move-
ment when the truck turns a corner and
picks him up.”
A ramp was installed for a practical stunt inside London’s Natural History Museum’s Hintze Hall,
which Toll and his crew primarily lit with 5K HMI balloons.
¢

The street-level portion of the
chase finds the characters flying beneath
the El tracks at the intersection of Lake
Street and Wells Street, where the
cameras would either lead or follow the
action from an Allan Padelford car-
mounted Edge Crane and Biscuit
trailer.The location required a great deal
of pre-rigged lighting, as Thomas
details:“We had more than 200 Par cans
rigged underneath the elevated track,
and everything was on RatPac dimmers,
which enabled us to do the majority of
the dimming without having to run
miles of Socapex cable. We also rigged
sodium-vapor practical lights under-
neath [the track].
“This was still the [pre-dawn]
scene, but we had to shoot a lot of it at
night,” the gaffer continues. “We intro-
duced blue into the scene wherever we
could, and often that required putting
18K or 6K [HMIs] out in the street to
underlight the tracks. We also had a
Bebee light that would light one of the
buildings, just to create a little sense of
dawn.”
The production captured
ArriRaw 2880x2160 spherical files to
onboard Codex recorders with the
Alexa 4:3, and to internal Codex
Capture Drives with the XT. Toll
worked with DIT Ben Appleton in
both London and Chicago; the cine-
matographer explains, “We had one
basic, overall LUT, which we would
start with, but we would make correc-
tions and create CDLs for every
sequence. I found that working with a
DIT and having the ability to do color
correction on the set is one of the major
Tatum stands at
attention before
the Oscar-
winning
cinematographer.
40

advantages in using these cameras.”
From Appleton,the camera files
were delivered to Technicolor. Toll
explains,“I also had the opportunity to
look at my dailies on location on a cali-
brated screen withTechnicolor’s dailies
colorist, Jodie Davidson. So I had a
pass on set where we could establish
the look, but when necessary I could
view dailies and tweak color in a more
controlled environment, where I had
more time and more options.”
Davidson was with the produc-
tion throughout principal photogra-
phy, and she stayed on for the final
digital grade, during which she
assisted supervising digital film
colorist Traudl Nicholson, who
worked out of Technicolor’s London
facility. There, Nicholson graded 2K
DPX files using Autodesk Lustre
(within Flame Premium 2013 2.5.3)
on a Linux box. “Traudl works for
Arri, but Lana and Andy had worked
with her for Cloud Atlas and requested
that she come to London,” says Toll.
“Traudl is an incredibly talented
colorist, and I really enjoyed working
with her. We used the dailies color
corrections as our starting point, and we
quickly learned we had a similar visual
point of view.”
Even once Toll and Nicholson
were well into the DI, the visual-effects
work — which totaled nearly 2,200
shots divided among eight vendors —
continued apace, with Glass and visual-
effects producerTheresa Corrao bounc-
ing between the production’s post
operations in London and Chicago.
“One of the key things the directors
wanted was a sense of physicality and
credibility in terms of the way the action
and science-fiction elements were
portrayed,” says Glass. “They wanted
the world to feel convincingly authen-
tic. We benefited from starting with a
lot of visual ideas; some of those contin-
ued to evolve,but we had a good,strong
basis.”
Indeed, this evolution was seen
across all departments. Despite the scale
of the production and the detailed plan-
ning that occurred before the cameras
rolled, everyone brought to bear the
experience necessary to take advantage
of spontaneous ideas and nurture a spirit
of collaborative improvisation. As Toll
observes, “There was a lot of creative
flexibility in the best sense of the term.”
G
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Plus 4:3, XT;
Red Epic MX; Canon EOS 6D
Leica Summilux-C, Cooke S4,
Angenieux Optimo,
Fujinon Premier, Canon EF
41

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