American Cinematographer - March 2015 - 26

Eggsy and his
fellow recruits
are trapped
inside their
dormitory when
it floods. This
"sinking set"
was one of the
production's
biggest builds
onstage at
Warner Bros.
Studios
Leavesden.

on the monitors, and George could light
with the DI in mind, so that when he
walked into the DI, he already knew what
he would need to do and how to improve
upon what he already had. So we essentially used our LUTs as our light meter, and
treated the on-set workflow as if we were
already in the DI suite."
In terms of camera movement, Richmond says, "we largely shot off dollies and
cranes, made very composed shots, and
rarely shot big close-ups. We shot a lot of
wide and medium shots, which is more like
how older movies were shot." The exception to this approach - or as Richmond
calls it, "the modern twist" - related to
second-unit/action work, which incorporated more handheld shots as well as
"shorter shots with hidden cuts to make
them appear to be longer takes," the cinematographer says. "Some of that material
was shot with spherical [Angenieux Optimo
15-40mm T2.6 and 28-76mm T2.6 zoom]
lenses because they are lighter and more
versatile, and were easier for the visualeffects department to work with."
In pursuit of the classic look, Richmond employed a predominantly tungsten
lighting scheme, working with "older units,
26

March 2015

a lot of Blondes through diffusion frames, a
lot of covered wagons - strips of lightbulbs
wrapped in heavy diffusion, which you can
hide around the set," he explains. However,
he says, his goal was to "diffuse tungsten in
a more modern way, a more aesthetically
pleasing way to my eye, rather than having
hard light and multiple shadows all over the
place."
To achieve this, gaffer John Higgins
and his team built soft boxes that incorporated "the skeleton of a space light fixed
rigidly to the structure of the light box, so
the box could be inclined at any angle without the lamps moving," Higgins explains.
Lighting programmer Stephen Mathie
could then use a GrandMA lighting console
to control each individual bulb within the
soft boxes. Mathie's setup was linked to
multiple lighting sources with Socapex
multicore cabling, which enabled up to six
circuits to be connected to the dimming
system using a single cable. This system was
then mirrored via wireless link so that, as
Richmond emphasizes, "we could dim and
control virtually every light we had, apart
from HMIs, using an iPad, which was a
really good way to work with Matthew,
because he likes to work really fast.
American Cinematographer

"Another great thing about this kind
of dimming system is that for every slate we
shot, the settings for all the lights would be
easily saved into the system's database," the
cinematographer continues. "So when
second unit came in and took over sets after
we had shot on them for a couple of days,
all the settings would be there, and my
second-unit cinematographer, Fraser
Taggart, would know exactly what the first
unit had done with the sets. He would get
the LUT with the CDL values from us, but he
would also get all the information from the
dimming desk so he always understood
where the light was coming from and how
it was dimmed."
The show called for production
designer Paul Kirby to oversee a number of
elaborate builds, including the tailor shop
that fronts for the spy organization's secret
operations along the Savile Row section of
London; Valentine's lair, the villain's secret
base; and a country estate where the spy
organization's main headquarters is located.
But perhaps the most complicated was the
so-called "sinking set" - the recruits'
dormitory, which at a key point gets entirely
flooded. Shot at Warner Bros. Studios
Leavesden in the U.K., the sequence was
American Cinematographer - March 2015

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