American Cinematographer - March 2015 - 30

Top: Harry pressures professor James Arnold (Mark Hamill) to divulge information about
Valentine's deadly plot. Bottom: Cinematographer George Richmond lines up a shot with one of
the production's Arri Alexa cameras.

lenses are too heavy and cumbersome to fly
with, and we wanted the ability to reframe
in post."
The movie also features an envelopepushing nose-to-nose car-chase sequence,
which was directed by stunt coordinator
Kenny Bates and shot by Taggart in East
London. (Vaughn and Richmond shot the
interior portions of the sequence on a
London stage with a hydraulic rig.) "Kenny
brought his custom-built Mitsubishi Lancer
Evo camera car for the driving shots, and
also used a Russian Arm and a flight head
for some of the sequence," Richmond
relates. "The reverse-drive yellow Subaru in
30

March 2015

the scene was built by our special-effects
department. They basically took the body
off the chassis and turned it around so there
was a hidden driver looking out the back
window, which allowed the reversing car to
drive at such speeds. Fraser used our version
of night sodium color - [Lee] 102 Light
Amber and a Quarter Green - and placed
cherry pickers around the streets with 20Ks.
Many of the locations were picked for their
natural night lighting, as the cars were
moving too fast and covering too much
distance to light at all."
The cinematographer adds that for
the onstage car interior shots, Higgins
American Cinematographer

employed a ceiling rig with "a selection of
soft boxes with our sodium color and rows of
Par cans with different colors - red, sodium
and clean. Then we had two Vari-Lites on
each side of the car on the floor. It was all
controlled by the dimming system, so we
[programmed a chase sequence] to give the
feeling that the lights were passing us by."
Thanks in large part to the up-front
efforts to establish the movie's look, Pizzey
reports there were "no shocks" when it
came time for the final digital grade, which
he conducted at Goldcrest Post with Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve. The DI
process was used extensively to match exterior footage shot under constantly changing
British skies, and to finish a large number of
visual-effects shots.
In fact, Pizzey explains, he handled
certain effects shots himself, including "carrying out some anti-aging grading using a wide
range of techniques to make lead actors
appear younger, as [the film's early] scenes
take place quite a few years before the rest of
the film. We also had to carry out beauty
correction throughout, and all those shots
were done using [Resolve] - all in real time
- to give us the flexibility to adjust and
modify each of those shots up to the last day
of grading."
Although the DI was "used as a full
tool," Richmond notes, "it is quite interesting
how much we did at the beginning. We shot
tests, played with colors we would use in the
lighting, and took it all into the DI process [in
prep], so that Rob - who is a colorist I trust
implicitly - could help me mix these colors
from the start. It was quite interesting how
much footage we later took through the DI
[in post] that already looked graded just from
the LUT. We would try more contrast, or flatter, or warmer, or colder, or start messing
with density or color, and finally we would sit
back and decide it was actually great the way
it was."

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Studio, XT; Red Epic Dragon;
Blackmagic Cinema, Pocket Cinema
Vantage Film Hawk V-Series, V-Lite,
V-Plus; Angenieux Optimo; Cooke Mini S4;
Zeiss Ultra 16
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American Cinematographer - March 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2015
