American Cinematographer - March 2016 - 28

Top: The crew built a lighting grid fitted with approximately 80 100-watt bulbs for the exterior street
scenes. Bottom: Cinematographer John Christian Rosenlund, FNF (holding camera) is strapped to a
motorcycle for an action sequence.

people to have a cinematic experience
- epic and grand."
Filtration was limited to neutral
density. "I have the luxury of controlling the
color grading myself, and that means I can
[apply] most of the filters I like to use in
post," Rosenlund says.
Given the enormous vistas of the
film's day exteriors, the principal effort in
artificial lighting was concentrated on night
and studio scenes. The first material to go
before the camera involved an exterior road
clogged with departing cars, which
becomes a mad dash to escape as the wave
arrives. "I did some tests and I ended up
saying, 'We're shooting at magic hour,'"
28

March 2016

Rosenlund explains. "[We employed] 100
extras and 100 cars and shot around 70
setups."
The production had four hours to
shoot from the time the sun disappeared
over the mountains until complete darkness. The lighting choice was partly influenced by the need to provide the visualeffects team with the best possible material
to which they would add the 240-foot wave
"blasting through the Geiranger fjord,"
Rosenlund says. "The wave was created by
Gimpville in Norway, led by visual-effects
supervisor Lars Erik Hansen. When you
know their limited budget, I cannot understand how they managed it." After dark,
American Cinematographer

the production moved up the road to shoot
the "aftermath" scenes with controlled
movie lights, which would assist in continuity when transitioning to the studio.
"It's always super-difficult to make
night believable," the cinematographer
admits. "You often have to cheat and say
there's a moon that doesn't exist. [It was
difficult to obtain a] reference for what it
would look like after the impact of the
wave. We knew there would be a lot of dust
and smoke in the air. We started playing
with color; I wanted something that was
blue-greenish." Catalin sourced an artificial
silk, which filtered as well as diffused the
light.
For the roadway exteriors, Rosenlund's crew "built a system with about 80
100-watt bulbs in a grid," he says, "and we
dimmed it down or turned off some lights
because I wanted the car lights to be strong.
Later, when we were in-studio, we made a
gigantic silk [from the same material as the
one used on location] that covered the
entire studio. We had about 40 space lights
above the silk with additional diffusion on
them, so it was double-diffused. The idea
was to have an [evenly] lit surface at the
studio, with the same direction, contrast
ratio and color as on location. The even
toplight also helped me to avoid reflections
of space lights on the cars and on the water
surface."
With the film's later scenes depicting
post-disaster destruction, Rosenlund was
also faced with a need to create or enhance
fire effects. "I was trying to go as far as I
could with real fire, using gas," he says,
"but I also used some China balls and some
smaller stuff to enhance." Rosenlund is
keen to credit respective A- and B-camera
1st ACs Johan Bjerke and Andrei Cretan
with their work in keeping the film sharp at
wide apertures, both over- and underwater.
"On the primes it's 1.3 and the zooms it's
2.8, and the camera is constantly moving.
You need a good focus puller, and we had
two good ones on the show."
Given the difficulties of underwater
work, Rosenlund was careful to test while in
Norway, before shooting. "I blacked out a
pool and we tested some of the lights I
knew I had to rely on in that scene," he
says. "I [decided on] LED because it's lowpowered and less dangerous. I found an

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2016