American Cinematographer - April 2014 - 28

Nuttgens (in gray shirt) and director Richard Shepard (right) on location in a train station.

Dickie looks on combines dolly and handheld shots. The sequence opens with the
camera panning among giant ape portraits
that adorn the walls. "I wanted a few
controlled shots, something we could come
back to that had solid framing relative to
those pictures, and then it's a handheld
free-for-all when Dom goes crazy,"
Nuttgens says. The room was lit by 18Ks
outside each of two windows, with Grant
directly in the light and the other two actors
illuminated by the bounce off the white
walls.
The confrontation scene was also
shot with a zoom, an Angenieux Optimo
28-76mm T2.6, but Nuttgens otherwise
stuck with Arri Master Primes, especially the
27mm, which proved to be Shepard's preference. Nuttgens shot standard interiors in
the T3.4-T4 range. He went light on lens
filtration, using Tiffen White Pro-Mist 1⁄4
and sometimes 1⁄2, although he says of the
latter, "If you get any highlights, it tends to
bleed out."
Jérôme Carles operated Steadicam
for a tracking shot in an olive grove in
France. In the scene, Dickie chases after a
naked Hemingway, who is mortified by his
own behavior toward the powerful
Fontaine. "Jérôme framed really well,"
Nuttgens says. "He went up and down that
space the whole afternoon. The light was
dying, and we had to work fast." In
London, John Hembrough operated
Steadicam for a canal-side scene in which
Hemingway catches up with crime kingpin
Lestor (Jumayn Hunter) as he is out for a
jog.
28

April 2014

The crew took advantage of its train
travel to France by shooting an onboard
scene between Dickie and a hung-over
Hemingway on their way to see Fontaine.
The crew even had to change trains, quickly
moving their gear and resuming shooting
on the second leg. Nuttgens says the Alexa
performed "as well as film" in this situation.
"It tolerated the mixed color temperatures
between daylight and the warm, slightly
green fluorescents on the train." The crew
used no additional fixtures, creating
contrast simply by putting up solids along
the opposing side of the carriage to block
the fill light coming through the windows.
The film's most spectacular action
sequence is set on a French country road at
night. Hemingway, celebrating a cash gift
from Fontaine, drives a Rolls Royce standing
up, accompanied by Fontaine, Paolina,
Dickie and a pair of party girls. In his
drunken stupor, he crashes into an oncoming vehicle, and he and his ejected passengers fly through the air in slow motion in a
single shot.
To create the shot, the actors were
filmed individually at Pinewood against an
80' curved greenscreen. Most of them were
suspended by a Robomoco motion-control
flight system, but Grant was shot bouncing
on a trampoline. Nuttgens describes the
Robomoco as "a reinforced harness that
goes around the center of the actor with a
pivot point coming out of the back that's
strong enough to hold their rib cage in one
place so you can twist them without hurting them. They had limited torso movement, but their arms and legs were free."
American Cinematographer

The actors were backlit by banks of
Mini-Brutes gelled with Deep Straw and put
through heavy Lee 129 diffusion. Only a
small amount of fill light, a 5K Fresnel
through Full Grid Cloth, was used on Law.
The shot eschews the laws of depth-offield, as Law, in the foreground, and everyone in the background are all in focus. But
the filmmakers were aiming for something
outside of reality, says Nuttgens. "People
could accept this might actually happen,
but, on the other hand, we wanted it to
play as comedy."
Footage was captured in the ArriRaw format and recorded on 256GB and
512GB Codex datapacks. Digital-imaging
technician Mustafa Tyebkhan backed up
rushes in triplicate and transcoded the
dailies, which were handled at Pinewood.
Because of the production's last-minute
switch to digital, Tyebkhan had just one day
of prep. "There was no time to create and
test a color-management pipeline for Giles,
so I suggested that he monitor mainly in Rec
709," he says. "That provided him with a
consistent color space in which to 'paint'
the movie."
Nuttgens and Shepard supervised
the final grade at London's Dirty Looks,
working with colorist Tom Balkwill. Balkwill
says that in addition to keeping the colors
vibrant, they gave "a nod towards the
debauchery of Dom's narcotic and champagne habits. A few of the shots at Lestor's
club even go into psychedelic pinks, purples
and emerald greens." The picture was
graded in 2K in P3 color space on a FilmLight Baselight. Dana Congdon edited the
picture on an Avid using DNxHD files, while
the online edit was also handled on Baselight.
Of Dom Hemingway's striking color
palette, Nuttgens observes, "Everybody was
keen to go for it, spurred on by Richard.
There were times when I'd ask him, 'How
far do you want to go?' And he'd say, 'As
far as you want.'"

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa Studio
Arri Master Prime, Angenieux Optimo

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American Cinematographer - April 2014

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