American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 50

◗

Smoke on the Water

Production designer Chris Seagers devised a set outfitted like an actual oil rig, complete with a
functional helipad and surrounded by a water tank for shots from the sea looking back toward
the Deepwater Horizon.

50

October 2016

American Cinematographer

that had broken and clean off practicals
that needed cleaning off. It was a fulltime job."
On the real Deepwater Horizon,
nine minutes passed from the initial
blowout to the incapacitating explosions. Engines were destroyed. Without
electricity, the fire-suppression system
failed. The blaze grew and engulfed the
entire rig. Reproducing this inferno was
the film's tall task.
"When I came on the show,"
Ryan recalls, "they said, 'We want to do
fire without real fire. Can you light
that?' Nothing looks like fire except real
fire - so I said to them, 'Yeah, there's a
way: Project fire [from] LED walls.'" It
was a novel solution, similar to something Ryan and Chediak had used
before on a much smaller scale on The
Maze Runner (AC Oct. '14), when they
needed an elevator to appear as if it was
racing past the floors. On that production, Ryan had suggested a poor-man's
process that utilized an LED wall with
moving white bars, visible through the
elevator's cracks. He notes, "I said to
Enrique, 'Remember what we did on
Maze Runner? Remember how well
that worked?'"
"When I came to Deepwater
Horizon, using the LED walls was
completely on my mind, based on the
experience we had on The Maze
Runner," says Chediak. "At the beginning, it was a little complicated to
convince production because of the
price." Though costly upfront, the strategy proved a smart choice in the end -
economically, practically, and because it
provided exactly the kind of firelight
Chediak desired.
The idea was to have footage of
actual oil fires, which had been captured
as reference plates for ILM, playing on
the LED walls. ILM passed these
plates to production, and Chediak's
team chose the shots they liked. These
played on a loop wherever firelight was
needed. "Of course," Ryan says, "with
these LED walls you have complete
control over the intensity and the color.
We could make it redder or more
orange."



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

Contents
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - Intro
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 1
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 2
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - Contents
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 4
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 5
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 6
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 7
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 8
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 9
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 10
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 11
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 12
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 13
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 14
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 15
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 16
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 17
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 18
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 19
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 20
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 21
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 22
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 23
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 24
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 25
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 26
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 27
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 28
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 29
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 30
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 31
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 32
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 33
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 34
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 35
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 36
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 37
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 38
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 39
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 40
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 41
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 42
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 43
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 44
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 45
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 46
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 47
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 48
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 49
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 50
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 51
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 52
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 53
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 54
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 55
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 56
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 57
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 58
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 59
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 60
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 61
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 62
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 63
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 64
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 65
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 66
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 67
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 68
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 69
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 70
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 71
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 72
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 73
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 74
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 75
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 76
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 77
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 78
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 79
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 80
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 81
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 82
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 83
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 84
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 85
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 86
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 87
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 88
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - Cover3
American Cinematographer - October 2016 - Cover4
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