American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 63

Unit photography by Quim Vives, courtesy of Focus Features.

Opposite: Conor
(Lewis MacDougall)
inadvertently
summons a
fantastical guardian
(voiced by Liam
Neeson) in the
coming-of-age
drama A Monster
Calls. This page, top:
Conor shares a
moment with his ill
mother (Felicity
Jones). Bottom:
Cinematographer
Óscar Faura (right)
finds a frame.

set. "Once the cameras were reloaded
with new [drives]," he elaborates, "we
used the two DIT stations to offload the
footage and create production copies in
two different kinds of drives: 21TB
RAID 5 drives for the production
company, and JBOD transfer drives to
deliver the footage to Deluxe Barcelona,
where an additional LTO-6 copy of the
whole footage was created. The purpose
of having two DIT stations was to
manage A and B cameras separately,
which most of the time ran simultaneously, particularly during the [portions of
the shoot captured in] Manchester
[England]. Also, in the event of having
additional units, we could split the tasks
and be more effective."
These stations were also used by
Lago's data team to produce on-set
dailies with Assimilate Scratch. The
dailies' LUT was applied during shooting with the aid of Blackmagic Design

HDLink Pro and Pomfort LiveGrade
Pro software. Dailies were graded and
transcoded in a number of different
formats and uploaded to the production's private cloud system for viewing
by the filmmakers and producers in a
variety of viewing platforms.
Despite the movie's menacing
elements, A Monster Calls is a poignant
coming-of-age drama about a boy experiencing profound emotions. As such,
Bayona had strict creative and technical
demands for the project, and routinely
tossed complex challenges Faura's way.
The cinematographer recently chatted
with AC to discuss the production in
depth.
American
Cinematographer:
When you first sat down with Bayona,
what was the overall mission statement he gave you for the movie's visuals?
www.theasc.com

Óscar Faura: The first thing he
said was that he wanted to be free to
shoot any angle with two cameras at any
time. He was concerned about having a
young actor restricted by technical
requirements. We got to [have that latitude] at certain moments, but all the
scenes involving the Monster were
absolutely previsualized [by The Third
Floor in London], and we ended up
following a strict breakdown for those
sequences.
We started to see the challenges
of the movie progressively, because the
film had a long preparation. I spent
almost six months involved in the
project before we started shooting. The
previs was the working base for all
departments, and as it advanced, we
were able to see what areas were going
to be the hot spots of each Monster
scene. In my case, I saw clearly that
shooting a dark wooden monster facing
November 2016

63


http://www.theasc.com

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

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