American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 42

Saga's End

"You'll find that each character sort of bonds with a certain lens, and looks great in that close-up. Daisy looks terrific on
the 75mm or the 100mm, and Boyega looks fantastic on the 60mm and the 75mm. Basically, by the end of the first week of
shooting, we saw how the new Retro C lenses reacted to the characters and vice-versa. And that informed how we shot our
characters. There was no real go-to lens. They're all fantastic and they all do different things [well]."
- Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC, SASC
the sequel trilogy have LED-illuminated blades that create interactive
lighting. "Fortunately, we were
instrumental in how they were
designed for The Force Awakens,"
Mindel notes. "Nothing much has
changed, although the lightsabers

TECH SPECS

1.2.39:1 Anamorphic

4-perf 35mm

Kodak Vision3 50D 5203, 250D 5207,
500T 5219

Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL;
Arriflex 435
Arri Alexa 65 (some aerial plates)

Panavision Retro C Series, E Series,
T Series, G Series,
Primo Anamorphic Primes;
Primo and T Series Anamorphic Zooms
42

February 2020

have been shortened to make them
less heavy for the actors. The last 10
inches are added later by ILM.
Losing that many LEDs diminished
their output, but we could mimic the
sources very well.
"In this film, we used them as
sources in a much more aggressive
way than we did in The Force
Awakens," he adds. "This movie has
a lot more action set in darkness,
and we often relied on the
lightsabers to key the actors."
As the story progresses, the
heroes make their way to the
Thieves' Quarter on the snow planet
Kijimi. The exterior set on the
Pinewood backlot was one of the
largest sets ever built for the Star
Wars series. "It's very, very difficult
to make snow look like it's not lit at
night," Mindel notes. "So we had
three giant, soft light boxes on
cranes that we could move
anywhere on the set." Nafa kept the
American Cinematographer - 100 Years

lenses clear of snow, rain and debris
by mounting Schulz Sprayoff Micros
on them.
For an elaborate sequence
during the final space battle in The
Rise of Skywalker, Finn and Jannah
lead a charge of horse-like Orbaks
across the enormous hull of a Star
Destroyer. For this section of the
film, the production built an extensive set in a former airship hangar at
Cardington Airfield in Bedfordshire.
"It took us about three months
to put the lighting infrastructure in
before the set could be built," says
Mindel. "We had enough space to do
tracking shots that involved fullspeed cantering on tracking vehicles,
motorcycles and all sorts of rigs. We
also had a Spidercam wired into the
set to capture tracking shots with the
horses, and it did that brilliantly."
Principal photography lasted from
August 2018 to February 2019. In the



American Cinematographer - February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2020

Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 1
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - Contents
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 3
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 4
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 5
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 6
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 7
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 8
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American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 40
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 41
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 42
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 43
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American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 45
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American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 47
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 48
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 49
American Cinematographer - February 2020 - 50
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American Cinematographer - February 2020 - Cover3
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