American Cinematographer - May 2014 - 28

Top: The production utilized a 30' Technocrane for shots that bookend the film. Bottom: Zambarloukos
confers with director Steven Knight. The cinematographer recalls that he and Knight discussed Locke "as
a kind of visual poem. More than anything technical about how to shoot it, for me it was about, 'How
can I be a good servant to this human story?'"

preparation can you let yourself go and
improvise.
The film is bookended with
crane shots. The first reveals the
construction site and introduces Locke
as he gets into his car, and the last
moves off his car as he exits the motorway. What crane did you use for those
shots?
Zambarloukos: We used a 30-foot
Technocrane. Panavision and Panalux really
went out on a limb and helped us out with
this project. For as long as I can remember,
all the way back to my student projects, the
28

May 2014

[parties] that have always donated time,
equipment and knowledge are the rental
companies. I believe they've been sponsoring the film industry for years, and they
should be thanked and praised for that. A
film like Locke was made with a lot of help.
People like Hugh Whittaker at Panavision
basically said, 'You're lucky you're doing it in
eight days and in January, because [at that
time], you can pretty much have what you
want!'
Did you work with a digitalimaging technician?
Zambarloukos: Yes, Sophie BaggaAmerican Cinematographer

ley from The Digital Orchard. She was back
at base camp, and she would download the
cards so we could re-use them. We made a
basic LUT, and I switched from RedColor3 to
raw to keep an eye on things, but I didn't
spend time grading on set.
Were you watching dailies
during production?
Zambarloukos: Absolutely. Justine
Wright is a superb editor. We sent her a lot
of footage, but she was very diligent and
could work in the daytime. Then, while we
were setting up [to shoot at night], I would
watch footage in the DIT trailer, and Justine
would come in and tell us how many angles
we had on everything, what seemed to
work and what we might need. Having her
check everything in the day with fresh eyes
was hugely helpful.
What was your goal in the final
grade?
Zambarloukos: It was mostly just
fine-tuning. We transcoded the 5K footage
to 2K DPX files, and we graded and did final
outputs at 2K. [Colorist] Rob Pizzey at
Company 3 in London set it up, and when
he had to leave for another project, I
finished the grade with [colorist] Trevor
Brown. Things transposed very quickly from
shot to shot. Certain performances represented the dominant mood Steve ended up
favoring, so you can pretty much count on
your two hands the number of shots that
actually made it into the film. That made it
a very quick grade to do. With a DI, I used
to work very hard on each shot until it was
perfect, slowly moving through a reel. But
what I've started to do is go back to the way
I worked on a film print: I do a rough pass
as quickly as we can over the entire film,
then go back to the beginning and finetune. That way, you're observing the mood
of the film as a complete picture. I find I do
a better grade this way, going from broad
strokes to the fine brush strokes.
●

TECHNICAL SPECS
2.40:1
Digital Capture
Red Epic MX
Panavision C Series

American Cinematographer - May 2014

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