American Cinematographer - September 2016 - 68

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Grand Delusion

Top: Bryld sought
to emulate the
lighting evidenced
in the paintings of
the Dutch Golden
Age. "For me, a
painterly quality
has defined
sources, strong
sculptural volume
and a tight lightdark composition,"
he says. Bottom:
William (Jack
O'Connell) meets
with the Abbess of
St. Ursula (Judi
Dench).

sculptural volume and a tight light-dark
composition," offers Bryld.
The painters of the Dutch
Golden Age rooted their work in realism and favored portraiture, historical
subjects, landscapes and depictions of
everyday life. Bryld was particularly
drawn to their "quality of light and the
beautiful simplicity of their compositions. Those paintings are alluring, beautiful and elegant."
Striving for a similar quality with
the look of Tulip Fever, Bryld chose to
shoot with Arri's Alexa XT Plus camera,
recording 2.8K ArriRaw files to internal
Codex XR Capture Drives and framing
for a 2.39:1 anamorphic aspect ratio. "I
think the Alexa has more tonality in the
shadows and mid-tones than film," the
cinematographer opines. "I knew we
would have a lot of dark interiors, so the
challenge was to bring out that tonality
but still preserve a contrasty image."
Bryld and on-set digital-imaging
technician Christopher Nunn devel68

September 2016

oped a master LUT based on the curve
of Kodak's 3383 print stock and tweaked
it during hair and makeup tests to
enhance details and tonality in the toe.
"If there are too many variables, too
many knobs to turn, it can be a distraction from the real world," says Bryld.
"It's better to create a single LUT and
adjust what's in front of the camera, as
opposed to tweaking the image on a
day-to-day basis - that's how you paint
yourself into a corner. When I shot film
I would choose one stock for the whole
project."
Nunn also served as dailies
colorist on the production. "I had the
usual responsibilities of the DIT on set,"
he explains, "but I also graded the rushes
at my station and transferred the color
information/metadata to the Mission
Digital near-set lab for processing. The
lab technician was Neil Gray and the
workflow consultant was Jody Neckles.
It was actually quite a unique workflow
for this job. Proper grading from the
American Cinematographer

ArriRaw took place on set. In preparation for this film, I worked very closely
with Eigil, [colorist] Jean-Clément
Soret, Technicolor and Mission Digital
to sculpt the correct film-emulation
LUT and color workflow for this job."
By the time Bryld joined the
production, much of the design work
had already been fleshed out by
Chadwick, production designer Simon
Elliott and costume designer Michael
O'Connor. The cinematographer had a
little more than two months to complete
six non-consecutive weeks of prep. "It
was a matter of going through the reference materials, talking about the things
that inspired us, and letting Eigil fill the
gaps in our design," says Elliott.
"It's a gift of a period for any
creative," he adds. "I did quite a lot of
reading on the subject and went to
galleries. I was aware of other films set in
this period, such as Girl With a Pearl
Earring [AC Jan. '04], and I wanted to
avoid making similar references to
Vermeer, so I focused my attention on
the work of Gabriel Metsu and Pieter de
Hooch."
Bryld and Elliott also used their
research to glean specifics of 17thcentury Dutch architecture. The long
windows and narrow Amsterdam streets
informed the high angle of light seen in
many paintings of that era. "You can see
that every window has shutters, but
they're only on the bottom section of
windows," Elliott notes. These shutters
were incorporated into sets both on

American Cinematographer - September 2016

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