American Cinematographer - November 2015 - 58

◗

Questions of Perspective
1974], but that also gave us the opportunity to use transitions in the lighting
- the sunrise, clouds passing - and
other weather for dramatic effect as the
walk occurs, ending with this nice sunup look when Philippe is done. So there
is an arc to the lighting [that suits] the
scene.
We shot all of those scenes on
stage in Montreal [at Mel's Cite du
Cinema], basically hanging diffusion
from the ceiling to create a huge soft
box overhead - huge battens with
hundreds of 2K bulbs and then very
heavy silk - which was the exact opposite of what we did on The Martian. On
the Montreal stage, we always modeled
the light, using trims and sections in the
silk or by just turning bulbs off, but
because everything was so green and we
had such issues with spill and reflections, we would also use either white or
gray flags for negative fill, because if you
use black, you get too much negative,
but sometimes white creates too much
bounce. The gray will eliminate the
green spill but not go too far with the
shadows. I came up with this approach
on Alice in Wonderland, which also had a
lot of greenscreen work. We also used
some other fixtures in there for various
effects; for instance, we employed
balloon lights - a mix of tungsten and
[HMI] - to create a moonlit look for
the night before the walk takes place.
The great thing about having this huge
soft box overhead was that we had a
base illumination in place, and it was
just a matter of adjustments and a few
additions.
This big-box approach, of course,
would not have worked for our stagework exteriors on The Martian, in part
because the visor of the space helmet
Matt Damon wears throughout the film
would have picked up all these reflections that we didn't want. So our singlesource, directional lighting was the way
to go. Even still, we shot some scenes
with a different helmet that had no visor
and it was added later in post, primarily
in case we were going in for tight closeups and we'd get a reflection of the
camera. It was a constant change back

Extensive use of
cranes and jib
arms throughout
The Martian
allowed Wolski
to counterpoint
the extensive
use of GoPro
documentarystyle footage
with more
sweeping
camerawork.

58

November 2015

American Cinematographer



American Cinematographer - November 2015

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Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2015 - Cover1
American Cinematographer - November 2015 - Cover2
American Cinematographer - November 2015 - 1
American Cinematographer - November 2015 - 2
American Cinematographer - November 2015 - Contents
American Cinematographer - November 2015 - 4
American Cinematographer - November 2015 - 5
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