American Cinematographer - December 2017 - 56

◗

Hammer Time
Right: Having
been thrown
off the rainbow
bridge, Thor
finds himself
trapped on the
planet Sakaar.
Below:
Thompson
stands atop her
character's ship
to survey the
action on
Sakaar.

other as he moves, so you never see
them squash or stretch."
In addition to principal photography, the visual-effects team captured a
large volume of reference stills and
Lidar scans to aid the postproduction
efforts. "We always do a clean plate of
each take and shoot a mirror ball," says
Morrison. "There's literally nothing on
set that doesn't get extensively
photographed for reference. The assistant directors are constantly shepherding actors through our special photo
booth containing 145 Canon [EOS]
5D Mark III still cameras in an array,
with various lenses. It automatically
captures a 3-dimensional version of the
actor or extra, including high-resolution
facial scans in polarized and non-polarized light in just half a second. We do
that for every prop, extra, costume
56

December 2017

change, set piece, etc."
A highlight of the movie is an
epic gladiatorial throw-down between
Thor and the Hulk. "We set the
SkyPanels in a circle around the fighters," Aguirresarobe describes. "The
arena for their fight was built on bluescreen in 360 degrees, except for the exit
door, where Thor emerges from, and a
slight bit of wall, which he crashes into.
According to where the camera was, it
was easy to set up a backlight or semibacklight on Thor and the Hulk, and
get an image with great contrast and
texture." Garside scrimmed the backlight with 20x20s wearing 1⁄2 Soft Frost
diffusion.
"We used the most advanced
techniques when it came to the Hulk
and motion-capture sequences,"
Aguirresarobe explains. "We did stanAmerican Cinematographer

dard motion capture performed in a
motion-capture volume, as well as
Simulcam live tracking of the Alexa
camera and real-time display of
computer-generated characters, environments, lighting, etc."
Morrison adds, "We used
cutting-edge motion-capture and
virtual-production techniques, down to
actually building motion-capture technology into the sets themselves.
Everything was geared towards letting
Taika work in an improvisational style,
something that came up in our first
meetings. Taika likes to shoot long
takes, in series, and wants to engage
with the actors, throwing ideas and lines
at them constantly. We brought in The
Third Floor's virtual-production team
to help us achieve a real-time visualization of the actors as their intended CGI
versions, so we could see Mark Ruffalo
as Hulk, live, in the camera's eyepiece
and at video village - or Taika as
Korg!"
The cinematographer recounts,
"Another important sequence was the
film's final battle, which takes place
along a bridge that crosses the city of
Asgard. A stretch of the bridge was
built outside the studios, and the photographic challenge was maintaining the
light's continuity throughout the scene
from sunset to nighttime. It took more
than two weeks to shoot. We built a
large roof combining black fabric and
diffusers, and then - according to the
time of day and the sun's position - I
combined part of the black surface with

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2017