American Cinematographer - December 2017 - 58

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Hammer Time

Top: Surrounded by bluescreen, Hemsworth prepares for action in a scene in which Thor is
pressed into gladiatorial combat. Above: A camera is framed up on the ageless Grandmaster
(Jeff Goldblum), the dictatorial ruler of Sakaar.

the translucent bit to protect [the set]
from sudden light changes. [Key rigging
grip] Dave Thomson performed a highlevel engineering job on the upper part
of the set by combining different fabrics
and moving them with great agility. We
added a small amount of fill light with
our SkyPanels when needed, but the
majority of the scenes on the bridge
were shot with natural light."
Though the majority of the
movie was captured using the Alexa 65
camera, Aguirresarobe also deployed a
Phantom Flex4K for one key highspeed sequence. "For the flashback scene
where Hela fights against the Valkyries,
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December 2017

we used a special rig made by Satellite
Lab," he reveals. "It featured approximately 144 hot-shoe strobes, timed via
custom motion-control software. We
shot with the Phantom at 900 frames
per second."
The production had the benefit
of screening dailies both online via the
Pix System, and in person at a screening
theater at Village Roadshow Studios
outfitted with a 4K NEC projector.
Dailies were processed by Shed under
the supervision of dailies colorist Fergus
Hally. "We used an evolution of the
ACES workflow, which Shed developed for Guardians [of the Galaxy Vol.] 2,
American Cinematographer

encompassing ASC CDL values and a
developed Marvel show LUT," Hally
says.
"We used ACES," Morrison
notes, "but employed a custom LMT to
allow the footage to behave as 'classic
Alexa' - Log C [version] 3 with a
K1S1 LUT - so the footage was shot
in a future-proof manner, but was gradable in a more standard way."
Hally adds, "The camera packs
were cloned into Codex Vaults, enabling
the capture of associated metadata,
which could be seamlessly passed into
dailies and on to editorial. On set, DIT
Pete Harrow would build the CDLs
with Javier using Pomfort's LiveGrade
Pro - these loaded neatly into Codex,
and critical adjustments were discussed
later in the grading suite, under Javier's
guidance. In dailies, we were under strict
guidelines from the visual-effects team
to adhere to CDL parameters only, to
maintain a known set of values for the
visual-effects pipeline." Hally worked
with the Codex production suite on
Dolby display monitors, with some test
looks investigated in [Blackmagic
Design] DaVinci Resolve. Hally further
notes that "Flanders [monitors] were
used on set with the DIT."
Morrison worked diligently to
create a simple but effective image
pipeline to get from camera originals to
final projection. "I like to work backwards from the 2D DCP, where we
know it will be mastered for Imax at
2048x1080 pixels for a 1.90:1 aspect
ratio," he says. "Then the 2D scope
output will be extracted from that at
2048x858 at 2.39:1. That framing is
effectively what the camera operator
sees on the ground glass at 6K, plus a
1⁄2K pad around the image." Morrison
further explains that - as has become
traditional for many modern big-budget
action movies - on Imax screens, the
aspect ratio will periodically jump from
2.39:1 to 1.90:1. "In general, we've
maintained 2.39 for more intimate
dialogue scenes, but whenever we get
into an action beat it's 1.90 all the way,"
he says. "The Imax version of the movie
is stunning." The 1.90:1 footage
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2017
