Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
38 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N UA RY / F E B R UA RY 2 0 1 6 Artists have always been aware of light and its effect on the world around them. The painter James Whistler also said this about magic hour: "...when common things are touched with mystery and transfigured with beauty: when the warehouses become as palaces..." For most of my career, I have built sets outside of stages and I have learned, sometimes painfully, how important natural light is to the image. If the shots are not planned with the given light, a terrific set or location can be minimized and made less effective to the story. Of course, this is also true of poorly lit sets on stages. For me to work on a period film outside in the wild is the most pleasant assignment I can think of and even before I met Alejandro González Iñárritu, I knew I wanted to work on The Revenant. It is the true story of Hugh Glass, a trapper who was attacked by a grizzly bear while scouting and later abandoned near death by a couple of his fellow trappers who stole his rifle and other personal possessions. Hugh lived, and he crawled hundreds of miles through hostile Indian territories and dangerous terrain to find these men. Alejandro is a passionate artist/filmmaker that wrestles with his films to get them right. On our first meeting a couple of years ago, Alejandro shared his passion for the story of Hugh Glass, but budgeting and scheduling prevented it from being green lit at that time and Alejandro went off to make Birdman. Before he left, he sent me a copy of his favorite film, Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky, and I understood the kind of movie he wanted to make. In April of 2014, we met again in California to begin The Revenant. Alejandro told me he wanted to shoot the entire film in continuity, in natural light and shoot each scene in one shot, similar to what he was able to achieve in Birdman. He also told me his film was "a story of enlightenment through physical suffering." I suspected at the time this was going to apply to us all, at least the physical suffering part. My friend Chivo (Emmanuel Lubezki) who had just finished Birdman with Alejandro was going to shoot the film. Chivo and Alejandro together embraced the idea of natural light to exploit the real beauty of the exciting locations we were searching for. © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation/Photographs by Kimberly French and Michael Diner Previous pages: A rendering by Illustrator Brian Cunningham of the trappers' camp where their furs are being processed when they are attacked by the Arikara Indians. A few trappers escape in their keelboat. Above: The power of digital film cameras allowed shooting late into the dark without lights. The moody dusk above the river illustrates perfectly the quotation by James Abbott McNeill Whistler on the previous page. Opposite page top, left to right: The production often shot into darkness using only fire for light. As a part of the dogma, locations were selected with great depth. Here, Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is holding his dark background. The location for the trappers' camp and the Arikara Indian attack, at the Stoney Nation Rodeo Grounds in Morley, Alberta.