Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1536119
up, change the lighting. But oen we found ourselves in a situation where people were lighting her shots who she's never met, who have never talked to her, and who, as a result, don't understand what she's doing, creatively and technically. We were trying to bridge and fill in that disconnect, which means you want to get as much info and data from the shoot into post— and have Autumn talk to the CG lighting and compositing teams. If you don't want us to "make shit up," then we have to shoot it or inform people better of the creative intent. Something that we can either use directly in our shots and composite it in, or that we can at least use as a reference. This, for instance, applies very much to the burning roof. I said, "Let's shoot a burning roof. Let's light up the roof of the mill." Even Autumn couldn't believe that I was asking for it. We shot it with a bunch of IMAX cameras. The stage was smoked out and it looked fantastic. It was a great finale for the shoot. We didn't make that up—we shot that. Initially it was going to be a tilt up/tilt down shot. But then Ryan decided, "I want to be with the ancestors during that moment, so I want to follow the embers, push through the burning roof, and see the stars." At that point, we couldn't use that photographic element anymore. Despite IMAX resolution, it was filmed without a camera move. We had to recreate it digitally, but we still had that IMAX foot- age of the burning roof as a reference for what that needed to look like, and that's a theme throughout, for "not making shit up." That shot got so much attention and feedback, and it's one of the most talked about shots in the whole movie now. For Remmick's death, what you see in the film, except for the face, is all digital. But we didn't make that up. We scanned the special ef- fects supervisor's work—Mike Fontaine and his team—everything they did, and we replicated it. We shot those scenes for real, in the actual location, and always used that as a starting point. Then we added the glows and the smoke and all of that. Given the narrative need for a very specific sunrise timing, it was tricky to get the right moment for each shot during the two days we had in that location, as it had to be an intricate interplay between sun exposure and burn level. The location itself was challenging for different reasons. Produc- tion designer Hannah Beachler's team had to build an infinity pool to protect talent from full-sized alligators in the swamp location. When the final vampire flames start, we shot a burning stunt guy as refer- ence: Stunt supervisor Andy Gill's team set someone on fire. The SFX [special effects] team, under Donnie Dean's supervision, created a practical fire tornado as a separate element. Massive swirling flames, hugely impressive. Sometimes we were using that footage to actual- ly composite it together. But if we didn't, then we knew exactly what the CGI elements needed to look like, and what their exposure level and color had to be. That's the case for pretty much everything in this film. We didn't make shit up. We always had very targeted references to work to- wards. There actually are a lot of all-CG shots in this film—way more than you would think—but they're always respecting the visual lan- guage and the lenses and the lighting of the movie. Something that does exist in reality through Autumn's cameras and the film stock that she used. The film was captured in IMAX & Ultra Panavision 70 aspect ratios.