Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/619377
Chivo developed a guide for shooting natural light that was a great aid for me in finding locations and building environments in nature, but it also restricted just how many hours we could shoot in a day. In part, it goes something like this: • Shoot in available natural light • Seek depth with deep focus and stop; compose in depth, with short focus hard lenses • Shoot in backlight for continuity and depth • Shoot in cross light only after dawn or just before dusk; never shoot front light • Avoid white and primary colors in frame • Never zoom • Avoid light sandwiches—this is when an actor is lit from more than one light source Chivo has said that it is difficult to move from the complexity of natural light into artificial light in the same movie, so it was decided not to use any artificial light on The Revenant. To accomplish this, sets would be built outside on locations and they would be only lighted with the sun or fire. We understood we would be dealing with whatever elements nature threw at us, complicating both construction and shooting, but we all agreed that it would be worth the challenges to maintain the beauty and complexity of natural light. Unless a director is fully behind shooting in natural light, it would be impossible to do so because his time with the actors and his time shooting is limited. Most of the important shots were made in the last few hours of evening with the sun falling fast toward the horizon. As the minutes and takes passed, frustration and panic toyed with everyone, as they attempted to get the shots. Weather has a continuity of its own. Another difficulty with shooting natural light is that weather changes light as drastically as the time of day. A shot could begin on a sunny afternoon and, before darkness, experience clouds, rain, snow, wind and sun again. If the day wasn't finished before losing all light, we would come back the next afternoon to complete the scene or move elements of the sets with us to the next location and keep moving them until we were able to get the final shots needed. Rehearsals did help in that everyone paying attention knew what was important to Alejandro and what was required of each person on the crew. That applied when the shooting included exactly what was rehearsed, but that didn't happen too often. Everyone needed to be flexible and adjust quickly to changes. It was not feasible to prep and rehearse in the dark, making early-morning shots impossible. The crew would arrive on location about 9 AM to set up and rehearse