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www.postmagazine.com 23 POST DECEMBER 2016 PASSENGERS D P Rodrigo Prieto had spent the better part of his professional career as a cinematographer shooting such Hollywood blockbusters as The Wolf of Wall Street, Argo and Brokeback Mountain for directors Martin Scorsese, Ben Affleck and Ang Lee. Now, with his latest project, Sony Pictures' Passengers from director Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game), which stars Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, he takes his first steps into space. Surprising that it's taken so long, consid- ering his childhood fascination with the space/ sci-fi genre. "I'm a science fiction fan, from when I was a kid," says Prieto. "Even before I knew there were film schools — no one in my family was in the film business, so I didn't know that was a career you could consider — I made these little science fiction movies with my older brother. We were around 12 years old, doing all these stop-motion movies with space ships and monsters. I always loved that. I was in that generation when Star Wars came out and I loved the science-fiction books from Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury. It's funny because it's a genre I always loved and never had a chance to work in — so, this was a perfect opportunity for me." On the other hand, editor Maryann Brandon is not new to the sci-fi genre. She already has an Academy Award nomination under her belt for her work cutting Star Wars: The Force Awakens (with Mary Jo Markey) last year for director J.J. Abrams, as well as acknowledgement for her work on Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness. And although she's now back in space with Tyldum's new sci-fi adventure, Brandon says Passengers is a completely different type of film. "The reason this film appealed to me is be- cause it's a human story and a love story that is not dependent on legend or characters, like Star Wars. Look, Star Wars is like a western. You have your good guys, you have your bad guys, and they're all going to meet up at the O.K. Corral. [Passengers] isn't that. This movie couldn't be more different. What really appealed to me and struck me about this film wasn't the setting or that it was sci-fi or not sci-fi or in space. In fact, I think I ignored the fact that I was back in space. I just felt that the love story and the human story were so compelling that you can set this story anywhere. It didn't have to be in space. I loved doing Star Wars and creating those new charac- ters, but this film is entirely different. Of course, having all the visual effects experience didn't hurt me; it helped me. But I don't apply visual effects unless they further the story — for me, it's all about telling the story." Both DP and editor speak exclusively with Post on some of the film's biggest challenges on- set, as well as in the cutting room. SHOOT — RODRIGO PRIETO How would you describe how this film was shot, in terms of style/approach? What was the overall look you were going for? "When we started discussing the movie, some of the first questions Morten and I asked ourselves were, what kind of cameras would we use? What kind of aspect ratio? The first consideration was what Morten would want it to feel like. He men- tioned, for example, as reference some of Kubrick's movies, 2001: A space Odyssey is one of them and The Shining as well. Though, not in terms of horror, but how the shots were filmed — the presence of the space. In the case of The Shining, how the hotel itself was photographed. Towards the beginning of the film, Morten felt that the camera should be more mechanical — and feel like it's almost part of the spaceship. Then, it evolves into a more subjec- tive, or personal camera where it's more with the characters and in their personal space and follow- ing them and what they're feeling. "What I felt the movie needed, as I was imagining a space ship 600 years in the future, was an image that should be very pristine and clean. I imagined that the air in one of these space ships would be totally manufactured — the oxygen would be at the right level and everything would be done with the comfort of the passengers in mind. That's why I proposed we shoot the movie digitally, even though every other movie I've done was shot mostly on film. I tend to use film grain a lot in other movies I've done as an expressive tool. I use more or less grain sometimes depending on the emotional state of the character. In this case, I thought it should be consistently clean — so that's why we ended up shooting the film with the Alexa 65. When I did the comparative tests with other camera systems, in- cluding film, we felt the Alexa 65 had the combina- tion of the feeling of scope and clarity and yet it did not feel harsh, it did not feel like a nasty sharpness to it. It had sort of a relatively soft feel and yet with high resolution. It really films like a movie when we saw the camera with the Panavision Primo lenses compared to other systems. "In terms of aspect ratio, we explored ideas of going 1.85:1 [and others] but in the end we went with 2.40:1. Morten felt it was an aspect ratio that was more cinematic and grander. And it fit well with the sets that [production designer] Guy [Hendrix Dyas] built — sort of better at helping create the feeling that there's this spaceship which was designed for 5,000 passengers but just these two people are in it. That was the aspect ratio that helped that sensation of them being alone in this big spaceship." This film seems very different from what you've worked on — Argo, The Wolf of Wall Street, Water for Elephants — can you talk about that? "It's radically different and that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do it. When you see the oth- er movie I did right before, Silence with Martin Scorsese, which is coming out practically the same day, it was shot in Taiwan and the story takes place in 17 th century Japan. So, the two films are dramati- cally different and hundreds and hundreds of years apart. I find that very interesting. It's something I feel I've been very fortunate enough to have done a lot of in my career. If you look at almost every film, with the one I did before, say Brokeback Mountain was before Alexander and those are rad- ically different. Frida and 8 Mile are also radically different. When I got the call from Morten, I was still shooting Silence in Taiwan. I read the script and loved it and just thought it was so perfect to make that leap, to change completely that style from Silence in 17 th century Japan to the future." Anything different or unique about this film in the shooting style or approach? "Sure, many things, starting with just the practi- cals of shooting in the studio for 95 percent of the film. It was a movie where every shot has designed lighting that I created, so that was exciting for me. Conceptually, we decided this was a smart space ship in the sense that it kind of reacts to what the characters were doing. So, for something as simple as them walking into a room, the lights automati- cally turn on. In the same vein, the space ship has a day mode and a night mode to give the passen- gers the feeling that a day has passed, so the light changes that way. There's also emergency mode when things start going wrong. So, I had to build in all these different looks on each set that transition from one to another. And, a lot of the lighting was also built into the set. You would think that a movie like this would call for a lot of actors against green screen, but we decided it was better for the actors to feel like they were in an actual space ship, so that's why Guy built some amazing sets that were 360 degrees, even with ceilings. They were com- pletely self-contained. You really felt like once you were in there, you were in a space ship. A lot of the lighting had to be built into those sets, and that took a lot of work, design and figuring out. Prieto shot on Alexa 65.