DRAMA | DUMBO/CAPTA I N MARVEL
Characters with superpowers don’t fall to the ground when they’re hit; they have to fly through the air, so you have to put them on wires – and that takes a lot of time. That work doesn’t interest me a great deal, so there is a second unit to do most of that. These films work on the belief the audience has in the characters. “Anna and Ryan work together in a clever way: they tag team it. They don’t perform one particular role, they both revolve around each other. They won’t both be talking to the actor at the same time, they take turns and they complement each other – there was no discrepancy between their goals. For their working style, they took an organic approach. It’s a very personal story about a woman’s journey in a man’s world, who she is and where she came from. It was important to have a female director who understood that journey. “We did a lot of handheld camera work, shooting close to Brie [Larson] and keeping it very organic on set, so it was far less structured. It was more reactive as the scene evolved and we figured out how to cover it. We took a very grounded approach and the handheld cameras worked instinctively with her, responding to her movement.” For Captain Marvel , the 65mm digital cameras and lenses came from Panavision Woodland Hills, which even provided some vintage lenses Dan Sasaki tailor-made for the production. Davis enthuses: “Dan is the Savile Row of lens making. I went to talk to him about the film and asked for two sets of lenses: one set for a look that was soft and organic for the ’70s period (I wanted them to have fall-off and be quite warm like the old Speed Panchros) and for the space sections, I wanted a set that was crisp and much sharper. Dan asked ‘What sort of minimum focus do you want? What stop
do you want to shoot at? How warm or cool do you want them? What kind of curvature fall-off do you have in mind?’ I was never sure what kind of glass he used – some Panavision vintage, some K35 perhaps. They had to cover the Arri Alexa 65 sensor. In the end, I had a full set of 65mm lenses that went from 35mm to 180mm.” Davis was only going to use them for the earthbound scenes with Larson, but instead used them on close-ups as they were lovely on the face. “These film lenses have been recalibrated for digital. I think you have to make them flatter and retune them for the digital sensor. Dan also worked on the lens coatings, asking ‘How much flare do you want?’ He could reduce or increase the amount of flare to my specs,” says Davis. The time period for Captain Marvel is ’90s for the Earth portion and a normal film look, but the film includes flashbacks to Carol Danvers’ childhood, which was during the late ’70s. For these flashbacks, Davis explains, he wanted the film to look like “16mm cross process Ektachrome”. “We did a lot of testing and film grain emulation to make our image look like old 16mm film. My favourite 35mm film stock was Kodak 5247, and I knew I wanted that look for the ’90s.”
ABOVE A soft look was created for ’70s scenes in Captain Marvel and a sharper one for space shots
VFX vendors for Captain Marvel 15 3 Types of digital camera used by Marvel: Arri, Red and Panavision
28 DEF I N I T ION | APR I L 20 1 9
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