PRODUCTION ENCOUNTERS
ON LOCATION Encounters is not just about society’s fascination with alien life forms. Rather, capturing a sense of place was key to creating the right atmosphere
The next challenge was choosing a lens to fit the full-frame. “We wanted the flare that comes in Close Encounters , so we decided to shoot in full-frame anamorphic – we wanted that blue line,” Cragg describes. “We chose the Cooke full-frame anamorphic lenses which had just come out. “They are beautifully classy,” Cragg continues. “I think they have this amazing sort of internal glow that almost makes skin feel porcelain, like the light’s coming through it. I don’t know how they do it.” RATHER THAN JUST a sit-down interview , WE ARE BREAKING DOWN story beats and character ”
To achieve a truly cinematic sci-fi look, Cragg took things one step further, adding an extra flare “that could be something of the imagination,” he says. “I used a confetti filter to give it a bizarre, technicolour sort of crazy look.” Encounters undoubtedly achieves an ethereal aesthetic, but the series isn’t just about aliens – it’s also about setting, with each episode entangled in an area of the globe. “We wanted to feature the landscape,” Cragg points out. “We wanted to make sure we captured the sense of place wherever we went.” With his work on Encounters , Cragg was keen to honour genre-defining sci-fi features without copying them. He did this subtly, inspired by camera angles and specific shots. “We generally went for a higher angle – Close Encounters very much had that and ET had that,” he explains. Cragg also borrowed established sci-fi images, like light flooding through windows, witnesses looking towards the sky and locals discovering strange markings. “There are so many metaphors in all the science-fiction films when they come to the unexplained, and it’s mostly because they’ve actually done lots of
research,” argues Cragg. While these tropes might read as clichés, “they’re what people have seen.”
A NEW FRONTIER What separates Encounters from a more traditional documentary? First, the crew is larger. Second, “our equipment is quite probably the highest-end cinema equipment available,” continues Cragg, which gives the series an especially polished, produced look.
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