THE CREATOR PRODUCTION
“We would call her on comms and she’d come in to add light just off the camera angle. It became this dance between Gareth operating the camera, the actors and Nancie,” Soffer adds. “It was quite a sight to behold – and a really invigorating and unorthodox way to work.” VFX It will come as no surprise that The Creator is a VFX-heavy film – and the approach to this was also quite different to the norm. “It was reverse engineered to match the footage, not vice versa,” Soffer says. “Usually, VFX are developed in advance and then prescribed. We did the principal photography mostly ignoring what VFX would be added to the frame.” In parallel to that, Edwards, production designer James Clyne and the VFX team at ILM had a simple strategy: gather as much info as possible from each location and then design VFX to the plate footage. This alternate approach to the VFX also made financial sense. “You save a lot of money doing it that way, and that was part of Gareth’s pitch to the studio,” Soffer adds. “It ended up costing way less than doing it the traditional way on a film of this scale.” When it came to the philosophy behind the approach to VFX, Edwards has a metaphor. “When you are in pre- production, you put targets on the wall. In production, you’re throwing darts at the wall – but filmmaking is massively complex and that makes it hard to always hit the bullseye. Our approach was this: in production we are throwing our darts at a blank wall, and in post we go in and draw the targets around them.” No doubt the film hits the spot in more ways than one.
still wanted it to look and feel as if it was. “Basically, we wanted to be able to tell a prospective audience member that we didn’t use any lights at all – and for that to be believable,” Soffer adds. “Of course, we did end up using some lights but the approach was always starting from: ‘Can we light any given scene with just the available light at the location?’ That was always our starting point.” The film was shot in some 80 locations across Thailand, with Fraser (who was working remotely because the filming schedule overlapped with the making of Dune: Part Two ), overseeing the prep for a planned two week-long shoot at Pinewood Studios at the end of the shooting schedule. “In the initial recces, the goal was to find out what the sites offered with regards to natural light. Sometimes a location would just require us to turn off a few bulbs,” Soffer says. “Other times we would have to layer in some additional lighting. We used LED lighting – battery powered and small scale. We didn’t want any noticeable movie lights on the set
itself, as it would prevent Gareth from getting a 360° view. “The gaffer (Pithai Smithsuh) and I would light scenes in a way that would allow Gareth to shoot in any direction,” Soffer continues. “So, if he was turning in one direction, we would turn off some lights behind the camera and only use a light that favours that direction. However, if we saw Gareth spontaneously go in a different direction, we’d have our dimmer-board operator adjust the lighting in real time. Pithai and I were sat at a monitor and I was setting exposure on a dial handset that was adjusting a variable ND on the front of the camera. It meant that I could react live to what the camera was doing. So, if Gareth turned around, if we didn’t adjust lighting, we’d be flat because he’d be looking in the direction of the light that was now behind him. In that case we’d dim that light and turn on a different one.” Another key crew member was the best boy electric, Nancie Kang. She carried a small LED light on a boom pole and was ready to act when required.
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