SHOOT STORY | THE G I RL I N THE SP I DER ’ S WEB
A LOT OF PIXELS
lenses we didn’t use that much were the longer lenses, but... we had some scenes with them.” Pedro also used the 120mm lens from Arri’s Prime 65 set, which he describes as “a little bit sharp – we had to use a softening filter, but it was a very useful lens, a workhorse lens.”
footage it’s incredible how nice it looks, and the lenses are very nice... when you use a 50mm, you have the angle of a 25mm. Everything feels a little bit bigger.” This bigger feeling served the filmmakers’ desire to root the characters firmly in the locations where they appear. “We needed to have a movie where the places were part of it – if it was little
The Girl in the Spider ’ s Web was shot in the Alexa 65’s Open Gate mode, which produces an image at the A3X sensor’s full 6560x3102 resolution. At just over 52 by 25.5mm, the sensor is actually slightly larger than the classic Todd-AO film aperture (around 48.5 by 20.73) and demands lenses capable of projecting a very large image circle. The more recent Alexa LF is more compact and produces an image up to 4448 by 3096 from a more modest 36.7 by 25.5mm sensor, which is closer in size to a 35mm stills frame or the classic VistaVision film format. As such, lenses designed for 35mm stills work can cover the LF sensor, though the push for larger formats has provoked the development of dedicated motion picture glass. One great option might soon be the Cooke Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus lenses.
Camera assistants the world over are slowly coming to terms with the fact that large sensors yield
rooms, the old mansion, or big cliffs they had to be part of the characters. It has to do with that expression thing. If you want to express something about the characters, it’s good to make them part of their surroundings. We decide how
shallower depth-of-field for the same field of view, all else being equal. Pedro himself is not always a fan of very
DID YOU KNOW?
Aerials for the movie were also shot on the
shallow depth-of-field: “Sometimes I don’t want a wide shot with a shallow depth-of-field. It makes no sense – things are soft, but not soft enough. And again, with a long lens, it makes no sense unless it’s a dream.” The reduced depth-of-field of the larger format is somewhat offset by the fact that a lens designed to cover a larger sensor will tend to be slower, unless it’s also much physically larger. “Most of the
Alexa 65 by DOP Jeremy Braben.
to do, say, the house, the corridor, where to put this character. It’s not just something that happens, it’s part of the expression. To this end, Pedro had considered shooting anamorphic, but concluded it just didn’t fit the story: “the next movie with Fede we’re going to change. I love both, and I’m shooting a pilot now in anamorphic. For stories that are more precise and clean like this one, I feel like anamorphic is distracting, so we shot it spherical.” Still keen to avoid an excessively sharp and clinical look, Pedro chose Arri’s Prime DNA lenses. The company describes the range as “eclectic”, based on a range of carefully-selected stills lenses, rehoused to accommodate the needs of modern productions. DNA GLASS Arri is keen to make the intent of the Prime DNA lenses clear. They are not intended to have “absolute optical consistency across focal lengths” as the literature puts it, instead reaching for “character and emotion... often the lenses display unusual characteristics.” Given the popularity of anamorphic lenses, with their characteristic optical side-effects, Arri’s approach makes sense, and Prime DNA has been popular. The lenses have also seen use on Solo: A Star Wars Story , Ant-Man and the Wasp , Breathe and Bohemian Rhapsody , among others. “We used the 55mm a lot,” Pedro recalls. “There was an 80mm that had a beautiful quality to it, and it was the fastest lens of them all. Then we had a 25mm that was great – you could put that camera wherever you wanted, and you would see a lot without being overly wide angle. The
BELOW Claire Foy is the third actor to take on the role of Lisbeth Salander, following in the footsteps of Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara.
There was an 80mm that had a beautiful quality to it, and it was the fastest lens of them all
22 DEF I N I T ION | DECEMBER 20 1 8
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