SHOOT STORY | BOHEMI AN RHAPSODY
ABOVE DOP Newton Thomas Sigel on the first day of shooting on the Live Aid stage.
What was your idea for the look of Bohemian Rhapsody ? Being a
After a short tease in the film’s opening, which almost takes the audience on stage, we cut back to 1970 when Freddie has just emigrated with his family to London and he is working at Heathrow Airport. This part of the story was shot with the Alexa SXT and old Cooke Speed Panchro lenses. We created a special LUT for this period that emphasised the golds, yellows and oranges. It reflects the romantic idealism that Freddie had in the days when he first met Brian May, Roger Taylor and John Deacon. It was all about possibility and potential, with a healthy dose of naïveté. Eventually Queen forms, they luck into a gig on Top Of The Pops and begin to take off. This is where we made a transition to the Alexa 65 and Arri’s DNA lenses. Where the first act of the story was all handheld, now the Steadicam and dolly start to join in. The world seems to be opening up, getting bigger. By the late 70s, Freddie has completely changed his look and the film has as well, to a less grainy, cooler and more desaturated feel. The pressure of being in a band, trying to stay relevant year after year has taken hold.
musical biopic, what were your views on aesthetics for the big musical numbers and also the scenes focused on more personal drama? The movie is bookended with Queen’s performance at Live Aid in 1985, universally considered one of the greatest rock and roll performances ever. This historic concert was broadcast over 13 satellites by the BBC and can be viewed on YouTube today. It is such an iconic moment in rock history and I wanted to stay true to the quality of light at Wembley that day. The stadium was open to the sky, but by the time Queen went on the sun had dipped behind Wembley’s walls and created a soft, subdued light over the crowd. Being held in the day, the stage lighting, like the whole concert, was minimal. It was also quite improvised, since so many bands were performing, and all without rehearsal. For the movie we recreated the stage, and I duplicated the lighting rig that can be seen in the broadcast. We did take a little poetic license with the cues, but not much.
RECREATING THE 1970S How did you plan to recreate the 1970s look – how much did the fashion and production design tune your final choices? made a wealth of material available to us. Production designer Aaron Haye was meticulous in recreating some of the most minute details of the actual environments and there is a great deal of concert footage of the band throughout their career to draw from. Not as much as a band in the age of the Internet would have, but enough that I could study how their concert lighting evolved. This attention to detail was critical for us, because we wanted the audience to really feel transported back in time. By the time Queen went on the sun had dipped behind Wembley’s walls and created a soft light We were very lucky that Brian May is such a great archivist and
24 DEF I N I T ION | NOVEMBER 20 1 8
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