DEFINITION November 2018.pdf

SHOOT STORY | BOHEMI AN RHAPSODY

QUEEN SONGS IN MOVIES • Don’t Stop Me Now Shaun of the Dead • You’re My Best Friend Shaun of the Dead • Bohemian Rhapsody Wayne’s World • Who Wants to Live Forever Highlander • Flash Flash Gordon • Radio Ga Ga GTA 5 trailer • We Will Rock You A Knight’s Tale • Somebody To Love Happy Feet • Radio Ga Ga T2 Trainspotting • We Are The Champions High Fidelity • Somebody To Love Ella Enchanted

Why did you decide to shoot Alexa 65 with the new DNA and Prime 65 S lenses? What did that setup give you over something else? The Alexa 65 is a remarkable camera. It has this giant sensor that delivers exquisite picture detail. Not sharper, just more detailed. I don’t really care about the number of pixels – I care about their quality. The Alexas are quite large, which allows for this tremendous breadth of colour and dynamic range. They call the camera ASA 800, but I think it is so much more than that. REFERENCES What were your references for the movie? We looked at some movies like The Rose and Cabaret , but much more time was spent watching every frame of Queen footage, concerts, documentary material and their amazing music videos. I also had the luxury of shooting in London, with its great museums, where on my day off I could go stare at a Georges de la Tour to remind myself that it may be rock and roll, but for the movie, less is more. How did you shoot the concert footage? Was the idea to recreate a classic concert recording with multiple cameras, some handheld and some locked-off? What kind of camera movement was involved, and what support gear did you use to achive what you wanted? The earliest venues were at Ealing College when the band was first forming. There’s no footage of these

gigs, so I used what I imagined a humble college pub would have for their stage: par cans, colour wheels, maybe a couple of ellipsoidals. We sourced all the lamps from a supplier that specialises in heritage lighting equipment. The camera was all handheld and rough – just trying to follow the spontaneity of the performance. Then, the venues get bigger with the band’s rise in popularity. We introduce the drum riser with all the aircraft landing lights, a crown of light on the backdrop, some decorative lighting instruments on the sides. By the time we get to Madison Square Garden, we have recreated Queen’s massive lighting rigs – at the height of the band’s popularity they had one of the biggest lighting rigs in the world. They were also one of the very early adopters of the moving light. We drew on the archival footage to recreate this. They had these massive banks of par cans that they could raise and lower right in the middle of a song. I loved when it felt like the lamps were enshrining the band. A big challenge was creating a multitude of concerts on one stage in only a few days. There were days when I shot a concert in the morning, then had to make it look like a completely different venue in the afternoon! We did this by having these modular banks of par cans on chain motors that we could raise and lower to reconfigure and give us a totally different look. We would change gels (if only we could have used LEDs!) and reprogram sequences to vary the effect. And of course, there was always dry ice. Now that we were in large arenas, the camera went from handheld to Steadicam and crane, more of a sweeping, grander movement.

• One Vision Iron Eagle • You’re My Best Friend Peter’s Friends • We Are The Champions D2: The Mighty Ducks • The Show Must Go On Moulin Rouge • Under Pressure It’s Kind of a Funny Story • Brighton Rock Baby Driver

26 DEF I N I T ION | NOVEMBER 20 1 8

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