BOHEMI AN RHAPSODY | SHOOT STORY
I used what I imagined a college pub would have for their stage: par cans, colour wheels, a couple of ellipsoidals IMAGES As the band’s story develops so too does the lighting and colour spectrum, helping define a narrative of change and passing time.
Bohemian Rhapsody concludes with Live Aid. For Live Aid, we recreated the Wembley stage on an old airstrip in Bovingdon. It was 16 feet in the air and massive. But we were also totally exposed to the ever-changing weather of the United Kingdom for seven days. We couldn’t afford to silk, so there was a constant shuffling of fly-swatters and cranes to balance the light. While the idea was to be faithful to the light of the real event, we didn’t want to simply recreate the BBC broadcast. The idea was to tell the internal story of the concert. What is going on with Freddie? Between him and the band? So we put the camera in places where the BBC audience didn’t get to go. We open the concert with a massive aerial that begins over London, swoops down into the stadium, races over the crowd, goes up on stage and circles Freddie just as he sits at the piano. As the camera closes in, Freddie freezes. What’s going on? Will he pull it together? The band is watching him nervously, and then, well – you’ll have to see the movie. CONCERTS Are the concerts all real or were some VFX? There’s surely no shortage of Queen fans to recreate those times, but obviously the Wembley Stadium of Live Aid isn’t there anymore.
The stages were all real. We had a limited VFX budget, so everything
looking towards the band was done in camera. When the camera looked out at the crowd, that’s where our VFX budget went. While we had extras, we also had to replicate crowds and then build arenas in the computer. I really wanted to give the audience a feel for what it must be like to perform on a stage in front of thousands of people. There is a great scene where Freddie crowd-surfs and is carried by the audience like Jesus being taken off the cross at Calvary. By the time we get to Live Aid and you see him amongst a sea of 130,000 people, it’s breathtaking. DNA GLASS Lens-wise, what focal lengths were you settling on, especially with the With the DNAs, the 45mm and 55mm were the workhorses. For close-ups, we might go to the 70mm, 80mm or 110mm. Occasionally we would use the 35mm or 28mm for wide shots. iconic shots of Freddie?
Did you use the whole set of DNA lenses? Can you tell us
what you used and for what reasons? What is it that you feel this glass brings to the production?
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