In our latest issue, we catch up with the DOPs on Black Mirror, The Studio and The Last of Us, discovering the tools and techniques that make these hit shows look as great as they do. We also consider how filmmakers can protect their IP in the age of AI, take a hard look at the hidden environmental costs of postproduction, and preview key upcoming shows including Cine Gear LA and Euro Cine in Munich. Enjoy!
MAY/JUNE 2025
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NAILING THE LAST OF US’ BIGGEST TWIST PROTECTING YOUR WORK IN THE AGE OF AI BUILDING BLACK MIRROR’S VISUAL WORLD
DOP Adam Newport-Berra pays homage to classic Hollywood cinema in this timely industry satire
FIX IT IN POST? WHAT WE KNOW (AND DON’T) ABOUT POST-PRODUCTION’S CLIMATE IMPACT
CONTENTS
PRODUCTIONS 8 THE STUDIO DOP Adam Newport-Berra takes us behind the scenes on Seth Rogen’s Hollywood-skewering comedy drama 22 BLACK MIRROR Charlie Brooker and co serve up a seventh season of sinister techy tales; regular DOP Stephan Pehrsson gives us the lowdown 38 THE LAST OF US This epic survival series is back for Season 2, with higher stakes than ever. Catherine Goldschmidt discusses her work on it REGULARS 6 BEHIND THE SHOT Christophe Nuyens talks capturing the resistance in the new and final season of Star Wars prequel Andor 36 AI & THE CRAFT How do you protect your IP in the AI age? We speak to experts to find out 53 TAKE TWO Nearly 50 years on and The Shining has lost none of its fear factor. We reflect on the cinematography in Kubrick’s classic 54 THE VIEW FROM… In this first of a new series, we learn about the industry in the Belgian Society of Cinematographers’ corner of the globe 58 DYNAMIC DUOS Lukas Dhont and Frank van den Eeden on the keys to collaborative success
DEF RECOMMENDS: ADULT LIFE SKILLS (2016) Features writer Oliver Webb gives an indie gem the thumbs up 30
somehow missed this understated black comedy from Rachel Tunnard upon its release in 2016. The ever-brilliant Jodie Whittaker plays Anna, a hermit living in her mum’s garden shed after the death of her twin brother. Anna works at a local children’s rec centre and spends her free time making homemade movies with her thumbs. Feeling the pressure to move on with her life, Anna is given an ultimatum by
her mum, to move out of the shed before her 30th birthday. A poignant tale of grief and the healing process, Adult Life Skills is a powerful debut feature, and I’m hoping we one day get to see more work from Tunnard (who wrote, directed and edited the film). It also felt apt watching this British indie gem for the first time shortly before my own 30th birthday (although at time of writing I don’t live in my parent’s shed).
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POST 14 SUSTAINABILITY IN POST Ever considered the carbon cost of post- production? Maybe you should start, proposes Neal Romanek 30 VFX BREAKDOWN In the spotlight this month are the visual effects teams powering Bong Joon Ho’s fantastically fun sci-fi romp Mickey 17 GEAR 18 SHRINKING CAMERA GAP Is it time to rethink what a cinema camera actually is? Perhaps, says Adrian Pennington, as he explores the compact, lightweight models changing the game 48 THE EXCHANGE We grill Panavision’s technical director on the future of cine lenses, including renting, AI influences and tailoring to LED walls 57 LIGHTING THE FUTURE We find out how Aputure is making its lighting as sustainable as possible INDUSTRY 62 INDUSTRY BRIEFINGS Star Wars gets the oner treatment, the FilmLight Colour Awards open and more 65 SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST The festival of tech and creativity, founded in Texas, hits London for the first time 66 EURO CINE A whistle-stop tour of the Munich expo’s best bits, top talks and must-visit booths 70 FIRESIDE CHAT Clear Angle Studios CEO Dominic Ridley talks 4D scanning, Gaussian splatting and AI-driven data generation 73 LEVELLING THE FIELD A look at proposed market regulations to protect British producers against the monopoly streaming services are quickly heading towards 75 CINE GEAR LA Cine Gear LA is pitching up at the iconic Universal Studios Lot in Hollywood this June. Discover what not to miss
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Christophe Nuyens, SBC captures a magic-hour rave in Andor Season 2
A prequel to the events of 2016’s Rogue One , Disney+’s Andor – Wars canon, and the recently released second season has just raised the bar even higher. With the first season widely praised for its cinematic ambition and richly layered worldbuilding, the second instalment returns to continue the story of Cassian Andor’s transformation from aimless thief to rebel spy. Cinematographer Christophe Nuyens, SBC was behind the lens for several episodes of the latest season, including number three, Harvest , which features a sequence unlike anything else in the rest of the series so far. “I chose this shot because of the scene it was a part of in the show – the wedding,” begins Nuyens. “The wedding was a very different setting compared to the other worlds and sets. It had to be shiny and chic, but also had to explode with the energy of a rave or nightclub – all of this created an exciting challenge.” which premiered in 2022 – quickly became a favourite in the Star WORDS NICOLA FOLEY IMAGES LUCASFILM/DISNEY+
Initially, Nuyens and director Ariel Kleiman both imagined the sequence as a night scene, but showrunner Tony Gilroy had other ideas. “He said, ‘no – this has to be a day scene’, and that totally changed how we approached it. We had to find a way to capture that same intensity and atmosphere, but in daylight.” Their idea was to lean into the magic-hour light and embrace lens flare – something notoriously difficult to achieve on a green-screen-heavy show like Andor – but they eventually found a solution in using a painted backdrop. The party sequence was shot using multiple cameras, each choreographed to move with the dancers. “Several things had to be in sync,” says Nuyens. “We had two Steadicams and one Technocrane for the wide shots. One Steadicam had a 50mm, while the other used a 75-210mm zoom – it’s a huge lens for that set-up, but it really worked.” That particular zoom lens made its first appearance here, but would later come into heavier use. “In Andor , we
actually used a lot of zoom lenses, and our use of this technique increased in episodes 4, 5 and 6 because, to me, those episodes had to feel like a spy movie; the zoom lens creates that look,” Nuyens explains. “For this shot and specific episode, we started to use that zoom lens a little, especially as the character goes into her trance during the wedding party. We used them very specifically, not making them too obvious, to introduce that look in this episode to support the transition in storytelling for the next three.” Prepping the scene meant working closely with Kleiman and the wider team: “We did a lot of shot listing, researching many references, and from that we decided on the lenses – as well as that we wanted to do beautiful lens flares,” he explains. “Ari and I went to the rehearsals for the scene, and during those I just started shooting on my iPhone! We played around with framing and camera movement, seeing what worked. And we shot listed it right there in the rehearsals.”
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WATCH THE TRAILER
The whole sequence plays into the broader visual language of the season: “Season 2’s theme is the three- episode arc; after every three episodes, everything comes together,” reveals Nuyens. “There’s also a parallel edit, so we have two stories happening at the same time and we’re connecting them visually. For instance, we had these flares in the wedding party, then we used them with Cassian in the TIE fighter, which connects the scenes in a visual way. It’s something we were always aiming to do.” Ultimately, the experience was a happy blend of planning things to a tee and embracing the unexpected: “When working with flares, you have to look for them, and every lens flares a little differently. Every actor dances differently. So, for this scene, we did a lot of takes in the setting we created and looked for those lucky moments,” he muses. “That’s also why we used the zoom, to capture the nice things we saw. It’s a combination of luck and planning to have those lucky accidents.”
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“The chemistry and energy on- set was electric ”
DOP Adam Newport-Berra talks lensing The Studio, Seth Rogen’s loving send-up of the filmmaking biz, with Oliver Webb
IMAGES APPLE TV+
S eth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s latest project, The demands, Remick longs to produce high-quality movies amid an increasingly IP-driven entertainment landscape. Featuring an array of guest stars playing themselves, including Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Olivia Wilde and Ice Cube, the show was captured by DOP Adam Newport-Berra. Newport-Berra initially heard about The Studio through his agent, who mentioned that Rogen and Goldberg were looking for someone who could capture the show in oners. “I love shooting oners!” he begins. “I really pushed to meet Seth and Evan so that I could talk about it with them. They said they wanted to shoot the show with one camera, on one lens, and to capture every scene in one shot.” Rogen and Goldberg set out to pay homage to classic Hollywood cinema and capture the nostalgia of the golden era of filmmaking. A number of classic films served as visual inspiration (as well as famous oners being name-dropped throughout the show), including The Player (1992), Soy Cuba (1964), Boogie Nights (1997) and Goodfellas (1990). Episode 5 opens with a shot that Studio , follows newly appointed head of the fictional Continental Studios, Matt Remick (played by Rogen), as he navigates his new role. Struggling to meet the studio’s
GOLD-TINTED LENSES The Studio satirises the chaos of Hollywood while highlighting the creativity and artistry behind the silver screen
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WATCH THE TRAILER
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echoes the opening sequence of Touch of Evil (1958), although Newport-Berra points out that this wasn’t intentional. “It’s funny because we didn’t even think about it when shooting that opening scene,” he admits. “We weren’t always designing these shots ahead of time. We were having to just show up and block them, figure out what’s happening and then find a lyrical, poetic way to have the camera flow through all of it.” FORGET IT, OLIVIA. IT’S CHINATOWN Newport-Berra captured The Studio with the ARRI ALEXA 35 and ARRI Master Prime 21mm T1.3 lenses across a period of two and a half months, with four to six days required per episode. “We had an incredible camera operator named Mark Goellnicht,” he says. “Mark has a great attitude, and can just do take after take. He’s an absolute machine, and I sought him out because I knew how athletic he was. We also had an additional operator, Jesse Cain, who handled all the DJI Ronin work as well as helping with the handheld work, as many of the shots required multiple operators.” The Missing Reel episode pays homage to the noir genre, notably Chinatown (1974), with the film’s score even featuring in the final sequence. “The episode was written like a noir, and the goal was to make something more impressionistic and dramatic, all with a sense of humour,” adds Newport-Berra. “There are layers of jokes in the show, and we wanted it to be self-aware so we could lean into it without fearing it would feel too kitschy, because it was supposed to be, in a way. But I think it turned out quite beautifully.” Newport-Berra utilised the set and lighting from Olivia Wilde’s movie within a movie. “It was nice that we were shooting on a film set for this episode because we could see all the lights,” he explains. “It was easier to inject colour and stark lighting, as I could just put a light directly
AND... ACTION! Goldberg and Rogen designed the show to both feature and pay homage to various shooting styles and genres
in the shot if needed. We weren’t able to do that for the majority of the show because we had to light a set 360°. The noir episode gave me the opportunity to be a bit more impressionistic.” At one point in the episode, a stern-faced Matt descends a stairwell surrounded by smoke. For a moment, it’s as if we’re seeing the opening of another movie. “It’s funny because the smoke wasn’t originally part of the shot, but I was adamant about putting it in this scene,” says Newport-Berra. “Seth and Evan were both a little sceptical at first, as they thought it would be ridiculous, but of course that’s the point. We ended up basically filling up that alleyway with smoke right before each take, to the point where you could hardly see anything.”
ONER OF A KIND One of the most physically demanding episodes to capture was The Oner . This follows the very complicated process of shooting a oner for Sarah Polley’s fictional romantic drama starring Greta Lee. Matt’s presence on the set causes tension and chaos inevitably unfolds. Newport-Berra shot the episode over a period of four days. “We couldn’t shoot the entire episode in one shot because of actor availability issues. There was never a day in which we had all the actors together per se, so we had to
THEN FIND A lyrical, poetic WAY TO HAVE THE CAMERA flow through ”
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piece some parts together. We shot the majority of the episode handheld. It’s the most responsive, dynamic and intuitive way to capture scenes.” Towards the end of the episode, Matt and Sal return to Matt’s car and hurriedly drive off, which required lots of planning. “There’s a moment when we were moving through the space, in a pan we stitched into a Ronin shot as they were moving outside,” details Newport- Berra. “That Ronin shot took us out the door into the driveway. We then tracked around alongside the guys running to the car, and there was a hood mount on the car that had electromagnets on it. Once the Ronin was set on that hood mount, there were two metal plates that landed together. Someone flipped a switch, turning the magnet on, and then the guy carrying the gimbal could run off and hide around a corner among some bushes so the car could drive off. Then we had somebody operating that Ronin head from a car ahead of the picture car. I was in that car alongside the operator, the AC and Evan, and we were basically just leading that car down the driveway.” For Newport-Berra, the most rewarding scenes were the numerous comedic moments throughout the show, which were all meticulously choreographed. “It was about finding the timing between the camera and performances; that’s where the real artwork comes into the show. For example, when Matt trips and falls in the oner episode, it’s almost easy because we know it’s going to be funny and WE DID lots of takes OF THESE SHOTS, BUT THE ACTORS WOULD TUNE IT AND try out different things ”
surprising. We found a way to single out that moment and make sure we had the right people and tools in place to let that unfold. We found stitch points to get in and out of it so we could carve that out.” The camera was constantly up close to the actors and in the heart of all the action, so ensuring it could spin 360° in any direction was an integral aspect of the shoot. “It’s designed to feel that way, and I think that’s a testament to the actors. We were always riding this line of being really precise, well planned and choreographed, but with the chaos of really great comedic actors who will always inject something new. “We did lots of takes of all these shots, but the actors would always tune it and try out different things in each take, while always knowing they had to hit the same marks and have the same timing. The camera would also do something slightly different in every take, since it was handheld. There was this volatility to the camera and actors that lent itself to the show feeling like it was on thin ice.”
Working in this way ultimately meant lots of takes ended up on the cutting room floor. “We would get really close to nailing something, then one little element would veer off course and it would immediately mean the take was unusable,” explains Newport-Berra. “When it did work, though, it was really magical. I think this approach can become sterile and clinical if you’re too prescriptive with it or too specific. There needed to be a breath of air inside of it, so that during a given take someone could make a small improvisation or something unexpected could happen and the camera would catch it. I don’t love the camera being so prescriptive that the cast have to work inside a box.” Newport-Berra had a blast working with the numerous guest stars who came on throughout the show. “Seth and Evan created a fun and positive environment that wasn’t intimidating,” he says. “However, I think the way we were shooting was maybe intimidating for lots of the guest stars. There were a
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CAMEO ROLES The Studio combines its core cast of characters with real talent from both in front of and behind the camera
few people who showed up and didn’t really understand what we were doing because Seth and Evan were often too afraid to tell them ahead of time, as they didn’t want to scare them off. “Actors would show up and Seth and I would explain we were shooting this as a oner. It caught some people off guard, but they quickly caught up. I think that’s a testament to the whole core cast being able to lift up the guest stars, to really accommodate them and make them feel part of the scene.” TRIBUTE TO TINSELTOWN Every location throughout the show posed a unique challenge too. Rogen and Goldberg both wanted to shoot in the most incredible, iconic Hollywood locations possible. “A lot of those are up in the Hills, so even just getting to them with equipment trucks was often a huge issue,” adds Newport-Berra. “Matt’s house is a tiny, one-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills that we couldn’t even get our trucks up to. We were parking trucks
miles away, putting kit in a pickup truck, driving it up the hill and then scrunching ourselves into a tiny canyon I couldn’t put any lights in because there was literally no space out on the property. I was finding ways to hide lights in bushes or float a balloon light over the set. There was also nowhere for the crew to hide, so they were often tucked into closets.” The house used in the oner episode is a famous John Lautner house in Silver Lake. “There’s no real flat ground on the property, besides the little patio, so there’s nowhere to place lights, and we couldn’t put cranes in or anything. The entire house is glass walls and you can see out in any direction. We were constantly moving the crew around just to stay out of the shot. “Because of all the glass walls, I couldn’t use most of the normal tricks to make the time of day feel like dusk. We often rehearsed for eight hours, then had to wait for that two- or three-hour window at the end of the day to actually roll. That’s because of how we were
shooting the show; wanting the camera to see 360° all the time and being able to scan every inch of each location.” There were lots of technical elements to The Studio too, of which Newport-Berra is particularly proud. “What’s cool about shooting oners is that everyone has to be firing on all cylinders at all times,” he concludes. “You’ll find that, sometimes, an actor will save themselves for their close-up. They don’t want to burn their energy because they know the camera isn’t going to see them. It’s like being on a soccer field with the ball on the other side of the pitch. You’re not going to be sprinting towards the ball if it’s 100 feet away from you. “For this project, everyone had to be prepared to be on camera and everyone was working collaboratively all the time, so there was a collective energy, which made for something really special. The chemistry and energy on-set was electric, and when we pulled off each take it was the best feeling because everyone knows it and feels it.”
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I n 2011, the BAFTA albert Carbon Calculator was launched by some bright minds at the BBC who understood the danger of the approaching climate crisis and wanted to help broadcast productions track their CO2e emissions. The calculator was put in the care of BAFTA and made free to use for the entire UK industry. Soon, an organisation built up around that bit of software, which began to have a substantial impact on how content creators approached sustainability. But BAFTA albert’s primary focus – which goes for most media industry sustainability initiatives – has been on production. Once that footage is passed off to post-production, a lot of the great initiatives, tracking and net zero road maps become increasingly vague. A lot of research has been commissioned on the major problem spots in production – travel and energy use remain the biggest sources of CO2 emissions. Sustainability impacts can also be reduced by smart procurement and food usage, and there is greater awareness about the huge waste of resources that can come from building sets, props and costumes which might only be used for a single day. One pervasive myth that extends across production – as well as genres We don’t know enough about environmental impacts of post- production to make it fully zero carbon, but we know enough to start making changes now, says Neal Romanek
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– is that the more that can be offloaded to the digital world, the better. ‘We’ll fix it in post’ has also come to be a part of climate policy. It’s perfectly commonsensical to assume that building a physical set causes more environmental damage than creating it digitally, whether that’s in a virtual production volume or via VFX. Many are the horror stories from sustainability consultants who have watched multiple containers of set materials heading off to landfill. The same green assumptions apply to using the cloud for live broadcast as it can substantially reduce the movement of people and equipment. Keeping in mind that travel is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions, doing things in a data centre must be greener than in a facility or having to move gear to a location. But the fact is, we don’t really know. TO CLOUD OR NOT TO CLOUD Cloud providers are famously reluctant to provide fully transparent emissions data to their customers. At the AWS re:Invent conference in 2023, Amazon vice president and CTO Werner Vogels famously declared that ‘cost is a pretty good approximation of sustainability’. So the cheaper your Amazon bill, the lower your emissions. By this logic, the cheaper your flight, the better it is for the planet. Despite research being done on the sector, we still don’t have a great idea of how much our individual cloud use is costing environmentally. We do know that, as an industry, the cloud has a global carbon impact larger than the airline industry and uses a tremendous volume of water for cooling. On the other hand, data centres can be very efficient, automatically taking advantage of any idle computer power. But they’ll often also generate a backup instance for customers automatically as security, meaning the work – and energy – is effectively doubled. However, chips are also getting more and more efficient. Each new data centre built can do much more than its predecessors, with less energy. And then there’s AI… The point is, the environmental impact of data centres is astonishingly complicated, but we know it’s massive.
IDENTIFYING IMPACTS Post houses such as Dirty Looks are making efforts towards reaching net zero emissions
We should not automatically pat ourselves on the backs believing that digital work is always greener than physical work. ARTOO DETOO VS R2-D2 Dr Rebecca Harrison, an expert in product life cycle assessment – and a huge Star Wars fan – researched the environmental impact of four selected assets from the original Star Wars trilogy as compared to their digitally created counterparts in the Star Wars prequels. One comparison was between Kenny Baker’s original Artoo Detoo costume and the entirely digital droid in Attack of the Clones . The digital version proved to be six times more carbon intensive than the manufactured aluminium and fibreglass original. Digital offers flexibility, efficiency and creative possibilities that would be
impossible in a purely analogue world. It allows you to try things out – whether it’s a rapid re-edit or new blocking in a VFX scene – that would be impractical in the physical world. But each of these new versions costs energy. The cost might be minimal if it’s recutting a scene at a single workstation, but rendering multiple versions of an elaborate effects scene to show producers on Monday morning has a much bigger carbon footprint. UNDER YOUR OWN ROOF Whether post-production facilities have an advantage over the travelling circus of a film shoot is debatable, but there’s more control over the provenance of their energy. A post house can select energy suppliers that specialise in low- carbon energy – or bug their landlords to do so – and install their own solar panels, heat pumps or improved insulation.
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impacts associated with manufacturing, transportation and products used in modern animation, along with the downstream impacts from streaming’. Almost certainly the most thorough report of its kind to date, it measured the total CO2 emissions of facility operations as 56 tonnes per year. Of that, 33 tonnes were contributed by the energy powering its in-house data centre. A surprise finding was that 268 tonnes of CO2 per year were produced by remote workers. Multiple individuals working out of their own homes, each using their own electricity and heating – primarily from natural gas in this case – causes the emissions per work hour to balloon. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY Increasingly, high-profile post and effects houses are being more public about their sustainability plans. Dirty Looks, with offices in London and Brussels, became a certified B Corp in March, and has partnered with UK data centre company Deep Green, which uses the extra heat from its servers to heat a swimming pool in Exmouth, Devon. The company is committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2040. These ambitions still incorporate carbon offsetting, which – although it can have environmental benefits – has been increasingly discredited in terms of relevance to a business’ carbon reduction impact. Other big players, like Framestore, are also highlighting their green efforts. The company’s Montreal branch operates on local hydroelectric power, its London facility is equipped with solar panels and its Mumbai studio has solar-powered lighting. The company is also working with its LA and Melbourne landlords to switch to green electricity providers. We’re still in research phases with post-production and sustainability. While there are fewer variables than production, which can lead to more effective improvements in the march to zero carbon, the digital world isn’t always easy to measure, and efficiencies can be carbon bombs in disguise. In animation- and effects-heavy productions, post may well be the most carbon-intensive part of the process. A survivable future requires us to move quickly and boldly, but we also need better information about what’s really going on in post.
HIGH-PROFILE post and effects houses ARE BEING MORE PUBLIC ABOUT sustainability plans ”
These are the same issues that face most modern on-premises businesses, and there are endless innovations out there for inspiration. The site of Norway’s Media City Bergen pumps cold water from the nearby ocean through the building for cooling, while The Bottle Yard Studios in Bristol is powered by one of the biggest solar arrays of any business throughout England.
In 2023, the Canadian Media Producers’ Association of British Columbia published a report on
sustainability in animation production, with a detailed analysis of a Vancouver- based animation studio. The report focused on capturing the on-site emissions of animation studios, and came with the caveat that ‘there are significant upstream and downstream
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GEAR CAMERAS
Is it time to think again about what a cinema camera really is? The lines are blurring in interesting ways, finds Adrian Pennington A t a recent presentation to the Hollywood Professional Association, post-production entrepreneur Michael Cioni demonstrated just how far the gap between high-end cine cameras and consumer imaging had shrunk. He made a side-by-side comparison of footage from an ARRI ALEXA Mini, Fujifilm GFX100 and an iPhone 16. All were fitted with the same Nikon prime lenses and shot in the same lighting conditions. “You can see in these results that a camera that costs closer to $100,000 (ALEXA) and $1000 (iPhone) aren’t that dramatically different. This is visual proof that accessibility has got so narrow that we need to think twice about it.” Cioni was urging studios and streamers to relax their thinking around the types of equipment that should be used to create cinema and TV content, otherwise creators and YouTubers will be using technology that’s much less costly and virtually indistinguishable in quality to beat them. There are signs that this is happening – but it’s being led by auteur directors and DOPs prepared to think outside the box. They’re not necessarily choosing
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SUITING THE SCENES Compact, lightweight cameras are vital for oners, like in new TV show Adolescence (left), as well as sports and action films like Senna (below left)
inexpensive cameras to suit lower budgets, but for greater flexibility in storytelling. What these cameras tend to have in common is their smaller size, making them perfect for run-and-gun filmmaking, while supporting a range of accessories for complex productions. The RED KOMODO-X has found a solid niche as a B cam on projects including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga , where Simon Duggan, ASC, ACS deployed a five- camera KOMODO rig for background plates with another set mounted on sliders attached to the undercarriage of The War Rig vehicle. The camera contains the same image science as stablemates like V-RAPTOR, making for consistency in cutting. At less than £2500/$3000, multiple KOMODOs could be rigged on-set and, if one gets trashed, it won’t break the budget. “F1 cars are so low to the floor that there was limited room for us to grip, so the KOMODO’s weight and size was essential for rigging multiple crash cam bodies,” explains Azul Serra, ABC on the action sequences for Netflix series Senna . The box format V-RAPTOR body itself weighs just over 1.8kg/4lb and can be mounted on a drone for first-person view (FPV) sequences. The Helicopter Girls pioneered this using a gimballed FPV for projects including a woodland chase sequence in Wicked: For Good with second unit DOP Sam Renton; Stuntnuts: The Movie for Ben Davis, BSC; and an FPV of racehorses in Downton Abbey : The Grand Finale for Ben Smithard, BSC. “What’s remarkable about that shot is that it doesn’t look like it could possibly be from an FPV drone,” says Helicopter Girls co-founder Emma Boswell. “It looks like it should be from a tracking vehicle or a wirecam. It’s an astonishing sequence.” Director Kazik Radwanski and DOP Nikolay Michaylov made KOMODO their A camera for indie romance Matt and Mara , in part to meet 4K deliverables. “Given that its the size of a Rubik’s Cube, the KOMODO complemented our shooting style, which is run and gun, documentary and self-sufficient,”
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shares Michaylov. “But it’s also a camera that can be transformed into more of a studio build, which we required for some sequences in the film.” Similarly, the Sony VENICE has been used in its Rialto extension mode to cram multiple cameras into some tight spaces. The sensor can record a full 6K in large format, suitable for IMAX and way beyond the quality action cams such as a GoPro could achieve. Claudio Miranda, ASC fitted six VENICE cams into the cockpit of an F-18 – and another four externally – for aerial photography in Top Gun: Maverick . And multiple VENICEs were placed aboard sets for Apple TV+ saga Masters of the Air . Erik Messerschmidt, ASC rigged nine VENICEs on fast-driving cars for Michael Mann’s 2023 biopic Ferrari . Sony just launched an even smaller extension system the size of a smartphone. The system can also be used to shoot stereoscopically. When two units are placed side by side, the distance between the two sensors is just 64mm, which mimics the average distance between our own pupils. “You can even operate it like a medium format stills camera and shoot from the waist if needed,” according to Kate Reid, BSC, who shot a test film for Sony directed by the Lynch Brothers inside a replica 2x2x2m space capsule. SHOOTING FOR ONERS The current vogue for movies and episodes shot in single takes is possible because of the combined light weight and image quality of camera tech. Philip Lozano, AFC chose the V-RAPTOR to shoot the 88-minute, single-shot indie horror MadS because it was half the weight of an ALEXA. Another factor was the ability to record 6K Raw without changing media for at least 90 minutes.
“I didn’t want to start shaking involuntarily because my muscles were tired,” Lozano says. “Nor did I want to photograph with a lower-spec model. The whole package including camera, rig, battery and lens was only 12kg, but you still need core strength to be able to control the wides and the tight shots.” A specially designed rig allowed Lozano to stabilise the horizontal movement. “The idea was that I was able to move the cameras as if I had a Steadicam or dolly, as well as handheld.” The DJI Ronin 4D has built-in stabilisation, a compact design and full-frame image quality that enables filmmakers to capture dynamic shots. It’s also fairly inexpensive at around £5650/$5000. The action scenes in Alex Garland’s Civil War , notably the climactic battle for the White House, were shot on the Ronin 4D. It’s this experience with camera operator David J Thompson that led Garland to shoot the visceral action of Iraq docudrama Warfare entirely on the system too, with Thompson as DOP. DOP Matt Lewis also used the Ronin 4D to shoot the acclaimed Netflix series Adolescence . “Any slightly larger gimbal and it would have been too limited,” Lewis says. “It would’ve been heavier and would’ve had to be connected to a single operator the whole time. We couldn’t have done handoffs or anything like that. So much of what ended up in the show was based on the ability to be nimble.” SUPPORTING SPORTS ACTION Sports broadcasters are constantly demanding smaller systems with
high dynamic range to get closer to the action on field or track. Two of the latest innovations in this area debuted in April. PROTON claims to have made the world’s smallest slow-motion camera, measuring 36x36x90mm. The PROTON HFR captures 12-bit dynamic 1080p in frame rates up to 240fps. It also has a global shutter that eliminates motion artefacts. It’s even available with a FLEX option that allows the camera head to be separated from its processing unit, so it could be used in even smaller spaces. Germany’s Dream Chip Technologies creates some of the world’s smallest cameras. These units have been used during the Super Bowl, on cars covering Daytona and Formula E racing, as well as for football. The 30x30x31mm dimensions of the AtomOne Mini features a dynamic range and colour reproduction that matches standard systems cameras. “Broadcasters don’t want to use a DJI or GoPro because they can’t colour match them to other cameras, like the Sony HDC-3200,” says Dream Chip’s Christian Kuehn. The new AtomTwo has similar HDR qualities, as well as 1080p 60fps with a global shutter. “The global shutter means you don’t get the visible distortions and disturbances associated with a rolling shutter,” says Kuehn. “Five years ago, it was impossible to make such a tiny global shutter camera, but sensor manufacture has made some incredible advances. So many cameras coming out now have global shutters that I think rolling shutter will soon become obsolete.”
LIKE A FEATHER Sony produces lightweight film cameras in its CineAlta series
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PRODUCTION BLACK MIRROR
WATCH THE TRAILER
As Charlie Brooker’s dystopian tech nightmare basks in the glory of its seventh hit season, we catch up with regular DOP Stephan Pehrsson, BSC to get the lowdown on fan favourite USS Callister and sci-fi fantasy Bête Noire BLACK MIRROR reflections on
WORDS NICOLA FOLEY IMAGES NETFLIX
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BLACK MIRROR PRODUCTION
BRIGHT LIGHTS The tech was updated for USS Callister: Into Infinity, with an LED wall replacing the original green-screen window
O ver the course of its 33-episode run, Black Mirror has consistently managed to rattle us with bleak visions of technology run amok. The show has become so synonymous with our fears around tech that it’s now a byword for them: call something ‘a bit black mirror’ and most people will know exactly what you’re getting at. By and large in the Black Mirror universe – and increasing Easter eggs and crossovers imply that it is indeed a single universe – technology is advancing at a pace we can’t keep up with. It infiltrates all corners of our lives and gallops out of control, with unintended (and often horrific) consequences. It has always been an unsettling watch, but in 2025 – as AI runs wild, deepfakes flood our feeds and we doomscroll ourselves to oblivion – its tech-fuelled, near-future fables are cutting closer to the bone than ever. “We can’t run away from it; it’s our world now,” agrees Stephan Pehrsson, who’s served as DOP on iconic episodes including USS Callister (parts one and two). “Charlie is so smart, so ahead of the curve. He sees trends before anyone else does – and then manages to create this fantastic drama out of them. “He keeps sort of managing to predict the future, and he’s got this way of pointing out to you things that were hidden before. It’s amazing the way that Black Mirror has even become part of our vocabulary. I play such a tiny part in it, but I’m excited that they keep wanting me around and asking me back.” Pehrsson originally got the gig through Toby Haynes, a regular director on the series, who he had struck up a friendship with at film school and has continued to collaborate with since. The first episode the pair worked on together was back in 2017 and, after binging the episodes in the first three seasons ahead of the shoot, Pehrsson could tell that the pressure was on. “I saw how high the bar was and my main feeling was ‘I can’t fuck it up!’” he laughs.
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CINEMATOGRAPHY CHAMELEON As seen in Bête Noire (this image) vs USS Callister, Pehrsson uses the flexibility of the anthology series to its full potential in terms of his filming style
They didn’t. The resulting episode, USS Callister , was a huge hit with the fandom, and so beloved by Brooker himself that it’s the only Black Mirror story ever to get the full sequel treatment. Right from the start, something Pehrsson enjoyed most about the show was the creative freedom it affords the teams working on different episodes. A self-described cinematography ‘chameleon’, the anthology format works perfectly for the DOP, giving him the chance to create a new visual world for every script, without worrying about the usual restrictions of a long-running series. “It’s really the closest you’ll get to working on features – you’re telling one stand-alone story, and it doesn’t need to fit in with anything else. What Charlie and Annabel Jones – producer – and everyone else wants is for you to interpret it and make it your own: to put your own vision on Charlie’s words. That’s why they bring in different director-DOP teams, so every episode feels distinct.” BÊTE NOIRE The second episode in the seventh season, Bête Noire is a classic Black Mirror sci-fi romp. It centres around Maria, a product developer at a confectionery company, whose grip on reality starts
HE’S GOT THIS WAY OF pointing out THINGS THAT WERE hidden ”
slipping when an old schoolmate called Verity comes back into her life. At first, it seems like the mysterious Verity is merely expertly gaslighting and isolating Maria, but as the plot thickens, it becomes clear that she’s relying on more than her powers of manipulation to alter Maria’s past and present. As the episode draws on, it’s revealed that Verity has created a vast quantum computing set-up in her home that allows her to rewrite reality, remotely, at the touch of her pendant necklace. Pehrsson, who says this is his ‘secret favourite’ episode of the whole show, particularly enjoyed figuring out how to build the anxiety and tension as Verity’s grip on Maria’s world tightens. “We landed on using zoom lenses,” he explains, “because we wanted to give that impression of observing from a little further back. We found that zooming in
on those moments when the tension rises – rather than tracking in – gave it a different feel; like the camera was pointing something out to you.” The team chose not to focus on Verity’s pendant, which she wears throughout the episode, until the penny drops that it’s the source of her power. “We made sure the shots were wide at the beginning – but then we want you to see it, so we pan to it, revealing it to the audience. And then it all clicks.” Mostly, though, this episode was a case of ‘playing it straight’. “We wanted to present it like an average drama, so you wouldn’t question it too much, but then towards the end we let it go handheld and vibrant as the plot goes crazy.” THE RETURN TO USS CALLISTER The other episode from the new season Pehrsson worked on was USS Callister :
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Into Infinity , a follow-up to the fan favourite that follows the employees of Callister Inc, the company behind an immersive MMOG simulated-reality game called Infinity . Pehrsson says that it wasn’t just fans who couldn’t let go of the OG episode after it aired. “We were talking about doing a sequel almost as soon as it was going out,” he remembers. “Toby kept saying this was probably the best ‘pilot’ episode of a TV show he’d ever seen. Although it had this perfect ending, there was always a part of us thinking: it would be fun to find out what they’re getting up to next...” In fact, they came within a whisper of creating an entire spinoff series, Pehrsson reveals. The crew were gearing up to shoot at the end of 2023, but then the SAG-AFTRA strike stopped play. When it came to rounding up the all-star cast to try again, schedules wouldn’t allow for it. “It was a big problem because we had to get these five really famous, in-demand actors back in the same space again. It’s not something we’d had to deal with on Black Mirror before – the cast usually only have to commit to a couple of weeks, so you can get these amazing A-listers and, generally, if people are free they will do it. In this case, the schedules were so tricky we had to rethink it, so the showrunners decided to make a feature-length episode instead.” Visually, the tone evolves from the saturated sixties vibe of the original
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FLYING COLOURS The USS Callister sequel was even more ambitious than the original episode, with new locations and costumes
into a slicker, more modern sci-fi look. “We moved from Shatner Star Trek to JJ Abrams Star Trek ,” Pehrsson grins. “Whenever you were in the gaming world, in the spaceship, I wanted it to feel like a big Hollywood blockbuster. We had flares, smoke, lights flashing everywhere.” They shot on the ARRI ALEXA 35 with Panavision’s T Series anamorphics. “It looks like a vintage lens, but is actually more modern. It has all that good anamorphic flair – the kind of stuff you see in big event movies,” he continues. “We weren’t allowed those the first time around. Back then, we had one opportunity on the last day to shoot with vintage glass, and we chose these Japanese Toyo lenses from the sixties – they looked like something Doc Brown would have made in Back to the Future ! They were almost falling apart, and weren’t practical, but they looked amazing. This time, though, the T Series anamorphics gave us the look, but were much easier to deal with.” Another upgrade was swapping out the green screen for an LED wall, for the view outside the spaceship window. “VFX worked out that it would actually be cheaper to display space on a volume- type screen. I was sort of against it
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IT EVOLVES FROM THE saturated sixties vibe INTO A slicker, more modern SCI-FI LOOK” when I first heard about it, as I thought green screen would be simpler. I worried that the parallax would look wrong, and that it would cause problems with the reflections from the glass window, but after they put it in, it made total sense. “It was absolutely brilliant: when they travel through hyperspace, we used a video animation, so that hyperspace was actually lighting the cast. Then, when they’re in Nanette’s head, we could make the screen change to different colours, bathing them in red first so you feel like you’re behind the eyes. When she opens her eyes and we flash them white – all of that was on the video screen, with a bit of help from a 360 SkyPanel.” It also came in handy when the crew aboard the ship are seeing the world from Nanette’s point of view. “The cast could see what was happening on the screen and react accordingly, so that worked great,” he enthuses. The most formidable challenge was shooting the sequence involving character doubles. “This is something we see more and more of in films, but it’s still so hard – made even harder in our case by how different some of our characters looked,” he explains. The spaceship scenes required actors to perform both sides of their roles, often hours apart due to lengthy wardrobe changes. “Walton’s in a full caveman outfit that takes four hours to put on, then you have to clean all that off and put him into his spacesuit, which takes another two hours,” he says. To execute the repeated set-ups, the team used a Technodolly – a motion-
TENSION BUILDING Pehrsson (above centre) working on Bête Noire (left), on which he employed zoom lenses for drama as well as more chaotic handheld filming methods
control rig that could record complex camera moves and replay them as needed. “It works like a motion-control camera, but the great thing about the tech is that you can turn everything off and let the camera move with slight inconsistencies – almost like working handheld,” says Pehrsson. The greater challenge came in coordinating the performances across takes, with actors needing to react to their earlier performances. This meant the first pass had to be edited quickly, with the dialogue timed and cued for playback during the second. “Someone has to sit there and edit the sound, put the dialogue up when it’s supposed to be there and cut it when it’s not.” The process was demanding for everyone: “It was a long day trying to get through
all the set-ups… we were ready to murder each other by the end of it,” he chuckles. If tasked with shooting doubles again, Pehrsson says: “I would have taken a dolly and had a prep day. That was our main takeaway, that we should have had a prep day. It would have been a lot easier.” Despite all the challenges, going back to the USS Callister was a thrill for all involved, and a memory he’ll cherish. “Day one was just so exciting,” he recalls. “It felt like a fun reunion, with old friends we hadn’t seen for seven years,” he recalls. The crew marked the occasion in style: “Someone decided we should all get uniforms,” he says, laughing. “So the entire camera team was dressed up in Star Trek outfits. On the first day, we got a picture of us all together – with me in the captain’s chair, of course.”
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VFX BREAKDOWN MICKEY 17
VFX BREAKDOWN CLONES GAME of
Chris McLaughlin and Robyn Luckham from DNEG discuss working on Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17
WORDS PHIL RHODES IMAGES WARNER BROS
M ickey 17 is unusual: it’s a Adapted from Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7 , the film was directed by Bong Joon Ho, whose successes on films such as Parasite have earned him an enviable degree of creative authority. That authority makes for unique and interesting films – but it also brings a consistency of approach that VFX- heavy projects don’t always enjoy. Chris McLaughlin was DNEG’s VFX supervisor on the film, generating the hordes of alien creatures in the snowbound landscape that characterises some of the film’s most memorable visuals. “Dan Glass, the production VFX supervisor, divided the work out to various vendors,” McLaughlin begins. “We chatted about the creatures, about our work and we were awarded just over 300 shots.” big-budget science-fiction film that’s not part of an established franchise. McLaughlin was pleased to discover such well-laid creative foundations. “The director had already done some of the work with his creature designer, Jang Hee Chul, who he’d worked with previously. Bong has been featuring CG creatures for ten or 15 years. He’s super savvy; everyone was. He came to us with a pretty fully formed design for
these creatures – concept art and even a 3D model – and we refined them. We got into the details of texture, skin, flesh, bone, mandible and we did just about everything that’s outside in the snow.” Mickey 17 went before the cameras towards the end of 2022. “They shot our sequences in Cardington,” McLaughlin recalls. “This huge airship hangar, where we got a lot of height. The rest of it was at Leavesden, but they built the snow fields at Cardington. The ground was covered in Epsom salts, which looked pretty convincing. Instead of a blue- screen studio we had a white-screen studio, with 30ft white walls and a grid of SkyPanel softboxes overhead. We didn’t do any scenes that had hard sunlight, but we could weight the lighting to be a bit stronger and more yellow on one side, which made it much easier to integrate.” A glance at the trailer hints at the sheer scale of the VFX workload, leaving animation director Robyn Luckham with a slate of work, including several huge crowd scenes. Even so, Luckham says, the vision of the man known as Director Bong was as consistent as it was far-reaching. “The idea at the start was massive. Normally, it increases by the end and gets insanely complex, but Director Bong started off complex.”
WATCH THE TRAILER
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