FEATURE | MAK I NG OF A LEGEND
Newton Thomas Sigel DOP on Bohemian Rhapsody
Neville Kidd DOP of The Umbrella Academy
“The Alexa 65 is a remarkable camera. It has this giant sensor that delivers exquisite picture detail. Not sharper, just more detailed,” says Sigel. “I don’t 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 much more than that.” “Arris Alexa 65 had been of interest even before starting prep, because once you put your hands on a medium format [stills] camera and you take some pictures, you fall in love with it,” enthuses Luque. “I love the Alexa sensor and it was just a matter of finding the right lenses for it. There’s no way of going wrong with three Alexa sensors stacked against one another. When you see the footage, it’s incredible how nice it looks. “What I felt with the 65 was that it’s better to use it in small houses and locations, because you have a better wide lens without distortion. If you need a 12mm on the normal [Alexa] it looks really weird. It’s beautiful if you know how to use it, but if you’re in some other kind of place, it’s difficult to use a 12mm. But the 25mm on the Alexa 65... it’s a very wide lens, though it’s not round, it’s not like you’re looking through the eyepiece in a door. When you’re in a small space, it looks great.” Pedro Luque DOP of The Girl in the Spider’s Web
“I do love the 65, the size of that sensor is stunning and we were able to use the same lenses as we did with Altered Carbon . These were the Canon Cine Primes and the Cooke S5s, which was a great combination,” says Kidd. “Now fortunately there are more options lens-wise for the Alexa 65, lenses like the Zeiss Supreme lenses, which when we started shooting we couldn’t get hold of. Also, you’ve got the Cooke S7s so we’re getting spoilt for choice now. “The Alexa 65 camera gives you such a wide scope, giving your lenses a great way to see the world. And it made our operators lives easier, they could see everything but could quickly run out of set. So the benefit of giving them a 360˚ was fantastic for the camera. The Alexa 65 when it moves around the set sees the world in a different way that other cameras just don’t see. Aesthetically it looks stunning and for me you get a kind of beautiful realismmoving that camera through The Umbrella Academy world, even though the world was made up.”
IMAGES Behind the scenes shots from The Girl in the Spider’s Web, Rogue One and a still fromWar for the Planet of the Apes
50 DEF I N I T ION | MAY 20 1 9
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