DRAMA | H I S DARK MATER I ALS
IMAGES Some stills and behind- the-scenes shots, including Lorek Byrnison the armoured bear, in various stages of development
We could only afford to build a quarter of the set, so we put the rest of it within the VR world mode. Consistency is in the capable hands of colourist Jean-Clément Soret, who Brown says is “confident that the series is consistent with the filmic look” established through a LUT developed by Technicolor in the first two episodes. THE RETIRING ROOM According to Brown, one of the hardest scenes to do because of set restrictions and lighting contrasts was in episode 1, where Lyra runs across the rooftops of Jordan College. It is here that she and Pan find a spot to look through the window of the Retiring Room, and they witness the master attempt to poison Lord Asriel by pouring a mysterious powder into a bottle of his favourite Tokay. Brown says: “Because we had a child actress, Dafne, we weren’t permitted to shoot on location. Everything was done on a stage. The college walls, even the roof she’s sitting on was on a stage. Joel [the
NORTHERN EXPOSURE As the series unfolds, we will visit more locations, such as Svalbard and Trollesund in the North, and while Brown wasn’t involved in the photography of these wintery locations, he was able to divulge what the sets looked like. “The whole of Trollesund is a 3D set built within the VR world and, using a headset, you could go into that world and see all the different parts of the city through a very sort of arbitrary video game graphic. And, since it was LiDAR scanned, you could see the topography and the elevation in which it disappeared behind buildings or where it met water. You could also plot the sun path based on the time of the year and build and sunrise and sunset to see where the shadows would fall. This is an incredible tool for a DOP, because it means you can change the geography of a set, so that the shadows are favourable to the time of day you want to shoot.” Virtual sets helped cut costs and were used in a number of scenes, including the crypt in the depths of Oxford for episode 1. Brown explains: “We could only afford to build a quarter of it, so we put the rest of it within the VR world. In that world, we placed actors based on their positions in rehearsals, and framed up those shots based on our lenses. We got the VFX team to build lenses centred around the Arri
Alexa LF, so when we took screenshots, we knew that everything would be within the camera frame.” On the odd occasion Brown did have to shoot into the void, where the set couldn’t be built, the VFX team would allocate some of its budget to digitally extend it. This kind of planning enabled him to understand the constraints of the set before it was even built. The decision to shoot in 4K with the Alexa LF was Brown’s. Having used this format on the Channel 4 and Netflix lovechild The End of the F**king World , he sensed the BBC would be in a similar position, where a 4K shoot would be needed for other broadcast platforms. “At the time, the Alexa LF had just been released, so we snapped up the opportunity to use it. We were also the first TV project to use the Alexa LF but, because of how late His Dark Materials has come out, we’re probably like the 5000th production to release something shot on this camera,” he laughs. “I’ve trusted the Alexa forever, though; the colour profile, the highlight range and the gain floor is, in my opinion, the most cinematic of all the cameras.” Brown chose Zeiss Supremes and Zeiss Master Primes, which covered the Super 35 frame he was shooting. The Master Primes, however, were switched out for something wider by the DOP in episode 4, who chose to work with the camera in full-frame
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