COMEDY | AVENUE 5
I knew that I was going to shoot on the Alexa, as I wanted absolute reliability
IMAGES Stills from HBO’s Avenue 5
around that wide, I slotted in one, two or three more cameras depending on what we thought we’d would get. “So, a big wide, a medium wide and then potentially a very long lens that went between characters. We then moved in and usually cross shot the two main actors in the scene. They were on mid-shot and then maybe I’d have a camera in the middle, which would ping-pong between them. We called them ‘swingles’: swinging singles, like a tennis match going between the dialogue, which was quite fun. Then the fourth camera slotted in either on another character who was listening or maybe in profile on another character. “We sort of built it up organically and got in to a rhythm, we were pretty much on a 32mm to a 50mm for the whole show; there were exceptions for longer lenses.” These lenses contributed to the three distinct looks for the show. “I mentioned the time of day – that all relates to the public areas of the space ship. There’s also the back of the ship and that has more of an industrial look, so for that the references were Alien and similar looks: sodium and green fluorescent light, much more grungy with loads of dark surfaces,” he says. “I contrasted the ship with lighting in terms of those two looks.” Finally, when it came to operating, it was mostly on dolly or on Steadicam. “Occasionally it was handheld if it was a hectic scene, but it was quite cinematically framed,” he concludes. AVENUE 5 IS CURRENTLY ON SKY ONE IN THE UK AND HBO IN THE US
an advantage on our sets. You wouldn’t be able to see the depth of all this beauty. I thought that was a really good note that I hadn’t thought of before.” Lens-wise, Bolter knew the show would be shot with spherical, as the aspect ratio of it was going to be at 2:1. “We had a lot of characters, so there was going to be a lot of width. Armando likes to see a lot of actors in the shot, he likes to play things like a three-shot or a four- shot – the 2:1 ratio makes perfect sense for that and gave it a little more space and grandeur than 16:9 would have.” Bolter is a big fan of Leica glass, so chose the Leitz Summicron primes. He explains: “I’ve shot my last three series on Leica now. I decided to go with the Summicrons on this show, the Summicron-C primes. I chose those over the Summilux as they’re a little bit smaller and lighter and just slightly more interesting. The Summilux are completely perfect, flawless lenses, while the Summicrons have a bit of something to them, there’s a tiny bit of vignetting, a tiny bit more interest in the out-of- focus areas, but they still have incredible contrast and beautiful colour rendition. I do love the Leica look.” He continues: “We had two full sets of Summicrons across four cameras, so I was able to have two 50mm and two 40mm, for example, but there weren’t really rules for which focal length to go for. The way we built it up was that we almost did a wide first, just to give half a chance of learning the blocking, as there were no on-camera rehearsals. Then,
shoot, as they were shooting full scenes at the same time as Bolter. THE CAPTURE Bolter knew which camera he was going to use early on. He says: “I knew I was going to shoot on the Alexa, as I wanted absolute reliability over anything else as this was high-pressure shooting – it was all about performance and we had to stay out of the way – an expression we kept using was ‘ninja cinematography’. We had to just get in there and do the best cinematography we could without being noticed. We had to operate quietly and not take over the process, the lighting had to be integrated and quick, we had to be ready to shoot straightaway. It all had to be very intuitive.” Bolter explains he knew he wanted an Alexa sensor, as “it’s pretty much perfect and I knew there wouldn’t be any problems”. He then chose the Alexa Mini, as he knew there would be some handheld, gimbal and Steadicam work involved in the shoot. Plus, slotting four cameras around actors, you need every little bit of space. “We’re a 4K Dolby Vision HDR show, but HBO is very smart with its understanding of the tech and the advantages of shooting on the Alexa. Even though we shot at 3.2K ProRes, HBO was absolutely happy to upscale that for transmission. HBO was incredible actually, as Arri did have the large format Alexa – the LF – but that was before the Mini LF was available and it was just a bit too big. HBO had a note, which I thought was spot-on, that we had these huge sets, so why would we want even more shallow focus? It wasn’t
40 DEF I N I T ION | FEBRUARY 2020
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