MI B: I NTERNAT IONAL | DRAMA
WHAT IS STABILEYE? DAVE FREETH
“In the few years that Stabileye has been a part of the film industry, it has been used to good effect with ever more demanding scenarios. Through the creative ideas of the end users, it has seen more and more involvement with long takes that evolve. For instance from a crane shot to a walking shot, or starting inside a room and being passed through a window and onto a wire rig, only to be handed off to a tracking vehicle for a fast finale. “Right now we’re involved in a number of fantastic productions. We are being put through our paces on some complicated sequences in the trenches. Another project has seen us filming a horse race over a few days,” says Stabileye co-director, David Freeth. “The camera operators and first ACs were set up in a chase vehicle, while Stabileye was in the hands of the grips, who were tracking long lenses among the horses on a mule-tracking vehicle. Eventually, Stabileye was placed in the hands of the jockeys and we did some close shots at full gallop. The quality of stabilisation was perfect and the footage was stunning. “Stabileye isn’t a ‘gimbal’ in the typical sense; it’s a miniature stabilised head. It has a set of hand wheels and relies on an operator to operate them, but from time to time we are asked if control could be given to a person carrying the head. This is something Stuart asked for and it gave him the dynamic response he needed for his shot.”
says: “But we definitely added to the natural lighting that was there. This was very much a classic night shoot, but one that follows the style of the film. There’s not a lot of fancy camera moves, but a lot of classic square-on framing. We looked at the early movies and some Cohen Brothers movies for that as well as reference.” As for Marrakech, it was “terrific”, but not without challenges. One of the scenes for MIB: International takes place in the Medina, but it was impossible to get a truck within a mile of where the team was shooting. “We used carts and motorcycles to move everything,” recalls Dryburgh. “For Marrakech, we mostly shot in the Medina in old market streets. Getting gear in every morning was a hike. There was virtually no set dressing involved, because the bare bones of the place was so great.” Although, he admits, “we did have to cram a bit of light in some of the darker
“but particularly challenging as we shot in summer, which meant we had short nights – and only a limited number of nights – so we had to do loads of work. But I always enjoy shooting in the real world.” For the London night shoots, Dryburgh had to wait for the sky to become a very dark blue before he could start shooting. To prepare, he visited the street at night well in advance and took some digital stills, approximating the camera EI and speed. “Also seeing what the natural light had to offer, because it’s quite a well-lit street. Then we looked at what we wanted to keep and take away, and there were some street lights that were right overhead of where we were shooting we didn’t really want,” he explains. To work around the unwanted streetlamps, the team utilised some big lights and some smoke, then hid more lights up in alleys and shopfronts, trying to keep the lighting as natural as possible. Dryburgh
ABOVE Stabileye in use for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
AUGUST 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 17
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