PRODUCTION. THE LAST KINGDOM
F or those who were disheartened by the absence of a sixth series of The Last Kingdom , rejoice. In Season 5, Uhtred’s profound odyssey comes full circle as he reaches the very place where it all began – his rightful inheritance, the ancestral land of Bebbanburg, which was snatched away from him many years ago by his duplicitous uncle Aelfric, and subsequently claimed by his callous cousin Wihtgar. However, instead of tying things up with a sixth season, it was decided to end the epic tale in a movie.
“The producers felt there was still one last great Uhtred tale to tell, so they got the gang back together,” explains Luke Bryant, cinematographer on The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die . “As this was likely to be Uhtred’s last journey, we tried to raise the stakes as much as possible, both narratively and aesthetically. I’d worked with producer Mat Chaplin previously and we’d wanted to work together again. Mat got me in for a chat with director Ed Bazalgette and we hit it off immediately. The script itself was based on the final few books of The Saxon Stories by Bernard Cornwell.” Deciding on the right kit is usually a subjective exercise, but one key discussion was on how to remain true to the visual grammar of the TV show, while also broadening and deepening the palette of the film. For that reason, the team decided to shoot with large format anamorphic Cooke lenses, on the Alexa LF. “The wider aspect ratio of anamorphic gives us an epic canvas – a more cinematic
feel. Anamorphic lenses tend to flare more than spherical lenses and that really helps a show like The Last Kingdom , where that sense of having organic texture, a rootedness in the period of the Saxons, is key to our sense of time and place,” Bryant explains. “We always wanted a haziness to the image, like you’re seeing everything through the gauze of smoke and steam. You also get such painterly bokeh with the Cooke lenses, so even
“We always wanted a haziness to the image, like you’re seeing everything through the gauze of smoke and steam”
KEEPING CONSISTENT Luke Bryant DOP used the preceding TV series as a visual reference while adding a cinematic edge
IN THE MOMENT The final battle scene was made to feel more raw by gradually reducing the amount of filtration throughout the film
10. DEFINITIONMAGAZINE.COM
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