DRAMA | CATS
IMAGES Taylor Swift as Bombalurina, performing her big number
The Great Windmill Street set was built on Leavesden’s L Stage, which is 80ft wide and 440ft long
LIVING WITH THE 65 In these pages, we have already hugely appreciated the Arri Alexa 65 cameras, but there is a drawback to the use of the camera handheld within a musical setting: it’s big. Ross and his crew had a plan for this. “We did a bunch of tests in prep, I’ve used every variety of stabilised system over the years including the Stabileye, Movi, Arri Trinity, Oculus head, that kind of equipment. The Alexa 65 doesn’t fit on any of these devices, it’s either too long, too fat or too heavy. We did a tech test with everybody by shooting previous tests to analyse what we felt was the best camera and lens combination for dealing with scale and then we shot another test to that was like a full, almost a workflow, test with cast members in their Lycra outfits that they were wearing for the
I photographed a lot of the rehearsals and dance workshops.” The Great Windmill Street set was built on Leavesden’s L Stage, which is 80ft wide and 440ft long, taking the entire width of the stage, fire lane to fire lane. Construction on that set was around 12 to 14 weeks. So you could see the frontage of the Windmill Theatre and the Milk Bar and the Meow Club. “The front doors of our buildings were 24ft high and we quickly got to feel how this was going to affect the imagery. So, we did a few tests in half-built spaces with different camera systems and lens combinations. We also shot a couple of dancers scampering around like cats and then had a look on the big screen to see what was most convincing scale wise. That’s what led us to the Alexa 65 camera,” says Ross.
space. Of all the routines, Rumpleteazer and Mungojerrie is the one where we have the most fun with scale.” PREVIS AND PLANNING The director Tom Hooper and Eve Stewart had been working together for about four years before Ross became involved. Stewart had hundreds of concept art drawings of what the different cats could potentially look like and what the sets could look like. One of things they had decided upon was to include the idea of what Great Windmill Street in Soho would look like as an enormous set in its own right. Ross explains: “Eve had drawn up these sets by the time I was involved and the VFX house had rendered them in 3D, so we could basically walk a camera around any of the sets in a rudimentary kind of a way. We had these little figures that were the size of the cats and placed them wherever we wanted to and did an approximate previs of what it was that we wanted to do.” He adds: “But the choreography side of things has a huge influence, so it was really only when Andy [Blankenbuehler] was able to start working with our amazing collective of dancers and cast that he was able to piece together how the sets were going to be inhabited. As a result, Tom and
20 DEF I N I T ION | JANUARY 2020
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