SHOOT STORY | STRANGERS
balanced we got cheap ones with a green tinge in them naturally. We created that dirty look on set, not in the grade; we always wanted to create this feeling and film within that.” COLD LONDON Obviously to extend the idea, London, in turn, was given a cold aesthetic. “It was ever so slightly desaturated, ever so slightly colder and blue. London is what you’d probably expect but Hong Kong had to have this vibrant heat to it.” Eben and his director came up with this idea early on in pre-production which then Eben took forward into camera tests, building a library of LUTs as he went. “I had Hong Kong LUTs and London LUTs and they were all doing a little something to keep those themes running. PRIME ORIGINAL Strangers is an Amazon Prime original production, and ITV managed to broadcast it first. But as a Prime show it must be shot in UHD. Amazon, unlike Netflix, allows the use of the ARRI Alexa camera with its in-built up-scale to the required pixel count; also an HDR grade completes the deliverables. “So we shot with the Alexa Mini camera. We had two bodies and Master Primes which give a really pleasing image at about T1.4 and 1.5 which counters the digital harshness. I also used glimmer glass in front of the lenses to soften again. We only used primes for the show and we never really went wider than a 40mm going on to 50, 65 and 75.” This was the opposite style to the lenses used in Eben’s last show which was The Woman in White where he used lenses very close to faces like the 21mm and ‘Dutch Angles’. Interestingly for his current project, the Amazon prime show The Feed , he has gone even further with the closeness of the actor’s faces, even getting them in to the matte box for some shots. Many episodic productions, usually in the USA, have a list of dos and don’ts when they talk about moving the camera. With Strangers and the director Paul Andrew LUTs and they were all doing something to keep those themes running I had Hong Kong LUTs and London
Right at the start of episode one there is a car stunt that takes a Jason Bourne original move and extends it impressively. Everyone has seen the car stunt that has a car T-boned by another and the POV is in the car that is hit. When a Jason Bourne movie did it, it was so impactful that you almost felt the thud. In Strangers a main character’s car is hit in a similar way but then while the car is pushed over a small rise the viewer is still in the car with her – it’s like being in a washing machine. When the car stops rolling we see the victim’s lifeless body but with bad cuts that she didn’t have before. It’s pretty seamless but how did they do it? Double Negative in the UK came up with the idea of rolling a similar car down the hill without the actress Dervla Kirwan in it but still with the camera shooting. Then back in London Dervla was put in a roll cage with a hamster-like rig that could rotate her around. They used green screen to then composite it back into the shot. DNEG had to CG an airbag into the shot for compliance reasons and also some little bits of glass flying around. The actress had the cut make-up on all the time she is rolling but the motion blur hides it until she comes to rest. The initial scene was Dervla’s first of the shoot and then her rolling was five months later in a studio in London. Eben shot about ten different views of the hit just for coverage reasons. THE CAR’S ROLL THE STORY BEHIND THIS DRAMATIC SCENE
IMAGES Strangers stars (top to bottom) Emilia Fox, John Simm and Thomas Channhing.
42 DEF I N I T ION | OCTOBER 20 1 8
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