PRODUCTION SOCIETY OF THE SNOW
the team visited three times ahead of principal photography, collecting as much information as possible about the geography and light conditions so that they could recreate it accurately when they moved on to their main shoot location in Granada. There was plenty of work to be done – specialist mountaineers captured expedition footage, the team gathered background plates and establishing imagery from drones and helicopters, and a detailed photogrammetric map of the landscape was created. But what Luque recalls most vividly from this stage of production is how he felt when he saw the valley for the first time. “I had goosebumps, it felt like such a sacred place,” he reveals. “I remember kneeling down and asking permission for us to do it all, to do it in a respectful way and give us strength to do something that won’t hurt anyone. It was so silent, and there was this feeling of immense and overwhelming space." Thanks to intense previs work, the team knew how the valley looked and felt at any given hour of the day or night; but
the next challenge was finding a stand-in location without the practical difficulties of shooting in the deepest Andes. They searched all over the world, from the Alps to South America, eventually zeroing in on a Sierra Nevada ski resort as a good match thanks to its snowy scenery and harsh sunlight. The material from the third stage – shot around Chile and Uruguay – introduces the actors and shows them returning home. Production continued at Netflix’s studio in Madrid with the recreation of the crash, a visceral action sequence that shows off Bayona’s well- honed horror skills to full effect, before picture finishing was delivered by Deluxe Spain, with the grade, online and finish completed in DaVinci Resolve Studio. SNOW BUSINESS Shooting in a ski resort in Spain wasn’t nearly as challenging as working in the Andes themselves, but it came with problems – starting with getting the cast and crew to the 3000m-high location of the main set, says Luque. “We picked an area that looked wild and real, like the crash site, but it was difficult to access. It was about an hour’s gondola ride to the end of the ski station, and then we adapted snow tractors into
people carriers to take people on from there. We’d drive for 45 minutes in the wilderness – dodging avalanches on these dangerous mountain roads.” Sometimes it would be covered in snow on arrival, or inaccessible due to a storm. On one occasion, they arrived to see the whole site blanketed in Saharan dust: “We woke up and the mountains were latte brown!” he laughs. To mitigate further disruptions, the Sierra Nevada site was divided into three sets, including a huge stage on top of the ski station which featured a replica plane fuselage, real snow on the ground and 140 ARRI SkyPanels as a ceiling. They also installed a large LED volume displaying the second unit’s footage of the Andes, allowing for maximum authenticity and enabling the team to adjust the colour temperature, exposure and camera placement as desired. To help ensure that the digital and physical elements blended together seamlessly, the team worked with Cinelab Film & Digital in London to transfer their captured footage to 35mm Kodak VISION3 250D film stock, which was then processed and scanned back to digital. This photochemical process gave the whole thing a patina of grain that broke down the digital quality and lent a retro feel, befitting the film’s seventies setting.
HEART AND SOUL The cast and crew gave their all to the project and the reaction of the survivors was a humbling experience
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