PRODUC T I ON . FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE SECRETS OF DUMBLEDORE
the lighting works well, and trying to manipulate David’s strong ideas of how to construct a scene, so it looks as good as possible. I directed my gaffer not to overlight or overfill the images; David and I wanted to keep the lighting soft and give the impression it was all single-source. The reality of this, with the enormous sets and lots of actors, is impossible. But it would at least look this way. “With lighting foundations in place, we moved on to colour mixes, ranging from cooler shadows to warmer highlights,” Richmond explains. Fans of the Harry Potter series will have seen this style before, because it’s an LUT with silvery blacks, and bears a resemblance to the LUT used in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince . That film deliberately steered away from the vibrant hues that became a staple of the series when Christopher Columbus helmed The Philosopher’s Stone . This cinematic progression also had something to do with Richmond’s choice of camera and lenses. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and its follow-up, The Crimes of Grindelwald , had been shot on an Arri Alexa 65 and Prime 65 S lenses. Together, they can produce an overly sharp image if not handled with care – and although the team did, Richmond needed reliable tools to ensure a softer
“I directed my gaffer not to overlight or overfill the images; David and I wanted to keep the lighting soft and give the impression it was all single-source”
look for the third film. “I wanted a new system, and went for the Alexa LF paired with Panavision Ultra Vistas. These 1.65x squeeze anamorphic lenses can fit a 240 image exactly into that VistaVision-style chip from the LF camera, to give it the same height as the Alexa 65. I did this, but with the addition of a filter to bend out
the image – softening and distorting the edges to produce an old-world cinematic look. Anamorphic is always going to be softer than spherical, but I wanted to take it a step further, shooting on the larger chip,” he explains. “I’m drawn to this look at the minute, but my tastes often wander from film to film – which is exactly
Did you know? JK Rowling was credited as the sole writer of the first two films in the Fantastic Beasts series, but Steve Kloves serves as co-writer for this latest instalment. He wrote all but one of the original Harry Potter films.
WHAT’S IN THE CASE? Expect more weird creatures for Newt’s assistant Bunty Broadacre (Victoria Yeates) to look after
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