Sony VENICE 2

Sony VENICE 2

Scene Deconstruction with Rob Hardy ASC, BSC

In this Deconstruction, British cinematographer Rob Hardy ASC, BSC takes us behind the scenes of Civil War, his most recent collaboration with director Alex Garland. After graduating from film school, Rob’s early career saw him shooting music videos and commercials. His big break came with John Cowley’s Boy A which earnt him a BAFTA for Best Photography and Lighting. Rob’s first project with Alex Garland was the 2015 science fiction film Ex Machina, shot with a Sony F65, followed by Annihilation, the prestige TV series DEVS and Men. Rob was also recruited by director Chris McQuarrie and Tom Cruise to shoot Mission Impossible: Fallout – selected in part for his ability to work with dark lighting – and where he chose shoot the A-camera himself.

Civil War takes place in a violent and fractured near-future society where an alliance of US states revolt against the federal government and try to push the capitol to surrender. The film throws the audience into the war zone as it follows a team of journalists and war photographers. Their goal is to get to Washington to interview the President before the rebels descend on the White House.

Firstly, it’s a road movie and secondly, it’s a war film. Visually Rob felt it was important to use a more abrasive approach to the cinematography rather than a more traditional elegant approach. Rob and director Alex Garland took a lot of their inspiration from the immediacy seen in wartime newsreel footage, they wanted to replicate the sense being there, with the journalists in the film.

Scene Deconstruction: Key Insights

• By rigging a car with multiple cameras arranged so that no camera can be seen by another, it’s possible to shoot dialogue scenes within the moving car without having to stop to reset for different camera angles.

• On a full frame camera, a 50mm or 55mm lens will give a moderately wide shot. With a large aperture these focal lengths can deliver a shallow depth of field which can be used to separate different characters within a shot or separate the characters from their surroundings.

• When approaching a new project, cinematographers often take inspiration from other artists, such as painters and photographers. For Civil War, Rob drew particular inspiration from William Eggleston – who helped establish colour photography as a legitimate art form.

The VENICE… was the bedrock of the movie. It also allowed me to make the lens choices I wanted to make, in other words the Panavision H series lenses.

Rob Hardy ASC, BSC

Helicopter Battle Scene

This nighttime scene is set in the city of Washington. The journalists have just arrived and are now getting close to the White House. A helicopter is seen firing guns and rockets amidst the streets and buildings.

A real helicopter was used for most of the shots. Originally it had been planned to film the scene in downtown Atlanta, but for safety and other reasons this was deemed impractical. So, a large city street set had to be built. Replica streetlights were placed exactly as they would be in a real city street.

These lights were the foundation for the scene’s lighting, creating a natural, believable look.

“We wanted to show that Washington was still, to a degree, a full functioning city with the horror of what was going on inside it,” Rob says.

To help deliver this look, lights were included within the set’s buildings to create the impression of shops and offices with the lights left on at night.

For explosions, Rob would use the light created by practical explosion effects to light the area around the object being blown up. For the helicopter’s gunfire additional interactive lights were used to illuminate the buildings and simulate the flashes of light from tracer rounds. The combination of CGI gunfire and these lights created a very convincing impression of urban warfare.

On the Road Scene

“With Civil War it was almost the perfect example of something that should be shot chronologically,” Rob explains. “So, we did. And it really gives us a sense of moving forwards, moving through the landscape. By the time we got to the end you could see it with the actors, that they were very much in the zone, there was a very real sense of nervousness.”

A lot of the film takes place in and around the journalists’ car. To film these parts of the film, three examples of the same car were used. For exterior views a “free drive” vehicle was used. This car didn’t have any cameras attached to it so could be used whenever the whole car needed to be seen.

The second car had a pod on the roof for a stunt driver. This allowed the main camera to be inside the car with the actors in a very kinetic way while the unseen stunt driver drove the car from the pod on the roof.

The third car was the “coverage car”. This car was fitted with up to 12 cameras carefully arranged to give a wide range of sight lines and views so that all four occupants of the car could be filmed while the car was being driven. Rob used a combination of VENICE 2 cameras mounted on the hood of the car with Sony A7S III cameras rigged around the outside of it looking in, as well as several positions inside the car. Great care was taken over the camera positioning so that no camera would see another within its shot. The small footprint of the A7S really helped with this.

This arrangement gave great choreographic freedom allowing the actors to play out the scene in full without interruption.

The VENICE 2 camera and the Sony A7S III both share very similar colour science, and this makes it easy to match the footage from these cameras.

In terms of matching cameras, for example the VENICE 2 and the A7S, those two just kind of match quite naturally I think… …. especially after you’ve graded it…. …. You can barely tell the difference.

Rob Hardy ASC, BSC

The Downed Helicopter Scene

The journalists pull off the road as they spot a downed helicopter in a large abandoned parking lot.

The scene features a full-size helicopter in an expansive parking lot and this created quite a striking image. Regardless of the blocking or camera position, Rob chose to shoot this scene with very consistent framing, using just two shot sizes with plenty of headroom and with the actors very central in the frame to create a sense of unease.

He took advantage of the VENICE 2’s full frame sensor and the fast T1.1 55mm Panavision H series lens to shoot with a very shallow depth of field to deliver moderately wide shots, giving a sense of the location, while at the same time clearly isolating each character within the shot to give the scene a slightly surreal feel.

William Eggleston’s photography was a key inspiration for me…. … you get a real characters isolated within a landscape and you also get a sense of the landscape itself.

Rob Hardy ASC, BSC

We Just Try to Stay Out Scene

The journalists have arrived in a small town that doesn’t appear to have been affected by the war that’s raging in much of the rest of the country. Rob wanted to create a sense of stillness and unease. The interiors for the scene were shot in a completely empty store that had to be fully dressed with fixtures and props. New practical lights were added within the building and outside of it Rob used large light sources including Wendy lights. A full Wendy is a frame containing 192 separate parabolic reflector lights providing a very high intensity output. The smaller half Wendy has half as many lamps.

When shooting the interior, the main light source was the practical lights with additional lights added to supplement the practical’s where necessary.

“It’s much more about the lens choices than necessarily the blocking,” Rob says.

Once again to emphasise the sense of unease, as with the downed helicopter scene, Rob chose to shoot with the 50mm and 55mm H series lenses to achieve a shallow depth of field while keeping the frame moderately wide. Rob feels that these focal lengths are representative of what a war correspondent might use, giving the shots a naturalistic look and helping to create that sense of being there for the film’s audience.