World War Z

[John Holland]

Does anybody know why Ben Seresin BSC has sole credit as DoP on this film when in fact he only did the reshoots and the rest of the film was photographed by Robert Richardson ASC . Did he ask for no credit .?

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

Allegedly he told the producers he'd pull his name if they released it in 3D, or something to that effect. I've heard quite a few unflattering Bob Richardson stories from the crew on the shoot that its hard to tell, and as always theres two sides to everything so who knows what the truth is.

[John Holland]

Well good for him on the 3D thing at least !

[Phil Rhodes]

AT DAWN!

[John Holland]

Phil, Stephen has told me in the past about the Richardson stories on this and other films he has shot in this country . Plus a very very famous British DoP Oscar nominated described to me when meeting him has a complete "C" cant use the word on here .

[KH Martin]

I thought Ben and Tom Sigel both did the reshoots after Richardson handled the main shoot, which was problematic with respect to him, the line producer and other key personnel (main VFX supe John Nelson was let go in favor of Scott Farrar for example.) There's a VANITY FAIR story that touches on a lot of problems.

 

Was going to do a story on this for HD VIDEO PRO, but it was made clear up front Richardson would not be doing any interviews for it, and that no other DP was going to be doing interviews about it. Tried to make it into a director and VFX piece, but they never put Farrar on the phone and decided to not make Forster available either (which seems funny, because a few weeks later Forster was available for me to interview him for another magazine, for ICG's July all-interview issue.)

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

That's a real shame - I think Richardson is a genius and I'm always interested in reading his interviews, regardless of his personality. I'd love to have read more about his work on this - ah well.

[Shawn Martin]

Sigel said he came on after Richardson left to shoot "Django Unchained". Not sure if his part was finishing up the main shooting, or reshoots like Seresin.

 

I've also heard stories about Richardson, about how incredibly unlikable he is. Great DP though, of course. I think his diary excerpts on his shoots, reprinted in a couple of issues of AC over the years, are fascinating.

 

I read that Vanity Fair article, and am only really interested in seeing this to find out if it really is that big a train wreck. Not really a fan of the glossy Alexa look in the trailers, or the nonstop CG zombies.

[James Compton]

The Robert Richardson work was obvious. The South Korean military base interiors were backlit with glowing highlights.

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

From what I've read the second hour of the movie, just after he gets on the plane after Israel, is what was reshot. I too thought that there's a pretty obvious visual difference between the first and second half. I thought Richardson did a great job as usual, particularly the scenes with the flares in the stairwell, but I was disappointed with how smeary some of the footage looked, almost like they were shooting with 270 degree shutters. The reshot footage looked good too but it just felt a little more straightforward compared to richardsons virtuoso style. On the whole I quite enjoyed the movie, particularly the first hour, there's some really tense scenes in there.