Never Let Me Go Cinematography

[Robbie Fatt]

I really did enjoy the cinematography of the movie "Never Let Me Go" and now I have some simple questions about the cinematography and in particular the focal lengths and lighting. My guess is that HMI's were used largely throughout the film but I'm interested to know what focal lengths the DP shot at. Apparently he used Cooke Lenses.

 

28mm?

 

32mm?

 

Any information would be helpful.

 

[Robbie Fatt]

28mm?

 

40-50mm?

[Phil Rhodes]

The dinner hall is some of absolutely enormous soft source top left. That's the sort of thing people constantly want on low budget stuff, and it's very hard simply to achieve the required scale to get it to fall off like that.

 

Huge HMI into... what, a huge diffusion of some sort. One of those inflatable things, perhaps.

[David Mullen ASC]

Your guesses are close to my guesses...

[Phil Rhodes]

Like so?

 

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I would say 32mm and 40mm in first, 28mm and 50mm in second, but a complete guess.

 

Yes, big soft sources, flagged and controlled so they don't spill everywhere is time consuming and fund intensive to do. Not to mention finding an excellent location like this. Half the battle with good cinematography is good locations/sets... :)

[Stuart Brereton]

Old locations like the one in pics 1&2 often have a lot of restrictions on rigging and lighting, so unless there was upper level to the room that they could light from, or windows that were easily diffused, I would think that a lighting balloon was an obvious choice.

[Phil Rhodes]

Or just a row of large stands with three or four 8x8s on them and 2.5K HMIs fired into it, which is how I'd end up doing it.

 

Which would probably be cheaper.

 

P

[Mark Kenfield]

Such a gorgeous, devastating film. I won't bother guessing as to the how. I just loved that movie.

[Stuart Brereton]

Or just a row of large stands with three or four 8x8s on them and 2.5K HMIs fired into it, which is how I'd end up doing it.

 

Which would probably be cheaper.

 

P

Cheaper, yes, but more restrictive in terms of coverage. Most likely lit with something big, through a frame, from outside the window (assuming there is one).

[Phil Rhodes]

And how would you deal with the inevitable criticism "it's so dark, I can't see their faces!"

[Stuart Brereton]

They're keyed with a soft source from left of frame. You can see that the doors on the left lead outside, so assuming that there's also a window there, above frame, then you could punch something like a 12/18k through a frame big enough to cover the window. Depending on how big the window is, you may also be able to push another, smaller lamp through as a low level, more frontal fill. If you can't, and there are no other suitable windows, then you'd have to do it from inside the room.

 

I'd always try to avoid a big rig with frames and multiple lamps inside the room, as it will inevitably get in the way of the last minute B camera angle, or will take a lot of effort to reposition for the reverse angles.

[Robbie Fatt]

If this helps. Here is a similar room lit through the windows.

 

And the beautiful MS/CU.

[Chris Burke]

Are these two pics reverses of each other? That might explain a lot. Beautiful film.

[Phil Rhodes]

Well that's easy, five 10Ks, five cherry pickers...

[Miguel Angel]

10Ks? Make it 24Ks if the Cinematographer likes working with Tungsten lamps or 18Ks if he / she likes working with HMI

 

1 per window and far away!

[Phil Rhodes]

Well, I didn't want to be predictable.

[Mark Kenfield]

Perhaps the saddest thing about Never Let Me Go, is that Adam Kimmel hasn't shot another feature since :(

Edited June 3, 2016 by Mark Kenfield

[Alexandros Angelopoulos Apostolos]

Who was the colourist? He/she did a good job.

[John E Clark]

I'm sure there were Big Lights outside dowsing the scene with illumination... but just on the off chance... a lot of the shots looked pretty close to available light or bounced available light.

 

Shot On What lists the following for film stocks used. A Digital Intermediate was also used, so there could be some amount of post processing done.

 

Kodak Vision 250D 5246/7246 Neg. Film
Kodak Vision 500T 5279 Neg. Film

As a note, the above film stock URLs go to a page that indicates how many films that were shot on that film in the site's data base.

Edited June 3, 2016 by John E Clark

[Stuart Allman]

Robbie,

 

I know this doesn't allow for "small" fixtures, but one thing I did on a recent production is put the lights on what would be camera right of your first photo and bounce off the high wall at camera left (maybe using Ultrabounce stuck to the wall); where we assume the high windows are. It gave me a similar look, albeit in a much smaller space. Since the camera is pretty much always opposite the key, I didn't have to worry about light stands being in the shot.

 

As far as how to do it in a larger room, such as the one you show...I don't have that level of experience.

 

Stuart Allman

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illuma.blogspot.com

[Robbie Fatt]

Hey Stuart,

 

Yea this sounds like a cheap, efficient way to do it. But yea, I guess there would be a lot of spill in this process and a limited amount of control.

 

Do you have any photos of this setup/ the end result?

 

Thanks!

[Stuart Allman]

I don't have any photos of the setup. I don't think the director has even made the video public yet.

 

Why would it have spill issues? There's no haze in the room. The light is flagged off with bar doors so it only hits the bounce directly. You control the "depth" of the light in the room by how much of the bounce you hit.

 

I didn't have to deal with low ceilings, but that may or may not be a factor for you to deal with.

 

Stuart Allman

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illuma.blogspot.com

[Robbie Fatt]

Ahh yes I understand. How big are the lights you were using?

[Stuart Allman]

As I wrote, I had a much, much smaller "warehouse" space (maybe 15'x30'). So I think we used a 2k and something else bounced off the wall. Since it was fully enclosed we could be at ISO 850 on a Canon C100 and it worked fine. The final look was achieved in the color grade by adjusting contrast - that's what really sold it as a hard window light. Without this adjustment it just looked light a light bounced off a wall.

 

What you'll need to use will really depend on the size of your space. To do this same setup with a large cafeteria sized space probably wouldn't be a good idea. It would just be too inefficient and would require some very large lights. At that point you'd be better off just doing it the conventional way with large lights outside and diffusion.

 

I think Roger Deakins did a nice write up of the setup he used for the "hearing" scene in Skyfall. I think he said he had a series of 12k's double diffused into the upper windows for that scene. It had the same look, but higher key.

 

 

Stuart Allman

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illume.blogspot.com