La La Land - How did they do this?

[Randy J Tomlinson]

I am fascinated by a Scene in La La Land because i think this is not an easy task to do such a Scene:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waTDxRZ93Qc

 

What kind of wizardery was used here to achieve such an ambient? How do you lighting a scene like this? I wanted to ask shane but i think i get answers here faster. I love this! I think this scene is fabulous. I wish i could do that. Is this even possible with filmstock?

 

Thanks

Randy

[Stuart Brereton]

La La Land was shot on film, so yes, it's possible.

 

The one-shot musical numbers were extensively rehearsed throughout the day, and then shot when the light was right. At the top of the scene, there is a hard backlight coming down through the trees. Probably a large HMI on a condor. As they walk toward camera, they are also lit by the practical street lamps, until they walk into a large pool of soft toplight, which is where the majority of the scene happens. The toplight could have been a balloon light of some sort, or, more likely a large soft box suspended from a crane. I believe that DP Linus Sandgren added a little green to his sources on the night exterior, so that when it was timed out by adding magenta, the evening skies would take on a pinkish glow.

 

I think this scene was shot from a Technocrane, but they also used a lot of steadicam and traditional ride on cranes. Camera Op Ari Robbins is extremely good at combining steadicam moves with stepping on and off cranes.

[Randy J Tomlinson]

I tought that. Shane said just recently, to achieve that silvery moonlight ambience he set the camera to 29 hundred kelvin and backlight the scene with tungsten (no gel) at 32kelvin. He mentioned thta this slightly blues up the gray tonality.

 

However this is done with film as you mentioned, so i guess 500T was used and some tungsten backlight from pretty far up. Duuhh...i wish i had some close details on this. This is blowing me away. I really want to try this one day. Thats just amazing.

 

Thanks for your input Stuart. I really apprechiate :)

[Stuart Brereton]

I don't know which Shane you are referring to, but the DP of La La Land was Linus Sandgren.

 

The movie was covered in the ASC Magazine.

 

https://ascmag.com/articles/la-la-land-city-of-stars

[Randy J Tomlinson]

Shane Hurlbut ASC

yes i know that Linus Sandgren was the DP.