User Manual

PROFILES // VOL. THREE // 19
THE RITUAL // Q&A
We did also use the Alexa because we were shooting in
Romania in extreme conditions. There is no panacea, and in
some cases, we needed the robustness of the Alexa in really
freezing environments. Also, much of the camera support that
we had — Mini Libras, jibs, and a bunch of stabilizing equipment
that we needed for some of the shots, we needed the weight of
the Alexa Mini.
We also had access to the new Canon C700, which we
needed for shooting high-speed stu. That camera has all of
the advantages of the C300 Mark II but allows you to shoot
120 frames per second at 4K. It was a prototype and was not
commercially available at the time and we had some much-
needed insider access to it.
Years ago, Canon did a test to prove what happens on their new
sensor at night. The supposition was, “What if you’re trying to
catch a sunset shot but you get there too late. Can you still get
the shot?” They did a demonstration of this camera which can
shoot at 105,000 ISO. How much of that can you use without
any noise reduction? They were able to shoot up to 10,000 ASA
without any appreciable noise, which was amazing.
In some of these night cases on The Ritual, we needed that.
We were planning on using that creatively. But there was one
shot where we needed to get light but we didn’t have it. It was
a really cool scene where Luke [Rafe Spall] and Hutch [Robert
James-Collier] are on this mountaintop and it’s dusk. I’ve
always been excited about the twilight, when the sun is gone
but there’s a glow in the sky, and there’s this blue ambience. I
wanted to capture that and we needed coverage. We had six
or seven things we needed to cover in that time and only an
hour and a half to do it. The Canon totally saved us. We got
beautiful images and you can see one of the characters smoking
a cigarette and the lit end of the cigarette is lighting his face for
a moment as he inhales.
The lenses were a very specific choice too. My friends at Vantage
— a company in Germany that makes Hawk Anamorphics, has
these amazing T1 lenses. They are extremely fast. Basically, they
are the fastest commercially available lens. You can shoot at T1
(equivalent to around f0.95), which is extraordinary. To shoot at
f1 on a lens and 3,200 ISO gave us the ability to shoot in near
darkness. Not that we weren’t lighting it, but suddenly we could
get all the softness from a balloon light into bounce cards into
what material we had on the ground and start working with this
softness that we all associate with night.
So often when you have ‘night’ in the movies, it feels like you
can see the lights. You can see the artificial fixtures.