In late 2019 and early 2020 I shot a contemporary adaptation of H. G. Wells’ seminal sci-fi novel, The War of the Worlds. Despite the usual chaos of an under-budgeted production, as a fan of both the book and the Jeff Wayne concept album, I had fun putting a version of this story onto the screen.

Perhaps the most creative sequence, from a lighting point of view, was set in the sewer where the core trio of Herbert, Hannah and Olgivy shelter from the Martians. The scene was shot in “The Pit” at Swordtail Studios in Haggerston. This is a basement with authentic features like a knocked-through wall, a shaft complete with ladder to nowhere, and a pump that lets the Thames in if you turn it off!

The action saw the trio coming down the ladder (after climbing through a false manhole in an exterior scene), shining a torch around, passing a pool of water, and stepping through the hole in the wall to a room where the main dialogue took place. Realistically there should have been no light except the torch, but director Junaid Syed wanted it to look cool and so did I!

Gaffer Daniel Temple rigged Aladdin Bi-flex1s at the top of the ladder and in the centre of the dialogue room’s ceiling. The latter was skirted and crated to stop it from spilling down the walls too much. I’ve never been much of a fan of toplight, but I’m gradually coming around to it, and it certainly worked beautifully for me in this case.

Dan also rigged a Boltzen or similar LED spotlight up high on a wall where it would shine through a glassless window into the dialogue room, giving a highlight on the back wall. When I framed the master shot with the dark, broken wall pieces in the foreground, the toplit characters in the midground and the highlighted patch of wall in the background, the result was very cinematic dark-to-light depth.

The only other source we really ended up using was an Aputure 300D skipping across the surface of the pool of water, throwing rippling reflections onto the area around the base of the ladder. Read my article on shooting water to find out more about achieving this effect.

We set up a couple of fill lights, bounced into different parts of the ceiling, but only used them for a brief scene set the following morning, finding that they killed the mood.

As a fun aside, I noticed recently that a Doctor Who special for one of the classic series’ Blu-ray releases was shot in the same studio…