It is a different order of cold today. The surrounding mountains are dusted with snow.
I’m right on the edge of not having enough light. Shooting at the Alexa’s native 800 ISO, I have the Cooke S4s at T2.8 – occasionally 2 and 2/3. They’re T2 lenses but any lens’ optical performance nose-dives if you shoot wide open. Most of the light has to be hard, because bouncing it loses too much power. And even with hard light, the false colour display in the EVF shows me I’m about a stop under. Just like Pfister was on The Prestige, and just like I normally shoot, but the problem is there’s nowhere to go. For the day’s second scene Paul requests some 60fps slo-mo. Fortunately the shots involve big doors opening and flooding the scene with natural light, otherwise I would be totally screwed on exposure. In a later scene I’m forced to use matte silver bounce when polyboard would have given a more pleasing, softer look, but without 12Ks and 18Ks to fire into the poly there just isn’t enough juice to start with. 12s and 18s were on the original lighting list, but it had to be whittled down. Apart from anything else, we wouldn’t have had enough guys to wrangle them.
Despite these misgivings, things are going well. We are all shooting for the moon, and at least we’re landing on the roof, which is still pretty damn good. My crew are doing amazing work and Paul tells me every day that the shots look beautiful.
In the afternoon our move into the kitchen is delayed by a rare bat sleeping in the chimney. We do pick-ups elsewhere and hit the kitchen as the light falls. This is our first scene to feature naked flames: candles and an open fireplace. We put matte silver bounce at the back of the fireplace to throw more of the firelight back out into the room. Foil would have been better, but we don’t have any. Before we shoot, the bat flies through. Monday’s call sheet is handed around, and at the bottom is the fact of the day: one of the bats nesting at our location last week was the inspiration for the Dark Knight trilogy. Apparently.

All in one room today. Lots of handheld shots to start with, and we have no moose bars until lunchtime so I’m gripping the rods quite uncomfortably. We really milk those crucifix windows again, letting them flare out the lens sometimes. We have to be careful though because when too much light hits the Soft FX filter it throws a square reflection back onto the actors.
Paul designs a really cool Evil Dead style steadicam shot to cover a major scene in one set-up. It banks and swoops while Max and Mikey wave branches in front of the lamps outside the windows. Bad stuff is going down in this scene. The age of the windows helps soften the shafts of light through the crucifixes and it all looks beautifully organic. We use a lot of low angle bounce to catch the shafts near floor level and throw them back up into the actors’ faces. The cast look great with this under-bounce. We use a hard silver or gold reflector for the villainess, and polyboard on our heroine for a softer look.
In one shot there is a bright green paddling pool just out of frame. Filmmaking can be so bizarre.
It snows as we return to our holiday cottage for the night along the steep, narrow roads. I doubt it will stick, which is lucky because we’d struggle to get to set tomorrow if it did.

Most of my crew and I arrive over an hour before the call time. We want to get ahead, but frustratingly some kit issues hold us up. Given those issues, and that we didn’t get a pre-rig day due to Ben’s availability, the fact that we run only about an hour behind all day is pretty incredible. Ben, best boy Max, and sparks Mikey and Rudy have to run all the distro into and around the priory, and put up all the big HMIs outside the windows.
Once we get going we bash out the first scene very quickly: two set-ups, one take of each. We move into another room and more complicated scenes. The crucifix-shaped windows installed by the art department look great on camera, especially when we blast shafts of light through them. For one shot we mount one to C-stands and use it as a gobo. Several people have very complimentary things to say about the photography, which is a great relief!
Welcome hot food is served from the catering van – Christopher Lee Location Catering. You couldn’t make this stuff up. But when we wrap, the camera and lighting team somehow find ourselves standing in the road, eating leftover sandwiches by torchlight.
Last night I watched some of The Prestige and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer before going to bed. Tonight I look at the DVDs on the table and think: no, this film has become its own entity now. The game is afoot.

It’s the day before the shoot, and for me it’s very much the calm before the storm. My ACs Rupert and Max are busy in Cardiff prepping the camera gear, but I get a lie-in – my last for a while, I fear – before Paul and I are driven up to the remote location in the Brecon Beacons where we’ll be based for the first week and a half. When I arrive it’s wet and hellishly windy, but thanks to my thermals I’m toasty enough.
I spend a few quiet hours walking around the rooms we’ll be using, figuring out where we can put sources, and generally coming up with problems which poor Ben will have to solve! The art department are hard at work around me, and what they’re doing already looks great. There are crucifixes everywhere, and this gives me an idea… which I’ll talk about in a later post, if I end up going with it.
I read the American Cinematographer article on The Prestige. Christopher Nolan wanted a similar free-form, flowing camera style to that which Paul wants. Wally Pfister explained how he used minimal lighting, relied heavily on praticals, and pushed the film stock a stop to make this camera style workable. I shall steal his ideas.

I pop into the massive costume trailer to meet the wardrobe supervisor, get my first glimpse at the clothes, ask what kind of headgear people will be wearing (which might shade their faces). Ben arrives just in time to see the location in the last of the daylight. He tests the genny and has a quick look over the lighting gear. I try to sort out a last-minute addition of a zoom lens to our camera kit.
Then I go to the cottage down the road where I’ll be staying for the next week and a half, along with the DIT, the line producer and the production manager. Other cast and crew are staying at neighbouring and less neighbouring cottages. It’s very nice, though there’s no phone signal or wifi. Which means you might be reading this quite a while after I wrote it, unless the pub we’re about to go to has wifi. Mmmm, pub.

I eat breakfast at the hotel with the co-writer. We talk about dodgy Alan Moore adaptations and the perfection of Die Hard. When we get to the production office I’m still trying to figure out the lighting list, which is tricky because my gaffer is in transit from Poland! The office is in a castle, which is very cool but you have to go outside to make phone calls; the thick stone walls cut out all reception.
Paul is sitting doing storyboards, and he talks me through what he’s drawn for the first few days. They’re crude, but they give me an idea of how flexible I’ll have to be on lighting to accommodate the roving Steadicam moves he wants. I show him my blog post on 2.39:1 composition to see how he feels about things like short-siding, formal composition, squeezing people into the edges of frame. He’s up for all of it, which is great.
Julian, the production designer, takes me around the rooms we’ll be shooting in at the castle. We talk about where we can help each other out.
After lunch it’s time to set up for the make-up tests. An Alexa, the Cooke S4 primes, a monitor and some basic lighting gear has been delivered for this. I pick a room in the castle from which I can easily eliminate the natural light and while Rudy, my AC for the afternoon, sets up the camera, I establish a 3-point lighting set-up. We have three actors and four make-ups in total to test. I also want to test Soft FX filters and see if any of them will work for the show. We try different strengths (1/2, 1 and 2) on the first actor and quickly we all agree on 1/2. It gives the image a filmic softness without looking cheesy.
Leaving the 1/2 Soft FX in for the rest of the tests, I experiment with different lighting to see how the prosthetics and straight make-up react. I try four different keys: a 650W tungsten fresnel bounced from the side, the 650 bounced from above, the 650 direct and a kinoflo direct. I had issues on Ren with kinoflos causing shine, but here we seem to be fine. I test with and without fill, with hard and diffused backlights, and with bounce from below. We also look at cooler and warmer white balances to see how moonlight and candlelight will affect the make-up. What’s great about these tests is that I can play with the looks and get immediate feedback from Paul as he stands at the monitor. He really responds to the moodier looks, which makes me very happy.

Up at the crack of dawn to travel back to Wales, armed with a nice new warm coat, ski socks and thermals! On the train I read some relevant American Cinematographer articles and watch Ida. Stylistically it’s nothing like Heretiks will be, but I want to see how they handle some similar themes visually. It is as beautifully shot as everyone says it is.
I arrive at the production office…

We have a big production meeting, going through the schedule day by day to address the concerns of the various departments. Naked flames vs. LED candles are discussed again. Having dealt extensively with the latter on The First Musketeer, I’m keen not to go down that route again. I get to see some initial make-up tests, and there’s lots of back-and-forth with me, Ben (the gaffer), the rental house and production about the lighting list, trying to get it down to a level that works for the budget and the size of our lighting crew.
Back at the hotel I write a risk assessment – urgh – apparently insurance companies expect these from all HoDs now. Dinner with one of the writers and one of the producers – they’re very nice, as is everyone on the team. Then I get to work on some lighting plans.

I just got hired last-minute to photograph a 17th Century supernatural thriller feature. At this stage I don’t know how much time I’ll have and how much I’ll be allowed to say about it, but I thought I would try a daily blog. It might make a nice change to “bring you along” on a shoot. So let’s dive right in.

November 11th
I’m one of several DPs to meet with Paul, the director, about the project. Since first being contacted about it yesterday (sound recordist David kindly recommended me) I’ve only had time to read the script, watch the trailers for Paul’s last two films and do a quick google for some reference images. Several of those images are from The Devil’s Backbone, a film that sprung to mind as I read the script for Heretiks. Another image is the one in this post. I love the idea of the God rays coming in but not hitting the characters; they’re trying to be divine but falling short. I suggest to Paul that this could be a visual theme, and he seems enthusiastic. The meeting goes very well.
Paul’s keen on using a lot of Steadicam, so even though I haven’t got the gig yet I call Rupert (my 1st AC and Steadicam op on Exile Incessant) and sound him out.

November 12th
Mid-morning I get a call from the producer, offering me the job. I immediately confirm Rupert and spend the next few hours trying to fill out the rest of the camera, grip and lighting crew. After a brief discussion with Paul about shooting format, we quickly settle on the Alexa. I call the rental house, 180 Degrees in Bristol, to introduce myself, confirm the camera package and Cooke S4 lenses, and add an extra item or two.
Around 5pm I set off for South Wales, to be ready for tech scouts the next day. Rammed into a rush-hour train from Paddington, I go through a hardcopy of the script with a biro and two highlighter pens: blue for lighting, pink for camera. I also compile a character cheat sheet, because the script has a lot of characters and I know I’ll get them mixed up otherwise. It will also help to track their journeys through the story.

November 13th
I wake up to a wet, windy and bitterly cold Welsh morning. I’m going to need to buy thermal underwear before the shoot starts. A dozen of us pile into a minibus and drive to the first of our two main locations. As Paul talks everyone through the scenes, I struggle to keep up, being less familiar with the script than the others, some of whom have already been on the project for weeks. We don’t have a gaffer for the shoot yet, but a friend of the production manager’s has come along to draw up a lighting list. I’m also liasing with the effects supervisor and the production designer as we consider the requirements of each room. The first location is home to a protected bat colony, so only a specific type of bat-friendly smoke can be used.
After a very welcome pub dinner, we proceed to the second location. By this time it’s much clearer what Paul and Justin (the production designer) are aiming for. I can’t wait to see Justin’s plans come to life. When the recce is finished, we go through the schedule to determine which days will require naked flames – requiring an additional effects person on set. Then I head home, finishing my script mark-up on the way. I have the weekend off, then it’s back to Wales on Monday to start prep in earnest.