[Roger Deakins]

I remember the room was small and I didn’t use anything inside. There was a small window to the right so I probably had a 6K HMI and bounce source outside.

[Roger Deakins]

Certainly do! A fast down hill track is tricky to make perfect.

[Roger Deakins]

You could just use white card. You could cut out a circle of any size, preferable cheating it larger than the moon’s reflection really would be.

[Roger Deakins]

Rio! That would be nice but sadly no!

[Roger Deakins]

Some post stabilization was used on the last film I shot but I don’t remember any being needed on ‘1917’. It is a good tool and can help a tracking shot that has a bump in it.

[Roger Deakins]

I probably used a 32 and 40mm for most of the film but there were plenty of shots made with wider lenses and with a purpose made set.

[Roger Deakins]

I have not seen the film as yet. Have you? What are your thoughts?

[Roger Deakins]

If you only need the reflection of the moon you might be better off using a white cut out and lighting that. You could then adjust the size of the cut out and even paint on some detail. A lamp directed at the window will surely look like what it is.

[Roger Deakins]

Ahh! I’ve corrected that. I should have said more observational. ‘Jarhead’ was definitely more subjective!
Had we gone hand-held I would have been the operator slipping around in the mud so perhaps that was another reason I didn’t favor hand-held! Seriously though, we wanted that solid unrelenting forward movement that the Trinity, the wire rigs and the crane gave us.

[Roger Deakins]

Placing diffusion on the barn doors of a lamp will not really make the source ‘softer’ unless your subject is very close to it. The diffusion will spread the light in a more even wide beam but it won’t actually soften a shadow. A second layer directly on top of the first might spread the light even more but it will still not soften the light. To do that you need to make your source larger, as would be the case if your second layer of diffusion is set a few meters in front of the first. In general terms, the further your diffusion from the lamp the softer the light.

[Roger Deakins]

In early conversations we considered shooting entirely with a hand-held camera as we had done on the earlier film, ‘Jarhead’. But as we developed our storyboards we could see that there were many occasions the camera wanted to be more solid and more observational. To shoot some scenes hand-held may well have worked but what would those scenes be and why those in particular? We were shooting on a reasonably long lens so any hand-held work would have been very ‘active’, which we felt would break the spell of the single shot.
I shall be interested in watching the recent ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ to see their approach.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 9 months ago by Roger Deakins.

[Roger Deakins]

I would like an optical viewfinder – but I know that is no longer a possibility!

[Roger Deakins]

If you are close on the actor’s face you might think about cheating the shot in a more controllable situation. Getting a clean reflection on a bright day is quite difficult.

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