Report on the Blackmagic Design conference about the filming of "Bedlam", by Jon Shaikh

To introduce the film, an exclusive teaser is presented to the audience, without sound mixing or color grading, as post-production is still underway. However, the images reveal that the film is a cross between drama and action movie, featuring underground boxing scenes and candlelight typical of a period costume drama. James Butler begins : “As soon as I was attached to the project, Jon, the director, told me he wanted something emotional with the camera work. He wanted us to think of it as choreography, and not just for the fight scenes. We thought of the camera as if it were a character in the film. For example, we never put it outside, looking at the scene through a window. From there, the visual style evolved. The production took us to shoot on different sets in different countries. Each time, it was a new team, which added to the challenge of using this new camera for the first time ! It’s often scary to use a camera you’re not familiar with, but I had taken a lot of medium format photos, and I thought it would be a good idea to use this sensor for the film. Jon was very receptive to this idea, and we immediately did some tests with the camera. We liked it, and the producer was also flexible enough to let us shoot with what we thought was best for the film. Jon had taken photos in 2x anamorphic, but that caused us to lose a lot of the sensor’s capacity at the edges. Above all, we didn’t want a science fiction effect. We were going to have scenes lit by candles, and if there are 20 candles in the frame, we don’t want 20 blue streaks in the image—that’s ridiculous ! So we used the Hawk 65 1.3x. It was a big camera with big lenses, and there was no cage available for this configuration, so we had to figure out a way to work with it”. Steadicam operator Horia Cojan adds : “We tested lots of small lenses, but they chose the big ones ! I was very worried about having to carry this configuration for 31 days of shooting. I’m much more familiar with Arri camera setups, but in the end we were able to make cages and plates with a 3D printer, which allowed us to adapt to different setups and use the equipment I’m used to. We also used Blackmagic Pyxis, which are much smaller and could be attached directly to the stuntmen, allowing us to get long shots right in the heart of the action.”

When asked about the workflow, the team explains that they managed to stay below 2TB of data per day, despite high resolution, thanks to BlackMagic’s workflow. “The recording cards are huge, I love them, it’s impossible to lose them !”, jokes James Butler. “I hate them, they take up too much space on my rolling cart, I don’t have room to put my coffee anymore !”, adds Mark Kozlowski. “We also recorded proxies”, explains James Butler, “so that editing could begin in parallel with filming. I like using this method. Film is a collaborative project, and if editing is underway during shooting, we can view the sequences as we go along and know if there’s a need for pick-ups or re-shoots. Financially, it’s always very complicated to do re-shoots, but if we know about them during shooting, we can integrate them more smoothly into the work plan.” Mark Kozlowski adds : “I always try to have a simple and rigorous methodology so that everything flows smoothly between my DIT station and the editing suite. We’ve all had bad experiences with films edited with log images and cinematographers who lost control of their color grading. So I always make sure that the color grading is locked on the proxies”. “And what’s great about BlackMagic”, adds James Butler, “is that the color space is perfectly harmonious between the cameras and the DIT station, which was in Resolve.”

The guests are then invited to comment on a few stills from the film. James Butler continues : “For me, a film is about eyes and faces. That’s all that matters, human emotions. For this film, we wanted to respect the combat scenes as much as the dramatic scenes. There was a lot of talk about the visual style of the film, I made maybe 20 different decks on Shot Deck ! It was a wonderful collaboration with the director ; our visions matched perfectly. His script was very specific about the times of day ; it wasn’t just day or night, there were evenings, twilights, dawns, etc. We spent several months doing the technical breakdown, very precise, with the frame rate, shutter angle, etc. for each shot. We built a colorful universe, with green tones in the prison, very blue nights, and of course very pronounced shadows. We also tried to create an evolution in the lighting : at the beginning of the film, the images are very clean and clear, and then little by little we descend into something more brutal, darker, until there is only one source of light. And in the prison, there is no natural light at all, with completely black shadow areas that create a claustrophobic atmosphere. It was a complicated set, where we could only hide small bulbs or tubes. With today’s cameras, I know that whatever I do, the information will be in the signal. So I expose for what I want to see in the cinema. I want to see the film on the Small HD in the video village. And for me, the priority is the actors’ performances ; I always want to give them the freedom to move around freely. If I can light with a single projector, I do so ; minimalism is always best for the actors.” Mark Kozlowski shares : “It was very interesting because James wasn’t afraid to go into the darkness at all. I was used to people saying, ‘It’s too dark !’ But here, I was the one asking, ‘How dark do you want it to be ?’ It was exciting to search for the image among these different levels of darkness. Even if some areas seemed completely blocked, we could always find information in the log to work with finesse.”
The director of photography was also very demanding when it came to rendering the effects of candle flames : “For the flame to look real, you absolutely must have a white spot in the center of the flame. If it’s orange all over, it’s not believable. Mark and I sometimes spent a lot of time reworking these candle images to make them more realistic”.

Regarding the frame, Horia Cojan comments : “What’s interesting about this film is that the camera is like a character in the film, which is kind of crazy. I immediately felt very close to the themes of the film, and I always like to bring my personal touch, my creative vision. As a Steadicam operator, I’m at the heart of the action, I see what’s in the frame, but also everything around it, and on this film we tried to break down the hierarchy a little to allow me to take liberties and follow my instincts. I’m always very instinctive in my work. I don’t care about technology ; for me, it’s just dance”. He concludes : “In our line of work, every day is a new learning experience. The day I feel like I know enough, I’ll quit ! You learn from every decision, good or bad. We are both artists and technicians. We have to stay alert, because every shot can become a unique, magical moment that must be captured without error”.

(Report written by Margot Cavret for the AFC)