'Gladiator II' Cinematographer on Shooting the Flooded Colosseum Sequence on Dry Land Using VFX

Variety

'Gladiator II' DP, John Mathieson, breaks down how they shot the flooded colosseum scene on both dry land and a water tank using remote operated ships in combination with VFX.

Transcript

00:00My name is John Matheson. I'm a cinematographer and I've just shot Gladiator 2 for Ridley Scott.

00:18Things have got more technical and faster and easier in visual effects. They can make more

00:23intricate stuff quicker and they can go to town a bit more, but for me, camera's a camera still.

00:29The language he uses is the same. This was going to be a lot more visual effects heavy,

00:33which is all the way through the industry now. The first film, he was a bit more suspicious of

00:38it. I mean, he was in a more build the sets, fight real tigers, shoot real arrows, great fun.

00:44I mean, there are improvements in technology and some of the things we did better because we did

00:48once before, but the Senate was there, the Coliseum was there, the Forum was there.

00:52So everything is where we left it.

00:54The camera comes on quite late. I came into the back of the office and they'd started already

01:02with something and Neil Kulbal and Ridley were talking about a sea battle in Wazzazat,

01:07which is on the edge of the Sahara. And I said, well, I'm in the wrong room here.

01:13Sahara is not known for its coastline. And so they were going to shoot this battle dry

01:17and then add the water later. That would not have happened 20 years ago. Those ability to use CGI

01:23now really embraces it. Our character has become a bit of a leader of the gladiators. He's the one

01:31who speaks out and he conquered the rhino and he's getting a bit too powerful. They wanted to kill

01:35him off. So they devised a sea battle in the Coliseum. They flood the Coliseum so they could

01:40have this sea battle. It's got these fun little pantomime type islands and they come out in these

01:44mini little galleys and they go at each other. I mean, it's my favorite sequence, even though for

01:49me, lighting and things, I didn't really do much. I missed a few bits and pieces, but as a scene

01:55that's come together, it's totally unique to anything you'll see. It's incredibly colorful

02:00and contrasty and the boats are all different colors. The gladiators are kind of pantomimed up.

02:05It's totally over the top. The boats come out and they do this dancey dance, you know,

02:08Lucius having been the man of the sea, grown up by the sea, helms the boat and does a double take

02:13and disables one and turns back on it, rams it and makes a mess of them. And then they

02:18jump across and they all start throwing each other in the water. In the water are, you know, sharks.

02:26Ridley wants to shoot it as much as he can, all at once. So you put lots of cameras in

02:30and you position them around the arena because the boats are moving. Not all the cameras will

02:34be on all the time, but the boats will come to you. The action will come to you. They're plotted out

02:39to meet bits of action as they come towards you. It's like going shopping. Did you get the

02:43rice? I'm getting the pasta. You have to just talk to everyone, all the operators and say,

02:48don't worry about that. He's going to get that. The good thing about doing it all at once is that

02:52it's in continuity. So the boat's burning, walls have been broken, guys are falling off. You know,

02:57if you cut to another shot and the guy's falling off in the wide shot and you cut to a close-up,

03:01Paul, he's still there and he falls off. You can't use that shot. But since everything's running at

03:05the same time, when he falls off in the wide, he falls off in the close-up as well. So we shot it

03:10dry again on these things called SPMTs, which are multi-wheeled, multi-steering bases. It's like

03:16putting a thing on a massive skateboard with lots of wheels on it. And the guy walks along next to

03:21it and he's got a joystick and he drives it. The good thing about that is that if you do anything

03:24in water, water drifts the whole time. You set the camera up, set the boat up, put the guy in the

03:27water and just the slightest breeze, everything goes like that. It's really time consuming water.

03:32So we did it dry. And then we moved the tank in Malta, which is the probably largest tank in

03:37Europe. It's 300 by 400 feet and it can be up to two meters deep. They put the Coliseum in there,

03:43but only the ring edge of it and the roll box and some bleachers. Then we shot the whole

03:47other half, which were the boats interact with the water. If you think most of the time

03:51you're fighting on the boat with, you know, and you're on the top. When you fall in the water,

03:56then you need the water. People get knocked off. There's a whole lot of stuntmen pushing a bunch

04:00of cardboard boxes about the size of a van around trying to get under that guy when he falls off.

04:05So he lands on something. He doesn't take a dive onto the Coliseum floor, but then you go in

04:09to the wet tank and then you do what you couldn't do on the dry tank.

04:18Story-wise, there's only a few shots in the water, but they took

04:21maybe twice as long to just to give you some idea how difficult water is to work in. They

04:25had to remember what they did in the other one to fall in the right place, to get the right

04:29continuity. To me and the cameras, when you're shooting that dry, as long as you're

04:35under the water, because you know the water's going to go put over your head, you're okay.

04:38You put the cameras where you want, rather than being on the raft and coming up alongside and

04:42doing all that. Really, you know, down to the ADs and the coordination, the special effects,

04:47the visual effects. It's a fantastic, and Ridley, of course, who's overseen. It's a fantastic scene

04:51that's been put together. We had a lot of cameras. You've got this old shape of people around you,

04:59all going screaming, shouting and shadows. I think the answer is just to stay back with

05:03the camera and reach in rather than going very wide and very close, because then you lose

05:08everything. Because I was shooting you, you're head to toe. But if I shot you very close,

05:12well, I see you and see much of the room. If I come find the back, I actually see what's behind

05:15you. That's very important to feel like you're there and to feel you're always in the action.

05:20And then we've got these amazing cranes these days that we didn't have 25 years ago, which

05:24the stabilized cranes, they're telescopic. They can reach to 75 feet or more, but we use the

05:29short ones. We lay big tracks down as well. Some of the tracks are a hundred foot long or more.

05:33The shooting of it is, it's observing and planning. You don't write lists of what is

05:38going to happen because there's so many things going on. You might say, well, this guy goes from

05:42the front to the back. Well, let's put a camera that goes from the front to the back down the

05:44side. Well, no, wouldn't it be better if you were sitting at the front and he ran to you?

05:48Those decisions only come by watching it and having a lot of experience, a lot of very experienced

05:53operators. They plan, they rehearse, the stunts rehearse, special effects guys to try and reverse

05:58and we follow their lead really. And so the language of the film from the first one to this

06:04one hasn't changed much. You know, cameras are still cameras, lenses are still lenses,

06:07but we had more cameras and more visual effects possibilities.

06:15The lenses, we've got some Sphero Primos, but we never use them because they're prime lenses.

06:20We like zooms because they're just quicker. That might sound like a bit of a philistine.

06:26When you're working that quick and your crane's up in the air, the last thing you want to bring

06:29down is bring it down, pull the matte box off, pull the motors off, pull the lens out,

06:34change the bridge plate, put another lens back on, rebalance it, put the motors back on,

06:38put the mouse mounts back on. And that can happen quite quickly. We've got a zoom lens,

06:41you just go zip. So it's all about the zooms, I'm afraid. You know, much as I admire cinematographers

06:46who choose the right lens, that's not what we're doing here. You've got a lot of people who've

06:50been up since 2.30 in the morning. You've got to be ready. You've got to be quick. You've got to

06:54be on it. All the cameras are standards. I went to Panavision and said, what have you got lots of?

06:59They said Alexa Mini LF. So I said, right, we'll have those. Because I didn't want a mixed bag of

07:04stuff. Because if you are all over the Coliseum, everything's got to be compatible. You can't have,

07:10oh, this camera has this lens, or this one has this bridge. No, no, no. Oh, it's a much nicer.

07:14Yeah, I know it's a nicer look, but look at the time. You know, you don't have that pleasure.

07:21Doesn't mean we don't take great care. But it was zoom lenses, wide zooms. They've got a lot

07:27better. The zooms are much more sharp than they were a few years ago. They've got a better range.

07:31They're faster. These modern lenses made by computer are much better optically. It goes

07:35in straight. But if you give it a deep aperture as well, you'll get really good black shadows.

07:39And I wanted that. If you're shooting a shot with a lot of depth in, close up of me, and your

07:45aperture is too wide, that becomes mush. You want to see a bit of detail back there. You don't want

07:50to just have swimming out of focus, nothing. So shooting deep with standard one camera,

07:57Alexa LS, and just zoom lenses, that was it. Just simple. But I have to say, it looks great. We just

08:03didn't agonize over different lenses and flares and Zeiss and Cook and this. Yeah, it was mixed

08:11stuff. But as long as you've got the range, long and wide zooms, that was it.

08:22I saw it dry a lot because the water comes later. I saw the dry stuff, and that looked great.

08:28Because you can imagine it. Because it's all there. All the action's there. You just have

08:31to ignore the bottom of the frame where the water is. I didn't really see it put together

08:36until I started grading through all the colors on the film. I think it's very important as a

08:41cinematographer to actually, you know, make sure that the images that you want to get

08:45end up on the screen. Since we're grading as we go, you know, we're doing that on site,

08:49things are pretty much mapped out. Quite often we have a sort of dusk and a night and a dawn scene,

08:53and the night scene goes away. Then you're left with a dawn and a dusk together, and there's got

08:57to be a timeline. So you've got to shift one of them away from the other. You follow the colors

09:01by the story arc. This scene looks too like that scene. You want it to be somewhere else. You've

09:04got to bend it a bit. You know, I grade films fairly quickly, and I did probably about five

09:08days on it total. It is a film with very few looks. It's, you know, sunny Rome. Well, it's

09:14Numidium, which is very dry and white desert, hazy skies. Everything's just dust, and it's dry,

09:21it's dusty, it's sage colors. It's everything that's a bit burnt. And then you go to Rome,

09:25which is color. And so it went from this dusty, dry, arid, nothing, to Rome, which is more colorful

09:33and opulent and kitsch, camp, gaudy, vulgar. Then you have your night scenes, which are

09:39candlelit or gorgeous ambers. They kind of always stay in the same zone. You know, the

09:43violet ones, I made a bit more lemony. The warmer, softer ones, the more intimate ones,

09:48they're kind of a bit more orange and flattering. That was about it. Done a lot of that when we shot

09:53with the DIT on set when we were shooting.

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