Shooting Day for Night on “Hyde Park on Hudson”

In this interview for ARRI, Director of Photography Lol Crowley discusses using the ALEXA on the set of “Hyde Park on Hudson”

ARRI: What were some of the factors that led you and Roger to choose ALEXA for HYDE PARK ON HUDSON?

 

Lol Crawley: From our first meetings one of Roger’s big concerns was the day-for-night element. The majority of the story takes place over one weekend, but it culminates in a sequence where lots of people are racing about in the middle of the night and Roger specifically wanted this part of the film to have a stylized night look to it. He wanted to avoid actually shooting at night because he wanted to see this world, so quite early on we started experimented with day-for-night. Films like MELANCHOLIA by Lars von Trier became reference points, where you have this heightened look of a world lit by a full moon, so we had to pick a format that was strong enough to cope with that. We tested anamorphic and spherical on film, as well as ALEXA, but the way the ALEXA held up in low light conditions and the fact that it allowed us to apply a day-for-night lookup table (LUT) on-set were big factors in why we chose it. As well as the day-for-night LUT, we also developed two more: one for day exteriors and another for day interiors.

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