Instead of using data intensive, but uncompressed ARRIRAW, ProRes was chosen as recording format. Sébastien Goepfert: “To manage a huge amount of data requires more effort, and under our circumstances we could not afford it. We needed something easy to handle. Also, we were very happy with the ProRes format, too.”
Regarding the lenses, the crew thought about anamorphic first. “But considering certain limitations and last but not least just simply the weight of the lenses made us chose Ultra Primes. For the director camera movements and smooth movements were very important and to serve that, the tiny Ultra Primes became a good and reasonable choice for working with gimbals and TRINITY,” Sébastien Goepfert points out. On a previous feature film he already worked with the lenses and learned to appreciate them: “The Ultra Primes are very interesting lenses, because they are very sharp with a good contrast. And I like the modern look. Also, Amjad was interested in a ‘indefinitive time look’—I found the Ultra Primes suitable for.”
In terms of lighting, three different kinds of equipment were in operation. Amongst others, M-Series daylight fixtures (M40, M18, M8), SkyPanels S60-C, and Tungstens (5K/2K/1K) by ARRI. Sébastien Goepfert: “Daylight fixtures we were using for indoor scenes and to recreate this kind of very hard sun, because Amjad wanted something dark inside but feeling this kind of harsh sun coming from the windows and all the dust… a nice effect. To have this kind of geometric shape and also pictorial aesthetic, and also to compensate sometimes when we shot with sun backlights, to compensate the indoors, as outside the sun was very harsh. I was also using daylight fixtures to compensate with bouncing sometimes.”