Robin Hood, which is set to open the 63rd Cannes Film Festival, is John Mathieson BSC’s fifth cinematographic collaboration with Ridley Scott, having previously lit Gladiator (2000), Hannibal (2001), Matchstick Men (2003) and Kingdom Of Heaven (2005) for the veteran director.

 

 

Mathieson, also a double Oscar-nominee for his work on Gladiator and Phantom Of The Opera (2004, directed by Joel Schumacher), revisited a tried and tested cinematographic formula to bring the $130m heroic tale to life on the big screen. Scott has developed a method for filming, especially intricate shots, as swiftly as possible, preferring to work with a minimum of three cameras, and up to eleven on a big stunt – with the result that it may only take two or three takes to capture what’s needed.

“Robin Hood is a Hollywood epic, with a big cast and big themes. Ridley is a visual genius, who’s made great films for a long, long time, and who knows what he wants,” says Mathieson. “From a cinematographic point of view this means you have to create and capture images differently to the way you might work on other types of films. With multiple cameras to set up, there’s a lot to get organised and to communicate to the crew. The production is like an ocean liner leaving port, and you have to be ready to get on board every day and go with the flow.”

Robin Hood stars Russell Crowe as the eponymous hero, Cate Blanchett as Maid Marian, Matthew Macfadyen as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Max von Sydow playing Walter Loxley, Mark Strong as Godfrey, Eileen Atkins taking the role of Eleanor of Aquitaine and William Hurt as William Marshal. A Universal Pictures/Imagine Entertainment production, in association with Relativity Media and Scott Free Productions, the film began development in 2007 when Universal Studios acquired a script entitled Nottingham, depicting a heroic Sheriff of Nottingham to be played by Crowe.

However, Scott’s dissatisfaction with the script led him to delay filming, and during 2008 it was rewritten into a story about Robin Hood becoming an outlaw, and switching identities with the Sheriff. Filming was scheduled to begin in August in Sherwood Forest for release in November 2009. However, additional script rewrites to further change the storyline, plus WGA and SAG strikes, delayed the start date. Filming, with a new twist on the Robin Hood story, eventually began on March 30, 2009, in forests around London, and at a 200-acre Nottingham set in Seale, near Farnham, originally built during 2008 and which had aged into the landscape. (Interestingly, the set and the extensive unit base can be seen on Google Maps/Earth in satellite view mode.)

The production moved in June and July to film at various countryside and beach locations in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Filming also took place at Bourne Wood, near Farnham, and in Dovedale near Ashbourne, Derbyshire

“This is a much more real film than the typical Robin vs. the Sheriff of Nottingham story,” says Mathieson. “We encounter a war-weary Robin, just returned from the crusades, who finds the country full of pestilence, starvation and rebellion in the air, with a civil war about to start. We’re immersed in power struggle that mixes the geopolitical and historical. It’s much more global than a romp around the woods.”

Mathieson says he did not watch other Robin Hood films, as most were shot too long ago to be of significance. However, he says that he and Scott did look lovingly at medieval painters such as Breugel The Elder, “whose old, lumpy, medieval men, stumping through wintery forests with their greyhounds, were a real inspiration. The trouble was it just didn’t look like that when we came to shoot,” he muses.

“Photographically, I would have loved to have shot during the winter, when there’s no foliage, the air is clearer and you can see forever. But we ended up shooting in the woods during spring and high summer of 2009, when the coverage of the leaves was complete and dense that there was no meaningful light. Apart from green being a boring colour, the moss and algae on tree trunks can take on a lime green hue, and things look magenta when cast against it. There’s no texture either. So my task was to introduce separation and contrast into that place, by lighting bits and pieces, and to give it a colder, more muted look.”

Consequently, more often than not, Mathieson found himself pushing the 500ASA stock, and sometimes dreaming up ways to light on the hoof. One memorable example, he recalls, for a shot of a horse and rider galloping a couple of hundred meters away from camera through the forest, involved strapping together two 100K SoftSuns delivering enough light to follow the action to the edge of the woods.

Mathieson framed Robin Hood on 35mm in Scott’s preferred 2.40:1 aspect ratio. “Photographically, the approach to Robin Hood was like Kingdom Of Heaven, although the stories are different. Shooting 2.40:1 gives you that epic framing, but it’s versatile and quick to set up. On a large scale films like these, where there’s a dynamic mixture of big set pieces, battles, charging horses, the intimacy of people walking and talking, and with multiple cameras running simultaneously, you have to be able to move quickly. So you need a camera system that’s light and versatile.”

Cameras included ARRI ST and LTs, often with nine of these running across a set-piece, or as many as 11 on a big day. Mathieson says he also used SI2K and various crash cams, to get close into the action during the final beach battle. Along with lightness and speed of deployment, Mathieson’s lens choices were dictated by the simple premise of capturing the best possible quality, super-clean image.

“On a film like Phantom Of The Opera, I used the lenses to create subtle, elegant blurs and flares, to give the pictures idiosyncratic warmth. But on Robin Hood, we just needed to create great colours and stable images, and to gather lots of shots.”

Mathieson selected a wide range of Panavision Primos, and an array of fast but lightweight zoom lenses, including the recently launched Panavision 19-90mm T2.8 compact zoom, plus the Optimo 15-40mm T2.6 and 28-76mm T2.6, which were both used a lot for filming on Steadicam.

Mid-range zooms included the Optimo 24-290mm T2.8, Panavision Primo 24–275mm T2.8, plus the longer 135–420mm T2.8. The Russian-made Elite 120–520mm T2.8 fitted with a doubler became an ultra long lens.

“The choice of lenses for shooting Super 35 gives you sharpness, range and incredible apertures – you can cope with shooting in either low-light or in full sunlight on a beach, or pan from a bright exterior into a dark interior without introducing lens artefacts,” he says. “Also, when a horse comes galloping at you at 35mph, it can be up and passed you before you know it. With the longer lenses, you can get a good crack at it and follow the action as the horse banks left or right.” In terms of film stocks, Mathieson selected a small range of stocks, calculating their usage on the likely F-stop range he wanted to work in at the various location or studio, and for the very pragmatic reason of keeping to a minimum any filtration changes on the multiple camera set-ups.

Kodak Vision 3 5219 500 ASA was used for the woodland scenes, which were dark on even the brightest of days, with the stock being pushed by as many as 1.5 stops, and all of the night-time scenes. Mathieson selected Vision 2 5201 50 ASA for “the sunny stuff, open exteriors, and the final battle scene on the beach,” with Vision 2 5205 250 ASA for poorly-lit exteriors and brighter interior scenes, or a combination of the two such as the mouth of a barn or a doorway.

“Castles are not famous for having big windows,” he says. “My old Mini had more glass that some of the rooms in which we were shooing, so we had to pack a lot of hard light through the windows to get enough illumination on to the set.”

Having made five films with Scott, Mathieson says of his relationship with the director, “We don’t overly discuss things. There’s a comfortable familiarity between us, and a lot gets done on automatic. As there is always a huge amount to do every day – the main task on Ridley’s films is to translate what’s needed to the rest of the crew.

“On a production like Robin Hood, there just isn’t the time to fiddle around with bounce cards and be arty as you might do on a drama. You have to make sure to put the cameras and lights in the right place, and let things fall into frame. Your photography is limited in some ways, and might not be as finely-tuned as you want it to be. But there is a randomness that creates a new dynamic in the photography. So long as the set up is right, you go with what you get – an image that suits the picture.”

The DI on the film was done by Stephen Nakamura at Company 3 in Los Angeles. An ARRI Laser scanner was used to convert the negative to a 4K digital files, and the colour correction was done at 4K resolution. Due to other working commitments, Mathieson was only able to work with Nakamura for a week, to talk about the look and give the colourist his instructions.

“I’m not a great fan of DI, but felt I was in good hands,” Mathieson says. “I didn’t really achieve a look, or a style, per se on this film, as that can take you out of the story. But I did try to make the photography not look too lush and green, by taking out some of the warmer colours. The DI helped to enhance the dreary, coolness of the imagery, especially in the opening woodland scenes which are a visual metaphor, that better days are to come.”

For scenes shot during sunny days, Mathieson asked Nakamura to balance the contrast with those shot on more dreary overcast days. During post production Company 3 also took reflections of sunlight off leaves on the ground, helmets and armour, and did lot of custom sharpening – on weaved-metal body armour and on water droplets during the final battle scenes by the ocean, to make them appear like shards of flying glass – creating a sense of hyper-reality. In some scenes, blades of grass were also sharpened and given a brownish-green tone, helping to tell the audience on a subconscious level that it is a certain time of day and season.

Since completing Robin Hood, Mathieson has also lit Rowan Joffe’s directorial debut Brighton Rock and Ealing Studios’ Burke & Hare. Whether he’s shooting a multi-million dollar epic or a more modestly budgeted British independent production, the lure and the approach remain the same.

“To me it’s all about the story, the script and the director, and how I as the cinematographer can make images come to life,” he says. “Dealing with the logistics on a film like Robin Hood is different, but when you’re on the set, it’s the same thing, big or low budget. You’re at the sharp end, always on a tight schedule, working with the director and the crew, to light and frame the images that will best tell the story.”