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Did you ask for this? The production designer did and
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Hey what's going on Indy Mogul today I'm
here with Jakob Ihre the cinematographer
behind the story "Chernobyl." Today we're going to do a
cinematography breakdown of the actual
series walk through a couple of scenes
talked about it from the camera lenses
lighting and actually walk through each
of these things one by one so, Jakob, how was the
the process of shooting Chernobyl?
It was an amazing life-changing
experience for all of us involved it was
it was very very hard it was a long
period so there was an amazing dedication from everyone that really made it.
As far as the visual style and visual
concept of it goes any references and
inspirations? I mean it was lot of
research made was so much research and
our production designer Luke Hull had
done so much research and of course
cinematography is often based on great
production design and historical
research and this is a small little
detail I guess but I I found they didn't
have any frosted bulbs in the lamps was
all clear gloss bulbs
because of that the light was often hard
they had fluorescent tubes even in the
living rooms in the ceiling so the
mixture of fluorescence and this hard
lighting hubs or practicals that factor
that historical fact
put some stamp on on the look for me one
big kind of reference or a starting
point was the murals of the Soviet Union
at the time and in Episode two I think
you have these shots of of a mural we
see the the work of the Soviet working
and he's standing next to this Sun and
it's not actually Sun it's atom and
so the atom was represented as the Sun
and the fact they looked like the Sun
that was kind of a starting point for us
how to to visualize the Invisibles was
big and you often see the light
fluctuating is in the sunlight dimming
in and out in the same shot and you know
in order to convey the feeling of
something is in subtle way it's it's off
and it's it's a different world that we
live in after the accident. So for this
project as far as camera lenses go
what did you guys use?
We were using Alexa Minis and some
Cooke Panchros.
Spherical lenses. And at first we thought of
using anamorphic lenses for me Russian
cinema was somehow anamorphic lenses
which is very wrong because many things
are not you know spherical of course but
so we thought we could kind of portray
this what was even better with these
lenses but we kind of switch side and
thought let's forget the machinery of
the Soviet Union and concentrate more of
the people of course it's real about the
people and and the characters and we
have to be as true to them as possible
and not to put a layer between us and
them so we thought let's be as
humanistic as possible and I think
spherical lenses are or a more honest
lenses in that sense and used
correctly spectral lenses are more or
more a humble and more natural
looking lens than anamorphics. Alright so
let's get this first clip up and running
let's do this. Yeah this is in the control
room of reactor 4 and we shot this in in
Vilnius in their studio in Vilnius but
the entire set was gonna build in
England.
It was a massive set in more than 2,500
LEDs they've all come controlled on this
giant iPad. Wait you're saying every
single one of those little dots in the background?
Yea everything is controlled-- What?! I think
was 2005. That was all DMX?
Historically accurate as well? I maybe had experts on with us and even made sure that the
lights were blinking that correct
way. All right let's draw this up so this
is the control room here. Okay so these
are all like the little buttons.
And then we have all these
buttons on this box here but the main
lighting setup is of course from the
overheads. What are these lights here
simple Kinoflo's at first we thought we
would put sky panels which are more
controllable but there were shots we thought
we would look up and see actual tubes. Is
that the actual overhead lighting here
yeah this is overhead lighting and you
guys put retrofitted these with Kinoflow lights. Yes we did.
Where'd you start the cameras you had
three cameras spread out in different
you know in different positions and
often we felt we were not doing anything
visually interesting we were worried
that how do we make this come alive you
know behind here we were holding on this
side they were always in the same always
pointing the same angles or it was
wonder maybe one next to it and maybe
one here but ever never shooting to
watch each other three likes when he's
going out at the same time we cook it
spherical glass but you're not really
yes and the hard thing was with that was
that the cooks when we had more than one
camera because all the sets are so
different so when I'm looking here in my
monitor and I put on 75 on this one and
we put on a 50 millimeter on this one
they look completely different model to
one is warm on his cold so then before
we go for take I am trying to calibrate
all this lenses by using
Kelvin at the Kelvin of the cameras and
you see the magenta and green and that
was really hard especially they don't
have much time to do this but I was
forced to do it because I wanted to show
you know my
and everyone and directed three cameras
which are part of the same movies and
you knew this was a risk choosing these
lands and that was a big risk and but it
was an interesting process to do because
while you were doing and you were so
concentrated on the image I wouldn't do
it again but it was a good it was a good
challenge as much as we were breaking up
reality with other you know distorted
lenses we're also breaking up our
reality for two gear and the fucking
shows something is wrong yeah I can
assure and that maybe takes us away from
a more evenly lit studio studio set yeah
I Storify have these three divers have
been chosen or they have said yes to
this mission to go down underneath the
reactor and to find this sluice gate and
to somehow stop the flow of water and
this was shot three different locations
the exterior is a real nuclear power
plant actually which is a twin power
plant to Chernobyl that which we have
access to because guys crazy to have you
know to be there
this first part that's not a nuclear
power promise another kind of power
plant in Lithuania we had our amazing
German SFX team failing the floor you
know dedicate this model swimming pool
here
this is shadow stage this one a stage
and there was really hot hand to work in
this on this stage of course cos we go
all walking in the water most of all it
was hard you know scene to tell and many
times we thought you know what are we
really telling here what's going on
people the audience won't find this
interesting because they asked we don't
see them barely they have this mask on
the concealer faces becomes here them in
a Western monster or was the enemy and
it was one of the most powerful scenes
for me at least watch English and be
direct and I of the shooting this for
two days we thought you know maybe this
one you know end up in the film even you
know because it might not work and then
we have this flickering lights and there
was of course everything is based very
much on what happened but down here we
don't fully know what happened but it
was one idea that they use glow sticks
but for some reason we felt that the
glow sticks wouldn't it wouldn't look
correct so we switched to those you can
rewrote the script a bit to be able to
use this dynamos when you went through
this was there any additional lines that
you added other than the hand cranked
lights
yeah we had enormous kind of seelix
above the set which we bounced lights in
I think that source force they are
steaming up and down which are also kind
of fluctuating you know as the torches
fluctuates the the bounce or the you
know the ambience it's kind of what's
hitting them in the you know on top of
the head style let me have our amazing
sparks standing here they have some LED
unit some LED panels which are on the
same which are in sync with the iPad and
also controlled by the iPad or by the
DMX and they're giving them fill light
and when this light starts to flicker
they flick in the same way so the bounce
back on them flickers in the same way
often we were shooting a long tape if
and my god they're flickering too much
here how will this ever work and he
might not work but often when you see in
the Edit
we often felt actually it's not freaking
enough and so in post
we often I had a lot of flicker on to
the existing flicker to give it a little
bit more of intensity so there are so
many different layers of control in
order to achieve what we in the end have
a look
since it's so many layers of control
yeah now before we talk about our last
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domain but now back to the episode one
to one in terms of production design
this is exactly how it looked like they
said when the trial happened outside
Chernobyl when you're after accident
because it was kept from them oh man I
guess oh you're contradicting your own
testimony in Vienna testimony in Vienna
was a lie I lied to the world so we used
that as our lighting approach as well to
use the lights that were actually there
and for the first time we let the same
in a very hard man of a very hot lights
and I love that the most part I do I
always you know hope how can we light
this film like they did in the old days
nowadays it's so much realism s once you
have a hot sauce it doesn't feel real
and especially should color when you use
hot lights it looks fake but you get
away with it easier if it's black in
white so you never get the chance to
shoot with using hard lights but for
this trial saying we did that and it was
at the same time as also the most
realistic approach
so the props that you see oh the lights
in short they're actually you know
lights from the 80s or maybe 70s there's
a real spotlights that they would have
had of these kind yeah exactly and of
course we had our own Fresnel lights
around units next to them but
times we live and the same with some of
the probes be used so if this was our
court case over here where were the
lights set up
well if first of all we had the windows
here and we didn't want a feeling of any
Sun coming through so we had frames to
kill any direct sunlight coming so this
is like do butene right here big 20 but
20 K 20s okay and we also had some
Indies on the windows to keep the
exposure the same throughout today's we
had that and then of course we used all
the other practicals that you see in
short a lot of practicals which are
actually lights from the 80s really
clunky and hard to use that many times
actually list the scene with but many
times we have our own more more than
Fresnel light or still very hard lights
to match the quality measure quality of
this and go to t4 and 5.6 and by then we
needed lights and often these slides
were not enough for us so then we had
hiding behind some chairs and stools we
had source force which are lightly a
spot very well giving us a bounce from
the ceiling as we come hide analyzing
short tail we couldn't rig anything in
the ceiling because it was a real
location and we're not allowed to put
anything and then you can see above the
curtains there are actually some
practicals I don't think they were there
in real life in a meaning on the real
trial but we saw have some fluorescence
that these are Tino's these are the
keynotes and you can see our summer
green and some more white after and that
was also to make it less like a studio
proper how cleanly live yeah in fact
perfect yeah exactly so so we put all
care in making those some deals more
greener than the others in the trial
scene you know you don't see in the
daylight but towards the end of the
scene you start to see when he started
mentioning the truce and started
mentioning the widest explosion happened
you can see that behind him in the
background you see that the Sun is is
coming through the curtain for the first
time and it's actually over exposing the
background to introduce a threat again
so that's the Sun over exposing a
background there coming through and that
was done on a you know one of the
windows in the background we had a big
crane here
and I think that an 18 k HMI which was
controlled with a with a shuttle is some
kind of like like blinds because we're
at the certain point they open up and
the Sun comes themself and comes and
hits the background so even though you
put all this work into black it out and
to kind of hide the presence of the Sun
at the very end even after the truth is
told it's really just reintroducing it
and saying its problem is still here
yeah a threat is still yeah yeah ice do
that that is amazing
okay all right thanks so much for coming
out really appreciated again amazing job
on Chernobyl if you haven't seen it
already it's on HBO
seriously outstanding series I think you
congratulations on making it also a big
thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring
this video again don't forget that you
can start a free trial online at
squarespace.com and head over to the
link in the description for 10% off your
first website or domain also if you want
to hear more from Jakub you can actually
listen to our podcast which we got in
the description link down below I think
so much for joining it's a short thanks
so much guys
to to tell about the behind here there
is two monitors and here I am standing I
mean I'm not more important than the
draw them
