Hammer Time

Javier Aguirresarobe, ASC, AEC

and director Taika Waititi wade
deep into a colorful mix of
Norse mythology and the
Marvel Cinematic Universe on
Thor: Ragnarok.
By Noah Kadner
•|•
W
hen a movie is the second sequel to a property set
within Marvel Comics’ interconnected universe of
more than a dozen films and counting, a degree of
franchise fatigue among the filmmakers might be
expected. In the case of Thor: Ragnarok, the exact opposite
occurred, due in large part to the enthusiasm of director Taika
Waititi and cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, ASC,
AEC, who are both new to the series. The two joined forces
with a game cast — including Chris Hemsworth, Tom
Hiddleston, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, Idris Elba and
Cate Blanchett — to bring to life the latest adventures of the
titular Norse god of thunder.
“In my first conversations with Taika, even before hiring
me he let me know that the film would be up to 95 percent shot
on bluescreen,” Aguirresarobe recalls. “He asked if that was all

50 December 2017 American Cinematographer

 right and I replied that it wouldn’t be my
Opposite and this
first time. A couple of years before, I’d page, above: Thor
shot The Finest Hours, a film about a (Chris Hemsworth),
rescue at sea, which forced us to shoot in the god of thunder,
teams up with his
a pool surrounded by bluescreen. That brother, Loki (Tom
turned out to be a great experience — Hiddleston); Valkyrie
however, there’s an important difference (Tessa Thompson);
and Hulk (Mark
between the two films. The Finest Hours Ruffalo) to save
was a true story that took place in a Asgard from his
familiar setting of a stormy day, and a sister, Hela (Cate
Blanchett) in the
night out in an uncontrollable sea. In high-flying adven-
Thor: Ragnarok, the challenge consisted ture Thor: Ragnarok.
of creating fantastic worlds with settings Left: Director Taika
Waititi (left) checks
that originated in our imagination and the frame while cine-
were lit with realistic lighting. We matographer Javier
needed CGI’s aid to develop, shape and Aguirresarobe, ASC,
AEC looks on.
complete the scenarios.”
When asked why he chose
Unit photography by Jasin Boland, SMPSP, courtesy of Marvel Studios.

Aguirresarobe to shoot the project,
Waititi enthuses, “I’ve been a huge
admirer of Javier’s work for many years
and he’s also one of the nicest people
you’ll ever meet. I try to make my sets
feel like you’re working with family, so
there’s a lot of joking around, playing
music and dancing. Javier is great, with
such good energy, and he’s just deter-
mined to make things as beautiful as he
can. You can tell he’s an artist and loves
what he does.”
Recounting the path that brought
him to this particular director’s chair,
Waititi explains, “Marvel liked my work
in What We Do in the Shadows, and in
particular, Boy, my second film. They
saw I could not only do something
funny, but also tell a story where the
audience could invest emotionally in the
characters. If you look into what
Ragnarok actually is in Norse mythol-
ogy, it’s the end of the world, but it’s also
a new beginning with a rebirthing and
rebuilding.
“The press-release pitch for this
movie is: Thor loses his hammer, is
trapped on an insane world across the
universe, and has to fight his way to free-
dom and get back home to save his own
planet,” Waititi continues. “I would also
describe it as, ‘What if you got a bunch
of the craziest kids together and asked
them everything they would want to see
in a movie?’ A lot of inspiration also
came from the art of [comic-book artist]
Jack Kirby, in terms of color, line, form,
and sometimes even composition.”
The filmmakers shot Thor:
Ragnarok at Village Roadshow Studios
in Oxenford, Gold Coast, Australia,
from July through October 2016. After
almost a year of postproduction, the
filmmakers reconvened in July 2017 for
additional photography with an eye
toward a fall 2017 release. Key
crewmembers included 2nd-unit direc-
tor of photography David Burr, ACS;
A-camera operator Pete McCaffrey;
digital-imaging technician Pete
Harrow; key grip David Nichols; gaffer
Reg Garside; and rigging gaffer Craig
Clark.
While recent Marvel adaptations

www.ascmag.com December 2017 51

◗ Hammer Time
Right: Thor is
held prisoner by
the demon
Surtur, who aims
to trigger
Ragnarok, the
destruction of
Asgard. Below:
The crew shoots
the god of
thunder as he
flies into action,
having escaped
Surtur’s chains.
have been shot digitally on units such as
Red’s Weapon and Arri’s Alexa, Thor:
Ragnarok is the studio’s first to employ
Arri’s Alexa 65 — with its sensor area
equivalent to 5-perf 65mm film — as its
primary camera. “I suggested the Alexa
65 because of the immense amount of
visual information that needed to be
acquired,” notes Aguirresarobe. “In
order to cover that large 54.12mm x
25.58mm sensor, we needed special
medium-format lenses. So we
combined a set of [Vintage 765] lenses
— [originally] made by Hasselblad, Arri
and Zeiss [and adapted for the Alexa
65] — with a package of new [Arri
Prime 65] lenses ranging from 24mm to
300mm.” Arri London supplied the
lenses and camera bodies.
To maximize the depth of field
and exposure quality of the Alexa 65,
Aguirresarobe was determined to light
52 December 2017
to a relatively high T-stop of 5.6, while
rating the camera at ASA 1,250.
Garside recommended the extensive use
of LED lighting, including Arri S60
SkyPanels and Outsight Creamsource
Sky units. “We chose the SkyPanels for
their great consistency and versatility,”
Aguirresarobe says. “For our floor units,
we built soft boxes with two and four
SkyPanels in [each]. These had inter-
changeable diffusions and were moved
around on stands. On the other hand,
we had 8-by-4 and 8-by-8 soft boxes
that were hung on single-winch motors,
which were attached to Bomac track,
which in turn was attached to the dolly
beams in the roof. This enabled the
boxes not only to be raised and lowered,
but also to be moved up and down the
stages. It also enabled us to switch diffu-
sions easily.”
To light the massive amounts of
American Cinematographer
bluescreen surrounding most of the sets,
Garside chose Kino Flo Image 85s with
5,500K tubes. “We used a GrandMA2
Light dimmer board for the picture and
also had them for the second and
rigging units,” the gaffer notes. “[Board
operator] Glen Bielenberg sat with
Javier and me in the DIT tent so that
Javier could issue last-minute instruc-
tions. We gave Javier his own six-chan-
nel board and always put his main key
and fill lights on it so that he could alter
his ratios at any time.” Aguirresarobe
explains that he, along with Bielenberg
and Greg Daley, the head console
programmer, invented many color
presets for the LEDs on the GrandMa
— with such whimsical names as Surtur
Blue, Musphelium Fireable Sakaar,
Sunset Asgard and Hulk Pool.
The movie opens with the
cavernous world of the fire demon
Surtur. Of this environment,
Aguirresarobe observes, “It’s a grim and
dark cavern, which turns to fire when
Surtur comes alive — then the deep
blue of the cavern’s ambiance shifts to
extremely warm tones. When Thor
finally gets out of the cave, he lands on
a reddish surface reminiscent of Mars,
with warm, orange tones.”
Thor’s home realm of Asgard
subsequently endures a brazen attack
from Hela, the goddess of the dead.
“Asgard is a place that expresses a
certain melancholy,” Aguirresarobe
notes. “It reminds me of a medieval and
◗ Hammer Time
Top: Cameras are trained on Karl Urban, whose character, Skurge, has been tasked with
guarding the rainbow bridge that leads into Asgard. Above: The crew captures a scene between
Hela and Skurge in Asgard’s throne room.
romantic world, not at all aggressive. Its
look is of a certain beauty without being
too loud when it comes to color and
contrast. I noticed that in the previous
productions, Asgard’s look followed
along those lines. That’s why I tried to
keep to the same tones and feel —
neutral colors, sometimes rather cold,
with faint sunlight shaped by soft
clouds.”
In an attempt to protect Asgard
from Hela, Thor is catapulted across the
galaxy to the vibrant planet Sakaar. “On
Sakaar, everything is imbued with color,
and primary hues prevail,” says
Aguirresarobe. “The houses are green,
red and yellow, and the costumes go by
the same scheme of pure chromatic
54 December 2017
imagination. Sakaar’s sky mirrors what
we see on this planet — and other plan-
etary phenomena [are depicted as well],
bringing light and color with them.
This all proved to be an authentic chal-
lenge not only for the creation of CGI
images, but for our lighting, since it
evokes constant shifts in intensity and
color — although the short lengths of
the shots did not allow these effects to
be reflected on the character’s faces.
The cinematographer adds, “I
always wanted the concept for the light-
ing to follow the same creative lines as
[those of ] the artists completing the sets
digitally. For example, in Sakaar there
was a huge spaceport scene, but only
three columns were built on stage, plus a
American Cinematographer
very small area for what would be
Grandmaster’s ‘garage.’ I decided to fill the
space with intense lights and shadowy
zones. To achieve this, we planted a row of
4K Molebeams on the upper part of the
set for sharp and intense beams of light, as
if the roof had windows looking out into
the exterior. It was always of great interest
to me to share those decisions with
[visual-effects supervisor] Jake Morrison,
since I needed his help extending such a
well-defined ambience [throughout] all
that large space [via] CGI.”
Garside notes, “We had a number
of Sakaar sets that were LED-driven.
The most notable was the Grandmaster’s
chamber and palace, whose walls had the
possibility of changing color. For that,
our LED guru, Paul Johnson, installed
1.9km of RGB-W ribbon, which took
up a total of 8,192 channels on the
GrandMA. The reason we used four-
color LED was to match as close as we
could to the Arri SkyPanels. There was
enough light coming from the walls to
add kickers and liners to the cast. In this
case, they became our main source of
lighting. When those walls were in
frame, we ended up dimming the LED
strips to 5 percent, not just to reduce the
amount of light but to also keep the color
saturation on the walls.”
Morrison estimates that up to 98
percent of the movie contains visual
effects. With approximately 2,700 shots
from 18 vendors, the project boasts the
highest visual-effects shot count for a
Marvel movie to date.
Morrison notes that one of his
favorite challenges was 7'-tall rock
monster Korg — played by Waititi via
motion capture. “Taika is famous for
doing cameos,” Morrison says. “So we
had him in full mo-cap gear with the gray
suit and stereo head-mounted witness
camera, riffing and improvising lines as
Korg with Chris Hemsworth. With his
rock-covered body, Korg reminded me of
the Rock Biter character from The
NeverEnding Story, but we were deter-
mined to avoid [that character’s] latex-
puppet appearance. Luma Pictures and
Framestore came up with new technology
to shift and part the rocks against each
◗ Hammer Time
Right: Having
been thrown
off the rainbow
bridge, Thor
finds himself
trapped on the
planet Sakaar.
Below:
Thompson
stands atop her
character’s ship
to survey the
action on
Sakaar.
other as he moves, so you never see
them squash or stretch.”
In addition to principal photogra-
phy, the visual-effects team captured a
large volume of reference stills and
Lidar scans to aid the postproduction
efforts. “We always do a clean plate of
each take and shoot a mirror ball,” says
Morrison. “There’s literally nothing on
set that doesn’t get extensively
photographed for reference. The assis-
tant directors are constantly shepherd-
ing actors through our special photo
booth containing 145 Canon [EOS]
5D Mark III still cameras in an array,
with various lenses. It automatically
captures a 3-dimensional version of the
actor or extra, including high-resolution
facial scans in polarized and non-polar-
ized light in just half a second. We do
that for every prop, extra, costume
56 December 2017
change, set piece, etc.”
A highlight of the movie is an
epic gladiatorial throw-down between
Thor and the Hulk. “We set the
SkyPanels in a circle around the fight-
ers,” Aguirresarobe describes. “The
arena for their fight was built on blue-
screen in 360 degrees, except for the exit
door, where Thor emerges from, and a
slight bit of wall, which he crashes into.
According to where the camera was, it
was easy to set up a backlight or semi-
backlight on Thor and the Hulk, and
get an image with great contrast and
texture.” Garside scrimmed the back-
light with 20x20s wearing 1⁄2 Soft Frost
diffusion.
“We used the most advanced
techniques when it came to the Hulk
and motion-capture sequences,”
Aguirresarobe explains. “We did stan-
American Cinematographer
dard motion capture performed in a
motion-capture volume, as well as
Simulcam live tracking of the Alexa
camera and real-time display of
computer-generated characters, envi-
ronments, lighting, etc.”
Morrison adds, “We used
cutting-edge motion-capture and
virtual-production techniques, down to
actually building motion-capture tech-
nology into the sets themselves.
Everything was geared towards letting
Taika work in an improvisational style,
something that came up in our first
meetings. Taika likes to shoot long
takes, in series, and wants to engage
with the actors, throwing ideas and lines
at them constantly. We brought in The
Third Floor’s virtual-production team
to help us achieve a real-time visualiza-
tion of the actors as their intended CGI
versions, so we could see Mark Ruffalo
as Hulk, live, in the camera’s eyepiece
and at video village — or Taika as
Korg!”
The cinematographer recounts,
“Another important sequence was the
film’s final battle, which takes place
along a bridge that crosses the city of
Asgard. A stretch of the bridge was
built outside the studios, and the photo-
graphic challenge was maintaining the
light’s continuity throughout the scene
from sunset to nighttime. It took more
than two weeks to shoot. We built a
large roof combining black fabric and
diffusers, and then — according to the
time of day and the sun’s position — I
combined part of the black surface with
◗ Hammer Time
Top: Surrounded by bluescreen, Hemsworth prepares for action in a scene in which Thor is
pressed into gladiatorial combat. Above: A camera is framed up on the ageless Grandmaster
(Jeff Goldblum), the dictatorial ruler of Sakaar.
the translucent bit to protect [the set]
from sudden light changes. [Key rigging
grip] Dave Thomson performed a high-
level engineering job on the upper part
of the set by combining different fabrics
and moving them with great agility. We
added a small amount of fill light with
our SkyPanels when needed, but the
majority of the scenes on the bridge
were shot with natural light.”
Though the majority of the
movie was captured using the Alexa 65
camera, Aguirresarobe also deployed a
Phantom Flex4K for one key high-
speed sequence. “For the flashback scene
where Hela fights against the Valkyries,
58 December 2017
we used a special rig made by Satellite
Lab,” he reveals. “It featured approxi-
mately 144 hot-shoe strobes, timed via
custom motion-control software. We
shot with the Phantom at 900 frames
per second.”
The production had the benefit
of screening dailies both online via the
Pix System, and in person at a screening
theater at Village Roadshow Studios
outfitted with a 4K NEC projector.
Dailies were processed by Shed under
the supervision of dailies colorist Fergus
Hally. “We used an evolution of the
ACES workflow, which Shed devel-
oped for Guardians [of the Galaxy Vol.] 2,
American Cinematographer
encompassing ASC CDL values and a
developed Marvel show LUT,” Hally
says.
“We used ACES,” Morrison
notes, “but employed a custom LMT to
allow the footage to behave as ‘classic
Alexa’ — Log C [version] 3 with a
K1S1 LUT — so the footage was shot
in a future-proof manner, but was grad-
able in a more standard way.”
Hally adds, “The camera packs
were cloned into Codex Vaults, enabling
the capture of associated metadata,
which could be seamlessly passed into
dailies and on to editorial. On set, DIT
Pete Harrow would build the CDLs
with Javier using Pomfort’s LiveGrade
Pro — these loaded neatly into Codex,
and critical adjustments were discussed
later in the grading suite, under Javier’s
guidance. In dailies, we were under strict
guidelines from the visual-effects team
to adhere to CDL parameters only, to
maintain a known set of values for the
visual-effects pipeline.” Hally worked
with the Codex production suite on
Dolby display monitors, with some test
looks investigated in [Blackmagic
Design] DaVinci Resolve. Hally further
notes that “Flanders [monitors] were
used on set with the DIT.”
Morrison worked diligently to
create a simple but effective image
pipeline to get from camera originals to
final projection. “I like to work back-
wards from the 2D DCP, where we
know it will be mastered for Imax at
2048x1080 pixels for a 1.90:1 aspect
ratio,” he says. “Then the 2D scope
output will be extracted from that at
2048x858 at 2.39:1. That framing is
effectively what the camera operator
sees on the ground glass at 6K, plus a
1⁄2K pad around the image.” Morrison
further explains that — as has become
traditional for many modern big-budget
action movies — on Imax screens, the
aspect ratio will periodically jump from
2.39:1 to 1.90:1. “In general, we’ve
maintained 2.39 for more intimate
dialogue scenes, but whenever we get
into an action beat it’s 1.90 all the way,”
he says. “The Imax version of the movie
is stunning.” The 1.90:1 footage
 ◗ Hammer Time
The crew
readies an
Asgard
exterior.
“amounts to one-third of the feature run
time,” reports senior finishing producer
Michael Dillon.
“We do the geometry transform
just once, so the effects vendors receive
the DCP Imax resolution with the
padding for, effectively, a 2.5K EXR
file,” Morrison says. “The padding often
helps with tasks like reframing and 3D
tracking — and when their effects are
60
completed, we ‘cut off the crusts’ by
removing the padding to end up back at
the final 2K. A benefit of this ‘brave new
world’ of ACES EXR is its support for
multiple layers within the file. So we can
send the image along with the various
mattes from the effects vendors and
have all of that information available for
the digital intermediate.”
As Thor: Ragnarok raced toward
the finishing line, Aguirresarobe was not
able to directly supervise the DI, due to
his work prepping another project in
Argentina. With Morrison’s assistance,
Aguirresarobe left a color bible to help
guide the grading toward his creative
intentions. “I always encourage the cine-
matographer to spend time with the DIT
and colorists to create a bible as sort of
their ‘mini DI,’” says Morrison. “It’s
about building trust and getting back to
the feel of a photochemical process, while
honoring their vision. I did that previ-
ously with Russell Carpenter, ASC on
Ant-Man and Kramer Morgenthau,
ASC on Thor: The Dark World.”
Waititi sat in on grading sessions
with Technicolor’s supervising finishing
artist Steven J. Scott in Walt Disney’s
former personal screening theater on the
Disney lot. “I approach color grading like
I’m the eye of the audience,” says Waititi.
“I look at a shot and think about what
doesn’t look real or what I’m really
supposed to be focusing on. I’ll think,
‘We should be focusing on that guy over
there, except it’s way too bright on the
other side of the frame and my eyes are
being drawn over to that tree instead, so
let’s fix that.’ These artists are all so great
at what they do.”
Scott explains, “Our initial focus
was the 2D SDR version using
Autodesk’s new [Lustre/Flame]
Connected Colour Workflow in
Disney’s great theatrical environment. I
laid the foundation and set key
sequences with the production team,
which then served as the guide for our
team, including finishing artists Charles
Bunnag and Gray Marshall. We began
the final finishing in late August and
delivered in mid-October. From the 2D
SDR master grade, we derived the 3D
stereo conversion, HDR, Imax, and all
the home-video deliverables.”
Dillon elaborates that the finish-
ing employed “Lustre 2018.2 with an
HP Z840 [Workstation outfitted with
an] Nvidia P6000 GPU, and dual
ShotReactors [background cache
renderers].” He notes the additional
contributions of finishing artists Adam
Nazarenko and Dave Franks. “Finishing
was done in multiple theaters on the
Disney lot,” Dillon adds, “which gave
the filmmakers the flexibility to partici-
pate in finishing and sound mix without
much interruption.”
Pondering the conclusion of a
project largely crafted in postproduc-
tion, Aguirresarobe recalls taking great
satisfaction in seeing the final result.
“When you’re constantly surrounded
with bluescreen, you end up a little
worried about how it’s ultimately all
going to look,” he says. “Once I started
seeing the final trailers, I was very
pleased to see the outcome is a very
imaginative and spectacular-looking
film.”
Waititi agrees, noting that the
project’s nearly yearlong postproduction
phase afforded plenty of time for reflec-
tion. “You sit for a long time with all
these bluescreen shots, and in your head
you’re wanting it to look a certain way,”
he says. “You have to wait until all those
backgrounds, set extensions and CG
characters are finished. Once they start
coming in, you can finally refine what
you originally intended at the start of
the production, but you really need
those crucial key creative elements
within the frame right from the begin-
ning.”
Click here for exclusive lighting
diagrams and additional images. ●
TECHNICAL SPECS
2.39:1, 1.90:1 (Imax)
Digital Capture
Arri Alexa 65,
Vision Research Phantom Flex4K
Arri Prime 65, Vintage 765
61
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