Behind the scenes of THE LITTLE MERMAID with cinematographer Dion Beebe

0:00 hi I'm Dion Bibi uh Director of Photography on The Little Mermaid and this is the Go creative show [Music] hello and well a podcast for filmmakers my name is Ben consoli and today we speak with Dion Bibi the cinematographer of The Little Mermaid so I'm sure you all know but there is a live action Little Mermaid out and people are loving it I really enjoyed my interview with Dion Bibi I mean he is just such a legendary cinematographer check out his IMDb he's done a million films um and little mermaid is just his most recent and he does a really good job of explaining you know how he lit and fit and shot the Underwater World versus the above water world the challenges that go into it we dive deep into all of those

0:46 things no pun intended and I think you guys are really going to enjoy it thank you to everybody that asked all of your questions really good questions and I'm pretty sure we covered basically all of them on the show so thank you all so much for that uh but yeah let's just once again dive in to the interview with Dion Bibi the cinematographer of The Little Mermaid I want to welcome d on BB ACS ASC To Go creative show for the first time thank you so much what took you so long I don't know I was waiting for your call I mean sitting there by the phone like come on call me of course director photographer of just countless movies but we're here today to talk about The

1:32 Little Mermaid and anything else that may pop up I really enjoyed this film uh and I have to say too I was mentioning on my social I'm like my producer Connor is a is a huge Disney fan I myself like I mean who doesn't like Disney obviously but like there's that at that second level of Disney fandom that I'm not a member of I will never claim to be but yeah it's seeming though you you guys and what you did here with the little mermaid is really working for people like me casual Disney fans but also the really true hardcore fans of Disney are you feeling the same way yeah yeah look I I think you know taking this on was a was a little bit daunting because it is such a sort of beloved title um under the sort of you know Disney

2:18 sort of banner and yes there's there's the super fans you know there's people who you know this the animation the original was was such a sort of important part of their childhood or whatever aspect whatever attachment they have it's it's deep and look I've met Aerials you know in their 20s you know who were you know named after after our sort of Ariel in the movie and have sort of grown up you know you sort of have to remember this it's like what is it 86 or 7 that the original came out so you know that's quite a few years ago now um so yeah no look it was look it was exciting to to try and sort of figure out how to bring the story to

3:04 sort of essentially to life um but it was also you know with a sort of a fantastic partner in in Rob Marshall who we have a history together and I think we you know we very much sort of went in sort of collaborated on this thing and and and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we were going to do it well what was the thought process so you know there's this Legacy of the film it's obviously started as an animated film The Little Mermaid back in the 80s so coming into it now how inspired Were You by The Animated feature look you know without question you know we we watch the animation you know um It's tricky because you know

3:52 bringing an animation to life is you know we very much you know felt we needed to sort of pay homage to that to to those sort of fans of the original animation um but it's also a different process you know the live-action aspect is different you know the character is going to be a little bit different the world is going to be different because you're not in this sort of you know Animated World the sort of um cartoon aspect to the sort of dimensions of of character and and of sets of place um so sort of filling it out and sort of giving it the depth that needed um was you know there was a lot of

4:38 discussion about that but always keeping in mind you know the the original um so yes we watched it but we we really did not um try and sort of do any sort of frame by frame sort of recreation other than you know there are a couple of um moments that we really felt we sort of we we wanted to really hit you know and of course you know if you've seen it or not or when you eventually see it there are a couple of moments that you know you know pretty much you could put side by side with the animation and sort of just experience that moment um on the big on the big screen live as you did on the on the animation hopefully name one what's one of those

5:25 moments where you were like you know what we nailed this I look I feel and it was a pretty exciting moment um when it's it's the sort of Part of Your World reprise It's when um Ariel after she saves Prince Eric lays him on the beach and they the the courtiers and the sort of from the palace come down and they find Eric on the beach she escapes into the water and she's watching him um on the beach and she has the sort of what sort of called sort of Part of Your World reprise um and in the animation it's it's um it sort of crescendos with the wave crashing and she sings the Big note at the end of that sequence of the part of

6:10 your world and a wave crashes behind her it sort of Dawn and and we spent a lot of time recreating that moment you know creating our own Wave Splash so we could time the exact moment as as Hallie hit that note we could the wave could crash behind her and she you know and it's it's a sort of you know it sort of brings sort of chills to to me thinking about it because you know her voice her performance at that moment and we did it in one shot so when you see the movie It's she appears behind the rock we sort of pull up and it's in the water at Sea and we're sort of so we're on a crane out in the water you know on a close-up on a zoom pulling

6:57 back as she climbs up and she's singing the song and then we widen out just as the wave hits and you know we reveal the sort of you know the setting and yeah it was a sort of exciting exciting sort of moment to to recreate I hadn't seen the film honestly since it was originally in theaters so I it was kind of a little bit all new to me but that moment I went with our producer Connor at that moment I was like it's all of a sudden the memories of the film flood back when you see that moment so I I mean whatever you all the work all the planning was well worth it because it certainly did have an impact on me and I'm sure countless other people out there watching it

7:43 yeah yeah no well that was the hope I mean it's it's not that we're you know we were ever looking to sort of copy an an aspect of it but I think there's something in the original that just touched a lot of people and sort of hearts and I think that moment is is one of them you know and I think that moment as and particularly as look as Hallie performs that song you know and and brings a new life to it um it was really sort of satisfying to sort of bring the the Two Worlds together effectively now you and Rob Marshall have been noted in articles to have been inspired by Blue Planet for Little Mermaid I'd love to talk to you about that uh you know I guess what

8:28 inspired you from that show and how did you implement that inspiration into the film yeah you know look I I think look because the film is set you know half the movie is sat underwater um we had to sort of figure out you know what our what our sort of under underwater world was going to look like how people were going to function in that how we were going to effectively do big musical numbers in this world so there was a lot of discussion about sort of methodology and how we approach you know camera lighting um moving the actors all of those elements um and to sort of bring them into um in into our sort of live-action version and blue planet I mean there is

9:16 some incredibly stunning sort of imagery both about just the power of the ocean you know the world of the surface of the ocean as well as just the sort of depth you know we spent a lot of time um sort of studying you know how light affects color when when you go at different depths and and our movie sort of takes place the elements that take place underwater take place at different depths underwater so you know part of aerial sort of you know where she hangs out with scuttle and Flounder is near the surface the world of um you know with Triton and her sisters in the world of Atlantica he's in a sort of mid-level part of the ocean

10:02 again the light changes the sort of the the sense of sort of particulates and the atmosphere effectively changes and then when we go deeper into Ursula's World Ursula's Lair which is near the bottom of the ocean then of course you know you sort of eradicate almost all the sort of Red Spectrum and now you're into very Blues deep blues and almost purples um so you know we were able to sort of look at something like blue planet and really study um you know how a sort of real world um is affected by by these sort of depths and ideas and then really sort of put together our own sort of playbook in

10:47 terms of how we were going to sort of realize that because some of you know what happens when you go deep it it gets very hard to see there's very little light cuts through and it becomes you know incredibly sort of you know murky and and sort of difficult so we sort of you know devised our own palette and um and sort of put together a sort of a lookbook effectively for the movie ads we went in as we knew we were approaching different sequences at different parts of the ocean we had this sort of reference and blue planet was a a big part of sort of pulling in the ideas and those sort of preferences we had a couple of questions about this particular topic Christopher Sousa 59 on

11:34 Instagram Matt TBR on Twitter about the process of filming the Underwater World in The Little Mermaid now obviously I'm assuming that there's quite a bit of CGI in there and when you talk about like referencing things like particulates in the in the water and all these things how much of this underwater space was physically in front of the camera and how much which CGI I'd love to know the process yeah so you know look we we knew we were doing a musical um we knew we had big you know sort of effectively sort of dance numbers underwater so you know we we very quickly sort of um you know moved away from any idea of doing it in any actual water because you

12:21 know we we knew we couldn't move effectively our characters didn't move we would just be hindered by just the process so um you know the idea of sort of creating these references became more important because we were handing we were having to sort of lean into the visual effects component pretty heavily but what was important is that we work out you know the the I the the visual sort of concept behind each of these modes each of these sort of depths in the ocean what's aerial sort of you know Ariel's Grotto versus you know Triton's sort of throne room or so they're sort of creating visual reference points becomes very important when you're entering a very

13:08 sort of effects heavy CGI world because people don't know or understand like there's no real reference to the average person about what these depths look like unless they see something like blue planet or scuba diving or anything like that yeah exactly people who who have those references exactly have a sort of a some idea what it what it is to be under but then it also depends on the ocean you run you know if you're if you're in the sort of deep Atlantic versus the Caribbean or you know Mediterranean you know these oceans are different and the level of particulants change and so there's a there is a lot to sort of to sort of you know pull from so we really sort of wanted to create it that's why the idea of the sort of

13:54 lookbook creating these sort of very clear reference points for us um before we started shooting so that we knew when we were when we were capturing the live action elements what we were trying what we were hoping to achieve and so the process of of capturing those um elements were you know there are a number of ways you know currently to to do any sort of big effects CG sort of movie and and in in terms of shooting underwater again there's a number of different ways we could do it you look at sort of Avatar way of the water James Cameron chose to work with a lot of motion capture um facial capture he he shot his actors

14:40 underwater um in those Motion in in those sort of capture modes you know so he was not doing any any real live action filming um what what we wanted to do because it's a musical and because Rob and John DeLuca and his choreographers timing is everything so we needed the control of the actors you know we we needed a live we need you know had to time it had to move them into frame out of frame you know they had to sort of move relative to each other in in very specific timing so our approach was a little more mechanical um where we had actors on on effectively on the end of a crane

15:25 um in a sort of rig that could rotate go up down sideways so the actors could be moved and they would be moved by about you know Dance Collection of dances and stunt people who would control the motion of each of these actors um and they were in these sort of revolving rings so they could rotate 360 and really what this allowed us to do is is really sort of be very very specific about shot composition timing um and and we could do something like you know Part of Your World which is you know each shot is timed each each line that that Hallie sings as you sort of you know flies up out of

16:10 frame you know swims out of frame or enters another frame everything was worked out beforehand you know we you know withdraw When We Do songs it's a very sort of meticulous process of um you know of timing and shot choice and how each each sort of each line is performed because what we do with within the musical genre together is you know we rehearse these numbers very thoroughly um so that the physicality of the song is understood by the singer before they they pre-record so you know if if Hallie is sort of surging upwards

16:56 or singing or doing a particular physical motion she knows what that is when she pre-records so the idea of just standing behind a mic passively singing is is not it you know the actors know what they're going to be doing in the song so so this process of sort of rehearsing um blocking the the song um before the pre-recorders are very important sort of part of Rob's process but it also means then when we go into filming um we have a very sort of structured sort of blueprint of and blocking of the actor's movement and each sort of you know where each line is going to be performed and um so it's

17:44 it's it's a it's a very sort of sort of thorough and difficult you know time-consuming process but it really sort of pays off you know within the complexity of of trying to you know shoot a performance with an actor dangling on at the end of the crane yeah and eight people controlling their movement and another eight people controlling the other actor and sometimes you've got 32 people just on the floor moving the actors around you know so it it was a real dance it was a real sort of uh yeah it was fun though I want to talk a little bit more about that the motion of the actors so you you've explained it a little bit but I want to get it I want to get a real clear understanding of it in my head so you've got I'm it sounds like you've got people dangling off um cables from

18:30 cranes and then you also have like you you mentioned something about putting them in like a um a device that allows them to spin 360. can you just explain to me like the rigging of the talent and then also corresponding the camera how how are you rigging your camera to capture all these moves the approach it's in shooting underwater on stage is is pretty much like shootings in space effectively you know where there is no real Horizon um and you know and and people are in constant motion so we're underwater no one's ever still and and and people relative to each other are always you know floating in space and so we so we really sort of wanted to devise a way of shooting live where our actors could float our camera could

19:16 float um we could have multiple actors in a scene and they're all floating independently of one another um so they're sort of yeah so that if you can imagine a sort of like a effectively a camera crane with a sort of pedestal base on Wheels with a sort of you know fulcrum one end is the actor you know tied into a circular ring that is on ball bearings so it can rotate 360. so the actor could effectively do a full 360. on axis yes but being on the end of this arm means they can also be raised up and down you know and left to right and be pushed along on the wheel so we had a sort of every axis of movement available

20:02 to us couple that with a camera which is on the end of a telescopic you know crane where we're able to then move either you know countering their movement or joining them in movement so you know we we were then able to just sort of think of our think of movement and think of the sort of dance and really sort of free ourselves up in terms of you know normally musical when we're working we're on our feet we're working on a on a flat surface and and suddenly we were like okay well now we can we can work vertically you know now she can swim upwards you know she can swim down she can you know we can we're not sort of restrained to to feed on the ground

20:49 anymore um did that excite you or did that overwhelm I mean I can imagine I think initially it terrified us you know because yeah you know because Rob is a you know came from dance he came from Broadway um he understands putting things on its feet you know putting it on a stage and and you know you you accidentally after you exit right and you know that's how it works but suddenly we were you know presented with this idea that you could move in in any and every direction and how do we firstly how do we sort of deconstruct that and put it into a musical you know like say when part of your world and and and Ariel swims up to the opening and the top of

21:35 her her sort of grotter um you know how do we rehearse the timing of that and and understand how we're going to break it down um so you know it was it was a complicated process of of really of constructing it on its feet effectively so we would have to imagine these sort of the big moves up and you know everything we do in rehearsal I shoot on a small camera and we sort of work out the timing so at first when we were doing it with Hallie on a stage just with cutouts of all her you know her what's its and things around her and um you know we we could sort of walk her through the timing of it and then have to imagine the big surging movements

22:21 um first part of the process then we had to sort of put it into Rigs and then sort of think okay well now she's she's gonna she's for this she's gonna have to be on wires because I'll travel she needs to travel you know 20 feet up so that's not going to work on our on our sort of on our crane rakes for the actors because the was limited about how high we could raise them so we could then break it down and figure out what rigs um were applicable to what moment of the song that we had sort of you know constructed um so yeah so it was it was a really crazy dance when you imagine the sort of you know you know how he's on a crane wearing a

23:06 crane sometimes you know you know King Triton's in there on his Crane and his floating around and moving and then add the sisters in and now we've got you know four or five people on cranes while being around I mean it it looked ridiculous but it's Madness it's total insanity yeah any reference at all in your monitors of what this world may look like or were you purely truly just looking at Green you know we we started with that there's a system called ncam where you can um you know create digital 3D renderings of of the sets John Meyer our production designer you know save designed Ariel's Grotto and then we put it into a 3D model and with the sort of witness

23:52 cameras on set we could um run a key and place her within the sort of within her sort of cave um and we did utilize that for a couple of weeks as we started out but eventually Rob was just looking past that you know and he he had enough confidence in Imagining the sort of the sort of previous we did and and the visual references we created um he had enough in his mind that he didn't need the live um renderings that sort of of of the environments uh so we we started with that system and then actually sort of um ditched it a couple of weeks into

24:39 shooting wow and then we we're really just um working within the blue screen world but knowing you know really because of our you know we had a very very sort of intense rehearsal period I mean almost for me uh you know I mean covered broke it up a little bit but it was the better part of a year of prep um starting in 2019 you know we started prepping this project um and a lot of that was more prep than any other film you've ever worked on I imagine so uh it it yes it was definitely more prep and um and and I and because of you know covid hitting us a week before we we were going to go into our first week of shooting we were

25:25 a week out March 2020 you know so uh sets built pre-lit you know we were the test shot we were like literally ready to go God that's the one yeah I was so I was so like my head in a movie that like people like I was like coven like what is that like what's going on like so like no idea because you know when you're in that mode I just blink it of course and then it's like we're like okay we're gonna go we're gonna break for three weeks and come back it's like like sort of five months later I think oh my God talk to me about the camera package you used for The Little Mermaid and why you chose it yeah you know I shot on the um uh Alexa 65 so we you know I really wanted to and

26:10 and started talking with Rob we really wanted to put this on a on a on a big canvas um you know just the world's you know the world book below the ocean you know is is of course a big canvas but but also you know Prince Eric's world the the sort of the the land of the world above that she's so sort of you know aspires to sort of um you know explore we we really wanted to um give that a as much of a sort of breadth and scope as we could so I went with the sort of um yeah the Alexa 65 which is sort of a great sort of large format um camera system um and combine that with um the

26:56 um Hawk anamorphic lenses for the above world but then we shot on the Leica spherical lenses for the underwater elements um for me sort of um because of the the vast amount of visual effects work it didn't make sense for me to shoot the uh the underwater live elements um on anamorphics because the depth is different underwater how we're sort of combining you know aerial say with um the sort of scuttle or or Sebastian or these other little animated characters within that world meant that you know anamorphics by Nature have a

27:42 much you know quicker fall off than a different Optical response and um and and I didn't really want to I didn't want to impose the anamorphic look on the underwater elements that we were shooting rather sort of capture them a little cleaner and be able to then impose create build the sort of optical sort of um effects you want into that world with a little more sort of freedom a lot of the comments on the film from a cinematography standpoint is that it is dark and you guys really leaned into the realism personally I didn't really think it was all that dark maybe I'm just used to seeing dark films but it it felt right in line with just you know what

28:28 your expectations are for seeing a major Motion Picture nowadays I feel like people are really embracing the shadows and I think you guys did a really good job of it but that is one of the things that you know you're hearing quite a bit of so I'd love to talk to you about that was that a strategy did that come from the Blue Planet inspiration um is it something you intended to do and why yeah look I you know I think we were sort of somewhat bracing ourselves for um that reaction and I think mostly it it comes largely from the fact that the reference point is an animation you know which is incredibly vibrant there are no shadows in that animation you know you have to sort of realize you know this is and so if if that is your sort of reference

29:14 point um to the live action film then it's always gonna no matter what we did it was always going to be too dark or Darker Than People expected or darker than they remember the the sort of Animation so you know so some of that I think was just built into you know taking on a live-action sort of version of this film um but yes you know the we did look to to try and um build um our worlds from a real world reference point so that again the sort of blue planet idea taking this underwater footage examining it looking at it understanding how color is

30:00 affected by depth how sort of um you know how particulants play when you're at different depth um all of these things we we wanted to infuse into it to ground it in a sort of realism you know understanding of course that it's a story about mer people so you know there's an element of there's always an element of fantasy but I think you know Rob really wanted um Ariel's sort of Journey um and her world to feel grounded in in a reality um rather than pure Pure Fantasy and I think when when you can effectively create um when you can ground a sort of story

30:46 like that I think it the stakes become higher you know we identify more with the Journey of it you know if it's pure fantasy I just feel it's often harder for us as an audience my view to identify with that character and I think what was important for us is that the world we build you know is there to to create depth in the understanding of aerial sort of choices and her character and her journey so also like what better movie in all of the live action remakes of these Disney movies to have it be the most realistic possible like Ariel is obsessed with the real world like that's kind of her whole thing is that she

31:31 she's fascinated by the even the most mundane things about human life and culture so having it leaning into realism seems to be the only way to do it I think fantasy would have been wrong and against the storyline yeah and and exactly and and her her sort of want and her sort of you know what's driving her is is you know is is a real sort of curiosity and um and a sort of uh a longing to explore something that you know she knows nothing about and and yes I think you know we worked hard just to try and sort of to to ground that Journey um and and and and not make it and not

32:19 try and sort of you know that part of the world feel like the animation yeah well let's talk about the above above water World um wary Spencer on Instagram is asking what did it take to get Italy to feel and look like the Caribbean so first of all good for you for shooting in Italy that whole time I mean what a great experience that must have been not a bad place to be although the Caribbean would have been a nice place too but not a bad place to be yeah look I tell you after like spending like the longest coldest winter wettest winter in London where we shot most of the movie to go to like hit summer and

33:04 go to Sardinia and be on the beaches of Sardinia it was such a sort of a reward for all the suffering and hunting exactly so you know so look um yeah look you know Finding I mean that beach was a was a big search you know and and um the Mediterranean certainly was high on our list of you know locations you know in terms of trying to locate somewhere in the Mediterranean because of just the logistics of moving out of London to another you know in terms of the crew and everything that has that comes with a a movie of this scale um to relocate um so somewhere within Europe you know

33:50 was was going to be we looked at Croatia we looked at um Greece we looked at a number of um sort of possibilities for beaches um and you know in the in the end you know one of the sort of I think things that really sort of Drew us to what is now you know we refer to as Ariel's Beach is the various distinctive rock formations that that are in the movie and you see them in some of the sort of posters or postcards or images from the trailer or you know where she lays him down on the on the sand and you have that sort of sort of these sharp sort of conical sort of you know rock formations that just out

34:35 um just on the edge of the coast and you know we really wanted there to be a sort of iconic element to her Beach like a instantly recognizable you know so every time we came back to it and and when she's on her Rock and the sort of longing she has for you know to being on land and the view of the castle all these things were sort of images we really wanted to sort of reinforce and um and having that sort of that Cove Beach with those very distinct sort of um rock formations was was a sort of a key part of that decision and then and then you know said in here because it was sort of Within Reach For Us from from London and

35:23 um you know it it's always a gamble when you go to an into a big sort of location element of a movie like this because we build so much control Rob enjoys so much control in terms of what he does and how he times things when you throw yourself on a beach in Italy you know you you give up a bit of control you know and um you know weather and you know believe it or not like it's the surf kicking up or the wind kicking up on the beach and just all that thing as a as a cinematographer when you're trying to sort of build the sort of continuity and consistency from day to day into sort of sequences like the sequence where she rescues him and

36:09 it all takes place at dawn you know so now you've got these complicated sequences of people arriving she's laying on the beach you know she then has to swim out get on her Rock she does the Part of Your World reprise and it's all of these elements you know that that you're building around that take place within five minutes of each other but you're shooting them over a number of days and and so always sort of fun and exciting to you know to to shoot these sequences to you know really sort of map the light and understand how you're going to make all that that feel cohesive and and the passing of time feel you know understood and and real we've talked about filming

36:55 on beaches quite a bit I don't know it just keeps coming up because we had the DP of Pachinko come on and one of the shots he talked quite a bit about is this in the earlier episodes this shot of the father running to go uh grab what he thought was his drowned daughter on the beach um we talked with the DP of White Lotus about filming on the beaches of Hawaii and similar things come up in that they're very difficult to know where you are like be yeah you have a horizon but if you don't see any any formations you don't know where you are unless you pull back and see the shore but sometimes you don't want to show how close they are to the shore so it's interesting to hear once again this popping up because I do think that's really really important and I'm curious about the reverse perspective like you know there are shots from behind her she's on the rock

37:41 formation she's looking up um that castle there was that practical at all or was that totally just added in afterwards that's total CG yeah so but but the the what we did have was the sort of the the sort of that Headland and so when we're looking for the beach we knew we needed a place to sort of locate the castle and that sort of relative sort of um sort of position for her to sort of you know connect with it from the water so you know as we looked at beaches and scouted we always had that in mind so we would actually scouting we would go into the water look from the water imagine and that rock we we built the rock because it didn't exist where we wanted

38:27 it so we would go into the water and try and imagine distance over her shoulder to the castle and you know so but you're totally right about the sort of these sort of visual markers that that you sort of need and in these sort of particularly vast open locations can become a little sort of geographically confusing even though it's sand and Beach and water is that where the beach is that way certain things are sort of simple to understand but but you know having sort of strong sort of visual indicators that helped the audience locate themselves quickly you know you you don't want to spend time in these particularly emotional moments wondering where you

39:12 are you know like where am I on the beach or is this close to the castle or not so you know is this where are we in the same place where you know you know Eric washed up on the shore you know these things you know you you want to have clear you know clear visual storytelling um so yeah you know um finding that within any location and and it's not just location work I think it can be any bit of Storytelling particularly if it's action driven you really benefit from helping your audience understand geography you know where am I which way am I facing you know where is the threat coming from potentially or you know all of those

39:58 things are you know very sort of important sort of tools when when we're sort of telling a story um or or covering action you know yeah I mean even in my own work I'll because your eyes see everything beyond the Monitor and you're like I know where I am but sometimes it takes you to really narrow in on just the frame to say do do we know where we are like it's it's amazing how often that can come up especially when you're in the heat of things you're trying to blow through pages you're running quickly like do we know where we are it's so fundamental but it's really important um yeah a couple of things I just wanted to hit on before we wrap up first and this is a good question it's from Holly's uh Hollis Finns on Twitter wants to know which filming location was the most difficult

40:43 um in terms of environment schedule whatever the difficulty may be which location was the most difficult for you look it that it sort of split in some ways in some ways the sort of we we had more you know obstacles in a way shooting on location because you can't control everything you're doing and the weather and wind and time of day and all of those sort of elements you know come into play but really the sort of the most challenging had to be the underwater elements you know you know just choreographing the actors you know trying to sort of keep the you know capture those live action elements to give them the life they needed and not get sort of involved down in the

41:30 technicality of it because you know Hallie is playing a mermaid on the end of a crane you know it's it's tough and yet she brings such sort of joy and the life and sort of you know into this sort of performance and and so really what you're trying to do what I'm trying to do is really service that you know find ways to sort of to capture those to capture her performance that is not going to be such an imposition on her you know because you can do anything and you can choose as difficult a path as you want but but you really do have to consider what it is you're trying to capture and what you're trying to achieve and if you and if you burden your cast too much you know not just

42:15 will they suffer but you know the whole production will suffer so you know the finding ways and and making that sort of underwater world sort of you know just have its own life and and and give the actors a chance to you know to bring their characters to life was I think definitely the most challenging part I'm shocked to hear I'm shocked you're not here really any mention of the Shipwreck scenes when I watched the film I figured like that has got to be the most complicated part you're uh assumedly in a tank it's locked it out of mind see that just that first of all it's it looked so good and it was just so and you had a lot of it there was a lot of shipwreck scenes in this and these battle scenes and all of that

43:01 um you almost forget it because you're so dazzled by the underwater that a lot was happening on the surface of the water too can you talk to us a little bit about those shipwrecks seeing ship battle scenes in The Little Mermaid yeah no look that that is up there in terms of level of difficulty for sure you know we um John Meyer production designer built a full-scale ship um on a on a Gimbal and the whole thing sat up about I think 70 50 to 70 feet in the air um so it could completely move you know and roll and I mean it was incredible with full mast and set I mean it was incredible and we built it on a on a on an outdoor

43:46 in an outdoor tank but whether you know really just for spill off we didn't have water running alongside the boat but what we had is sort of wave machines so we could um you know they really sort of drop tanks where they sort of release the water and we could do these massive volumes of water across the deck or across the bow and um and you know we had to shoot that at night and of course it was winter in London and it was absolutely freezing cold at one point we're shooting actually not a 19 but a day sequence with jono um as sort of Prince Eric and and it actually started snowing and we're like oh my God this is ridiculous you know but you know they were I mean absolute Troopers you know that thing

44:31 about trying to protect your actors as much as you can and your crew reminds you but it was tough tough uh environment you know they were wet it was freezing cold um and once you sort of got on the boat because it was so high up we had to get everyone on pull away all our supports and once you're on it you were stuck on it for a bit and you know then the waves would come and you know there was nowhere to go so we couldn't really have people helping they had to everyone had to get off the actors were just okay here we go and um you know we shot uh on sort of you know a number of you know big 75-foot you know telescopic cranes and we had all sorts of rigs working you know we had the sort of um you know the

45:17 sort of spider cam system to sort of run the camera across the deck and it it was technically quite challenging and then of course you add the the actual shipwreck itself which is at night so now you take all of this into a night shooting with fire and waves and um yeah I think I I think I did actually suppress a lot of that memory but um it was it was yeah very challenging but but at the same time you know what a great opportunity to sort of play with all of that you know and and bring that you know have the opportunity to bring that sequence to life like that was it was pretty fun last thing I wanted to touch on briefly

46:03 and then we just have a couple rapid fire questions from our audience um last thing I want to talk to you about is this idea that you know for quite a bit of the film Ariel can't speak um and she's above water how did that change the cinematography when you are working with a character that needs to express a lot of emotion I mean she's a star but she cannot speak um talk to me about the way that that impact your cinematography and how you really achieved it so that us as audience members watching we still felt what she was feeling yeah it's interesting you know because when you I think people forget that the fact that she for half the movie doesn't speak um and and if and if you think back to

46:49 the animation the person who spoke was Sebastian and so Sebastian is the voice of the sort of comment on everything which is why the character is is in the animation is very big it's overly expressive you know sort of almost sort of cartoon character you know because Sebastian is carrying the weight of the story you know um so you know he is the the sort of the The Voice going forward once Ariel loses her voice so you know we we were you know again in that sort of pursuit of trying to ground the storytelling and sort of you know Sebastian in our movie is is not as sort

47:36 of a big of a character he's a he's a he's a smart ass and he's he's got sort of some great lines and he's and he's here this sort of comic relief um but he's not as big and and doesn't sort of dominate the the sort of aerial Prince Eric relationship like he does in the animation yeah um so but interestingly we you know and you know um and Rob sort of worked with lin-manuel um and Alan menkin to create a new song for her um in the movie which is you know for the first time which was a way to for her to be when she first comes on land to be singing and expressing herself but of course in her head so she's not actually singing

48:21 but what we found when you know it was actually a sort of funny thing we were shooting um the moment that Prince Eric was going to come into the room and and sort of meet the mystery girl for the first time and this is during the sort of the end of for the first time um um For the First Time song you know which sort of ends with Eric sort of coming in through the doors and finding her in there and she can't speak you know and he says well it can't be her but what we did um there's a sort of sequence in there so she's you know silent songs playing in their head and and we did a big lighting queue and a move around her with all the lights are the dump out and she as we come around starts to sing the song so

49:09 we sort of we took it into fantasy for a moment for her to be able to sing and speak and express the song in words rather than just in her head and through sort of her expression so we sort of you know use that technique as a way to sort of to have her Express that those feelings that sort of that sentiment before it sort of comes around and then reality comes back and she then can no longer speak but yeah that was a cool moment I think if I remember correctly everything was in silhouette or everything was sort of blacked out when she when you could see her mouth move when you're in her head and then when we came back to reality you can no longer see that that was a cool moment and an interesting way to bridge from her underwater world or her I guess her pre-spell world and her

49:57 post spell World um yeah but I'm interested in particular about did did anything change in the cinematography like the lensing did you change did you lean more on close-ups because you needed more facial expressions did your lighting change how did you how did you account for not being able to hear her or and see her mouth no you well you're totally right in terms of you know coverage um you know because the sort of subtlety of her Expressions you know her the looks from her you know that just the eyes dot into the site you know looks to Sebastian or you know so with our words of course now you know thankfully you know Hallie's amazing and and her ability to express through her

50:43 face is remarkable in her eyes you know she's she's um stunning and but yes you know we definitely sort of Lent into more close-ups more sort of allowing her to sort of to play those sort of Silent moments with looks um and little Expressions um like in the in the library with with um you know so the mo when Eric and Ariel meet again in the library and there's a sequence together in the library you know we do use a lot more close-up work there um and for Kiss the Girl and on the boat together again you know just allowing her to to you know and for the audience to sort of really you know understand and

51:30 and not feel any sort of loss of communication effectively through the fact that she was sort of you know muted um but yeah you know they're you know so that it was really more coverage than than a sort of change in in lighting or um you know cinematography we were in our above world so we're in our sort of you know anamorphics you know in that sort of slightly shallower depth you know on on how we captured the close-ups and and that I think also assisted that because when you shoot long lens anamorphic and the world you know Falls away behind you are as an audience focused more on on the face on the

52:16 expression and you know we we gave up a bit more of the the importance of environment in those types of sequences it does become more about your actor the sort of those close-ups become about them about their expression not about you know this sort of place or setting necessarily all right couple of Rapid Fire questions and then we will wrap up first one is MM Disney 200 on Twitter what was more fun for you to work on under the sea or on land um well funny enough Under the Sea the song was particularly fun to work on you know it was incredibly complicated number to put together you know because it's we have a

53:03 sort of a small sort of live action element in Ariel and then we have this massive sort of CG sort of component in all the sort of sea creatures that have come to life and sort of join in this sort of song and dance number with Sebastian but the process of sort of putting that together you know we worked with the Alvin Ailey the New York Dance Company came out to London we sort of you know Rob and his choreographers selected to sort of um you know the creatures that moved and this again was the Blue Planet reference you know we would you know Rob and his choreographers would look at sort of certain creatures and how they move and how they billowed and and find sort of uh sort of parallels in dance and then got the we you know bringing the Alvin

53:49 Ailey company over they then physically brought those sea creature movements into a sort of physical movement and actually they were costumed in order to actually accommodate that so we and then shot them dancing you know in a on a stage and Carl you know Rob and John and his choreographers then worked out these sequences and the motion in order to then go back into animation and build the sequence so it was a you know really sort of a a fascinating sort of process to go through and and really was a lot of fun too I'm guessing the answer to this is going to be yes but Gia I hope I'm pronouncing this right Gia jazool on Twitter wants to know did the post-processing live up

54:36 to what you imagined while you were shooting the film yeah look you know it's it's it's a massive sort of post process and I think you you know we put a lot of work into previous and to um you know constructing sort of building images that became reference points through the the sort of entirety of of the production so yeah look I I am sort of happy with how look things you know you'll never get everything you want um but you know we we put a lot of work into trying to really sort of hone down the you know all the elements and there are a lot of elements you know when you when you start to build out the underwater wall in terms of

55:23 all those things I mentioned before and depth and particulants and color and and and movement um it was a sort of complicated um layering to sort of go through um but um but yeah look I I'm happy you know I'm I'm am I ever always completely happy probably not but but you know I'm never happy anyway you know I think we strive to do things and are you a big grumpy on this no no but but I think you know I think we we strive for Perfection but I I don't think we ever achieve it well that's why the strive keeps going on because you can never actually get there but they're over yeah I have a feeling there's a lot of perfection in this film you're just

56:09 over critical of your own work and that is certainly typical of the people that we have on the show and any professionals um cjr3 birth I feel like we answered your question he did reference the animated film Tristan galland uh could you detail the step-by-step prep process we talked a lot about that I kind of feel like we have it covered and thank you guys so much for asking your questions these are great questions um if we don't if we didn't get to it specifically I kind of feel like we got around the topics in the interview so I feel really good about the completeness of this story and um I think we've got some cool stuff here Dion I couldn't thank you more or the film is awesome I mean we didn't get a chance to talk about anything else that you worked on which is a shame because you've worked on a lot of just really fantastic films and that just means we'll have to have you back there you go yeah we'll talk about a

56:56 different genre I love that [Music] a cinematographer for a Little Mermaid for coming on the show and sharing his information with all of us we really enjoyed talking with him and I hope you did too let us know give us some feedback on all of our social media profiles where they're on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and YouTube and all of those things and if you're listening to this episode and you're wondering I wonder what Ben looks like I wonder what Dion looks like it's easy to do all you have to do is head over to our YouTube channel hit subscribe and check out all of our interviews there on video so you get a whole new aspect of these videos that you don't get when you're listening to the audio only All Things Go creative show at

57:42 gocreativeshow.com and if you want to follow me I am there at Ben consoli at Ben consoli on Instagram and wow is there a lot going on with me I have a brand new band called three Second Chances there's tons of behind the scenes and music videos that we produced I own a video production company I'm also I'm always posting behind the scenes clips of the work we're doing so there's just a lot happening on the at Ben consoli Instagram you guys would enjoy I want to thank you all for joining us today and we'll see you next time on Go creative show a podcast for filmmakers