Making Spider-Man No Way Home (with Mauro Fiore and Darren Gilford) GCS295

0:00 hi my name is maro fiori i was a cinematographer on spiderman no way home hi my name is darren guilford i'm the production designer on spiderman no way home and this is the gop creative show hello and welcome to the go creative show a podcast for filmmakers my name is ben consoley and today we speak with production designer darren gilford and cinematographer maro fiore from spiderman no way home guys welcome to the show thank you so much for joining us thank you thank you for having us thank you clearly a ton to talk about and we've got a lot of questions from our audience so i know you guys are excited about this episode but before we get there i just want to

0:47 quickly mention our sponsor filmmakers academy master your craft at filmmakersacademy.com and encourage you to follow us on your favorite podcast app hit subscribe so you never miss an episode as well as twitter instagram facebook and youtube where you can not only hear the show but see the show all things go creative show at gocreativeshow.com so it is a rare situation for us here at go creative show that we get to talk to both a production designer and a cinematographer together on the same show so this is really really exciting for us and um particularly because i want to get to get to the the combination of the two you know the collaboration between the two of you guys you both worked together on spiderman no way home

1:33 and darren i'd like to start with you as production designer what is your collaboration like between the cinematographer and yourself well it's a critical critical relationship uh and i had a just an absolute joy working with maura our first film together hope we have many more uh in our future but uh you know it's a very uh integrated relationship i mean uh you know i have got to uh kind of conceive the sets with obviously our director and the producing team and as we start to go through that you know uh having morrow's input in the conception of the sets is critical especially light i mean mara's always talking about light he needs light we need plenty of light uh in in every aspect of our of our sets

2:18 and making sure he's got plenty of room to work uh plenty of uh you know the compositions that are going to help tell the story um you know and it it it goes down to the fiber of of of of everything we design uh you say it with disdain darren you're like he needs light he needs light he needs love i mean i want to support i want to supply him with everything he needs and his team needs uh and it's really important um i mean that relationship is just really really critical so uh as we're conceiving sets in the art department you know it's not just about how things look and how pretty they are but how how they're going to be photographed how we are going to be able to uh you know capture the scenes and the story elements that we need uh in a

3:04 way that is artistic and beautiful but also uh you know relatively as easy as can be uh in a very complicated shooting schedule and in the shooting day so it's not just uh designing the sets it's also kind of helping design the production and how to make it uh as seamless for all the other departments as possible now tomorrow for you i mean like darren was saying it's you need light you need this you do that so when you when you go on to these sets um i know largely there's some collaboration certainly but i think a lot of these sets at least in prior conversations i've had with production designers the sets are fairly conceived before the cinematographer gets involved in some you know in some at some points so when you come onto the set when you start working with darren

3:49 on this on spider-man are you immediately faced with a situation where you kind of have to make changes in order to accommodate lighting well i mean uh the collaboration since we have plenty of time uh especially on a film that this scale uh is you know happens very early on as everything is conceived and everything is like previz we're in discussion as to like how we're gonna actually physically make the film so there's a lot of interaction between myself and darren the production designer and everybody in his department uh if he's not able to answer my question there's plenty of like art directors or people along the way that uh you know are there uh for every single question

4:35 and also um you know collaboration is crucial because of the fact that there's there are so many visual effects in a film like this that the visual effects supervisor has to be involved in every discussion and we have to sort of like uh find a way for all of us uh to come up with a successful project in the end so it's really just you know it has to work yeah yeah neither of you are strangers to a large-scale movie like this but when you know that you're going to be working on the next spider-man it does something kind of scare you a little bit do you get a little nervous about anything do you are you do you get a little i don't know i mean just knowing that you're jumping into such a huge franchise like that

5:21 mara we'll start with you okay um it doesn't really scare me but i realize uh whether it is spiderman or avatar the amount of like dedication and creativity that you have to really throw onto a project like this um and be able to react uh because there's changes along the way uh that happen it's not like we have we have a clear idea what we're doing towards the beginning of the film with the script but then there's a lot of changes that happen and you have to be able to interact with those stranger or react to those changes quickly so uh that's the part that's kind of like i i have to have the energy not that i'm going to be overwhelmed everything has to be approached sort of like step by step but um that's really

6:07 more of the uh you know the overcoming that that i guess that slight fear and darren i saw you kind of smirk when i asked that so i have a feeling that you're in agreement that there's got to be something you're a little bit nervous about stepping into a project like this you know what i don't i actually if i'm not a little nervous i don't think i'm comfortable like i i need to be on edge a little bit as i take on these projects i i i take on this job as such a um you know such a privilege to work on these ips and uh how passionate the fans and the people are about these movies uh and i just i i i just want to you know give it do it do the do do the justice to the project uh as they come along

6:52 um yeah so i mean a project like this is daunting it was my first superhero movie too which i've been wanting to get into and dive in for a while and this was the perfect one for me for a bunch of reasons but uh yeah it was a bit daunting um but i you know i knew the the the first moment i met with john watts and he kind of pitched me the concept uh of uh of the three spider-man i was in i was all in uh and i was i was very very passionate about it from day one uh and you know assembling my team and my crew um yeah and uh you know you you can't be intimidated by it you have to um you know it's like eating an elephant one bite at a time you have to kind of take it uh slow and and let it come to you uh

7:38 but yeah i think nervous is is is a place where i'm actually pretty comfortable at the beginning of a project i like to be i like to be tested i like to be uh you know kind of you know pushed and this one was definitely at that level well being adaptable like you said mara i mean it's you guys were one of the first films to come back after covid and you had a major disruption i mean so much so that the original director of photography wasn't able to do the film so i mean maura you came in kind of still at the beginning but that right there is a major point where you kind of have to be adaptable um first of all talk to me about that call i mean what what happened when you found out that you were going to be taken over for this something that you weren't intending on

8:23 doing you weren't even booked for i mean what kind of what kind of feeling comes over you when something like that happens well it's a very interesting story because uh in a lot of ways the crew was already hired on the phone so the whole camera department sort of started the film with the other director photography and all of a sudden they were they were without a job so the first they see uh bill co i can say his name bill co recommended me to the producers as a as an option to uh we had worked together in the past and he we had a really great experience so he recommended me to the producers uh on the project that the producer said well we'll put him on the list but you know yeah we'll get him in there

9:08 all right no promises so so uh that's where my story kind of begins and then i knew that if i wanted to do the film i had to be one of the first uh people that interviewed because it was gonna you know it was gonna happen right away uh john's such a nice man uh to speak to and like he's so excited and uh so uh down to earth and his approach that you know was a really great interview and you know he uh it was very important for him that he really had a good time on the project and that you know things moved smoothly and everybody got along and there wasn't any screaming and it was like that was like very crucial then but now but sorry to interrupt but i'm curious specifically about the fact that you you reference the fact that you had a lot of time to on a film like this you have a

9:54 lot of time my guess is that a lot of that time was kind of cut short because of when you first got involved i mean were a lot of the preparations done before you even i mean you said the crew was booked so like how do you kind of jump onto a project where a lot of the prep has already happened well the crew was booked but not necessarily like obviously they left it up to me as to once i was hired who are the people you want to work with uh and so i decided to really hang on to the crew because they had already started working they had already started building you know and uh preliminarily already started uh on the project uh so i i just say a lot of time because as the more time that you have the more you're able to like adjust things and

10:42 make things clearer and so that time it seemed like a lot of time but eventually it turned out to be like not enough time because of the fact that you know those changes that are made and those sort of like tweaks and story points and um assembling of the final script um all that time was spent sort of like reacting uh to to those changes you know uh major changes uh that happened along the way so that's yeah i say plenty of time because like you know a film like this compared to let's say one that i had been on uh right before that which was like a morocco uh 10 million dollar film was like you get three weeks prep and we're filming uh so you know there's a little bit more involved that's what i mean by that

11:28 how did this sudden change affect you darren i mean not only obviously coveted coming through and stopping production but then having the cinematographer be swapped out uh it was pretty seamless from our standpoint but i gotta give morrow a lot of credit i mean i don't know that many dps that would be that um uh accepting to taking on an entire crew that most people he hadn't really worked with before but a lot of these people were committed they rented you know apartments and and and this is the show they had taken and uh mauro obligated uh or uh you know respected the you know that and i think that was an amazing choice and it kind of spoke to his character right away um and i thought that was a really noble thing to do right out of the gate

12:14 but yeah i mean it's sort of you know it was great to have mara i mean i remember there was that there was that kind of uh interstitial time where we had lost sheamus and we were kind of floating a little bit blind and it was great when mauro came in because as soon as he came in uh you know we could confirm a lot of decisions uh and just make sure we were on track uh and he was really amenable to uh you know everything we had done you know uh and he seemed to be excited uh and enthusiastic about the project and it was great we came in um it was just it was a breath of fresh air for us and got us going right away but i mean to speak to some of the the the things that mara was talking about i mean there was a tremendous amount of changes that were happening not only from story character uh but just the because of something because of covet shutting you

13:00 down because of covet yes and because you know and that's definitely related to uh what shame has stepped aside but uh yeah i mean our our whole philosophical approach originally was going to be a significant location movie a lot of locations in new york around queens all of that had to change and we had to absorb all of that into our studio footprint so those are big changes those are huge changes to have to figure out how to accommodate and make work and we took it we took advantage of every square inch of the studio that we could i mean we're building in alleys and uh you know sets exterior sets that we build through the elephant doors that would go into the sound stages uh we would change over sound stages every stage got turned over at least once maybe even a couple of maybe even three times

13:46 huge backlot builds that were torn down and then rebuilt um so it was a very complicated show uh and again i think because of covid uh we had this incredible crew led by john watts uh and his kind of approach and his uh you know his his demeanor and i think everybody had a tremendous amount of respect for each other we know we were working through a really really difficult period in our industry we definitely felt like we were on the cutting edge of helping to establish and figure out how to kind of get through this new production paradigm uh and there was just an incredible amount of compassion and and and patience on a crew that i'd never seen before um and a lot of that came from mauro in his department and mauro now you know coming into a project that had intended on being on location for quite a bit of it and then

14:33 now kind of putting it into your studio environment is that something that is more appealing to you are you do you do you prefer having the control of a studio or do you kind of like the on location stuff well um i actually like the on location stuff because uh sort of like the lack of control is interesting sometimes there's a sort of like surprises that happen that you really didn't think about on the studio and so even sometimes reacting to changes uh there are some beautiful things that happen naturally uh in sort of like the real world so um even though it's much more difficult i would say uh they're both difficult depending on you know the scale the scope but um

15:18 yeah but location work is something that for sure uh that i prefer uh you know bottom line if we have to do it in the studio it's really all about like what are the things that make it look as real as possible and you're you're working very hard to make those those uh sort of like situations that sort of happen in front of you obviously uh when you dedicate like you know a week to a sequence um it's much more it's a little bit easier to control in a studio environment um but then when you take that studio environment and you make it outside the studio you have the same sort of like uh not restrictions but same problems that arise but um yeah so for me it's a challenge to work in the

16:03 studio but an interesting challenge you really have to put a lot of work into uh you know the specific little details and hopefully you don't leave anything out uh things that sort of naturally are there in the world is your philosophy just in general to always make the the studio sets as real as possible even if you're living in kind of these fantastical you know places certainly like you did an avatar in in in spider-man as well well no i think the pro it depends on the project i think it's all depends uh depending on what the director director's uh initial conception or of the film is if he wants it to be stylized then that's an approach or i mean for john this film uh the thing

16:49 that he kept repeating to me is that you know realism he wanted it to be real um and that that's reflecting even on the sets uh you know basement sets he really wanted this realistic uh world uh that was really important to him so um we react on that vision or you know the concept has all to do with that that sort of statement that the director establishes let's talk about one of those sets darren and particularly the sanctum sanctorum set that uh i know that you know both of you guys had a hand in for sure and it was something that darren you you thought would be interesting for our audience um talk to me about that why why is that one of the ones that you you know feel the feel not necessarily the

17:34 best about but something that you wanted to bring to our show today well i think the sanctum uh the the sanctum was such an important part of her story in so many ways and obviously it's got uh a lot of history in the marvel universe in the avengers movies and doctor strange of course uh and charlie wood the production designer on uh on avengers and dr strange conceived the original foyer which we rebuilt uh we knew we were going to do it differently this time around we wanted to have a significant weather event um it ended up being snow a big blizzard a portal been opened and left uh left open upstairs which kind of uh was the leading art direction for all the snow in the direction of the snow so we had to rebuild that set and they've re i think marvel's rebuilt that set three or four times now uh but our

18:19 version had to be waterproof uh obviously we had a lot of snow effects and water effects so we had to kind of customize it for that but the exciting part was going downstairs for us i mean that was a new set and it was kind of conceiving um what the sanctum could be in this kind of underground undercroft layer ancient chamber uh and that was wide open for us uh and so it was a new dimension on on kind of doctor strange a little bit into his personality and there was a great joke to be had there we wanted to go down there and turn on the lights and the first thing you feel like is you're in your grandma's basement you know with the christmas decorations and uh you know and all the all the decor you'd find in a very kind of typical uh you know kind of new york underground

19:04 kind of basement and then as you work your way through it you kind of realize that there's a there's a big aperture and it's opening up into a really ancient space this ancient chamber which kind of for us grounded the sanctum sanctorum in new york so the whole idea was for us was this ancient chamber uh was was found by the monks uh in um way way back when new york was was first being built five points um and so the the idea was that was kind of the anchor point for why they put the sanctum in that specific spot so that was just a really fun set to do uh and you know conceiving that with maura we we had one we had a few big sound stages that was one of our biggest sound stages at pinewood now trilith uh and the sight lines were really important we wanted to take full

19:49 advantage of of some height so coming down from the staircase coming down into the basement and then keep coming down lower and lower so there's a significant elevation drop from the very when you first kind of come down the first staircase into the into the basement and then down into the ancient chamber and then just how we framed it and how we wanted to make it very cinematic uh in the aspect ratio when you look down into the ancient chamber uh which becomes kind of the jail cells for all of our villains later in our story uh but it was just a really really fun set to do uh it was tricky it was a full complete set ceiling we uh we designed this amazing rollaway ceiling so the whole piece could kind of come away and could be lit from the top we had little pockets uh what's one of the thing tomorrow uh and i discussed early on was how do we get some light in

20:35 this cave-like structure and kind of open up a couple holes and a couple gaps and a couple of working with rosemary brand and burger set decorator and a couple light sources and how we were going to light this very dark kind of uh you know undercroft set yeah and i'm curious and i'm curious about that as well because tomorrow you you see the designs you know you're going to be underground um a new environment that we haven't seen before so there's not necessarily a reference for it you can kind of you know it's a blank canvas for you talk to me about how you kind of worked with darren to make you know his vision of that set into something more conducive for filmmaking well i mean that set was very interesting because it was very challenging uh because the discussion

21:21 was you know conceptually it's a dark environment and that's always the most difficult when people want to sort of like see a dark environment and they write it uh there is a we have to be able to see it somehow uh but yet it's a dark environment and it always bothers me when it's so bright in a you know in a scene and everybody's pretending like it's dark uh but you know it's a huge challenge um one of the biggest challenge is to create darkness it's not only to create light but to create darkness uh why it's well because you want to be able to see in that darkness otherwise you know why are we there and you want to be able to see these characters so the challenge is being able to see the characters and not make

22:06 it look like you know you're in the middle of like you know a supermarket so uh the challenge there was like what is the color of that light how could we get any light in there because it was a solid set so with darren we worked really hard along with the gaffer josh davis and you know trying to carve out space and trying to find little spaces that we could just sneak light in just to light the set a lot of times really just to light the set because uh you still have to light a set even if you want it to be dark you want to be able to see things in the background you want to be able to see things in the foreground and play with that foreground background as they sort of uh you know uh to compose things so it was a very challenging and we spent

22:53 a good like two days pre-lighting that set where we tried a bunch of things out and john was there actually john came to the pre-light because we wanted to make sure that it was you know dark and he should be involved because i'm obviously new to the project and i want his uh his sort of like interpretation of what what it looks like because i'm the one coming into his world so we have to be able to find it together as opposed to me forcing somebody into something so it was quite challenging um but you know i i think in the end uh we did achieve something that was like you know pretty interesting and you know gratifying well what was one of the more innovating innovative ways that you brought light into that space because darren had mentioned that you did have

23:40 an actual ceiling that you know you were able to open on occasion but still you have a ceiling to contend with um so can you bring up one or two challenges of that set and how you have the cave how you overcame them well a lot of times i mean sure we could light the whole thing from the ceiling but it looks like you lit the whole thing from the ceiling uh so you know what i mean like it's not it's not a boxing match so we i didn't want it to look like a boxing match that only the center of the of the whole uh you know cavern is sort of like you know this seller is lit only by the center of the room so the challenge is like how do you show something that's deep in the cellar like how do you light something like that is a like a cell or jail cell

24:27 uh that's deep deep into the cellar how do you light that and be able to see it without any light source there are no practicals um so we came up with you know carving because the set was i don't know if i should say the set is made out of foam i don't know if we want to get into that detail um so a lot of you can give away all sorts of secrets on this show we're among friends people will keep it quiet so we had to like actually cut into you know the foam to get some light sources to just rake the edges of things that are in the depth

25:13 what kind of light sources are you putting in there just like led strips darren sorry we're speaking over you what were you about to say i was gonna say one of the ingenious things that mauro did was uh indirect lighting on the inside of the cells uh because we had to have like a force field that kind of kept them uh kept our characters in their cells and there was a very soft kind of rim light around the edges uh that were buried with leds that kind of helped with visual effects and kind of helped that force field uh kind of put in but it was just enough edge lighting to help kind of define the spaces of each one of those cells individually what were the leds you were poking or carving spots for in that foam wall well they have a ribbon ld uh leds which are

26:00 a series of led lights and a ribbon that you can it's sort of like a piece of tape that you could uh put in different places but you know it all of this uh the technology on a film like this is so interesting because everything is on a dimmer and everything must be programmed uh so you're able to recreate it later and so the there's an incredible amount of pre-rigging before we even get there so we can you know work the environments and turn things off quickly and change the color of things within seconds it requires a huge amount of pre-rigging and programming of those specific units that are all in those specific parts of the set um so that is like a part that a lot of people don't know about and i think

26:47 on this film more than anything else for me is led technology has changed so much and has brought something so interesting to the industry because of those uh those rapid changes and uh computerizing all your lights yeah and i'm glad you mentioned led because we have a question from um warner image on instagram asking if you used any of those led walls um you know this kind of the green screen replacement where you have the actual like you know scene or whatever your background plate on the wall did you did you use any of those on the film no we did experiment with those at the beginning of the project we did do a test but we ended up not being very happy with that test and we wanted to have a sort of like stronger light sources

27:32 and the led panels are definitely great for uh ambience and sort of like soft light sources but the minute you're trying to recreate the sun um it's just it's not possible because basically whatever that screen emits is what is projected on the actors faces uh so we ended up you know not not doing any led walls i have used led walls in uh past projects and uh darren's used uh used them as well but this one just it didn't work out it was just not the right tool i almost i tried and but it just no wasn't the right tool how do you incorporate led walls into your workflow darren i know you didn't do you didn't use it on spiderman no way

28:18 home but as you know from your standpoint of a as a production designer how do you incorporate them and or why what would a situation be where you said this is perfect for an led wall well i did a project before led walls existed called oblivion where we did a front projection um a full-on front projection 22 synced projectors uh for sky it was for a sky tower set so it was up in the air so uh that was the perfect application because it was it was illuminating the set it was everything was in camera uh and it was all soft clouds and soft weather it wasn't hard architecture and hard you know right angles and lines that would have to kind of line up so that was like a perfect situation for something like that uh we use them nowadays for a lot of car

29:03 insert photography and things like that to get a lot of motion going by i haven't uh jumped into the full unreal engine project yet where we're actually designing foreground set pieces to be completely in front of the full digital wall something i'm very interested in doing but i just haven't i haven't uh had a project that quite needed that level of of of or that technique yet that was relying that heavily on that yeah we've got a general question about lighting um from blake studwell on youtube wanting to know and this is for probably for both of you guys but we'll start with you morrow are you concerned with motivating light or is it more about what looks best for you well uh again i'm reacting to you know the director wanted to uh wants to shoot

29:51 a realistic looking project um not neces i mean i don't necessarily uh so really that sort of like sort of like conceptual uh springboard should be uh the motivating sort of like a conception of any kind of lighting in other words if uh the director wants realism then we must motivate the light sources because that's that's what realism is about uh showing light sources and having it look like uh it's in the scene and making things look like uh the lamp that's in the shot is lighting the actor as opposed to a movie light so i think it it all has to do with the concept of the film

30:36 let's take a moment and talk about filmmakers academy and a course that is near and dear to my heart it's called commercial directing master class and its trainer is jordan brady who you guys already know i'm sure from his podcast uh respect the process jordan uh i'm two podcasters first of all how are we gonna keep this brief but we'll try i will try uh you've you've upped the ante you've upped the game here because this is video and no one told me and it's a good thing i'm naturally handsome i don't have a bad side you could shoot me from the left or the right but we're not here to talk about that a commercial directing masterclass is basically uh a deep dive into how to manage your career as a commercial director whether

31:22 you're starting whether you've been doing spots for 10 15 years i give you secret voodoo tricks to manage your career run the set and get the most out of your performers and your script i would say that the real key though you get is the behind the scenes where you watch yours truly uh interact with the ad agency and the actors and the crew because those are the three plates that you're kind of juggling right you you the agency hired you you want to collaborate the actors are your mouthpiece and the crew they do the bulk of the work so you have to keep all those moving parts flowing commercial directing is such a different beast and that is why i absolutely love this course and i know you guys will as

32:10 well the whole course is available now check it out for yourself filmmakersacademy.com [Music] let's talk about the rooftop scene when um all of the peter parkers meet we've got a question from logan astro up on youtube wanted to know how you approached that scene and darren we'll start with you well we we started conceptualizing artwork really early and it was you know and i'm still amazed that we were able to keep that as secret you know for as long as we we have i mean it was i think it was it's a testament to how diligent the production was about protecting that concept uh but we started with lots of different concept art about how we were going to get these three characters

32:56 together in lots of different ways and how we were going to first kind of uh you know how we were going to reveal them ended up being at the high school we ended up building that as a set um we had we ended up having a stage 14 which was kind of our catch-all stage so it was tons and tons of smaller pieces of sets that we could wheel in and wheel out under a pretty complicated lighting package and that was probably the biggest set it was the the that we wheeled into that configuration it was three large pieces that made up the high school rooftop uh and you know we kind of conceived it from what the existing uh high school in queens is but it's a it's kind of a stretch as far as a little bit of a cheat just to kind of make sure the proportions worked for the three characters and how they worked on the bell tower and how they

33:42 kind of came out and where they were kind of all um kind of uh kind of you know how we kind of compose them in that in that one specific set but uh yeah it was a pretty traditional straightforward set um i'll let mauro speak to a little bit more about how he how he ended up shooting it yeah i mean how did you light it and how did you approach that scene uh well one thing darren did mention is we moved that set outside once as well so oh you did it because yes um john was really adamant about things looking realistic and you know he sort of and i sort of got connected to the i understood like we want things to be if we're if we're supposed to be outside then we should put the set outside as well so that set when we did a day exterior which we see

34:29 at the beginning of the film um when sort of like uh dom is laying uh back uh they're laying down and they're sort of like talking about yeah so that was outside and then so we brought it inside again as far as like how i approached that uh set as far as like when the three spiderman came i just went for it i went for style i just went for really stylized lighting i didn't really you know because it was going to be outside at night and i felt like it was one of those moments where um it was such a sort of uh a breakthrough for everybody to see all those characters that i i kind of treated it very much like in a classical sort of like this is like a roman sculpture

35:14 and we should uh you know be able to see everybody and uh you know uh with darkness and everybody has their light and that's kind of the way i approach it i love that that was an amazing week too when they all showed up when we had all those actors together it was a pretty special week i can't believe that stayed a secret i know i know mara did we have the the the shield the fallen captain america statue liberty shield was it on the right side and then the high school was on the left side on stage 14 when we did that i think we did them together yeah i think you're right i think the was yeah one side of this thing yeah so we had this basically just to try and keep a lid on on what we were doing we had those two set two set pieces where those three actors were

36:01 were going to be on and so we kind of jammed them into one sound stage so we could try and control it the best we could coming and going on anybody with any knowledge of what was going on um so yeah we had the high school next to the shield which was it was a crazy week i just remember walking into that stage and seeing those three guys in their chairs you know waiting to roll it was just like on their uniforms and it was just like crazy it really is um i want to talk about use of green screen in the film and particularly how that gets sort of put into production design i mean are you also involved in the design of what is going to eventually be on those screens yeah so so talk to me about kind of the

36:46 way darren you approach incorporating so many visual effects so much green screen in a film like spider-man well i come from visual effects my background is visual effects i used to be an art director at a visual effects company called digital domain which is where kelly port our visual deck supervisor uh where i met kelly almost 20 years ago so i come from that world and i you know very early in my career i saw the need for designers that could kind of bridge the gap between traditional construction sorry traditional set construction and visual effects design so that really interested me so i'm always designing for that and i you know to me that's really really critical from a design standpoint that there's a continuity between the sets uh the physical sets

37:31 and that you don't even understand where the lines blur and cross over into visual effects it's a big pet peeve of mine when i can kind of see two different designs of a movie the physical design and then the visual effects design it's really important to me that those are integrated so um you know we try and build as much as we can we want to give the you know the director the dp the actors as much physical scenery that they can react to as possible it's not always the most uh excuse me uh efficient way to go about filmmaking so we we obviously rely on visual effects when we can or or when we know that it's going to be such a massive extension that there's just no way that it's going to be cost effective to build um or we just don't have the time or the space to build so all those factors go into it uh how much of the percentage of of a scene is going to be

38:17 done on a process screen but we always try and make sure that the dp and the director have an understanding of what they're going to see when the set falls off into that blue screen so whether it's concept art or it's 3d models i constantly grab morrow and like hey maro here's my model here's you know i'll rotate around the set with the explainer here's the physical set that we're going to that we're going to have for on stage here's where the extension is going to be working with kelly port 2. i love to make sure all the assets and all the builds that are coming out of my department is the pipeline that goes right into visual effects as well so whether we're doing cruder models but the basic proportions and the basic concepts are there then we get handed off the visual effects to flesh out i'd like to make sure that the art direction

39:03 at least is controlled as much as i can within my department yeah and jamie dickinson on twitter is asking about the way you light for green screen morrow because like do you know ahead of time it sounds like you do darren just explained but can you talk to us more about how do you prepare yourself so that you know exactly what's going to be on those screens and you can light accordingly well um again i mean we work with previzus which like is a big help because we kind of have an idea some sort of idea what's going on in the background because i simply have to react with what's going on the background otherwise it doesn't look like it's the same environment so when lighting blue screen you have to find those interactive moments

39:49 um sort of like tricks along the way that convince you or try to sort of steer you in the sort of sleight of hand that you're looking at something that's you know foreground only and you're trying to make that environment uh together sort of correlate the two environments so uh every aspect the blue screen has to do with interactive lighting for me i have to always try to find what it is that's gonna make those two environments uh uh go together is there a way that you can like see some kind of a representation active on set like in your monitors i feel like i've seen stuff like that online where you can see you know they'll have a camera set up and they

40:35 just throw i mean it doesn't look perfect but they'll throw like the background in there just so you can get an idea of what's there in your monitors is that something is that technology you guys are utilizing uh i mean we did on avatar when it was first sort of like introduced uh something called symbol cam so in your camera monitor you'd actually see that environment that's going to be recreated digitally later uh so those two environments are interacting with each other was very important on avatar because uh foreground characters had to interact with the whatever was happening outside the room or outside the window so it was a technology that was really important um and then on another film i worked on called real steel where it was i don't know if you guys

41:20 saw it but it was about fighting robots and all the sort of motion capture of the robots and all the fights were done beforehand and cut together so when we went to location we could play back whatever was motion captured in our monitor and do the tilts according to that background so we could actually have a live mocap inside our camera that was just basically capturing plates it was you know an environment was like we recreated the boxing ring but there was nothing in the ring because it was all done you know with the all done beforehand so it was like a technology that was really important uh for those two projects i'm not necessarily sure that we had

42:06 that kind of uh need or necessity on this project that had to be you know that that needed that kind of technology i want to talk about the camera and lens package for the film what did you shoot on we shot on the alexa lf which is a large format sensor uh about 4k of resolution and we shot raw and we also uh utilize pandavision lenses called panda speeds um all prime lenses uh ranging from 100 millimeter all the way down to uh a 21. was that a decision that you had made because i know you you came on to the film a little bit late in pre-production was that a decision you made or something that you had gone through

42:52 testing or well they actually preliminarily they already sort of like booked the lf and panda speeds uh but i did uh go through a series of i looked first i looked at the tests that uh they had shot and it really didn't do me any good i i really still needed to approach it myself i'd never worked with these lenses before so i was really curious about using them so uh you know i devised the test very early on in production that i could test all these lenses and i found them very interesting what did you like about um i really like the sharpness and also sometimes how it fell off uh the depth of field of the lenses the bouquet of the lenses was very interesting

43:39 um the long end of the lenses were quite interesting in their bouquet and i also really love the speed uh because there are very high speed lenses all the way up to like uh you know you could uh t14 which is like wow amazing and so i've it when a lens is that sensitive usually every they put the best technology uh towards those lenses because you have to think it has to work in that big of a aperture so the whole plane of the lens must be able to have a good focal plane so that was interesting to me as well and it turned out to be you know i did carry some zooms at the beginning of the project but this was very much a film that we

44:25 dedicated uh specific lenses uh for specific use so we we kind of stayed off those zooms and really stuck to primes how many cameras did you roll we had a total of like three cameras but we we rolled two cameras always um and we we actually had four cameras i'm sorry but um so the alexa lf because of uh uh because of the technology can shoot high speed so we also carried a mini lf which is a much more portable version of that camera but the mini lf is not able to do anything past 30 frames per second so i thought it was important to have a camera that was able to do more than 30 frames per second that's why we chose you know two lf's

45:12 and two mini lf's as opposed to all mini lfs yeah yeah um i oh god i was just thinking about oh filtration um i want to are you throwing any filters on these lenses as well or did you like them right out of the gate um i usually don't like the filter that much because i i feel like you know it's a strange sort of thing thing that you have between the audience this gauze i rather do it with lighting maybe that's kind of like what my background is in but i rather uh sculpt the face as opposed to like filter it and i feel like filtering it sometimes just kind of like i feel like i'm cheating or what am i you know what am i doing but it's just a personal thing i'm not saying like you know i so i really didn't do that much

45:59 filtration are you tinkering around with the lenses at all though or did you just like them as is we did have them detuned quite a bit uh so you know the end the edges would fall out of focus a bit more and it didn't look so critical um yes well i think it also contributed to the realism those lenses because you you really are bringing a lot of realism to a show that has tons of special visual effects i think it was a nice choice and darren how important is the lens and camera package to you is that is that something that you think about when you're designing your sets or do you stay out of that uh it's not i mean it's not a huge factor for me as much uh i mean i'm more about making sure the aspect ratio

46:45 and framing for all the master shots uh and the you know the sets can be shot and can kind of the masters can kind of be established and then obviously all the detail going in and picking off all the all the angles inside but i usually approach most the sets from all the masters and just trying to make sure that i'm not boxing a dp into something that he can't you know you can't quite capture and get wide and kind of understand the scope and the space and the proportion that we're in when you have such beautiful sets that are so detailed and obviously there's so much money and budget and time going into these things do you tend morrow to shoot a little bit more closed down so you can see them and have a little bit more christmas in the background or do you or do you like to just kind of go with a softer background i know you had mentioned you love those lenses

47:31 because they went up to t you know t4 t2 um in a show like spiderman with so much set design so much art direction do you tend to you know close up a little bit uh well i i just think it depends on the scene again you know like if it's something that we really uh for instance the scene that in the diner when sort of uh peter goes back and tries to sort of recapture their relationship and nobody knows him and he recognizes them anymore i thought it was really important to have shallow focus so i i think all of those sort of like choices are made according to the story as opposed to you know like whatever uh maybe but you know there are times let's say that i remember there was a time where like even the conceptual art of you know the

48:19 rooftop that darren had already drawn really influenced the way that i shot the scene and you know even made me like suggest things to john constantly about how we should stage it because i wanted to see that space and i wanted to so i think it's all uh you know story driven darren be honest does it kill you when you put so much effort into a scene and the whole thing is shallow you must be like god damn it i just want to see the work i put in no honestly it doesn't i you know you have to approach as a as a designer as an art director you have to approach everything that everything could be seen uh and you have to be prepared to show everything but you don't i mean to me the best stuff is the suggestive stuff i don't i don't expect everything to be seen in every detail

49:05 i just want to give the dp and the director that choice you know i want them to be able to look into any corner any pocket that they want to but it's all about the story it's all about servicing the story and mara mara's so right it's all about scene by scene shot by shot what needs to be conveyed to tell the strongest story possible uh and you know if that means things go soft uh that's totally fine by me as long as the essence is captured um you know that's all that we you know we strive for you do your you know you plan you plan to everything to be in shot but you know it's never going to happen and you just want to make sure you give you give your team uh the best stuff possible so they can make the best movie possible we've got a question from logan astrop wanting to know how you approach that

49:52 opening tracking shot um of the apartment at the beginning of the film and i'm going to ask you both but i want to start with you darren on the way you approach designing a shot like that well to be honest that shot was not the the the conceit of the set uh you know the set was kind of uh came together from an amalgamation of a few different uh historical pieces of of of spider-man movies uh and from endgame i believe i believe at the end of far from home they've uh they they definitely moved apartments conceptually after the blip so we had only gotten a snippet of what the apartment was and we had to kind of extrapolate from that we had peter's bedroom because that had been established but the rest of the

50:38 apartment really hadn't been established so we kind of recreated that from scratch um we knew the different beats of the story we knew they were going to come in through the window we knew the gag we were going to see happy hogan um and um and marissa or aunt may's character uh kind of being introduced in that scene but i believe it was it was it was after the set had kind of been designed and we kind of laid it out that john kind of reverse engineered with morrow that tracking shot of running around the apartment going from window to window and all those different story beats they were all scripted and written but how it was all kind of stitched together was was uh was kind of after the fact probably after the set had been built and been walked by by john and morrow i would assume when they kind of started to

51:23 figure out that that piece yeah mara why don't you tell me from your perspective how that scene came together well um it was gonna always start with uh you know tom coming through the window with mj and then you know we were gonna eventually like john just came up with this idea that he wanted it all to be handheld so it was one long take one long shot uh sort of like the sequence um is we start at the door and we travel all the way to the bedroom uh to experience it uh the same as like aunt may's experiencing it and uh uh happy is experiencing it as well so we're you know we're discovering it uh as an audience the same way everybody else's and so we did you know several takes and there was just

52:09 one long sort of handheld shot that we wanted to really create an energy uh that he was able to go through the apartment and uh you know and we so we originally didn't plan on like darren is saying like we didn't actually pre-light that but when uh you know the director has a a sort of instinct like that it's great to follow it because exciting things happen um you know as opposed to like fighting it and like you know what am i gonna do uh you know uh when there's like a great energy like you follow that energy and that's what that was all about now he's gonna open that window what happens what's outside the window i'm not sure so there's a bright light there's sunlight there's even like a helicopter outside the window so we we just kind of like

52:56 you know threw it all together uh as exciting as we could make it uh all one hand held sequence i imagine camera movement plays a giant role in spider-man i mean it's it's all about moving around not just in action films in general which is certainly true but there is a there is a certain movement to spider-man that you kind of have to capture cinematically can you talk to us about the way you approach that i mean i think we uh again it's like shot by shot and conceiving things like what a lot of times it's really uh like how trying to find that specific scale of where what we're doing um you know how do we show that because in a blue screen environment what is the lens that's going to make us feel

53:42 uh the most like we're in a real uh location so a camera movement uh it's not it's not something that uh was so literal we tried not to be so literal about camera movement and we we kind of stayed away from those uh uh sort of push-ins that uh a lot of people do on characters we didn't really it was we really let characters uh sort of uh play in that in that field as opposed to like really restrict their movement and try to like uh manipulate them in any way whatsoever of course you know scale we we did several crane shots and that's part of the film and how are you going to show scale on a film like this is you know you create these crane shots

54:28 and drone shots and you know exciting camera moves with high-speed camera cars and um as as much of that as you can add to the action uh makes it you know look uh much more incredible and uh is sort of like you know uh interactive let's discuss the hybrid sequence i know mauro this is something you wanted to talk about for sure and i'd love to get darren's input as well but we'll start with you um you know i asked the beginning of the show is there a particular scene something maybe that's more challenging that you want to discuss and this was the first thing out of your mind and i'd love to hear why and you know how you approach that sequence uh well it was really challenging because basically you know we didn't have a high bridge we had a

55:13 parking lot with you know in atlanta with changing weather conditions and you know a blue screen a massive blue screen and you know we have sun that moves on that blue screen and uh you know and darren had to create like the ground of that highway which was like massive how long was that how long was that uh ground i think it was like something what is it like 500 feet i don't remember no i was it was about a football field it was about 300. yeah okay so it was great i believe it was big it was 100 yards of like you know cement grooved cement uh that he had to kind of recreate you know like uh the top of the high bridge and so you set that all up and now you're like okay we have nothing we're not really at

55:58 the high bridge how are we gonna do this so the challenge is like how are we gonna spend the whole day filming and you know uh sort of like really planning with the first ad of like what you're doing at a specific time of the day and be able to use the sun so it doesn't look like you know from one shot to the next that it's like a disaster and it doesn't look like the same day so the challenge for me was to make that look you know realistic like we're actually and the visual effects were amazing in that sequence i thought he did an incredible job and all of that you know obviously like and also kelly the visual effects supervisor was crucial even in pre-production with light studies and providing me light studies as to what

56:45 the sun was doing in a specific location and you know uh downloading that and we we designed things around you know those specific things so i thought when i saw the film i was convinced that was in the high bridge that's why i'd say that was the sequence i mean you know but that's that's really the reason well what is something that you do and i know i know you said it was particularly challenging but i'd love to just get a little bit of like maybe was there was something that you did to give it that realism i mean you're outside so you have the benefit or i guess detriment of having real life around you but are you just sort of you know working with the sun diffusing are you like what what's your approach to a scene like that okay so like a lot of things what i like to do is work with the sun

57:30 so we kind of like stage on all the scenes around the sunlight uh what specific direction are we shooting in a specific time of day so i try to map out the whole day according to what the sun is doing and which direction we're looking sometimes it's challenging because it you know uh you may be looking in a direction i don't want to look at but we have to find ways to sort of like approach it and find uh you know so the real it's it takes so much planning and like everybody being involved you know with uh because eventually we have this previous to work with and that's like you know this sort of like video game quality of the sequence that everybody

58:16 agrees to shooting and they everybody loves so we're gonna we're gonna make it we're gonna make them we understand what we're shooting already so by breaking those specific little shots from that previous together we're able to really program our day and you know try to be successful to a certain point to get the whole sequence done in a specific uh uh time time period yeah darren how challenging was that scene for you it was tricky i was just going to mention i remember one of the hardest calculations was we built a giant steel three wall sike so a giant process screen blue screen kind of outdoor steel structure that could stand the weather

59:02 uh and the wind uh in atlanta uh and we had to build this parking lot or the the top of the bridge but just trying to figure out how far off the back wall so we wouldn't have shadows thrown from the wall onto the set but uh in that time of year so lots of calculations figure out where the sun's going to be at that time of year which direction this psych had to be built how far off the wall so the shadows wouldn't fall on it or the minimum amount of shadows that would fall onto the set throughout the day this is a really really tricky complicated uh kind of setup it wasn't a trick a hard thing to build it was more just to make sure we put it in the right spot we built the walls at the right height we had enough room to work around it and then that all had to be torn down and that became happy's that became

59:48 happy's apartment at the end of the movie too the giant courtyard so that was this giant basic playground that we built for the studio which was an amazing it's a really amazing resource for them but it was it was amazing that was the other thing i want to mention is i've never seen a lighting rig more impressive in my life than what mauro put together his team put together for happy apartment it was enormous i don't know how big those two cranes were but there was two construction cranes that build skyscrapers basically that were dangling two gigantic lighting rigs over this exterior set uh to give it that long island city that that illuminated city feel but it was just so impressive i mean i don't know what the specs were more on those lighting packages but i got pictures of those things i'd never

1:00:33 never been on a set that had that much can you talk to us about that lighting rig since we're on tomorrow um the night exterior of yeah happy's that was such a massive light it's true it was massive but you know uh the thing was i mean you know there's a huge sequence there with interactive lighting explosions and you know the green goblin comes back in and there's like green explosions and and not regular explosions not just like pyro explosions but so the lighting rig had to like incorporate all of that into it um you know because we weren't just dealing with like oh just letting a night exterior we had to we had to account for like what are the effects here what's going to happen when when green goblin explodes through the the front window what's going to happen

1:01:22 when the sandman like you know creates a you know this this hurricane and what happens when electro has like this like electric shock and the whole building is sort of you know in the state of like you know so i think a lot of that had you know those were we had to have interactive lighting along with you know the lights that were just lighting the night exterior and so everything became huge you know when you're dealing with with that uh that that element alone and you know uh lucky we do have the resources on a film like this and the crew uh was just amazing uh as far as like the pre-rig crew and the the main crew and keeping everything moving i mean it was mind-blowing i know at one point we

1:02:07 we decided that we do we were filming a lobby and it was all just exposed uh to light and we decided we were gonna just make a blue screen instead of you know just surround the place in blue screen so we're able to film in the daytime um instead of you know filming the whole sequence at night it would be better for everybody uh you know we could do certain things we could hide what we were doing inside the set because a lot of people didn't want to expose to the world what we were doing so all of a sudden we made this sort of change uh we decided to do a night interior and surround the whole place with loose screens and the crew completely you know uh reacted on it and within you know the next day we had blue screen surrounding

1:02:54 the place and we were able to film it that way you know it's massive huge so um you know a lot really i i have to thank this very impressive and incredible crew uh to be able to to have been able to do that because just the idea just having the idea is just one thing but actually uh you know creating it as another well the film is fantastic box office loves it critics love it it's just such a success you guys did an amazing job so thank you so much for coming on go creative show to talk to us all about it we really appreciate it thank you very much for having us thank you [Music] all right i want to thank production designer darren gilford and

1:03:41 cinematographer mauro fiore from spiderman no way home thank you guys so much for being on the show i learned a ton so i hope you all out there did as well so please let us know what you think of the show we love your feedback and certainly love your questions we used a ton of them in this episode because they were great so for all of you that gave us questions thank you and we really do appreciate that i also want to thank filmmakers academy for sponsoring this episode filmmakers academy master your craft at filmmakersacademy.com and of course i want to thank connor crosby from ignitionvisuals he's he produces the show and puts it all together and dave siegel mixes masters and makes the show sound so good you can find him at seagullsound.com

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