RED Aeronauts

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Cinematographer George Steel and director Tom Harper have been frequent collaborators since pairing to make the original BBC drama Peaky Blinders and on subsequent projects including miniseries War and Peace. During that production Steel had heard an account on the radio of James Glaisher’s 1862 ascent with balloonist Henry Coxwell to a record altitude of 37,000 feet.

Harper liked the idea of a 19th century ballooning adventure and turned to Jack Thorne (who wrote Harper’s first directorial features The Scouting Book for Boys and War Book) to pen the script. To help the story succeed as a drama, his treatment swapped out Coxwell for a female partner based on a French ballooning pioneer Sophie Blanchard.

With actors Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones on board and Amazon Studios backing the release, Harper and Steel embarked on the production, aiming for authenticity. “Tom was determined not to create a fantasy world but to make the story as true to life as possible,” Steel explains. “That was because the script grounded the story in the context of its period setting (late 19th century London), but we also needed to sell the VFX, make it believable.”

From that tonal conceit stemmed a decision to shoot as much practically in camera as they could. Steel tested combinations of cameras and lenses to gauge look design, as well as camera movement flying in a hot air balloon high across the Oxfordshire countryside. “The odd thing about being in a wicker basket 3,000 feet in the air is that there is so little movement,” Steel reveals. “The feeling was incredibly smooth and when we reviewed footage it looked like VFX, everything was just too crisp and even. The way focus fell off looked unnatural. “That informed us what stop to shoot at so we could have more of the background in focus during close-ups and it led us to create a look that ends up somewhere neutral – in between reality and fantasy.”

Steel chose the RED DSMC2 camera with the MONSTRO 8K VV sensor for its small size

The authentic feel of the project meant performing as much balloon filming in the sky as the weather and safety would allow. This included footage taken from a helicopter of a life-size replica of the original 1862 craft with the actors on board, as well as by Steel from within the basket rigged to a crane and extended 200 feet into the air. Even on stage, the action was recorded airborne with the camera swooping around on a 90-foot crane. Steel chose the RED DSMC2 camera with the MONSTRO 8K VV sensor for its small size, saying, “When you’re in an 8-foot wide basket with two actors – and I’m not exactly small – having a more compact camera has to help! It also has the ability to capture skin tones, color and texture, capturing the change in hues from terra firma to the heavens.”

Steel tested a number of digital cameras alongside 35mm film and MONSTRO was the format that won the blind tests. “People reacted most favorably to it,” he says. “The full-frame sensor really captures color in clarity and detail. Data size wasn’t a factor because of the way REDCODE manages data.” He paired the RED camera with Panavision Primo 70s, which Steel felt offered a very sharp, but not too harsh picture with a gentle focus fall off. “We knew we were going to shoot spherically to give the aerial sequences a wide-open vista in 1.85 and to contrast this with cropped aspect ratio of the flashback scenes in 2.39,” he explains.

Steel and Harper favored wide encompassing shots - often 360-degree views - and lighting was key. The illumination for earthbound sequences was softer and grainier whereas the light nearer the sun was harsher, more mercurial. Steel worked with his team to invent a vast lighting rig designed by gaffer Wayne King that was positioned at the top of the bluescreen stage, using an array of fixtures from SkyPanel LEDs to HMI Molebeam and a box full of gas that could be colored in different ways to mimic the particular atmospheric conditions.

“The full-frame sensor really captures color in clarity and detail. Data size wasn’t a factor because of the way REDCODE manages data.”

This was most challenging and creatively gratifying aspect of production for all concerned. The flight not only passes through different altitudes with light changes at different heights and at different times of day but with weather conditions (and even migrating butterflies) to contend with too. “All these factors came into play and we needed to help the audience believe that we’re entering clouds or a storm on the way up and on the descent,” explains colorist Simone Grattarola, another serial collaborator with Harper and Steel. “Our characters reach the top of the world where they are looking up to the stars with clouds far below them and, as they descend, they are going through snow and the harsh daylight transitions to dusk.”

Steel elected to shoot at 8K raw compressed 7:1 largely to accommodate VFX. The raw files were converted to EXR for export to the VFX teams at Rodeo FX and Framestore, and to Grattarola who was grading in parallel on Resolve. “We would review VFX one day, then be sent new VFX shots which we’d refine again and feedback to VFX,” Grattarola says. “That process between VFX and color grade built up over a few weeks and had everyone working to create something that felt very realistic.” Steel concludes, “When I watched the finished picture, I found myself carried away by the story.”

Special thanks to George Steel and Amazon Studios for sharing behind the scenes of The Aeronauts.

MONSTRO gives cinematographers clean and natural imagery with exceptional depth of field control. Featuring an incredible 17+ stops of dynamic range, it delivers increased highlight retention and color contrast. And when it comes to low-light performance it outshines the competition with lower noise and fine shadow detail. All of which, unlock unrivaled creative options and the flexibility that every creator dreams of.

The MONSTRO 8K VV sensor is available in both the modular DSMC2 and all-in-one RANGER camera systems.