Darren Aronofsky talks about the movie ‘Postcards from Earth’ – The Hollywood Reporter

September 28, 2023: Sphere “Postcard from Earth”

By: Meg Meyer/Sphere Entertainment

Sphere’s exhilarating Sept. 29 launch with U2’s residency was followed by director Darren Aronofsky’s Transport Show on Friday. postcard from earth The film was the first to premiere at the new Las Vegas entertainment complex. It is a kind of story and document, drawing the viewer into different experiences. For example, it can make you feel like you’re walking with elephants on a safari, swimming with sharks under the ocean’s surface, or looking at Earth from a faraway planet.

The film also shows the possibilities of this new canvas for filmmakers. “I’m still processing everything,” the Oscar-nominated director said black swan To tell hollywood reporter Sphere’s interior is covered with 160,000 square feet of 16K LED displays that extend high above and behind the audience’s peripheral vision. Displayed in high resolution to create a sense of depth and realism, the visuals are accompanied by a powerful new beam-split sound system and his 4D features such as wind and tactile seats.

“It’s a completely different medium in terms of the immersive nature of every image you create and how it comes across to the viewer,” Aronofsky said, adding that when he began planning the film, Lumière He said it reminded him of the brothers’ “1895”.short Arrival of the train at La Ciotat station, This work is known for surprising audiences with the sight of a moving train approaching through the then-new medium of film. “That’s what inspired the opening of Sphere. … A moment when expectations of what you’re looking at suddenly change.”

As in the early days of cinema, the visual language and filmmaking tools evolved as films were produced. “We started by welding together nine Red cameras to get the resolution we needed to create Sphere’s images,” Aronofsky recalls, adding that he then went on to create a custom camera he invented to create the content. He added that he had received the first prototype of the 18K Big Sky camera. For sphere.That camera – used for most lenses Postcard – What evolved during production was “trying to figure out what the language was, how do you shoot a 270-degree movie, how do you make the audience feel comfortable with their peripheral vision filled with images?” It means “there was.”

The hour-long film is effectively an enveloping globetrotter, ending with a story set in space in the film’s familiar aspect ratio, beginning with two humans arriving on Saturn. . When reminded of life on Earth, the image opens and takes up the entire display. Aronofsky’s longtime collaborator, cinematographer Matthew Libatique, shot the space-set story with ARRI’s Alexa 65 camera, and Andrew Schulkind, Sphere Studios’ senior vice president of capture and innovation, Served as DP for Sphere Content. They traveled to a total of 26 countries using a variety of cameras, primarily Big Sky.

Aronofsky realized that his goal was to take advantage of the large canvases and high resolutions he could display to compose a frame filled with detail all around the viewer. “We tried to shoot in a lot of caves because we knew that if people looked up, they would see little spiders and all kinds of other creatures crawling over the caves,” says the director. One such creature he jumped towards the audience, causing a huge reaction. “There’s no doubt that I wanted to do macro shots because presenting them to the audience at such a level of detail in 18K would be something no one had ever seen before.” ” To do this, they enlisted a team of natural history photographers.

Another hero shot includes giraffes, including one that appears to be leaning against a sphere toward the audience. “What’s interesting is that the front of the Big Sky camera is a big piece of glass, so there’s a lot of reflection. So the giraffes are very confused because they think they’re actually looking at giraffes, and they’re not sure what they’re seeing.” I kept coming back to see what was going on,” Aronofsky explains. “We went away, left the camera there, and operated it from a distance so the animals could comfortably hang around the camera. And then… [shot] It’s just a lucky coincidence, and that’s what happens when you have enough time and work with the best natural history photographers in the world. ”

Stunning shots included an elephant walking very close to the audience, created by natural history photographer Graham Booth (who previously worked with Aronofsky). one strange rock) and Shulkind. “There were some tricks in there that I won’t reveal, but the elephant almost stepped on a million-dollar camera,” Aronofsky admits.

Bring Postcard To the Sphere (with standing room, the Sphere can accommodate up to 20,000 people; Postcard It also required a tight production schedule with a great deal of invention, including complex production and post-production workflows, and the development of new technologies and processes ranging from reviewing work to moving vast amounts of data. Aronofsky reports that the movie contained a whopping half a petabyte of data.

oppenheimer Editor Jennifer Lame was hired to cut the film, which was done in Avid Media Composer. A newly developed virtual reality program allowed her to review a cut of what appears to be a sphere (she also tested a cut of the quarter-sized Big Dome at Burbank’s Sphere Studio). Contributing companies include Industrial Light and Magic and Digital Domain.

However, Aronofsky, Lame, and the team ultimately weren’t able to see the film in the actual Sphere setting until early September, making post-production even more difficult.

Picture Shop Colorist Tim Stipan (work by Aronofsky) whale) graded the film, and the director’s longtime collaborator Craig Hennigan served as sound editor, designer, and supervising re-recording mixer. “Tim really had to figure out how to time these images, and no one had timed his 18K images before,” Aronofsky says. “It’s the same with sound. The image is 270 degrees, so you want the sound to be in the right place. But you don’t know exactly where it’s happening, so you can’t actually do it on a regular movie screen. You can’t mix. So we kind of guessed and hoped for the best, and then we got to Sphere itself, and the MSG team there actually figured out how to use that big screen to actually mix movies. I did.”

For Stipan, the team installed a Baselight color grading system in Sphere’s room, allowing them to work in a real-world environment. (Baselight maker Filmlight has created new software to support Sphere content). Hennigan, on the other hand, started by creating a Dolby Atmos mix and worked from there.

Schulkind, who has worked with Sphere for almost four years and helped develop the Big Sky camera and workflow for filmmakers, remembers working at the Las Vegas venue in September. They spent several hours each morning checking edits, color timing, and sound, working until midnight each day while U2 rehearsed and crews put finishing touches on the venue.

This also includes testing and preparing final elements such as wind effects from the front of the venue. “It can take him about 30 seconds for the wind to hit, so we had to time how the wind hit the front and back rows,” he explains. “They put a plastic cup with tinsel on it so they could track when different areas were infected. [wind]. …It’s been a tough month. ”