Solo, A star Wars Story (2018)
Feature Film
Our Role
Main Unit On set DIT and Equipment Services
Directed by
Ron Howard
Cinematography by
Bradford Young
Shooting format
Arri Alexa 65, Arri Alexa Mini - Arri Raw
Experience
Principle photography took place in Pinewood Studios London for the majority of the shoot with a location shoot in The Dolomites, Italy followed by Fuerteventura, Spain.
The onset colour and exposure management workstation was adapted for this shoot as Cinematographer Bradford Young wanted to have an independant duel monitor setup next to or close to the Director to aid communication. Dan Carling Designed a custom 2 monitor station with large black out hoodman that could be lifted over the monitors to create the perfect dark viewing environment without setting up a large Ez up. This monitor station was always connected to the main DIT kart by a 4 x 55m BNC loom which also contained 1 audio cable for talk back.
Dan Carling worked closely with video assist operator Sean Walker on this shoot copying each circle take from video assist to populate a resolve timeline for each scene to be used as reference for Bradford thoughout the shoot. All this data was stored on a massive 24TB RAID housed on the bottom of the Colour workstation.
Data management was overseen by Dan but managed by data wrangler Mateusz Szczesniak who used a Codex Vault S for data cloning. The vault S was setup adjacent to the main colour workstation so Dan could review any focus critical shots at full 4K DCI resolution on the 24” Canon 4K display attached to the Codex Vault S with 1st AC Jake Marcusson.
For the location work in the Dolomites a new colour and exposure workstation was built. 4 x Fuji LUT boxes were mounted along with a 12v 16x16 video matrix switcher underneath the 17” TV Logic Grade 1 monitor. All the power cables and BNC cables fit within a 3U space meaning the entire rig was in one small case.
Iris handsets were mounted to a lightweight C stand to ensure proper exposure control could be maintained even in the difficult locations. Due to the extreme cold weather all 12v batteries had to be housed within a cool box to protect from the snow and preserve battery life.
In Fuerteventura the sand and heat through up different challenges. The workstation was rigged into a 26” diameter by 4” thick wheeled beach kart. This made pulling the kart over sand quite easy. A sun shade and umbrella became the best bit of kit to shelter from the scorching sun.
Data management on both locations was upgraded to a Codex Vault XL with several more Codex SSD drives hired in to cope with the longer rushes turnaround. Once onset clones had been done the material was flown back to Pinewood post for further processing.