Disney+'s Star Wars: The Acolyte is an original live-action series from Lucasfilm and creator/executive producer Leslye Headland. The series focuses on an investigation into a shocking crime spree that pits a respected Jedi Master against a dangerous warrior from his past. The show stars Amandla Stenberg, Lee Jung-jae, Manny Jacinto, Dafne Keen, Charlie Barnett, Jodie Turner-Smith, Rebecca Henderson, Dean-Charles Chapman, Joonas Suotamo and Carrie-Anne Moss.
Chris Teague is the series' lead cinematographer and recently shared with Post the challenges of shooting the show, as well as the decisions behind his technical set up.
Chris, can you walk us through the camera package you’re using on The Acolyte?
“We tested many cameras and lens packages and settled on the Sony Venice 2 with the Arri Alfa 2x anamorphic lenses. I have shot several shows with the Sony Venice, and it tends to have a very pleasing look with a variety of skin tones. It also handles highlights well, rolling off nicely, and captures lots of information in the shadows, so I have found it to be very easy to work with in the color grade. I also wanted a camera with a large sensor so that we could have a greater ability to let backgrounds be soft when we wanted them to. I thought this could look great, particularly in our spaceship sets, which tend to have lots of little lights and lit-up buttons along the walls.
“The Alfa lenses are excellent because they are a true 2x anamorphic squeeze, and they cover large format sensors. More importantly, they have a character that is hard to put into words - not too sharp, but definitely sharp enough, with a lovely sharpness falloff toward the edges of the frame. The 32mm is remarkably undistorted for a wide anamorphic lens, and the entire set has a very consistent look.”
How did you approach creating a look, as it’s the first time a live action Star Wars show explores the high republic era?
“What I find incredibly exciting, from a visual standpoint, about the Star Wars universe as a whole, is that it is a combination of clean, futuristic elements, with raw, organic grit. The look evolved mostly from embracing that overall framework, and then by approaching each planet or each location by considering what look might best help tell the story. For the snowy planet of Carlac, we find Osha in a desperate situation, so we created a dim, almost murky world to mirror her circumstances. In the pristine halls of Coruscant, we used beams of warm sunlight to suggest a world of clarity and order.”
Episode 4 has some lighting challenges, with the rapid sunset and the lightsaber scene?
“The night-to-day transition in Episode 4 was perhaps the greatest and most fun challenge in my career to date. We did a great deal of testing and arrived at the concept that our direct light, AKA our ‘sunlight’ would change from amber to golden and finally end in a foreboding blood red tone as Mae discovers that Kelnacca has been killed. Conversely, we pushed our ambient ‘sky’ light cooler and cooler as we get closer to dusk, mimicking what a real sky does. We tested about a dozen gels in front of tungsten Wendy lights and ended up using the Wendy’s simply dimmed down (to warm up the color) for Stage One, then we added soft amber gel for Stage Two, and finally Vittorio Storaro Orange gel (a very deeply saturated color) for the final sun look. Once we settled on these colors on the tungsten lighting, we matched them in our LED lights so we could use those to supplement the Wendy lights. The sky ambience was all LED, so we simply adjusted that in increments, landing a few thousand degrees Kelvin above our camera's base color temp, which was 4,000K.
“In the night sequence that follows sunset, we relied heavily on light projected from the Jedi lightsabers. We did extensive testing with the sabers to achieve the best balance between light output and weight. Since the performers had to do extensive fight choreography with the sabers, it was important to keep them light and nimble, and even an additional ribbon of LEDs in the saber can add significant weight. In most situations two strips of LED ribbon gave us enough brightness, and in certain situations where speed was essential, or space was tight, our props department made shorter sabers that were extended in post. Finding the right colors was a lot of trial and error with mixing the RGB and white channels in the strips and shooting tests. Bright, saturated colors can sometimes behave in unpredictable ways with film emulation LUTs, and we ended up needing to modify our LUT to give us the deep ‘royal’ blue that our showrunner, Leslye Headland, wanted for Sol’s saber.”
What would you say is the biggest challenge for shooting The Acolyte?
“The biggest challenge was staying on top of all the myriad logistical elements on a show like this, and at the same time maintaining an aesthetic throughline. With so many new sets and locations in each episode, it was essential to stay in constant contact with the art department in order to understand how their designs were developing, and to have the opportunity to have input into the construction and built-in lighting in the sets, so that we could have as much control as possible. Things move very quickly when sets are being designed and constructed, so it can be easy to miss opportunities to suggest places to install practical lights, or to suggest how pieces of set can be removed for camera or lighting placement.
“Also, with so many stunt sequences, it was important to stay involved and aware of the choreography so that I could give input on how to adjust the staging of these scenes for the best photographic results. There is a great deal of training by the actors and stunt performers that goes into executing these scenes, not to mention the installation of wire rigs for special bits of action, so it is not always easy to make changes once the choreography has been dialed in. To maintain an aesthetic throughline, I created a kind of visual flow chart to track the quality of lighting and the lighting color schemes of each set, so that I could have a sense of how the audience would experience the final episodes. I’d use image references or color swatches to create a kind of linear ‘mood board’ for an episode, and make sure I wasn’t repeating looks from set to set.”
Can you point to a scene or two that you consider highlights?
“The sun setting while Mae discovers Kelnacca’s body near the end of Episode 4 was very exciting to shoot. We used two Giraffe Cranes, each with a 20K fresnel gelled with VS Orange on the crane. These shot beams of light through two separate openings in the set, and the movement was coordinated to make it feel as though it were one source. Luckily, we had enough space on the stage to both place the cranes themselves, and put the light at a large enough distance that the changing beam angle read as fairly realistic, with a dash of dramatic license of course! Timing the movement was critical. As you might imagine, it takes a few seconds for a large crane with a 20K on it to get moving, so I was on a headset with both crane operators to give them the right cue based on Mae’s timing in any given take, with the intention of having the last bit of sun fade completely just as Mae realizes that she is in deep trouble!
“Another exciting scene to shoot was the moment when The Stranger is revealed behind Osha toward the very end of Episode 4. This was a pivotal moment in the series, and we wanted to give it just the right energy. The Stranger seems to drift down from a rock to approach Osha. Manny Jacinto was suspended on wires to allow for a floating effect, but we also shot the scene backwards - meaning we shot Osha’s reaction to Manny, followed by Manny floating back up to the top of the rock. We then reversed the footage in post so the action played in the correct order and direction, but the result is to give all of the movement a slightly eerie effect.”