The second season of Disney+'s Percy Jackson and the Olympians began streaming in December, bringing back the beloved book heroes to the screen, this time across the Sea of Monsters. The first season broke Disney+ records and took home multiple Children’s and Family Emmys. In Season 2, the show leaves the safety of land, as Percy and his crew set sail on a quest to save Grover and get the Golden Fleece to save Camp Half-Blood.
Jules O’Loughlin ASC, ACS, who served as cinematographer on selected episodes on Season 1, returned to work on Episodes 1, 2 and 8 of the new season. He also shared credit for Episodes 5 and 6. Here, he details how his experience working with water informed his choices, as well as the challenge of shooting a chariot race.
Jules, did your approach to the visual language of the show change from Season 1 to Season 2?
“I've been working with our showrunners, Dan Shotz and John Steinberg, for some years over four shows. Something that is very important to them is to keep the show grounded and realistic. So the question that constantly comes to mind is, ‘Is it grounded? Does it feel real? Does the audience accept what we're showing them? Are they being unduly distracted from the story?’
“On its face value, Percy Jackson may appear to be this fantastical show, but the story is very much grounded in the real world. We have monsters, and we go to the underworld, and we go to these mythological environments, but only the kids can see those things. The everyday people walking the streets in our show don't see what the kids see. So we wanted to treat the world in a really grounded way and let these particular elements stand out.
“Now, when you go from one season to another on a show, often the changes occur subtly and are driven by sequences rather than the overall look of the show. Moving from Season 1 to Season 2, we still have this very grounded feel to the show, but there are certain sequences that evolved from what we did in Season 1, and it is always driven by the story. They're driven by things like: What works story-wise for this sequence? What techniques or what lighting, or what color treatments can drive the story forward rather than distract? What underlies the story. What supports the story?
“The chariot race in Episode 2 and the final episode are some of the moments when we really discussed what adjustments we can make to tell those stories better. The chariot race, in particular, is a great example of how we moved away from the volume in Season 2 to create a more grounded look and utilize real locations and builds.
The world of Percy Jackson takes the audience on new adventures each season rather than staying in the same environment. What was your biggest challenge for Season 2?
“The biggest challenge, without a doubt, was the chariot sequence and this was for a couple of reasons. As with anything with Percy, there is an obvious responsibility that we have to our audience. We all knew that it was a really important sequence for the lovers of the books, and we had to do it justice.
“It was also a huge logistical challenge. It's a big sequence with a lot of stunts, and it's dangerous. We're using real horses that are dragging real chariots on a course. Most of our main cast are involved in it. There are a lot of moving elements we need to manage, and then we need to do it while keeping our young cast and animals safe.
“It's also a really iconic sequence when you think about it in the context of film history. One of the most famous films containing chariot racing ever shot was the 1959 version of Ben-Hur, which won 11 Academy Awards. There was also a 1925 version of Ben-Hur, also with an incredibly exciting chariot sequence. It's huge, it's exciting, and it's iconic. So not only did we have to do justice to the fans of Percy Jackson with this sequence, but we also had to do justice to film history and the iconography that the two Ben Hur versions gave us. It was a massive undertaking with a lot of responsibility, and hopefully the audience appreciates it.
“One of the other big challenges of the season was the water work that we did. It happens in a few of the episodes and starts at the end of Episode 2, on the beach outside of Camp Half Blood on Long Island, where Percy meets Hermes, confronts Tantalus, and escapes from the beach with Annabeth and Tyson. Water work is always very challenging, as there are a lot of moving parts, and it's just an inherently difficult environment to work in. In this case, we shot the sequence on an actual beach in Canada, so we had an added challenge to control the weather and keep a consistent dawn look to the sequence while we shot it across three days. To pull it off, I had to have overhead scrims being held aloft by cranes. We also used grip clouds, which are inflatable helium balloons that helped me to control direct sunlight. Then I needed to be able to shoot a moving boat off the shore, so I had camera boats with cranes in addition to handheld operators inside the hero boat. Coordinating a moving camera boat with a hero boat, and having to pull off specific drama and action beats can be a very challenging undertaking.
“Now, in addition to that, we also did more waterwork later on in the season, which audiences might have caught glimpses of in the promos for the sirens sequence. A lot of those later sequences were shot on a real sailing boat on a backlot in Vancouver. In those scenarios, you've got to be able to create a realistic environment, even when on a backlot, so there are a few things in your back pocket that are vitally important that I learnt when shooting the series Black Sails. One of those elements is wind, which makes the boat feel as though it's at sea, so we used wind machines to blow wind in the sails and loose items like clothing and hair. The other thing is water spray - it’s another environmental element that's important to make you feel as though you're at sea. The final thing that really helps to sell this notion that your characters are at sea is the movement of the camera. If your camera is too stable, it doesn’t feel like you are on an open ocean.”
Tell us about your camera and lens package? Did it change at all from last season?
“The camera and lens package that we used, which we started with in Season 1, is a Sony Venice 2 paired with Cooke anamorphic lenses. We tuned the Cook anamorphics for Season 1 because of the work that we did in Season 1 with volume. However, we really loved the look of those lenses, so in Season 2, even when we moved away from volume work and back to a more traditional shooting on locations, backlots and built environments, we stayed with that original set of Cooke anamorphics.
“Now, in addition to that, in both Seasons 1 and 2, I have used the Tribe 7 Blackwing spherical lenses. We incorporated them since you sometimes need to use spherical lenses due to the limitations of anamorphic lensing or anamorphic lens builds, and I love the look of the Tribe 7 Blackwing lenses. We used them, for example, for flashbacks in Season 1 and for the giants' attack in Episode 1 of Season 2, when our heroes try to get back to Camp Half-Blood. I opted for them because I wanted the sequence to have a slightly different feel. It was also an action sequence, and the smaller Blackwing lenses lent themselves better to some of the handheld work that we did during that sequence.
“In addition to our anamorphic and spherical lens sets, I sometimes used specialty lenses depending on the sequence. For example, I've used a Noctilux T1 lens on occasion to get very, very low depth of field or dramatic fall off.”
Can you share more details about the chariot race in Episode 2?
“It had to feel exciting. We wanted the audience to feel as if they were in those chariots with our heroes, in a real-world environment. When we are dealing with real chariots and real horses on a real track, actor safety was paramount too, alongside animal welfare. In the 1925 version of Ben-Hur, 100 to 150 horses were killed during the chariot racing sequence. Can you believe that? 150 horses died? Our priority was for the horses not to get injured and stay safe.
“From the concept stage, we knew we had to shoot it on a real track, so we built one. Apart from the Circus Maximus in Rome, there's no kind of purpose-built chariot track anywhere in the world. It's a very particular elliptical track rather than an oval one, so we built it from the ground up along with the stadium. We didn't want to shoot our actors against a blue screen, and we couldn’t put them in chariots drawn by horses because it was too dangerous. So our special effects supervisor, James Paradis and stunt coordinator Eli Zagoudakis, came up with an idea of building a process trailer to put the chariots on. When we film a scene with cars on roads, we use process trailers that are very low to the ground, and we put the car on them, and then we can attach cameras to the car or on the process trailer. The trailer is hauled by a truck, and the actors can pretend to drive the car while they're acting, making it very safe for them. We opted to do a similar thing with the chariots.
“James designed two trailers that we could put chariots on, so they could be very low to the ground. It allowed us to then put our cameras on the trailer and have our actors in the chariots being driven around the track by a truck, and in the background we ran real horse drawn chariots teamed with stunt performers. They could act and perform without all the dangers associated with driving a real horse-drawn chariot.
“Now, the additional genius of this process trailer was that the two trailers could be attached, so you could have two chariots interacting very closely together in one frame. So we had one chariot that had a tracking system that could move it north-south, and the other chariot could be moved east-west, imitating the movements that would happen naturally during the race!”
What were some of your favorite sequences to shoot this season?
“I think the chariot race sequence is a standout here. It is such a loved sequence in the Percy Jackson books, as well as being iconic as far as film history. I spoke about those two versions of Ben-Hur. Ultimately, it was not only the film history and the importance of it to the Percy Jackson fandom book, but it was also just a really fun sequence to shoot. It is very rare that you get to shoot something like that. Some years ago, I was lucky enough to shoot a western, and I remember telling my crew to look around and take in the scale and how amazing it was that we getting to do it. I had a similar experience when shooting the chariot race.
“The other sequence that I loved shooting was Polyphemus Island, because we shot it on location, and the whole company was away on location for six days. It was just a completely different environment from what we're normally used to shooting on Percy Jackson. We also had our whole crew out on-location, and it was just a really fun week that we had shooting.”