The lighting technician of NOPE, Leigh Mierke, has published a pretty rare BTS footage of the IMAX horror masterpiece directed by Jordan Peele. It appears that apart from the ‘Day-for-Night’ solution, the crew has utilized a huge amount of Cineo 410 units. Have a look!
Lighting desert
In a couple of interviews, NOPE’s DP (Hoyte Van Hoytema) elaborated on the challenges and difficulties of lighting a large portion of the desert. That’s the reason, new innovative methodologies were utilized in filming NOPE. That was accomplished by a combination of an ARRI ALEXA 65 InfraRed camera (first of its kind) paired with the Panavision 65 system. This dedicated rig was used to shoot during the day (Day-for Night). The assembling of the two outputs was performed in post to bring a sharp and artistic look to the night scenes. This solution was also implemented on Ad Astra, also by Hoyte. At the start, we thought that this was the only method for capturing the dark of the desert. However, the lighting technician of NOPE has shed more light on the lighting…
20 Cineo 410 units on a crane
The lighting technician on NOPE, Leigh Mierke, has published a few BTS footage on his IG, showing the enormous lighting panels that were used in NOPE. “I’m thrilled to have been part of such a wonderful production. It was a challenging environment and we were faced with technical hurdles daily. It was a joy to work with this fantastic crew of collaborative filmmakers” Mierke stated, and said that the production used a 20×20 truss rig with 20 Cineo 410 units. “We normally would use Skypanel s60s but it was a universal mandate” Mierke added. It appears that although the team implemented high-budget lighting techniques, these were able to light a tiny portion of the ranch. Hence, it’s very understandable why the ‘Day-For Night’ solution was applied with 65 systems, as even hundreds of Cineo 410 wouldn’t be enough for this. Watch the beautiful BTS pictures below, so you get an idea of how hard is to light a desert. [Click on the pictures for a full-resolution view].
