By Iain Blair
Polish-born cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, ASC, has shot many projects for Ridley Scott, including The Martian, All the Money in the World, Prometheus, Exodus: Gods and Kings and Alien: Covenant.
Their latest collaboration is The Last Duel, a tale of betrayal and vengeance set against the brutality of 14th century France, starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Adam Driver and Jodie Comer. The historical epic — shot on location in France and Ireland — unravels long-held assumptions about France’s last sanctioned duel between Jean de Carrouges (Damon) and Jacques Le Gris (Driver), two friends turned bitter rivals
Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (right)
I talked to Wolski, whose other credits include News of the World (an Oscar nod) and four films in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, about the challenges of shooting the film, the cinematography, dealing with VFX and post, and working with Scott.
This was an ambitious production. What did the prep and shoot entail?
Ridley and I talked for hours about the look of the film and so on, and he laid out the whole scope of the film for me. I did some scouting on my own and then Ridley and I did another to finalize the locations, and then I did a final tech scout with my crew.
We shot the first half in France and then moved to Ireland and Ardmore Studios near Dublin for the second half and the interior sets, along with some location work. The big problem shooting real castles is that they’re very hard to approach and are logistically very difficult to shoot in. Because of this, we built certain bits on stage, and then all the big battle scenes were also shot in Ireland.
But there was a bit of a twist to the shoot because of COVID. After France, we got shut down and had to wait five months before we could resume in Ireland and finish the shoot. Everyone had to quarantine, and then we were all in a bubble.
Tell us about your camera and lens choices.
I shot with the ARRI Alexa Mini LF. It’s 4K and versatile and small so you can shoot Steadicam or handheld. I mostly used Angenieux Optimo short zooms — 40-80mm and 60-120mm. They’re very flexible and you can use them handheld. I love the quality. I also used Panavision PVintage 65mm Primes, which are very fast.
Is it true you don’t like to work with a colorist in prep on any LUTs?
Yes. You have your palette in your mind. I was working with my usual DIT, Ryan Nguyen, on the set, and we set up very simple LUTs.
So we were doing on-set grading as we went and creating the files that would go to my colorist, Company 3’s Stephen Nakamura, after the movie’s cut. He has our recipes and basically preps it all for us, and we talk a lot. He does all his homework and lays down all the basics. Then we come in for the DI and fine-tune everything.
What about the lighting? I know you’re a big LED fan.
I first began using LED lights on the very first Pirates to create candlelight effects; they had to be custom-made back then. Now you have so many great options, and we used quite a few on this. Even so, I tried to shoot the interiors using as much natural light as possible, such as fireplaces and candles, and maybe with a balloon for a little bit of fill. For day exteriors, I’d use a bit of very soft bounce coming through a window because with real castles, there’s just no place to put any lights most of the time. And castles often have moats, so you’d need 200-foot cranes. This makes normal lighting is impossible.
What were the most difficult scenes to shoot and why?
People always assume big battle scenes are difficult to shoot, but they were pretty simple to do because the story isn’t about them. The battles are just there to show the basic reality of being a 14th century knight or soldier.
Going to war was a way of life, and the battles don’t have a result. They’re more informative, showing the violence, rather than being vital parts of the drama and intrigue. They were well-choreographed, and we shot them with multiple cameras and captured as much coverage as fast as possible. But the duel was very brutal and very complex — it involved so much training and choreography with the stunt supervisor and all the stunt men. We did a lot of previz and even used models to plan it all out. Then we shot with multiple cameras and skycams.
How involved were you with visual effects?
I’m always involved with VFX, and I’m very used to it because of all the sci-fi films we’ve done, going back to Prometheus almost a decade ago. Then, of course, all the Pirates films, which had a lot of VFX.
On this we had a couple of VFX supervisors [Gary Brozenich, Jessica Norman] and several VFX companies doing stuff [including MPC, Mikros and Host VFX, with 3D scanning by Clear Angle Studios]. So you try and shoot as much in-camera as possible and then add all the VFX elements for the things you can’t shoot.
For instance, the scenes in Paris where Notre Dame is being built were all-CG for the cathedral, but everything in the foreground, including the Seine, was real. There were some other big CG scenes, and there was a fair amount of compositing and cleanup because you have to do that with any period film. So, all the departments work closely together on that, starting during prep.
Ridley storyboards it all, so we’re all on the same page, and if you plan it out very carefully, it all goes pretty smoothly. The truth is, it doesn’t really matter what period a film is set in — every film uses some kind of VFX now, and as a DP, it’s normal and part of the job, with everyone collaborating on the way a film looks.
What about the DI and working with colorist Stephen Nakamura?
We go way back to the Pirates films. And Ridley is a huge fan of his work too, so it was a fantastic conversation. We have this shorthand, and he knows our work inside and out We give him the files, so he knows the look of the film in his mind, and he knows exactly what we like and don’t like.
He does a lot of homework on his own, and then Ridley looks at it, I look at it, and it doesn’t take a lot of tweaking to get to where we want to get — a stark, wintry look for a lot of the scenes and the castles, where you feel the cold and gloom. We did most of the sessions in LA, where Ridley lives, but we did some work in London when both of us are there.
How did you and Ridley approach the look? What were your points of reference visually?
We looked at a lot of Breughel paintings, and Ridley also talked about Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev, his great black-and-white film from the ‘60s, which has a lot of snow and stark contrasts, and is very Breughel-like. Those were our main references, as any art from the actual 1300s has no perspective and is basically illustrative, like the icons in Andrei Rublev, so we also looked at Vermeer and Rembrandt, who are far more cinematic.
All the locations in France must have been great visual references?
Yes, they were very helpful. Ridley talked about southwest France where he shot his very first film, The Duellists, and he’d already scouted a lot there before I came on, as I was still finishing up News of the World. So, instantly, all these amazing old castles set the scene, especially as they scouted in winter when there was a lot of snow and barren landscapes, and all that showed us what the movie should look like.
We shot in three castles: Château de Beynac, which we used as interiors of the Carrouges Estate, including the wedding scene; Château Berzé-le-Châtel for exteriors of the estate; and Château de Fénelon, which was used for exterior scenes of Belleme Fort. Then we shot in this well-preserved beautiful village of Monpazier, which we used for exterior scenes set in Paris. Then for the big duel sequence at the end, set at Saint-Martin-des-Champs in France, we shot at an old monastery that was retrofitted for jousting. We also shot in Ireland.
Industry insider Iain Blair has been interviewing the biggest directors in Hollywood and around the world for years. He is a regular contributor to Variety and has written for such outlets as Reuters, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
