By Iain Blair

Aussie cinematographer Mandy Walker, ACS, ASC, who collaborated with Baz Luhrmann on his sprawling epic Australia, teamed up with the director once more on Elvis. An epic in its own right, Elvis conjures up the life and times — and rise and fall — of this rock ‘n’ roll icon. Starring Austin Butler as the poor white kid from Tupelo, the film is told from the point of view of Elvis’ manager, Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks). And as Oscar season starts up, it’s been getting a lot of buzz. And for her part on the film, Walker has become the first woman to take home the AACTA’s Best Cinematography award for Feature Film in Australia, and she has been nominated for an Oscar in the same category.

Mandy Walker

I spoke to Walker, whose credits also include Mulan and Hidden Figures, about the challenges of shooting Elvis, the cinematography and working with the DIT, DI and VFX.

This is an epic story. How did you approach the look of the movie with all the different eras stretching from the ‘50s to the ‘70s?
We basically divided the story into two parts and used different lenses to tell the story. For the first part, when Elvis is growing up in Tupelo, I shot spherical in what we called “black-and-white” color that’s a desaturated look with pushed blacks. Then, once he got to Las Vegas, we used anamorphic lenses — old glass from that period, with more aberrations. We also had different LUTs for each period.

When Elvis is 10 and running to the Pentecostal tent, we shot it with the black-and-white color look. It was a very considered color palette that we’d researched from the period. Then, by the time Elvis got to Hollywood, it was more Kodachrome-looking, and I had more depth of field, more color in the lighting and more contrast. Then in Vegas, there were bright, garish colors, very ‘70s, with lots of flares.

This is your fourth collaboration with Baz. How did it work on this?
Baz is very good at explaining the story he’s making and the whole emotional journey. Then it’s a matter of me interpreting all that visually. And as he’d been working on this for 10 years, he’d done so much research, and the visuals are so important in this.

Fair to say that initially the camera seems to be constantly moving – right from the carnival Ferris wheel scene at the start?
Yes, we wanted it to fly. But later, when it all settles down and the drama gets heavy, the camera moves far more slowly so you focus on the situation. When Elvis is with his mother, it’s slower. Then later, in his Vegas hotel room when he can’t sleep, the mood is darker, and the camera reflects that.

How long was the prep?
We had a lot of prep on this movie — 16 weeks — and we went through everything meticulously. We were just about to start shooting when we had to shut down for four months when Tom Hanks got COVID, so we had even more time to do tons of testing on cameras, lenses and so on. Baz loves to test and experiment, and we also worked closely with all the other departments – not just costume and art direction, but all the VFX. Really, post is part of prep now on a film like this.

Did you do lots of shot lists and storyboards?
Yes, but not for everything. It was more about making the connections between scenes and sequences. For instance, for the bit when young Elvis runs from the gas station to the juke joint to the tent — that was all storyboarded, as it was all a build.

We also built the Beale Street set and Graceland exterior and interior, all on stages and backlots. That way, we could design all the camera moves and transitions and rehearse stuff physically on the sets before we even shot. Pretty much everything was shot on the biggest stages they had at Village Roadshow in Australia, and we also shot on three backlots for the carnival and Beale Street stuff.

Was there any talk about shooting in some of the real locations in the US?
Yes, early on, but we all soon realized we couldn’t, as it’s all changed so much now. Memphis doesn’t look anything like it used to when Elvis was there, and the same with Vegas. That’s why we had to recreate it all from scratch. There is a bit of archival footage of ‘70s Vegas in there, but that was it.

Mandy Walker on-set

How did you make all your camera and lens choices?
We decided to shoot on the ARRI Alexa 65, and Baz and I decided to go that way very early on. It’s an epic story, so why not shoot on an epic format? Then, when Baz was in LA around August 2019, we met up with [optical engineer] Dan Sasaki at Panavision and went through all these different lens iterations — some on 35mm and some on a 65mm camera — until we got to the right ones that were specially built for us.

I heard you also used a special Petzval lens?
Yes, mainly for all the flashback sequences and drug episodes. It’s based on an old projector lens from the 1800s and has a focal length of up to 160mm. Dan made anamorphic and spherical versions of it for us. It was perfect for helping to create that feeling of disorientation we wanted in those scenes because the focus is on the center of the frame and the edges are softer and fuzzier. It gives you this great vortex effect.

Did you work with a colorist in prep on any LUTs?
I did all of that with my DIT, Sam Winzar, and we began very early on in prep and testing. Baz and I would look at colors and lighting, and then we’d refine them when we got to our location or set. We put together a lot of references for the LUTs so all the transitions would be very smooth from one period to another, and we always knew where we were in time. Those LUTs translated into dailies. Sam and I would go into dailies every night, and if we had four or five cameras running, we’d tweak them a bit to make sure they were all balanced. Then Kim Bjørge, our dailies colorist, also ended up becoming our DI colorist.

Isn’t that very unusual?
Very. It was a big step up for him, but he’d been working on the film the whole time and knew it inside out. It worked out really well.

I assume there was a lot of bluescreen and set extension work, especially for the big concert scenes?
There was a lot, as we built all the stages and auditoriums for the concerts and shows. We didn’t use any real theaters, and the film’s full of big sequences, like the famous ’68 Comeback Special set piece. That was huge, as it was the high stage and backstage area and about a third of the audience. All of that was built, along with the whole studio and control room. So we used bluescreen for the rest of the audience and extending the auditorium.

It was the same for the hayride, the early concert sequence. We had about a third of the audience and built the whole stage and backstage again. We used a lot of set extensions for stuff like Beale Street. We built four blocks, but just one level. So the second story and the rest of the street were all added in post. Everything was very carefully planned out, and we did a lot of tests in prep so we all knew exactly what was in frame and what would be added later in post.

The Russwood Park concert is another good example. We shot all of that on a black stage. I put up stadium lights, and that sequence was all extended as well. All the split-screen stuff was planned too. The VFX team worked closely with us and did a great job of integrating with our in-camera work. I was quite involved in integrating all the VFX and post work with them, and we had a lot of VFX companies, like MPC and Luma, working on it. (Other VFX companies included Method, Slate, Mr. X, Rising Sun Pictures and Cumulus VFX).

We did it at The Post Lounge in Brisbane, and they also handled all our dailies and processing. I did all the sessions remotely since I was in LA on the Warner lot in the DI suite — I could see all the images from The Post Lounge in real time, and that’s how we did it.

We did quite a lot of work, especially adding some LiveGrain to match the older film stocks and for when we intercut with archival footage and for stuff like all the 8mm home footage sequences. VFX also added a lot of artifacts to those scenes. But I do have to say, the finished film you see is very close to how our dailies looked. It really did turn out the way we first pictured it, and I’m very proud of the way it looks.

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.