postPerspective Update

DP Dariusz Wolski on Last Duel’s
VFX, Castles and Ridley Scott

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, Adam Driver, Ben Affleck 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

I talked to Wolski, whose other credits include his Oscar-nominated work on News of the World 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.

How involved were you with visual effects?
I’m always involved with VFX, and I’ve worked with a lot of them 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 and several VFX companies doing work.

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 — the cathedral was all-CG, 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. 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.