DP Mandy Walker on Baz Luhrmann’s 
Elvis: Shooting, LUTs and More

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 ramps up, it’s been getting a lot of buzz.

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.

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.

Did you work with a colorist in prep on the 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. Our dailies colorist Kim Bjørge then became our DI colorist.

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