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Fincher had used digital capture on his previous three features, Zodiac(shot by Harris Savides, ASC), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (shot by Claudio Miranda, ASC; AC Jan. ’09)and The Social Network (shot by Cronenweth; AC Oct. ’10), and he decided to do the same on Dragon Tattoo, selecting Red Ones upgraded
with the Mysterium-X sensor. Red’s
new Epic was just becoming available,
but using it as the main camera posed
too many problems when the shoot
began, according to Cronenweth.
“At first we had a hard time  getting cards for the Epic,” he recalls.
“In addition, at that time, all Epic
footage had to be sent directly to Red
for transcoding before it could be sent to editorial,and we just weren’t comfortable
with that. But John Schwartzman
[ASC] was working with the Epic on
The Amazing Spider-Man and helping
to pave the way. By the time they
wrapped, RedRocket could handle the
Epic footage, and Spider-Man had
made a huge number of cards available,
so we shot the last 20 percent of Dragon
Tattoo with the Epic.
“We made sure not to switch
cameras within a sequence,” he continues.
“Although the Epic has a lot more
resolution and slightly different color
range than the One, the color is close
enough that we were confident all our
footage would match.”
Indeed, at press time the digital
grade was underway at Light Iron with
colorist Ian Vertovec (The Social
Network), and Cronenweth reports that
“matching between the two cameras has
been as seamless as anticipated. We’re
working with a Quantel Pablo 4K
color-correction system and a Sony 4K
projector in a theater-type setting. We’re
basically just fine-tuning the original
footage as captured on set, making some
subtle adjustments to better match
shot-to-shot within a scene, and doing
some repositioning.”
The filmmakers found one of the
Epic’s most significant advantages to be
its HDRx function, a simulated high
dynamic range mode that enables a
secondary, darker track of video to be
recorded, allowing for 1-5 stops of
selectable highlight bracketing via the
secondary, faster-shutter exposure track.
“We used that to get about 3 more stops
of latitude,” says Cronenweth. “It
records on a separate track that’s a frame
off, and you then use software to sync it
back. It really fills up the data cards by
doubling the recorded information, but
for certain situations it’s invaluable.
“We also like the fact that the
Epic is smaller and lighter than the One and doesn’t have that camera’s quirks,”
continues the cinematographer. “In
addition, you can overcrank up to 96 fps
and stay in 5K [resolution]. David also
likes to have the option of manipulating
the final composition or stabilizing the
image, and with the Epic we had 5K to
work with. We utilized the extra resolution
to create our own frame lines,
smaller than what you get using the
entire sensor. Actually, we did that with
both the One and the Epic, allowing
room for repositioning shots. For example,
if an operator clipped an eyebrow on
a tilt up, we had plenty of space to
correct the composition. We also used
the extra space created by the extra
resolution to help stabilize many
shots, including all the driving footage
we shot in Stockholm. The Epic gives
you much more information than you
actually need, and that gives you more
flexibility.”
“I like the picture the Red gives
me, the way it feels,” says Fincher.
“Ultimately, that’s what people are talking
about when they say they prefer one
format over another. When people
speak fondly of the anamorphic lenses
from the 1970s, they’re talking about the
feeling they get from that certain kind of
image. I like the Red One MX a lot —
in fact, I wish we hadn’t switched to the
Epic at the end of our shoot. There’s
nothing wrong with the Epic, but I sort
of like the graininess of the MX
[image]. It’s an aesthetic choice, not a
technical one.”From Fincher’s perspective,
perhaps the biggest advantage of the
Red is its size. “Because it’s small, I feel
like the filmmaking process itself
becomes sort of intimate,” he says.
“Filmmaking is a small circus — that’s
the nature of the beast — but I prefer to
keep it as intimate as possible. When
the mechanics become too consuming,
it’s too easy to get distracted from the
real reason we’re there: to capture the
actors’ performances. When the gear
gets too big, I feel like there’s a wall
between my cast and me, and it’s hard to
get around it to talk to them. I really
prefer to have that relationship, that
connection, be immediate. How we
shoot, where we shoot and what we
shoot with all play a role in finessing
that relationship.”
Shooting with two cameras
simultaneously and having the cinematographer
operate the B camera are
usually part of the plan. “David has
almost always worked that way,” says
Cronenweth. “I was the B-camera operator
on Fight Club and Social Network,
and Claudio [Miranda] was the Bcamera
operator on Benjamin Button.”
Fincher explains, “I try as much
as possible to put that second camera in
a place where it will get me another
setup that I actually need — I’m never
just looking for gravy. It can be frustrating
for my cinematographer and tough
for lighting, but I’m going to challenge
him to bring that second camera as far
around as possible, to not just stack [the
cameras] and get a medium and close at
the same time. I’m going to shoot a
pretty wide and fairly disparate view. If
I can, I’ll do opposing coverage, 180
degrees. That does make lighting tough,
but sometimes getting those performances simultaneously is what’s best for
the movie.”
In keeping with Fincher’s preference
for keeping the technical footprint
as small as possible on the set, Dragon
Tattoo didn’t have a digital-imaging
technician. “I don’t believe in tweaking
on set,” says the director. “Why would I
want a tent and more people around?
That’s anathema to me.”
Instead, just as they did on Social
Network, Fincher and Cronenweth set
one look-up table at the beginning of
the shoot and didn’t change it.
“Originally we thought we might have
one LUT for every location, but that
got confusing,” notes Cronenweth.
“Our approach is similar to using just
one film stock. If we change anything,
it’s the color of the light or the filter
instead of chasing LUTs. It makes
things faster and easier.”
The Red One is known for
having higher sensitivity in the blue
spectrum, and the filmmakers used an
80D filter on the lens most of the time.
“Although Sweden has a cool, desaturated
palette in winter, we used the 80D
to raise the color temperature about
400°K, which gave a little more blue
light to the sensor and gave us more latitude
to work with later,” says
Cronenweth.
The production shot primarily on
the locations described in Larsson’s
novel. “The notion of these horrors,
these particularly evil doings, taking
place in an environment that’s icy,
snowy and somewhat inhospitable just
seemed right to me,” says Fincher. “I
couldn’t see setting the story anywhere
else. In Northern Europe, you’re cut off
from the rest of the world a good
portion of the year in a very unique
place. The people are hearty, and the
winters are very hard. I’m happy we
didn’t transpose the story to Seattle or
Montreal or, worse, play Montreal for
Sweden.”
However, the unique properties
of natural light at that latitude presented
some challenges. At summer’s peak,
Stockholm experiences 19 hours of
daylight, and at winter’s peak, just six
hours. Moreover, the winter sun barely
makes it off the horizon, even at “high
noon,” and the summer sun typically
reaches a point about 54 degrees off the
horizon at the height of the day.
“There’s a reason why Sven
Nykvist’s movies look like they do!”
Fincher notes with a laugh, referring to
the late ASC cinematographer who was
famous for his collaborations with
fellow Swede Ingmar Bergman.
Early in his career, Cronenweth
worked with Nykvist as a camera assistant
and operator. “Sven brought his
own version of soft light to all of his
movies,” he says. “He was very inspired
by the light of his hometown. In the
summer, it almost never gets dark, and
because you’re so far north, the sun can
set and then rise again, about an hour
later, in almost exactly the same place. If
you want a dawn shot, dawn can last two
hours! The light changes so much
throughout the year that it’s very challenging
on a project as long as this one.”
“We had short nights when we
got there and really long nights when we
left,” adds Fincher. “It can be very
disconcerting if you’re not used to a sixhour
day. You can start work in the
morning and then find the sun going
down at lunch.”
“We set out to embrace the
Swedish winter,” says Cronenweth. “It’s
a strong element in the story, almost a
character of its own, and we spent a lot
of time out in the snow with those very
unique light tonalities. We embraced all
of the idiosyncrasies of the locations.”
The biting cold of winter gave rise
to one of the production’s few equipment
problems: the low temps caused
some of the floating elements in the
Arri/Zeiss Master Primes to misalign,
so the lens’s witness marks were off.
“The Master Primes have seven floating
elements, and in extreme temperatures
that can create obstacles,” says
Cronenweth. “The first assistants
ended up having to pull focus more off
of monitors, by eye. They’re phenomenal
lenses, and I would definitely use
them again; they probably held up as
well as any equipment does in that kind
of environment. But it’s something to
be aware of when you’re working in
extreme weather conditions.”
Some of the movie’s large exterior
setups posed other challenges.
Salander’s main mode of transportation
is her motorcycle, and she is not a timid
driver. Many sequences show her
zipping around dangerously icy roads,
and Cronenweth had to tackle one of
these scenes, a 5-mile run through a
forest at night, on his second day on set.
“I thought, ‘How are we gonna
do this?!’” he recalls. “We ended up
tackling it very simply, actually, and it
looks quite believable. We used an
insert car to either chase or lead the
motorcycle. When we were chasing her,
we simply increased the strength of the
headlight on her motorcycle by adding
some headlight fixtures with quartz
globes and wide-angle lenses so the
light would fan out and hit the trees in
front of her on both sides of the road.
“We then put a small bounce on
the front of the camera car, about 2 stops
underexposed, to get some detail on her
and the motorcycle. Lastly, we used
narrow-beam HMIs to softly project
ahead of and above her to illuminate the
forest. When we were leading her, we
used the same bounce idea on the truck
and the same narrow HMIs, and let the
motorcycle’s headlight bounce and light
her with just soft return.”
Making night exteriors like this
even tougher was the moisture from
nearby bodies of water, which created
mist that often froze to the lenses on
moving shots. The filmmakers used
standard rain spinners to keep moisture
off the lenses, but the mist would freeze
on the spinners and transform them into
rotating diffusion filters. To combat this,
the camera assistants mounted hair
dryers below the spinners and kept a
constant flow of warm air on the spinning
blades Driving sequences involving cars
were shot onstage in Sweden using what
Cronenweth and gaffer Harold Skinner
laughingly describe as “Rich-Man’s
Process.” Skinner explains, “It was your
typical greenscreen stage, but we built
this rig with LED media panels around
the car so that we could play QuickTime movies of the background
plates through the panels and project
the reflections and interactive light
directly from the background plates
onto the car and the actors. The LED
panels were 3 feet high by 14 feet long
on both sides of the car, and we added
another for the back and front windows.
Using this system, we got real interactive
lighting from the actual background
plates, so it feels much more authentic.”
To reduce spill and reflections
from the greenscreen, Skinner hung
Duvetyn on curtain tracks so he could
mask off any area of green that wasn’t
directly behind the actors.
One pivotal scene that was reshot
because of script changes shows young
Harriet outside a cottage and boathouse
on a waterfront Vanger property. The
scene was originally shot on location in
Stockholm, but when the filmmakers
returned for reshoots, they discovered
the property had new owners who had
torn down both buildings. In addition, a
winter storm had killed two large trees
that helped make the location unique.Fincher and production designer
Donald Graham Burt decided to reconstruct
the cottage onstage at Paramount
Studios and the boathouse and dock at
Red’s studio.
“It was a huge set, and I wasn’t
really sure how to approach it,”
confesses Cronenweth. “There were
some practical lights on the dock that
gave us a base look, especially when we
added atmosphere. We decided to use a
single 2K out from the cabin to the
water and hillside — we hung blacks
and added some sky augmentation in
post — and it was perfect.”
“We slipped a bare 2K globe
inside a Big Eye 10K housing with no
lens, just to protect the globe and create
a very large open-face source,” says
Skinner. “The dock lights were all clear
25-watt practical globes, so we added
some 1⁄4 CTO to the 2K to match their
warmth. We augmented with a single
1K Baby Fresnel to help when we were
doing turnarounds and the 2K got a
little too garish and flat, but that was it.
It’s very simply lit and very beautiful.”
A night scene that shows
Salander meeting Blomkvist at his
Stockholm apartment required a
massive shot that encompassed several
blocks of cobblestone streets. “It’s an old
part of Stockholm on this grand hill,
and David wanted the coverage to
encompass all four directions at night
for about two blocks,” recalls
Cronenweth. “In and of itself, that’s not
such a bad thing, but in April in
Sweden, you only have four hours of
darkness! So the challenge was to light
two blocks in each direction and have
the ability to quickly do turnarounds, to
move into any direction and switch our
backlight and whatever keys we had on
the fly. Our rigging crew spent an entire
night setting it up.”
“We had eight construction
cranes, four generators and 20 electricians,
and the special-effects team was
making snow at the same time — it was
quite the expansive setup,” adds
Skinner.
“In the end, we got it in our four
hours, and everything worked fantastically,”
says Cronenweth. “David’s final
establishing shot was done just as the
sky was starting to change colors, but we
got it in under the wire.” ●