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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Which camera & lenses were used for HBO's Chernobyl

Martin Konrad said:
Anyone with insights on camera and lenses used for HBO's Chernobyl series? Could not find anything online...
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We've done some work on this campaign, and I'm pretty such it's Alexa. Not sure of the lenses. The grading is also really interesting, I'll leave it at that...
 
Don't think the camera matters one fuck. The lighting and art direction are on point.

Nick
 
I agree that story, actors and styling and camera work are very good but its still interesting to know, very refreshing they did not got the way of lots of recent Netflix productions where it seems compulsory to have headlights and head torches shining in anamorphic lenses for at leat 5 minutes per film. the sounddesign is simply outstanding.
 
Lenses I have no Idea, but I believe I was told Alexa shoot. It's an excellent piece of work.

Nick
 
I've seen pics of Alexa Minis on set. Not sure about the lenses, initially I thought it was vintage glass but the flares remind me of Leicas. Hard to tell from HBO's extremely poor compression here in Spain.
 
Ignacio Aguilar said:
I've seen pics of Alexa Minis on set. Not sure about the lenses, initially I thought it was vintage glass but the flares remind me of Leicas. Hard to tell from HBO's extremely poor compression here in Spain.
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Unfortunately, I think HBO has poor compression in most places. Total sidebar here but Amazon gets master files and encodes them to their own specs which are higher quality than HBO's services. I switched to that and have noticed enough of a difference to stick to HBO via Prime Video. My girlfriend (non-industry person) even noticed and said "wow why does this episode look so much better?"

/tangent
 
I've just watched the fifth and last episode and can tell for sure that the lenses are Ultra Primes at very wide apertures. Both the UP's and Leitz glass (and that includes the Panavision Primos) share a greenish ghosting flare when hit by a strong source of light, but the rainbow colors that appear once in this episode are from Ultras.
 
Brendan_H_Banks said:
Unfortunately, I think HBO has poor compression in most places. Total sidebar here but Amazon gets master files and encodes them to their own specs which are higher quality than HBO's services. I switched to that and have noticed enough of a difference to stick to HBO via Prime Video. My girlfriend (non-industry person) even noticed and said "wow why does this episode look so much better?"

/tangent
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I second this. When the whole world complained about not being able to see much in Season 8, Ep 3 of Game of Thrones a couple weeks ago, I checked the HBO stream against the Amazon stream and can confirm how much clearer the fast action in dark areas of the frame was. HBO was a jumbled mess of macro blocking, but Amazon's you could actually see what was going on.
 
Nick Gardner said:
Lenses I have no Idea, but I believe I was told Alexa shoot. It's an excellent piece of work.

Nick
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It's Alexa.

We've worked on the BTS pieces, and I've seen Alexa's everywhere. Some larger bodies (XTs?), and a bunch of Mini's on Easy Rigs, etc.

A lot of the Mini's seemed to have primes on them (or maybe short zooms), so Ignacio is prob right about modern primes, etc.
 
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After having seen the five episodes now I can assure that this is an first-rate & must to see show. It feels like a docudrama because it’s very well designed (with great use of real locations to mimic the Chernobyl area) and so well written that everything seems to be 100% real and thus, even more terrifying. The cast is great, with Jared Harris as an standout in a great role. It’s well directed and shot, but the success comes from the concept of the series and its lack of sensationalism or sentimentalism in its approach to the story. Too bad it won’t get a limited theatrical release, this belongs to the big screen.
 
Highest score on IMDB ever... Not bad.

Johan Renck, the director for all the episodes and part executive producer is actually the absolute most client of mine. I' have been working on and off with him for 25 years. And without exaggeration, the work he brought trough the years very much made me, and is key in everything I done to date. Simply put me, my shop and what I do would have gone south early on and multiple times without him.

But sadly for Chernobly I did not get further than signing an NDA with the intent that I would work on it.

But I think I sounded way to negative about the whole thing as I was way occupied with other stuff. So sadly I did not get to work on it. Now in retrospect, after I watched the show. Yes I regret I did not toss evertything aside and said I wanted onboard. But at the time I did not really understood what it was. I actually though they where going to do some dramatised documentary stuff far from this epic saga they actually did. Well, I guess live and learn... Hopefully I listen better next time some one wants to pull me on a great train. Lol.
 
Björn Benckert said:
Highest score on IMDB ever... Not bad.

Johan Renck, the director for all the episodes and part executive producer is actually the absolute most client of mine. I' have been working on and off with him for 25 years. And without exaggeration, the work he brought trough the years very much made me, and is key in everything I done to date. Simply put me, my shop and what I do would have gone south early on and multiple times without him.

But sadly for Chernobly I did not get further than signing an NDA with the intent that I would work on it.

But I think I sounded way to negative about the whole thing as I was way occupied with other stuff. So sadly I did not get to work on it. Now in retrospect, after I watched the show. Yes I regret I did not toss evertything aside and said I wanted onboard. But at the time I did not really understood what it was. I actually though they where going to do some dramatised documentary stuff far from this epic saga they actually did. Well, I guess live and learn... Hopefully I listen better next time some one wants to pull me on a great train. Lol.
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Sometimes those things happen...
Early 2008 I shot a live music video with a young singer/song writer and I told him he should not hope too much from the music industry and it will be really hard for him to make a break... His name was Ed Sheeran... :)))
 
IMO:

cinematography is avg/okay, so is lighting - massive room for improvement
grade is non-existent or kept on purpose like that, they should have shot on RED as RED delivers that green/yellow haze like non-one else does straight OOTB !!! ;-)))
make-up goes from decent to amateurish, especially in E01 where some of the characters get "red faces" due to (....spoiler !) radiation - looks amateurish very often, almost like it was done in post

directing and story telling wise it is excellent


now, if somebody could explain why all these Russians communicate in perfect English.... ?

- M
 
Mike Nagel said:
cinematography is avg/okay, so is lighting - massive room for improvement
grade is non-existent or kept on purpose like that, they should have shot on RED as RED delivers that green/yellow haze like non-one else does straight OOTB !!! ;-)))
make-up goes from decent to amateurish, especially in E01 where some of the characters get "red faces" due to (....spoiler !) radiation - looks amateurish very often, almost like it was done in post
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Just goes to show how important good storytelling is. I didn't notice any of this; none of it ever came into play because the storytelling was so captivating I would have watched it no matter how poor the technical crafts were (which I didn't think they were...)
 
Mike Nagel said:
IMO:

cinematography is avg/okay, so is lighting - massive room for improvement
grade is non-existent or kept on purpose like that, they should have shot on RED as RED delivers that green/yellow haze like non-one else does straight OOTB !!! ;-)))
make-up goes from decent to amateurish, especially in E01 where some of the characters get "red faces" due to (....spoiler !) radiation - looks amateurish very often, almost like it was done in post

directing and story telling wise it is excellent


now, if somebody could explain why all these Russians communicate in perfect English.... ?

- M
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I think it might have been left to the 80s style as everything else is. I dug it, it was different for sure but exactly what it needed. Story trumps cinematography all day.
 
Lenses were rehoused cooke s2. Lots of playing with cc and white balance on cameras while shooting. The look was being pushed towards green while shooting.
 
Mike Nagel said:
IMO:

now, if somebody could explain why all these Russians communicate in perfect English.... ?

- M
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The writer and creator, Craig Mazin said on Scriptnotes (his and John August’s excellent screenwriting podcast) that they intentionally let the actors speak as they do without affecting “fake” Russian accents. I think this is a good choice with no need to differentiate characters from different locales like say, a Russian agent in a James Bond movie.

Also, the accents are just that. Whereas if it were dialects of the native language (e.g. English locale, Northern Irish and Londoner in the same piece) then I think it is incumbent on the production to do the dialects.
 
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