Cinematographer Markus Ilschner on enhancing reality with Supreme Primes

MARKUS ILSCHNER: We shot this trailer back in 2022 and my body remembers the stress I had! I remember being brave enough to fight for glass that isn't cheap, because I wanted a specific look. I wanted a lens that not just covers full frame but has a quality that allows me to achieve this cinematic feel.

We had done a couple of trailers for immersive experiences before, such as one for a Doctor Who experience, but they weren't meant to be as filmic from the script. For this Peaky Blinders one, I wanted a specific bokeh and a specific look: it had to feel cinematic from the get-go. I tested different lenses at the local rental, looking for glass that would give me a real sense of the textures as well as a close representation of the world we are in, including nice flares. It's down to me how much I want to stop (the lens) down or not, and I mainly shot between T2.8 and T4. That's where I found the sweet spot of the Supreme Primes for this show: they actually gave me exactly what I wanted, so I stuck them on the Alexa Mini LF, I did a little LUT and I was blown away.

In an immersive theater, you can choose which way to go as an audience member, so that you can follow different threads of the story before gathering at the end. In Peaky Blinders, you were able to follow the gang, or Italians, or the main character. Hence, what we tried to do with the trailer is to showcase that it was about multiple characters, different sets and a lot of fun. It was taking place in Camden Market, where they rented this massive space to build all those locations. Everything that is used in the trailer was actually shot on the real location inside this space: mainly only build sets with 3 walls to walk in and out, which was a struggle as I only had less than 180° angle to shoot.

We shot it in June 2022, knowing the show had just opened its doors. They had filled the place with real props and costumes from the actual TV show PEAKY BLINDERS which just wrapped officially, and a lighting designer set the moods for the different locations. The production company QPUK developed a short film-like script, which I really liked because I do narrative work, and I just felt I had to take it to the next level and make it look as good as possible. With the director, Alex Dawe, we had only one day for recce, just getting to know where everything was, talking to the lighting designer, taking a lot of photos. After about two and a half weeks of prep, during which we shotlisted and drew storyboards as precisely as possible, we only had two 5-hour days for the shooting, which took place in daytime before the experience would open to the public, meaning, the actors did it in their free time. With the 1st AD we made a super tight schedule, and I managed to get a pre-light team, an A unit and a de-rig team: it took a crew of 18 people to make it work. And it did work out nicely. The lighting was grounded on what they created for the live show itself, except that it was just way too dark and I needed a good contrast. We were shooting consistently on the Steadicam. I brought in a C700 full frame for some close-ups on faces at the very beginning to cut away from the wide shot of the family, otherwise it was mainly a one-camera shoot.

We were very prepared, but we also had the ability to be a bit free in finding some shots on the day. There was a specific shot that I just found of the character Al Capone wearing his hat. As we were moving from one location to the next set he just walked past this overhead light set up for the boxing room sequence. He was fully dressed, and I said, that looks really good, let's do a scene with him. We pumped in a little bit of smoke, we pushed in the Steadicam and got two shots out of it. And it just looks so good. I think every cinematographer has to be prepared to a certain extent and have a vision but also be open for things on the day that feel right. 

Tom Maller, the creator and showrunner, and the whole crew were very happy with how it looked from the get-go, which always is great feedback. We went a bit further beyond what we had discussed in preproduction, and it looked almost a bit too cinematic. People were asking, oh, is it season 7 of the TV show? We did have to pull it a little bit back in the grade, but it's what we shot. My colorist, Vanya Tomova, did an amazing job on enhancing what's given and making it even more Peaky Blinders like with her very own touch. She is a true artist.

Since then, I went back to the Supreme Primes for a totally different project, which is Asking4it, a short film about toxic masculinity and sexual consent, written and directed by Emma Jesse, who is currently in the postproduction phase. The main character is a man who bumps his head and wakes up in the body of a woman. Every time he looks in the mirror, he sees a very attractive woman, and everyone else sees him as a very attractive woman, even though we see him as a man. At first, he takes advantage of being a woman to get free drinks, but soon enough, he experiences firsthand how guys react to a woman dressed sexy. The story turns darker as you can imagine and without spoiling too much, he wakes up and realizes what he did to his girlfriend.

When I read the script, it was so relatable that I was kind of shocked, to the point that I questioned my own behavior. Going through this process and making people aware of it was the key reason to shoot this short film. Emma Jesse was very keen on getting a male cinematographer on it. We wanted to make it as realistic as possible but heighten it in a subtle way. The first question was, what lenses could we use? I decided to go for the Supreme Primes, because I know I get everything I want with the lens. If I want to stop them down, I get a great depth of field. If I open them up, I can make them almost dreamlike. I created a very subtle show LUT that had pastel tones to also enhance the dreamlike memory in a way, but I never treated it like it's a dream, because I don't want people to feel tricked into believing this is a dream. The reality of it was already as glamorous as possible, and I just wanted to enhance it in a subtle way, so I chose shooting Full Frame on a Venice 1 camera for its dual gain and relied on great lenses and beautiful lighting to help convey the story.

The biggest trick was that Emma built the bathroom set and the bedroom set with a hole in the middle as the fake mirror, so we could look through it over the shoulder of our actor and see the female actress opposite side and vice versa. There's also a very strong scene at the end of the movie where our sexy dressed man is pushed down on the bed. He just looks up into the ‘mirror’ and sees his female reflection being abused as well. That was shot with a see-through again. So, two sets at the same time, with duplicated lighting. I think it's super effective, because we didn’t overuse it. Viewers won’t see the trickery as they are so invested in what’s going on that they are just blown away.