Wonder Woman 1984 cinematographer Matthew Jensen on IMAX, practical stunts, and his love of Panavision Primos

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I’ve got a new interview up over at Filmmaker Magazine with Wonder Woman 1984 cinematographer Matthew Jensen. The super hero sequel was shot on a multitude of formats, including:

• 35mm (as the main format)
• IMAX (for the opening and closing scenes)
• 5-perf 65mm (for heavy dialogue scenes during the IMAX sequences)
• Alexa 65 (underwater shots in the Amazon Olympics set piece)
• Alexa XT (for the Washington Monument sequence, when an ISO of 1280 was needed)

Here’s Jensen breaking down one of the film’s practical stunts, part of a chase scene set in Cairo:

That (chase scene) was shot in Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands. I think the 2nd unit part of the chase was 15 days of shooting, then the 1st unit would come in and shoot little bits of it, particularly with Chris and Gal. The main thing we wanted to do was shoot in the real sun, so 1st and 2nd unit were very close to one another—we would be shooting under similar conditions and I think that helped the sequence blend together. So, while 2nd unit was shooting, we were also working in a parking lot not too far away getting close-ups, things like Gal getting squeezed between two trucks. There’s a top-down shot of her between the trucks—it’s really her and those are real trucks. We shot that in the parking lot. The pavement moving [below Gal’s feet] is a digital effect and [one of the trucks attempting to crush her] is a mechanical truck with a hydraulic arm pushing towards her.

Posted on January 25, 2021 0 By mattmulcahey Interviews Posted in Interviews Tagged #cinematographer interviews, Matthew Jensen, wonder woman 1984

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