Cinematographer Martin Ahlgren shot three episodes of 3 Body Problem. Perhaps most notably, episode five “Judgement Day,” for which he earned an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Cinematography For A Series (One Hour). The cinematographer, known for Altered Carbon and Daredevil, shows both the destruction of Judgement Day and the introduction of the sophon (a proton-sized supercomputer covering Earth).
The episode increases the stakes, ups the body count, and increases the ambiguity of the war between humans and aliens. It’s fantastical yet grounded work from Ahlgren. Recently, the cinematographer spoke with Immersive about his cinematography on the Emmy-nominated episode.
Before we get into talking about the attack on Judgement Day, let’s start with the reveal of the super computer, the sophon. How’d you want the light from it to affect Wade (Liam Cunningham) and Jin (Jess Hong) in the virtual space?
Well, at this point in the show, the virtual computer game they’ve been playing is basically over. But what the writers decided to do was to use that mechanism for telling the story of what we call the “sophon journey,” which is the creation of this computer and how it travels to earth.
In the books, it’s done slightly differently. It’s described from the aliens point of view, but I think this was a smart way of doing it. But it also meant that we lived in the world of this VR computer game, like this highly realistic virtual reality computer game, basically. As in the previous iterations of it, it’s not a representation of either what the aliens look like or what their world looks like, but it’s sort of a reflection of the world of earth. It’s a human form telling the story of the aliens.
Because we were using the same wall that was built for that, we had an incredible ability to really design what the light was going to be. We spent time before the shoot to program low-resolution video images of what’s happening in the sky to be this interactive light on the actors. One of the reasons it was done on this light wall created with LED panels as opposed to a video wall, which has been very successful in the last few years with the LED volume, is that that does require that you have all the assets built in advance.
It wasn’t possible with the schedule that we were on. There was no way that visual effects were going to be created in advance. So in that sense, it was a traditional approach to shooting it, shooting the actors against blue screen or set pieces. But the more high-tech scenario of it was that we had this very elaborate lighting to light them with.
For the proton-sized computer, the sophon, for the CG wide shots of the changes in environment on Earth, did you tell the VFX supervisor some qualities you wanted to see there?
For some of it. What we’re saying is that the sophon, this proton-size computer, basically it’s unfolding dimensions and turning into this reflective mirror surface. The light from the sky becomes a reflection of what the surface of the planet is. Those things drove our conversations around it.
Although, if you get too literal, then maybe at some point the logic falls apart. But one big discussion is that it’s easy to write about an eye in the sky staring down in a book or in a script, but when it comes time to design it, well, what kind of eye is that? What color is the eye? What is it? And to be honest, in the end, that’s something that was figured out in visual effects.
I like that it was beautiful and terrifying at the same time.
Well, it is an interesting end to the episode. Although to most inhabitants on earth, it’s a horrifying thing that’s happening, you do have people to which this is salvation. You have Tatiana at the end, staring up at the sky and basically seeing hope that this is real.
When you show how the aliens experience what they hear and see on the planet through this huge computer, there’s this huge wide-eyed lens. Was your thinking, this is how they interpret time and space, or at least on earth?
We had to design a way of telling this story visually. We experimented a lot. One of the things that we decided worked was using a 360 camera to travel through the world. Initially there was some talk about using it in a way where maybe it’s a really wide-angle image and then it zooms in on a certain aspect or something like that. But I think what we found in the end was interesting, using it as this omnipresent view of what’s happening.
I got a GoPro Max camera as a preview tool. Minke Spiro, the director, and I would look at how we could create the journey through it. In the end, we shot on a more high resolution 360 camera and Insta Pro two, basically a 2K camera that are stitched together that also you could move fairly close with. So, in certain cases where we wanted to go from this wide-angle view into someone’s eyeball, we could get very close to that and then replace it with a camera. We would zoom into the eye and take over from there.
And some of the previs work also served as a reference for visual effects to later map their 3D world, in a fashion that was similar to how we were shooting it. But so, this Insta Pro camera, which is basically the size of a basketball, I would attach to a boom pole and operate with it.
In certain sets, we would cut out a hole in the ceiling. I would lie from the top and I would hold that boom pole into the room and swing it around and then move it on its path forward. And in post, they would paint out the pole and me and the ceiling, but use it in that way.
Also, the script called for revisiting scenes from earlier episodes to explain events, the blinking of the stars and the writing on the retinas of scientists. So, while they were shooting those episodes, we would come in at the end of the day, given the last 15 minutes to quickly run through the scene and capture it with the 360 cameras, so that we could use it later in our journey.
Was that new for you, using those GoPros in tha tway?
I did a show called Altered Carbon, and we experimented a little bit with a 360 view on that when they go into a virtual reality world. We sort of had an inkling of doing that before, but now, the cameras are a little bit smaller. When we did it before, we had them traveling on a little robot car rig that would drive through the set. So, this was lightweight enough that you could hold it two meters away from yourself on a boom pole. So, a little awkward, but it could be used in that way.
And then with the GoPro Max, what was nice about that is that I was using the software that’s made for it. Some of the things that we liked was when you have a 360-degree image, you can kind of fold it over itself and play with that a bit in terms of how it distorted. So, we used that a few times as well in the journey for how to manipulate the image.
How about working with the contained environments in “Judgement Day”? What qualities do you look for, say, in the interrogation room.
From Dan and David, the showrunners, and Alex Woo, they wanted this feeling of making the photography something that feels natural, not calling attention to itself. In this case, you’re telling such an extraordinary story with aliens and all these amazing but out there concepts as well, but you want to keep the photography grounded. So, I think there was something to that where you’re doing these elaborate set pieces, but sometimes you’re finding yourself in a tiny, tiny little apartment or a small room. It’s the most plain and ordinary environment to shoot.
Obviously, we want to find visual interest in those environments as well. I think you certainly can and find a different kind of beauty, as well. But I also think that makes it interesting, in some ways, how plain in some ways we’re telling the story. Hopefully, that makes it even more terrifying, the extraordinary things that end up happening.
When we were starting to see the script pages and how in many script pages they were in that tiny little interrogation cell, it certainly gives you pause. You’re like, okay, we want to make an episode that’s going to stand out and be amazing. So, you’re trying to find ways of doing it. Fortunately, the dialogue and the acting in those scenes are very strong, and that drives you to a certain degree.
How did Auggie’s journey, her moral ambiguity, in that episode influence how you shot her? Especially for the “you are bugs” sequence?
Well, how we shot Augie in that episode for that was… I remember we were in Piccadilly Circus, and it was dictated a little bit by the logistics of locking down Piccadilly Circus. It was a huge effort. I think they worked on it for six months to get that done. And then we had a very specific storyboard for how we wanted to cover her. We knew we were going to have very little time, but we wanted to make the lead up to that as powerful as possible.
Auggie’s story is about being a little bit complicit in something that she’s not really comfortable being complicit in, as well. So, there is a duality to her story with the realization about the actual threat. Also, having sort of blindly helped Wade and his team destroy Judgment Day, there’s certainly something to that story that lends itself to telling that in a certain way.
The attack on “Judgement Day” was such a massive undertaking. When you lookback at it now, how’d the end result compare to your ambition or hopes for it?
So we did go back and forth quite a lot on how we were going to shoot it. We looked at things that were, in the beginning, a lot more gruesome and focused on the physicality of what’s happening. I do think that it was the right decision to pull back a little bit from that and make it more… Obviously, show a bit of the horror of it, because that’s part of the shocking aspect of that scene, but then focus more on leaving more to the imagination and how let that play out a little bit more. Yeah, hard to say, but obviously it struck a chord with people to some extent.
Even the attack on Judgement Day, how’d you want that sense of the ordinary along with the extraordinary?
There’s several different scenes that intercut together, shot in different ways. You have the deck of the ship and then the command center, and then you have the interior of the ship and everything like that. I think we didn’t want to set a specific threatening tone. In a way, we wanted it to feel almost ordinary, so when we spoke about how we wanted to build in the lighting into the ship, we certainly didn’t want to lean into a horror kind of aesthetic.
And so, to instead keep it very straightforward in a way and with the feeling that the more ordinary the environments are feeling, the more horrifying what’s happening to that extent. It has a horror film aspect to what’s happening, but we’re telling it in a way that’s more matter of fact. We felt that was the stronger way to do it.
3 Body Problem is available to stream on Netflix.
