DP Thomas Kloss (with bow and arrow) and Christopher TJ McGuire, ‘A’ Camera and Steadicam operator on the set of Conan (Photo Simon Versano)

Nu Image/Millennium Films have collaborated with Lionsgate to bring an $85 million 3-D adaptation of Conan to the big screen. Screenwriters Joshua Oppenheimer and Thomas Donnelly went to great lengths to explore Robert E. Howard’s fantasy character and his origins, and the film was seven years in development. The blockbuster was shot on stages at Nu Boyana Studios in Sofia and at locations around Bulgaria, and opens at Conan’s birth on the battlefield.

Director Marcus Nispel, noted for his remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, had worked with director of photography Thomas Kloss on commercials for 15 years. “In terms of communication, it was not difficult to come up with an appropriate visual approach for Conan,” says Kloss. “Marcus gave me an overall idea of what he wanted – which was a visceral masculine look. I just had to maintain it.”

Kloss had used Kodak stocks since he began shooting in the 1980s, with “very consistent results.” Lacking the time to do exposure tests on Conan, he relied on past experience. “We needed two compatible stocks, so I compared the contrast levels of KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 and KODAK VISION2 100T Color Negative Film 5212. In particular, I tested their handling of overexposures and they were very reliable,” he says.

The 11-week shoot proved exceptionally demanding. “It rained constantly for three weeks when we shot the opening village sequence before Conan’s father is killed.

The eight-and-a-half acre site was awash and we were up to our knees in mud. It was like shooting in a war zone. Then we had to tackle actor availability, hundreds of extras, animals, fire, explosions arrows and three or four cameras. It’s a miracle that we captured anything, yet the sequence looks interesting and authentic. The demands the shoot made on everyone are hard to describe, but it’s a good statement why action movies should be shot on film. There’s no way we could have shot in digital format under such circumstances.”

KODAK Cinelabs Bulgaria supplied and processed the film stock. “A couple of alternative resources were suggested to me for the telecine, but we decided to do the transfer at KCB,” states Kloss. “Manager Margarita Petrova and her staff did an excellent job developing the negative and, once they understood what I wanted in terms of the look, the dailies were consistent. I asked them about the density of the negative on a day-to-day basis and adjusted my lighting to the circumstances because I didn’t have time to dial in on location. It turned into a good experience because everyone was so helpful and constantly available for dialogue with us.”

Company 3 in Los Angeles is handling the SFX and scanning for D.I., and colourist Rob Sciarrata is doing colour correction. “Company 3 is one of the best companies in the world for that kind of work,” states the DP.

Kloss proposed a post 3-D conversion to give the movie a cinematic look on film. “Now all the big studio projects agree that 3-D is cheaper and better looking in a post 3-D approach,” he says.

Evan Jacobs, Stereoscopic Supervisor for Conan, comments that “the tight grain structure of KODAK VISION stocks has been really beneficial in the 3-D conversion work, the speed and quality of which is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was just a year ago. We’ve engaged several top-tier conversion companies to work on Conan, each with its own unique approach to the process. By splitting the work, we’re able to apply the best solution to the challenges posed by each sequence in the film.”

Conan is due to be released during the summer.