Cinematography: John Mathieson

The veteran cinematographer hired, John Mathieson has earned Oscar nominations for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and Joel Schumacher’s The Phantom of the Opera, along with blockbuster paydays from X-Men: First Class and Logan. He was the one who insisted on shooting the movie on 35mm film, instead of digital.

" I always want to shoot on the film", says Mathieson, "It’s quite often shot down by the studios because it seems that shooting on film is expensive and that it’s easier on digital. But I don’t think that’s true at all. We’ve managed to work using film for a hundred years without calamity".

Crucially enough, for Mathieson, shooting on film gives the cinematographer the chance to stamp their artistic credentials on a production, to create something distinctive in a world of increasing visual mediocrity.

"Whilst this was a family romp, that does not mean you can’t make it intriguing and mysterious. In a sense, Pokémon Detective Pikachu is a futuristic detective story, based in dodgy areas of town – dark alleys and dank docksides – with deep, smoky shadows, backlit silhouettes, and rich exposures. Take out the little yellow fella and it’s not a million miles from a movie such as Blade Runner, nor from some of the feature films I have shot before."

"During the shoot, I rated the 500T 5219 at 400ASA but didn’t correct it in daylight as I wanted to encourage the slate grey, corporate look in the film’s office sequences," Mathieson explains, "The 5219 is a robust stock with great latitude, so you don’t need to worry too much about overexposure at the top end of underexposure in the dark below. But even if I did, I knew I was in much better shape shooting on film as it can take that sort of punishment far better than digital. Also, neon lights, especially red and blue, as well as flesh tones and highlights, render much better on film – you get proper colors, compared to digital."

"The 50D 5203 is a lovely, rich and velvety stock, whose roots you can trace back down a long, direct line of great daylight stocks of yore, and right back to the ones I used on the Colosseum scenes in Gladiator, and also in Morocco on the Kingdom of Heaven. Its emulsion must be as thick as marmite, as you really can push it by several stops, up to 200ASA, and it will still look fine. On this film though, I rated it normally and used it as often as I could on exterior shoot days, such as the woodlands of Glencoe in Scotland."

Captured on Kodak 35mm film, Pokémon Detective Pikachu is how John Mathieson demonstrated that it’s both eminently feasible and financially profitable to shoot a VFX-laden, CG character-led film on celluloid, as opposed to the now commonplace binary alternative.

Mathieson framed Pokémon Detective Pikachu in Anamorphic 2.40:1 aspect ratio, using Panavision Panaflex Platinum 35mm cameras. These were fitted principally with Panavision E- and Anamorphic lenses but supplemented with Anamorphic Wide-Angle (AWZ T2.8, 40-80mm) and Anamorphic Telephoto (ATZ T3.5, 70-200mm) zooms, as well as spherical Panavised Cooke 10:1 and long Russian Elite zooms.
 
“The thing about all of these lenses is that they have lovely fall-off and are all pretty much fast enough for shooting a night-time city street scene when you don’t have lots of light. With some of the longer lenses, I might put some brightness behind the actors to get silhouettes and, with a bit of atmo and the depth-of-field, achieve a lovely veiling around the characters, with fogging into the shadows and beautiful, slightly-halted street lights. Using film I knew I could point the camera straight at any neon lights or bright reflections and not get any clipping in the image as you would expect with a digital camera.”
 
As for the 35mm film stocks, Mathieson selected KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 for the mainstay of the film’s studio-based scenes, and VISION3 50D Color Negative Film 5203 to capture the day exteriors on location-based shoots, especially the rural ones.
 
Mathieson says he kept his shooting ratio, that is the proportion of total raw footage to minutes used in the finished product, razor-thin, and rushed to meet extremely tight shooting deadlines. His system was so efficient that Detective Pikachu, which was still in principal photography in late 2018, arrived on schedule. 
 
Mathieson’s crew on Pokémon Detective Pikachu included Peter Cavaciuti as A-camera/Steadicam operator on the main unit, with Lewis Hume working as 1st AC and Archie Muller as 2nd AC. Rodrigo Gutierrez was the main unit B-camera operator, with Leigh Gold working focus as 1st AC, supported by 2nd AC Simon Dunn. Chris Cavanagh operated the video assist. Ashley Bond was recruited when a third camera was required. Tim Wooster was the DP on the second unit, with Stefan Stankowski working as an A-camera operator, and John Gamble working as a B-camera operator. Andrew Dunn BSC shot some additional UK material. The production’s gaffer was Chuck Finch, with David Appleby working as the key grip.
 
As this was essentially a classic, noir detective story, they purposely kept the camera movement quite steady, crafted, and solid, rather than flinging it around. They avoided too many massive close-ups and preferred the camera framing and lensing to create a sense of depth and distance.

There was a small degree of green screen to shoot, but not as much as one might expect from a live-action animation movie, as a lot of the time they shot in real locations.