'Gladiator II' BTS: Cinematographer John Mathieson on how to shoot historical shock and awe

All the swords and all the sandals. How tough and tactile practical filmmaking yielded dividends for cinematographer John Mathieson when it came to shooting Ridley Scott’s epic Gladiator II.

John Mathieson BSC won a Bafta and was Oscar nominated for his work on Gladiator in 2000 and returns to the arena for Ridley Scott’s hugely entertaining shock and awe sequel.

It’s his sixth film for the director which have mostly been sword & sandal (Hannibal, Kingdom of Heaven) or bow ‘n’ arrow & sandal historical epics (Robin Hood). The outlier is crime comedy Matchstick Men starring Nic Cage from 2003.

Over the course of that journey and in particular for Scott’s historical dramas the sets have got bigger as have the number of cameras with which the director likes to cover a scene.

Gladiator, the original, was of course a 35mm shoot but even here Scott was using two or three at a time. He staged even dialogue scenes in Gladiator II with four digital cameras and up to 12 for gladiatorial sequences of which there are many.

“We established the visual language for this film when shooting the first one,” Mathieson said after a screening of the film at Camerimage, Poland. So much so that Scott incorporates wide shots of the Colosseum used in Gladiator into scenes in Gladiator II.

In addition to the ‘Orientalist’ paintings of snake charmers, courtesans, and gladiators in exotic locales, Mathieson referred to the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites’ romanticised neoclassical subjects and jewel toned palette. It was a time when ‘The Grand Tour’ of Europe was a rite of passage, with Italy often as its centrepiece.

“Our template is Las Vegas. It’s gaudy, wild, vivid and just a little camp,” he said. “The result is a mixture of what Scott knows from his research and what he thinks is right for the image. It’s a Rome with the glamour we expect, but it’s not always squeaky clean. He somehow makes the real world disappear and you become a part of the story. His Rome is just better than anybody else’s because of the way his mind works. I like to say the rest of us read left to right. Ridley does it the other way. And if you ask him why, he’ll tell you to just do it.”

With the look and the style agreed and understood the challenge for the DP was delivering that for set pieces and on sets that would several times the scale of Gladiator.

John Mathieson BSC speaking at Camerimage

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The main set in Malta recreates many of Rome’s impressive historical settings in an area approximately eight kilometres long. The sets were built to a height of around 46 feet, which was doubled digitally in post-production. The set for Macrinus’ (played by Denzel Washington) luxurious home alone covered almost 11,000 square feet, with an atrium open to the sky, a courtyard, a pool and an enormous staircase. It contained over 1,000 pieces of hand-painted faux marble.

In Morocco, there were over 80 huge tents dedicated just for the extras’ hair and makeup, and to house countless props and costumes. Here they shot the opening scene’s sea ‘battle of Numidia’ repurposing a set they had used for Kingdom of Heaven.

“This was about logistics. And reliability. This was not about crafting bokeh or customising a lens. There’s a time and a place for that but this show was not it. We wanted reliability of cameras and lots of them as well as compatibility between cameras and lenses. It’s about the gear being as easy as possible to handle.”

Ridley Scott on set. © 2024 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

He shot mostly with ARRI Alexa Mini LF with additional Alexa LFs for higher frame rates augmented with crash cams and a drone.

“We had primes (Panaspeeds and Leica Summilux) but we rarely used them. I wanted zooms to bring out the scope and size of the sets. Our priority was to record enough shots of the right size, dynamic, composition, character and story.”

The zoom list included Angénieux EZ 1 45-135mm, EZ 2 22-60mm, Optica Elite 120-520mm and an Optimo Ultra 36-435mm; Primo 70 28-80mm and 70-185mm.

“I used the 36-435mm and Elite for close-ups and pushed those cameras further back because Ridley likes to shoot wide.

“The sets are so huge and so detailed that I wanted to bring that background to life as much as possible. I wanted the audience to see the person behind the person behind the person, even if they are out of focus. To do that I shot deep stops, T8.5 or T116, so we really feel the space and the textures of the background.”

The Colosseum itself was built on the same set that served the original at Fort Ricasoli in Malta, with a practical build one third the correct height of the real Colosseum, and between a quarter to a third of the span.  Mathieson hung banks of ARRIMAX 18Ks overhead and asked production designer Arthur Max to render the sand in the arena a brilliant white so he could throw black shadows, reflections and contrast.

For the wider vistas and exteriors he didn’t use much additional lighting at all, partly because of a camera plan which delivered coverage in nearly 360-degrees. Some camera ops were even dressed in costume in case they were caught in coverage.

A dream sequence was filmed in a studio, or rather a warehouse in Malta. This depicts hero Lucius (Paul Mescal) seeing his dead lover transported across the river Styx. There’s a vogue for this style of infra-red look which has also been seen in Dune II and The Zone of Interest. The scene was achieved here against bluescreen with the floor comprised of mirrors and silver pebbles.

Keeping it real

There goes the budget... © 2024 PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Of course, it’s a VFX heavy show too. The first film landed Mill Film the UK’s first Oscar for visual effects. Even if the majority of the baying spectators in the Colosseum are digital, Mathieson and Scott revel in shooting as much in-camera as possible. Indeed, the DP who is never shy to speak his mind, has previously been dismissive of studio shot VFX franchises for Marvel or DC (although he did shoot Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness for Sam Raimi).

“I appreciate what you can do on sound stages but I always feel like it’s clocking in and out of a factory. I like to be out on location and be inspired by what’s around me,” he said. “So for this film we’re working in heat and dust and there are mosquitos and somehow that sweat and that effort pays off with what you see on the screen. Ridley gets this too. He is tough. The shoot is tough but it yields things that are unpredictable and tactile.”

tl;dr

• John Mathieson BSC, renowned for his work on the original Gladiator, returns as the cinematographer for Ridley Scott's Gladiator II, applying tactile filmmaking techniques to enhance the epic sequel.
• The film features increasingly grand sets and a large array of cameras, with Mathieson using up to 12 cameras for action sequences to capture the scale and detail of each scene effectively.
• To achieve a rich visual style, Mathieson drew inspiration from Orientalist paintings and Victorian Pre-Raphaelite art, aiming to create a vibrant, glamorous depiction of Rome that feels immersive to the audience.
• The production favored reliability and ease of use in camera equipment, primarily utilizing ARRI Alexa Mini LF cameras with a focus on zoom lenses to capture the expansive sets and intricate details of the film's breathtaking visuals.