ARRI allows producers to get into the heart of a story

Are you trapped in a lockdown? Would you like to travel through a vast landscape and immerse yourself in the voyage of a van-dwelling female nomad criss-crossing America West after losing everything in the Great Depression?

Joshua James Richards, leveraging on ARRI’s ALEXA Mini and AMIRA cameras with ARRI/Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses,  filmed Nomadland, which has won an Oscar for Best Picture. To captivate audiences around the world, Richards decided that intimate storytelling techniques would be at the heart of the production of Nomadland.

He explained, “The challenge here was doing this in a way that feels like we’re inside the world (of the nomad in her 60s) and we’re not just viewing it as outsiders with a long lens.

“In terms of equipment, I knew that we needed to be as nimble as ever. Here, we have a character on a sort of voyage of discovery, and so I really wanted the audience to feel like they’re moving with her through these places. The compact ALEXA Mini and the ergonomic AMIRA facilitated this intimacy and ease of movement.”

Nomadland  is just one out of the seven other films nominated by the Academy for Best Picture … and four out of the seven were captured with ARRI cameras.

The award for Achievement in Cinematography is always highly anticipated at ARRI, and this year’s competitive playing field speaks volumes for the talent in the industry. Again, four out of the five main contenders in this category chose to work with ARRI cameras:

• ARRI’s ALEXA Mini and AMIRA cameras with ARRI/Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses were used on Nomadland by Joshua James Richards;
• Judas and the Black Messiah was shot by Sean Bobbitt BSC on ARRI’s ALEXA LF, ALEXA Mini LF, with ARRI Rental’s DNA LF lenses;
• Dariusz Wolski ASC shot News of the World on ALEXA Mini LF and ALEXA LF; and 
• The Trial of the Chicago 7 by DP Phedon Papamichael ASC used ALEXA LF and ALEXA Mini LF.

Despite the pandemic and restrictions during film production, large-format camera systems continue to be in high demand as they empower producers to immerse audiences into what they are watching.