Shooting on KODAK 35mm film, DP Dan Mindel BSC ASC SASC created a thrilling disaster-movie experience for 'Twisters'

The summer of 2024 sees the return of the epic studio disaster movie with Twisters, a thrill-ride adventure giving audiences an intimate experience one of nature's most wondrous and destructive forces.

Directed by Lee Isaac Chung, the Oscar-nominated writer-director of Minari, and shot in 4-perf widescreen on KODAK 35mm film by DP Dan Mindel BSC ASC SASC, Twisters stars Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell and Anthony Ramos as equal forces, with opposing motivations, who come together to predict, and possibly tame, the immense power of tornados. Twisters is distributed by Universal Pictures in the US and by Warner Bros. Pictures internationally.

The adrenaline-fueled action follows Kate Carter, a former storm-chaser haunted by a devastating encounter with a tornado, who now studies storm patterns safely on screens in New York. But when she is lured back to Tornado Alley in the open plains of central Oklahoma to test a groundbreaking new tracking system, she crosses paths with Tyler Owens, a charming and reckless social media superstar who thrives on posting his storm-chasing adventures with his raucous crew, the more dangerous the better. As storm season intensifies, terrifying never- -before-seen phenomena are unleashed, and the competing teams find themselves in the fight of their lives when multiple storm systems converge.

Shooting Twisters on the road, sometimes in taxing weather conditions with wind, rain and ice-making machines galore, plus no shortage of set-piece stunts, SFX and VFX – might have proved a dauting prospect for most cinematographers. But Mindel says he relished the challenge.

"From the moment I read the script and chatted with Isaac, I was really excited about filming Twisters. I liked the fact that it could be a conversation starter about climate change, an issue we all need to take seriously, and also that, being an edge-of-the seat thriller, it was going to need a determined collaborative effort between departments to get it made. The momentum and urgency of this kind of travelog filmmaking was right up my street."

Along with his enthusiasm for the project, Mindel also alludes to some good omens while absorbing visual references prior to production.

"As I knew we would be working on-location, out of trucks, moving constantly from one exterior location to the next, both night and day, with many in-camera driving shots, I rewatched Thelma & Louise (1991, dir. Ridley Scott, DP Adrian Biddle BSC) for its Americana style and the aesthetic of its car work. I was Adrian's focus puller on that production and I learned a great deal from the tough but rewarding experience a road movie can be."

He adds, "I also watched the 1996 Twisters (dir. Jan De Bont, DP Jack N. Green ASC) at home one evening with my wife, who sometimes has a few misgivings about certain types of films, but she really enjoyed it. So that was another positive sign."

Mindel is no stranger to filming on film, with JJ Abrams'' Mission: Impossible III (2006), Star Trek (2009), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), along with Oliver Stone's Savages (2012), Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and Julius Onah's The Cloverfield Paradox (2018), amongst his analog credits.

"From the get-go, Isaac and I we were united in the idea that film conquers all. So many digitally-originated films look squeaky-clean and are kind of sterile because of that. Although Twisters was going to have plenty of CG-generated VFX, I knew from previous experience, that the forgiving softness of film really helps blend them into the final image to deliver an engaging experience for the audience."

With the backing of the producers, Twisters was given the greenlight to shoot on film, and after four months of prep, principal photography got underway at locations around Oklahoma City and the local countryside in May 2023. Mindel notes that shooting in what is nicknamed ‘Tornado Alley' meant having to be forever watchful of the weather conditions for safety's sake – lightning strikes within a five-mile radius meant production had to shut down, with cranes put away, until the threat had passed. A much bigger interruption, however, came when filming was suspended in July due to the SAG-AFRTRA strikes, before resuming in November 2023 and wrapping the following month.

"It was so refreshing to collaborate with a director like Isaac, who was really focused on the story and how it would be told visually. He wanted to shoot as much as we could in-camera, before resorting to VFX," says Mindel.

"I really love to work with Anamorphic lenses, and Isaac was completely on board with the idea that when you're shooting on location, like those we scouted in Oklahoma, you want to have that widescreen aspect to show off the countryside – it's massive.

"It was also apparent that, as there's so much contemporary architecture around the landscapes of dusty red roads and huge green plains – like fracking sites and nodding donkeys in the oilfields there – we could only but embrace and include all of that as part of real-life Americana. So I suggested we adopt a kind of 1970s Time Life magazine photojournalistic look and try to make this the most positive view we could of the countryside in the modern day and age, to which Isaac agreed."

Mindel selected Panavision Millennium XL, ARRIFELX 435 and 235 35mm film cameras for the production, with digital camera arrays for VFX plates and some of the aerial work. He chose Panavision Primo Anamorphics for the mainstay of the shoot, supplemented with C-series and T-series Anamorphic lenses. The cameras and lenses were supplied by Panavision, Woodland Hills, LA.

Bucking the popular trend of having lenses adjusted for particular aesthetic purposes, Mindel instructed Panavision's lens guru, Dan Sasaki, to have his chosen set of Primo Anamorphics optics returned to factory mode.

"Dan is the foremost lens master on the planet and does magical things with glass," remarks Mindel, "but I actively wanted the looks of the Anamorphic lenses as they had been originally made, with all of their individual flaws, circles of confusion, soft and distorted edges, to underscore that Time Life authenticity in the filmed image.

"There's nothing wrong with using lenses and optics the way they were designed in the first place, and then flexing your skills as the cinematographer to make them function in a non-invasive way so that it doesn't interfere with the storytelling but actually enhances it. As the lenses were all mapped prior to production, I knew these image artifacts would not pose a problem to the VFX team down the line."

As for filmstocks, Mindel went with KODAK VISION3 50D Color Negative Film 5203 for day exteriors, VISION3 250D Color Negative Film 5207 for the interior car work and VISION3 500T Color Negative Film 5219 for the film's low-light/nighttime sequences. Film processing and dailies were done at FotoKem under the auspices of Mark Van Horne, director of production services, with 4K scans passed to Company3 in Los Angeles, where senior colorist Stefan Sonnefeld conducted the final grade.

"Kodak's daylight and tungsten filmstocks are very flexible in how you can use them to shoot in different lighting scenarios. They're reliable in terms of color rendition and depth of color, and they match well too," Mindel explains.

"One of the other nice things about them is that you can play with mixed light sources, and it doesn't really impact you in any way other than to make your frame look really interesting.

"I used a lot of gels on the lights to help the shadows and give the blacks some subtle tone in the grain, especially at night. Digital cameras can't really take mixed light very well, especially when skin tones are involved. Film gives you a lot more freedom over your lighting and aesthetic choices. I've done so many movies with the team at FotoKem and knew I could trust them implicitly in assessing the rushes."

Along with his status as a legendary cinematographer, the late, great DP Douglas Slocombe OBC BSC ASC is renowned for never having used a light meter on the set of Raiders of The Lost Ark (1981, dir. Steven Spielberg), using his eyes to judge the correct exposure. And Mindel took this same approach during production on Twisters.

"I have shot with Kodak filmstocks for many years and know them really well," Mindel reveals. "After a couple of weeks with the light meter to remind myself of the range, I felt confident enough to judge how much light we would need for exposures just with my eyes, whatever the time of day, and that made my life a lot easier.

"However, having been taught by my mentors to always trust the meter, I would double check exposure with the focus pullers when multiple filters were on the camera's and while shooting through the glass windows of the cars, which requires exposure compensation."

Geoff Haley operated A-camera/Steadicam during the shoot, partnered by Mick Froehlich on B-camera. Chris Haarhoff acted as DP on the second unit, filming the extensive stunts and exterior car work, with John Connor working as camera operator.

"My camera teams on Twisters are forces of nature, founts of knowledge and wisdom, real aces," Mindel declares. "I love the collaborative process of filmmaking, and I knew I could give them the autonomy and trust to execute shots with Isaac, which would free me up to work on the lighting and the logistics of what we were doing, and that we would always be ready to move to the next set-up.

"With this being an all-out action-adventure, I wanted the camera to have kinetic energy, and we designed shots that ended with some kind of punctuation that would allow Isaac to edit to the next take or camera angle.

"We used everything at our disposal – drones, helicopters, cranes, pursuit cars, biscuit rigs, dollies on tracks, Steadicam and handheld – with movement in mind. That said, my team were all too aware of the precision needed to keep the horizon line still when shooting wides and landscapes in Anamorphic, as it can become quite unpleasantly unsettling for the audience when the picture seesaws around."

Mindel says he particularly enjoyed using the heavy-duty MTV insert truck from Allan Padelford Camera Cars to film the movie's car work. "It's a real beast. Depending on the scene, we filmed with a 30-foot Super Technocrane on the back or had cameras mounted on the sides, and even towed the picture car, all with the camera crew in the back."

He adds, "I don't like to break things, especially irreplaceable vintage Anamorphic glass, so we used some spherical lenses when working with the drones, and those pictures were later adjusted to emulate the Anamorphic look."

Other key collaborators in the camera and lighting department were key grip Joe Macaluso, gaffer John Vecchio and lighting programme/desk-op Jonathan Huggins ICLS.

"If I've learned one thing over the years it's that the movie star's light has to be as sexy as you can get it," says Mindel. "The tools I use for that are generally incandescents. Regardless of what the manufacturers say, in my opinion LEDs are not appropriate for maximum control of skin tones. Plus, I find LED soft lights generic in their inability to bring shape, so the mandate was ‘No LEDs on the actors'.

"We therefore had what you now might describe as pretty antiquated sources within the overall package – Dinos, 20Ks, 5K Molebeams – but having the opportunity to mix modern LEDs with the older lights gave us a lot of options for our looks, especially on our night locations, and we had a lot of fun with that.

"Despite their current shortcomings, I really like how modern LEDs are built to withstand the elements, being either water-resistant or waterproof, and we didn't lose our lights once when shooting in some ferocious weather conditions."

When it came to filming the film's many action scenes, Mindel says he didn't make a move without consulting and collaborating with the SFX and VFX supervisors on the production.

"Scott Fisher is a master when it comes to combining physical effects with stunts in-camera. He and the SFX team built all sorts of pneumatic rigs that would make objects and debris fly, spin and tumble around, along with working out ways to convincingly throw weather – wind, rain and hail and smoke – at the picture car, all while ensuring the safety of cast and crew.

"This production has seamless visual VFX, done to the very highest level that help to sell the movie. Over the years I have become very friendly with the team at ILM, one of the main VFX vendors on the film, and am the #1 proponent in facilitating whatever it is they need photographically to make particular scenes work.

"Like me, ILM's VFX supervisor, Ben Snow, transitioned over the years through analog to digital, and knew exactly how to optimize the inherent textures and grain structures in the film scans and merge the digital/CG effects into the analog arena. There's a forgiveness in this process, the results look photorealistic, alive and very plausible."

Mindel concludes, "There's action, adventure and lots of weather in Twisters, and the IMAX version is a super-sensory experience. One of the most important elements in this production was the filmstock and how it remains appropriate and vital in the creative process. I'm so grateful that Kodak continues to provide moviemakers with the analog option, helping us make distinctive, great looking films for audiences to enjoy."