Re-creating a masterpiece

It all started with the announcement of this year’s ShotDeck challenge—a call to filmmakers to pick a favorite shot from the hundreds of thousands on their website and re-create it using only in-camera techniques, with some color grading at the end. No CGI allowed. I sent a text to my buddy, and we started swapping images we thought would be fun to tackle. One frame that’s stuck with me ever since I first saw Blade Runner 2049 is the stunning office scene where Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins create a stunning interplay of light across the walls and floor. If you’ve seen the film, you know exactly what I’m talking about. These water “caustics,” as they’re called, were created by light shining through a pool of water that acted as a skylight in the futuristic workspace.

Re-creating it would be a ton of work, but I couldn’t get over how incredible and unique the image was. I pitched the idea on one condition—we’d do a lighting test first to see if we could replicate the water caustics. If that worked, we’d move ahead with building the set.There are only a few behind-the-scenes photos from this scene in Blade Runner 2049, and while Roger Deakins has shared some details about the lighting, his descriptions weren’t exact. What was clear is that the scene centered around a large tank of water, through which light was shined. We didn’t have the budget for a massive suspended water tank, so I figured the key was to do it in miniature. A fish tank would suffice, and a cardboard box could serve as the room. A quick trip to Petco, and we had what we needed.My friend Marcus and I got to work, cutting a hole in the box and suspending the fish tank above it using some C-stands and scrap wood. Next came the lighting. I knew that sharply-focused water caustics require a small point of light, similar to how the sun is a relatively small light source and when it shines through a pool and creates clear, focused patterns on the bottom. We started with a 200W lamp and a spotlight attachment, but even with it placed as far back in my garage as possible, the caustics were muddy and unfocused. The light source was too big.

I then pulled out the smallest source I had: the iPhone’s light. That did the trick, projecting beautifully defined caustics inside our cardboard box. The only problem? It wasn’t powerful enough. Looking for a middle ground, I grabbed a flashlight from the junk drawer. It worked brilliantly, allowing us to capture test footage with light dancing exactly how we needed it to. We’d have to order a few more lights to cover the whole space, but the concept was proven, and we decided to move forward. What I didn’t realize was that the hard part hadn’t even begun.Anyone who’s entered a competition like this will tell you—it’s all about the details. And once you start, there’s an endless amount to replicate. Just like any beautiful shot, it’s a mix of exposure, composition, lighting, production design, focal length, filtration, aperture, actor sizes, wardrobe, and so on. We had to break down the shot into all those little categories and then one-by-one re-create them.

Our next challenge was the room itself. In the film, the office appears large and completely made of wood. Plywood seemed like a good match, but how big do we make the room? We had no schematics and very little to go on besides the wide shot and a quick over-the-shoulder.Years ago, I worked at a construction company and briefly used 3D architecture software. Luckily, it had a feature that could help—recreating a room in 3D based on a 2D image. I set to work tracing every wall, the floor, the desk, the chairs where Luv and her colleague were sitting, and after a few hours, I had a 3D model that matched the film. The problem was I didn’t know the dimensions. Were the walls 12 feet high, making the room 30 feet wide? Or were they taller? I needed an anchor point to scale everything from. I decided to base it all on the fish tank I had already bought—11.5” x 11.5” in real life. I went back to the 3D model, scaled everything so the skylight matched that size, then went through the model and jotted down all the dimensions we’d need.

With our scaled-down dimensions, we cut plywood and using a hot glue gun assembled the walls to give us our basic room layout. We suspended the fish tank and positioned the additional flashlights I had ordered. They were at 5600K, so I used some CTO gel to warm them up, matching the Blade Runner shot. Once we had everything in place, we quickly realized the skylight and fish tank wasn’t the right size. I had assumed they were square, but with the lights shining in, it was clear it needed to be a rectangle to light the foreground. We adjusted and, fortunately, found a larger fish tank online.While we waited for that to arrive, we moved on to recreating the set pieces. Marcus took on Luv, her wardrobe, and the unique chairs she sat in, while I handled the desk, coffee table, tea set, and the other woman in the scene. After scrutinizing the frame, and re-watching the scene in the film, I realized the other woman was actually a hologram and needed to appear semi-transparent. Yikes. Add that to the list of problems to solve.

Using the 3D model once more for exact dimensions, I crafted the furniture from cardboard, wooden skewers, and gaff tape. It felt less like filmmaking and more like an art project, but that’s filmmaking, right? Doing random things to get the image you want. For the hologram, I traced the woman’s silhouette from my computer screen onto ND gel. After testing different layers, I settled on two layers of .3 ND for the right amount of transparency. Marcus showed back up with an expertly crafted miniature Luv, made out of a doll, and had two mini chairs that he’d molded out of clay. 

For composition, we knew the original shot had been filmed on an ARRI Alexa XT Studio, so with a Super 35 sensor in mind, we used the Cadrage app and settled on an 18mm lens. With the walls and ceiling in place, we spent the better part of two hours positioning the camera just right. Once we were satisfied, we placed the desk, characters, and other set pieces into the frame.When the longer fish tank arrived, we suspended it above the set. It was the perfect size, casting just the right amount of light into the foreground. Finally, everything was ready for the shot. Over the previous two weeks, we had meticulously recreated miniature versions of every element in the frame. The only thing we couldn’t scale down was the water itself.

In thinking of miniaturizing everything, I had thought we might run into a problem due to the water molecules staying the same size, even though everything else had been shrunk down. I even did some research and found that acetone is about 30% less viscous than water, and if needed we could substitute that clear liquid for our water. Fortunately, we had the opposite issue—our small tank of water was moving too fast compared to the film. To solve it, we simply shot at 60fps, which slowed the dancing water caustics to the right speed.After testing different ways of agitating the water, we hit record and captured half a minute of usable footage. Now it was time for color. Using DaVinci Resolve’s Color Match feature, we got a baseline match and fine-tuned it with power windows and a mix of False Color and Parade.With that, we proudly submitted our entry—and to our surprise, we won. It was more work than expected, but it was totally worth it and has already expanded my confidence of shots to take on. One aspect I’m also proud of is that what we created isn’t just a single frame that would look fake if we saw 30 seconds of it, or if we moved to another camera angle. Besides being miniature, the set is all real, the lighting holds up like the scene in the film. It’s just a scaled-down version, and if anyone wants to give us the budget, we’d gladly scale it up.