Feature Film - WAR

Forbidden Ground

Broze ACS Award NSW & ACT Feature Films

 

As cinematographers, we are constantly tasked with creating worlds out of thin air. But when you are dealing with the historical weight of the Western Front, the challenge becomes as much about respect and psychological truth as it does about light and lens. The film itself tells the story of three British soldiers in 1916 France. After an abortive assault on the German trenches, they find themselves trapped in the middle of No Man's Land as night falls. With one of them seriously wounded and requiring urgent medical attention, they must navigate a desperate retreat back to Allied lines before an impending artillery bombardment obliterates everything.   

Here is how we set out to capture that terrifying, claustrophobic predicament.

The Geography of Illusion: Evoking WWI in Regional Australia

Transforming a landscape to reflect the scale of the Great War is an extraordinary hurdle for independent filmmakers, especially when you are geographically half a world away from the original European battlefields. To replicate the muddy, devastated landscape of the Western Front in 1916 France, we travelled to a farm just outside the rural township of Dubbo, New South Wales. This regional location, supplemented by select interior and pickup shots completed in Sydney, served as our primary canvas.   

Managing the environmental transition from the sun-drenched, arid topography of regional New South Wales to the cold, waterlogged clay of the Somme demanded strict collaboration between the camera, art, and special effects departments. Principal photography was a punishing 19-day and 19-night consecutive schedule completed over the Christmas period of 2011. Confronting the intense heat of an Australian December while attempting to evoke a bleak, freezing northern European winter forced us to exercise absolute control over our setups.   

19-day/night straight schedule - 

The shoot was physically draining. We spent long stretches on remote bushland locations, with days running up to twenty hours on the heaviest setups, and thick mud underfoot for almost the entire production. However, working in long, committed blocks paid off creatively. It let our lighting and atmospheric design stay highly cohesive as we moved between the trenches, No Man's Land, and our command-post interiors.   

To physically restructure the Dubbo farmland into a convincing war zone, the production deployed over 300kg of physical explosives through the pyrotechnic company Armzfx, run by co-director Johan Earl. By choosing in-camera physical explosions over digital effects, we established a highly tactile, immediate environment for the actors.   

From my perspective behind the lens, I navigated the spatial limitations of our location by employing a highly deliberate framing strategy. The camera consistently isolates the characters in tight compositions and intense close-ups, focusing on the faces of young men straining to survive. This stylistic choice served a dual purpose: it heightened the psychological claustrophobia of the narrative while restricting the lens's field of view to exclude regional Australian flora and flat horizons that would have quickly broken the illusion of historical Europe.   

Directorial Clarity in the Mud

Forbidden Ground was co-directed by Johan Earl and Adrian Powers. Because Johan was pulling double duty—starring on-screen as Sgt. Major Arthur Wilkins while also overseeing the pyrotechnic team—Adrian carried the lion’s share of the in-the-moment directorial decisions on set. Johan would trudge through the mud between takes to review playback with him, ensuring our safety and narrative beats were perfectly aligned.   

Adrian knew exactly what he wanted from every setup. On a tight, independent schedule, that kind of clarity is one of the most underrated gifts a director can give a cinematographer. Because we spent very little time hunting for the frame on set, we could direct our focus and energy into the nuances of our lighting, lenses, and atmospherics.

The Digital Toolkit: Navigating Early Sensor Constraints

We shot the film during a fascinating transitional era for digital cinema acquisition. Our camera package comprised a mixture of early-generation digital sensors, including the RED ONE, the Sony PMW-F3, and a Phantom high-speed camera, with Edgar Deluen keeping everything pin-sharp as our "A" camera focus puller.   

Each system was selected to address specific operational and creative needs on set:

RED ONE: Deployed to secure high-resolution spatial details for our wide battlefield choreography and daytime sequences.   

Sony PMW-F3: Utilised for its exceptional low-light sensitivity, which was critical for capturing our extensive night exterior sequences.   

Phantom: Reserved specifically for high-frame-rate capture, enabling us to render the explosive combat beats and flying debris with extreme temporal clarity.   

Operating the Sony F3 during this period introduced some distinct sensor-level hurdles. The camera had been released commercially only two weeks prior to the commencement of principal photography. Because of this tight timeline, neither the paid nor the free internal S-Log firmware upgrades were available to us. We were therefore forced to record utilising the camera’s internal Cinegammas.   

While Cinegammas offered the highest native latitude available on the stock camera profile, they limited the sensor to a dynamic range of approximately 12 stops of light. In high-contrast environments—such as night scenes illuminated by brilliant pyrotechnic flashes and harsh backlights—this threshold required highly precise exposure control to prevent highlight clipping while preserving rich detail in the deep shadows.   

Our acquisition workflow relied on capturing footage spherically using a high-quality Zeiss Master Prime lens set. Opting for spherical glass allowed us to maximise our active sensor area, ensuring optimal light transmission and edge-to-edge sharpness. To achieve a classic widescreen presentation, the spherical footage was subsequently matted to an ultrawide 2.35:1 aspect ratio during post-production, which was later modified to a 1.78:1 aspect ratio for the home entertainment and DVD releases.   

Camera Platform:
Sony PMW-F3 Zeiss Master Primes, Cinegammas (approx. 12 stops) Low-light night exteriors and dialogue scenes in No Man's Land. Captured details in deep shadow without S-Log.
RED ONE Zeiss Master Primes, RED primes, Spherical capture (2.35:1 matting) Wide master shots and daytime battlefield choreography. Maximised spatial resolution and wide landscape detail.
Phantom High-Speed high-frame-rate capture Slow-motion recording of pyrotechnic explosions and trench debris. Heightened the chaotic impact of combat in extreme slow-motion.

Painting with Backlight: Atmospheric Smoke and the Fog of War

A substantial portion of the film is set in the pitch-black, hazardous expanse of No Man's Land at night. To build an immersive atmosphere within these night exteriors, the lighting design had to evoke a chaotic, hostile environment.   

The core lighting strategy I developed relied on establishing strong directional motivation using powerful backlights. Our primary key sources for these night sequences were 4K HMI fixtures positioned as heavy backlights. We projected these units directly through thick, live atmospheric smoke, dust, and pyrotechnic debris. The interaction of the high-intensity daylight-balanced HMI beams with the suspended particles created a dense, textural "fog-of-war" aesthetic.   

This approach yielded several distinct visual and technical advantages:

Graphic Silhouette Generation: The intense backlighting transformed falling dirt, rising smoke, muzzle flashes, and the physical profiles of the soldiers into stark, graphic silhouettes against the lighter background. This heightened the dramatic tension of the characters' movements and gave us the kind of frame the WWI image-bank has trained audiences to expect.   

Physical Diffusion and Edge Softening: In the early 2010s, digital sensors were frequently critiqued for displaying a clinical, overly sharp rendering of skin tones. By introducing physical smoke as an intermediate medium, the air itself acted as a natural optical low-pass filter, beautifully softening the image and rolling off highlights in-camera without relying on heavy post-production filtration.   

Depth Construction in Void Spaces: A completely dark, unlit field lacks depth. By backlighting the smoke layers, we recorded distinct planes of atmospheric density, creating a three-dimensional depth of field within a physically flat environment.   

While the dramatic backlighting was highly effective for wide, atmospheric shots, it did attract some critical commentary regarding its realism, with some reviewers noting that the night illumination appeared overly stylised for a historically pitch-black battlefield.   

To balance these large-scale setups, we had to remain highly adaptable. On remote locations where heavy diesel generators could not physically access the terrain, we supplemented the package with compact, battery-powered units. This allowed us to remain lightweight and mobile during dialogue coverage and intimate close-up setups without compromising our cohesive visual structure.   

Global Perspectives and admiration: Deakins, Fraser and the Philosophy of Light

The technical and aesthetic choices made on Forbidden Ground reflect broader, global philosophies of cinematography. For working cinematographers, the balance between naturalism and stylisation is a constant topic of discussion.   

Roger Deakins CBE ASC BSC, celebrated for his naturalistic and story-focused approach, has long advocated for simplified lighting setups that do not draw attention to themselves. Deakins prioritises lighting the space rather than individual shots, ensuring that actors have the freedom to move within a believable environment. His utilisation of "cove lighting"—where powerful light fixtures are bounced off large muslin surfaces surrounding a set—creates a soft, wrapping quality that mimics natural ambient light.   

Furthermore, Deakins' innovative use of dimmer-controlled arrays, such as the triangular arrangement of 45 Tweenie fixtures utilised in Jarhead to replicate the flickering light of a movie screen, highlights how multiple small sources can be programmed to create a unified, dynamic effect.   

In contrast, contemporary master Greig Fraser ACS ASC has built a reputation for highly adaptive, tactile imagery that often merges digital sensors with vintage optics. On the sci-fi feature The Creator, Fraser and co-cinematographer Oren Soffer bypassed traditional heavy lighting packages in favour of a lightweight, "guerilla" LED toolkit built around Aputure fixtures. When natural moonlight failed during a massive field sequence, they avoided large HMI construction towers by rigging three Aputure Light Storm 1200d units to cherry pickers, salvaging the shoot day through rapid deployment and high-output LED efficiency.   

Fraser’s willingness to push technical boundaries is also evident in Dune: Part Two, where he captured the unique, colour-drained atmosphere of the planet Giedi Prime by shooting with a 3D camera rig containing one colour sensor and one infrared sensor. He also frequently pairs modern digital sensors with older, 1970s anamorphic lenses, such as the Panavision C-series, allowing the soft, organic characteristics of vintage glass to "melt" the clinical sharpness of the digital image.   

Our methodology on Forbidden Ground sat somewhere in the middle of these philosophies: utilizing a highly structured, stylized backlight design while remaining as run-and-gun and lightweight as possible on the ground.   

Post-Production Unity: Harmonising CGI and Colour Grading

With principal photography completed in our brief 19-day window , a significant portion of the film’s atmospheric scale was refined during the post-production phase. To expand the physical boundaries of our Dubbo farm trenches, we collaborated with visual effects artists to integrate digital matte paintings. These paintings extended our background horizons, adding distant artillery flashes, ruined forests, and endless lines of trenches that would have been financially impossible to construct physically.   

During the colour grading process, I worked to unify the footage captured across our different camera systems. The colourist applied a highly desaturated, washed-out colour palette across the trenches. This desaturated look was chosen to reflect the psychological state of the soldiers and the bleak, cold climate of the historical setting.   

While this grading technique was a deliberate artistic choice to reinforce the grim narrative, it highlights a classic cinematographic debate. As Roger Deakins has frequently remarked, the most successful lighting and camerawork should exist as a cohesive piece where no single element—such as an aggressive colour grade or a dramatic camera move—draws attention to itself over the story. Our desaturated style pushed the boundaries of this naturalistic philosophy, choosing instead a heightened, graphic representation of historical conflict.   

Looking at the ultimate in war cinematography 'Saving private Ryan' provided me to pivot from the tried and true approach of using acute shutter angles to enhance battle scenes. Ryan also employed 'Phase shifting' ie Pulling the film down during the exposure window giving the image a streaking effect. Here in the digital world I was unable to achieve this in camera although I'd experimented with this technique on my short film 'Bleeders' which was shot on the Arriflex 435 ES 'extreme' and a Arri 2C with a drill attatched to the side of it to provide some super slowmo.

A different approach:

After consideration I decided not to use this technique on the battle scenes but thought that the soldiers would be more aggitated and nervous prior to deployment over the trenches. My methodology was thus, shallow shutter angles inside the trenches and normal photography (albeit slow-motion) for when the battle ensued. 

A Humbling Milestone

Our work on Forbidden Ground went on to win an ACS Bronze Award at the NSW & ACT chapter in the Feature Films - Cinema category. On the night of the awards, I found myself listed alongside Dion Beebe ACS ASC—the Academy Award-winning Australian cinematographer behind Memoirs of a Geisha.   

Dion is an absolute giant of our industry, and his work was something I had been studying in detail since my film school days. Standing in that company was a genuinely humbling moment, and one I think about often as I navigate new projects.

Conclusions & Technical Takeaways

Our execution of Forbidden Ground illustrates how careful planning, creative lighting design, and the clever use of regional locations can allow independent filmmakers to achieve considerable visual scale. The production provides several valuable takeaways for modern cinematographers:   

Atmospheric Hiding of Location Limitations: By using heavy backlight combined with live smoke, you can create a physical barrier that obscures the background. This technique is highly effective for hiding regional Australian landscapes when doubling for European locations.   

Embracing Physical Limitations as Creative Strengths: The decision to use tight framing and frequent close-ups not only solved our limited set design but also created a powerful, claustrophobic atmosphere that directly supported the film's narrative.   

Sensor Adaptability: The successful use of the Sony F3's internal Cinegammas shows that even when working without raw recording profiles or modern log curves, careful exposure control and controlled contrast ratios can produce high-quality, award-winning images.   

Ultimately, the film stands as an excellent example of independent Australian filmmaking, showcasing how a dedicated crew can transform a dry farm in New South Wales into the historic, mud-drenched trenches of the Somme through sheer technical resourcefulness and visual discipline.   

To see more behind-the-scenes breakdowns, portfolios, and my latest showreels, feel free to visit my digital home at www.glennhanns.com.