section_path: Production/Filming
section_name: Filming
paragraph_text: Filming
  
  Corbet shot the film's epilogue in Venice in September 2020. Principal photography, scheduled to start in Poland in December, was postponed due to COVID restrictions. Further delays occurred as a result of the war in Ukraine as well as several pregnancies (including that of lead actress Felicity Jones) and deaths in the families of the film's cast and crew. Corbet ultimately elected to shoot in Hungary to take advantage of its tax credits, the presence of multiple film labs in Budapest, as well as his own familiarity; both Corbet and Fastvold had prior experience filming in the country.
  
  Principal photography eventually began on March 16, 2023, in Budapest. The Hungarian capital and surrounding countryside doubled as 1950s Philadelphia and rural Pennsylvania in the film, while the Andrássy Castle in Tóalmás stood in for the Van Buren mansion. Production then moved to Carrara, Tuscany, on April 29, 2023. Filming took place in the Bettogli and Bombarda quarries in unexpected thick fog, and in the town of Carrara itself. A small camera unit filmed exteriors in New York City, as well as the Statue of Liberty reveal featured in the opening scene. Principal photography wrapped after 34 days on May 5, 2023.
  
  The film was shot using the VistaVision process and cameras equipped with Leica-S lenses. It involves shooting horizontally on 35-millimetre film stock, which was then scanned, with the intention of also making prints for a 70-millimetre release, which has the same height and was the most practical format to show the original size of the VistaVision frame when projecting film. The idea for VistaVision arose while Corbet and director of photography Lol Crawley were scouting the quarries in Italy. The format was originally intended for big vistas, but ultimately the vast majority of the film was shot on VistaVision. Corbet explained that "the best way to access was to shoot on something that was engineered in that same decade", while Crawley stated that the format, with its wider field of view, allowed filmmakers to photograph architecture without using distorting wide-angle lenses. Crawley also used Arricam ST, LT and Arriflex 235 35-millimetre cameras equipped with Cooke lenses for the shoot. An Arriflex 416 16-millimetre camera equipped with Zeiss Superspeed lenses was used to shoot documentary-style footage, while the TV footage in the epilogue was filmed using a Digital Betacam.
  
  The Van Buren Institute, which was only constructed in portions and as a scale model, was designed by production designer Judy Becker based on the notes of Fastvold and Corbet, who tried to be as descriptive as they could about its features in the script. Not an architect by training, Becker looked to the designs of concentration camps, real-life brutalist buildings, the work of Marcel Breuer and Tadao Ando, Louis Kahn's Salk Institute, Frank Lloyd Wright 's Johnson Wax Headquarters and James Turrell 's skyspaces for inspiration. She also cited Breuer's Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York, a synagogue she remembered from her childhood and which had a Star of David overhead, as a point of reference.
  
  Corbet shot the film's epilogue in Venice in September 2020. Principal photography, scheduled to start in Poland in December, was postponed due to COVID restrictions. Further delays occurred as a result of the war in Ukraine as well as several pregnancies (including that of lead actress Felicity Jones) and deaths in the families of the film's cast and crew. Corbet ultimately elected to shoot in Hungary to take advantage of its tax credits, the presence of multiple film labs in Budapest, as well as his own familiarity; both Corbet and Fastvold had prior experience filming in the country.
  
  Principal photography eventually began on March 16, 2023, in Budapest. The Hungarian capital and surrounding countryside doubled as 1950s Philadelphia and rural Pennsylvania in the film, while the Andrássy Castle in Tóalmás stood in for the Van Buren mansion. Production then moved to Carrara, Tuscany, on April 29, 2023. Filming took place in the Bettogli and Bombarda quarries in unexpected thick fog, and in the town of Carrara itself. A small camera unit filmed exteriors in New York City, as well as the Statue of Liberty reveal featured in the opening scene. Principal photography wrapped after 34 days on May 5, 2023.
  
  The film was shot using the VistaVision process and cameras equipped with Leica-S lenses. It involves shooting horizontally on 35-millimetre film stock, which was then scanned, with the intention of also making prints for a 70-millimetre release, which has the same height and was the most practical format to show the original size of the VistaVision frame when projecting film. The idea for VistaVision arose while Corbet and director of photography Lol Crawley were scouting the quarries in Italy. The format was originally intended for big vistas, but ultimately the vast majority of the film was shot on VistaVision. Corbet explained that "the best way to access was to shoot on something that was engineered in that same decade", while Crawley stated that the format, with its wider field of view, allowed filmmakers to photograph architecture without using distorting wide-angle lenses. Crawley also used Arricam ST, LT and Arriflex 235 35-millimetre cameras equipped with Cooke lenses for the shoot. An Arriflex 416 16-millimetre camera equipped with Zeiss Superspeed lenses was used to shoot documentary-style footage, while the TV footage in the epilogue was filmed using a Digital Betacam.
  
  The Van Buren Institute, which was only constructed in portions and as a scale model, was designed by production designer Judy Becker based on the notes of Fastvold and Corbet, who tried to be as descriptive as they could about its features in the script. Not an architect by training, Becker looked to the designs of concentration camps, real-life brutalist buildings, the work of Marcel Breuer and Tadao Ando, Louis Kahn's Salk Institute, Frank Lloyd Wright 's Johnson Wax Headquarters and James Turrell 's skyspaces for inspiration. She also cited Breuer's Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, New York, a synagogue she remembered from her childhood and which had a Star of David overhead, as a point of reference.