Although the look of the underwater 4:4:4 footage was the main reason the production chose HD, another advantage turned out to be the time it saved the crew. Because the video signal was transmitted to the deck above water, there was never a need to change a mag. In Mexico, it took the divers as long as 45 minutes to swim out to the underwater location, so if they’d had to go back and forth to reload, the work would have been broken up with long interruptions. According to Lenzo, the only time shooting had to stop was when stunt scenes needed to be reset. “We had the ability to roll constantly,” says Lenzo. “It was amazing.”

Visual-effects supervisor Payam Shohadai of Luma Pictures says that when working with the 4:4:4 footage, the effects artists found that there were no compression artifacts, which made it much easier to pull a chroma key.

The Cave was finished with a digital intermediate at Company 3/Ascent Media in Santa Monica. After the 35mm and HD footage were combined, colorist Siggy Ferstl did the initial color correction, working from discussions he’d had with Emery during the shoot. Emery then joined Ferstl for the final grade, which took five days. “We were able to work very fast and very efficiently,” says the cinematographer. “It goes back to how you shoot the film — you shoot it the way you want it to look, you don’t say, ‘I’ll just fix it later.’” The color-corrected digital files were recorded to 35mm at EFilm in Hollywood, and prints were made by Deluxe Hollywood.

Emery notes that the creative and technical choices made on The Cave required a lot of bravery on the part of the crew, and a lot of trust on the part of the director and producers. “Making a movie is very difficult, and making a movie with people you don’t trust would be damn near impossible.” He recalls that as he looked at the results of the collaboration in the DI suite, he felt that the courageous decisions had always been the right ones. “I’m very happy Bruce let me be brave,” he says. 

TECHNICAL SPECS 2.35:1 Super 35mm (3-perf) and High-Definition Video Arricam Lites Zeiss Ultra Primes Sony HDC-F950 Fujinon HA13x4.5ERM HD lens Kodak Vision2 500T 5218, Vision 500T 5279 Digital Intermediate Printed on Kodak Vision Premier 2393 and Vision 2383