‘Dungeons & Dragons’ Cinematographer Barry Peterson Relished In Capturing Practical Effects, Stunning Landscapes For This Fantasy Film

Lensing a comedy isn’t really all that different from lensing drama, according to cinematographer Barry Peterson.

While his first studio movie was Ben Stiller’s Zoolander, Peterson’s partnership with Stiller left a lasting impression. Stiller wanted the film to not readily look and feel like a comedy. His approach then and throughout his long career since is that he approaches any project – regardless of the genre- as a photographic story.

It’s a technique he employs in spades in this year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

“I try to make it as dramatic as I can, and there are funny things that seem to happen in these in these movies. I don’t want people to look at it and go, ‘Oh, my God, look at the wide lens! It’s so funny’!” Peterson explained. “It’s not something I try to shy away from, And that may be why I keep getting them because I don’t make them all look like broad comedies.”

In Dungeons & Dragons, Peterson’s lensing blends moments of true satirical comedy with action and eye-popping visual effects using the AlexaLF with an anamorphic lens to achieve that fully cinematic experience. He provides moments of true visual splendor and plays with lighting techniques to give the film a different feeling than traditional fantasy-based projects. Here, he explains how he included some of the amazing shots he provided within the film and elaborates on the challenges he faced on a VFX-heavy project.

Awards Daily: I read that many artisans working on the film were inspired by HBO’s Game of Thrones. Visually, are there any nods to the landscape of Game of Thrones?

Barry Peterson: Ultimately, there are only so many stories to be told, and a dragon story is going to have some of the same consistencies. The one thing that we did differently than Game of Thrones was that we approached it as a slightly more colorful, slightly, less somber project. There was not as much smoke. There was not as much gray. There was not as much darkness because it was a different type of story. We still wanted it to be moody and scary at moments. We still wanted it to be violent at moments. There are parallels. You look at some of the fight sequences which are very much on par with Game of Thrones or even The Lord of the Rings series. But we didn’t want to do something that would hide so much to the point where you didn’t see it. It’s hard to be fun if you don’t see anything.

Awards Daily: The film starts with Elgin (Chris Pine) and Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) imprisoned in their ice prison. It’s a very different color scheme than the flashback sequence we’re presented with a few minutes later. 

Barry Peterson: That we did that very intentionally to make it feel like there was passage — we were traveling through different parts of this universe. It’s a total world creation. We wanted every world to feel unique, and some of those worlds are backlit. Some of those worlds were brighter. The prison at the very beginning, that was a little bit of a misdirect. We wanted people the first two or three minutes to see the horses galloping and show up at this prison, and then it just pays off Chris’s first joke. You’re thinking you’re going to watch a movie that is something we’ve seen before like The Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Suddenly, Chris cracks a joke.

For us, it just was a way of keeping it interesting too. I try to make things have curves in different places so that the audience doesn’t get bored. You’re just sitting watching the same look the whole time. That’s one of my thoughts right off the top. [Directors John Francis Daley and Johnathon Goldstein] were very adamant about. We all said, ‘Let’s make each world uniquely different, and we’ll handle them differently’.”

Awards Daily: I have to say, looking at the color palettes within the film, I have to applaud that, when we go to the Underdark, it’s actually not dark. 

Barry Peterson: It’s quite bright, right? Colorful and lava everywhere. When you’ve got something like the fat dragon in the Underdark, you have to be able to see them or there’s no joke. When the head poke pokes out of the cave for the first time, it’s like, ‘Oh, my gosh, what’s happening.’ Then when he eventually busts through, if you didn’t see that it was bright, you wouldn’t notice that he was the fat dragon. It was always splitting those lines, again, trying to keep it grounded in some kind of reality. The lava we just made bright enough and big enough that it would give us that kind of ambience and space.

Awards Daily: Another early scene has one of my favorite shots in a 2023 film. Chris and Michelle are sitting on a bench just before they reconnect with his daughter, and they’re situated in front of this hilariously long hallway. How’d you do that? 

Barry Peterson: It was shot in Wells Cathedral, which is in England proper. We were walking through trying to find locations, and we literally said that we should stick a super wide lens right in this corner. Our heads were jammed up against the wall. You couldn’t get any wider than we were. If you look at the doorway the little girl comes through just to the camera left of that, then you see that’s all the space we had. There were only eight or nine feet. So, we put a super wide angle lens and knew that it would just be a really cool graphic shot. It was an inspired by that location.

Awards Daily: It’s so perfect because it underscores the parody nature of the film. It’s such a ridiculous construction as it’s visually represented. Moving on to VFX, how did you as a cinematographer work to understand the effects employed for the film? 

Barry Peterson: As a rule on this movie, John and Jonathan wanted as much as they possibly could to be real. So many of the visual effects were in-camera, and their number one philosophy was to keep it real and avoid shooting in front of a blue or green screen. I was actually a VFX DP when I started, so I know that world well. I was on this project very early, so I had a hand in designing all of the VFX-heavy sequences. We storyboarded them, and we’d all work together to suggest different approaches. It is a group effort. There are projects where it isn’t that way, but I’ve got a relationship with John and Jonathan and there’s a trust level there where they want me more involved.

Awards Daily: What about the sequence where Simon (Justice Smith) turns a theater upside down?

Barry Peterson: We built an actual playhouse, and then we built the roof upside down — just the roof with two or three walls. Whenever someone would fall, we’d drop guys on tables, and we’d have our cameras upside down. There was no CG in that whole sequence until Simon was shot out of the glass in the roof. The building was real. The upside down piece was real. There was cable removal, but it was something you can touch. The stunt guys were banging off of padded beams and everything. It was real.

Awards Daily: So you also need to collaborate with the stunt choreographer. I imagine that you as a cinematographer also have to work with the stunt teams to know the beats that are going to hit as they’re going through these fighting sequences.

Barry Peterson: Absolutely. For almost every one of our stunt sequences, we were heavily involved as a first unit. Most typically Holga (Michelle Rodriguez) had to kick the butts of so many people. We were typically shooting her, and then we’d walk away at some point. We’d already set the environment, set the shots, and then they’d just literally take our cameras and stay in that space. We’d take off and shoot something else. Size does matter when you’re dealing with that. You have to use handheld cameras.

Awards Daily: What was your favorite shot in the film?

Barry Peterson: It’s in Wells Cathedral when we meet Forge (Hugh Grant). It’s just this massive, beautiful space. There’s no CG in that scene. It’s just 100% real. We dressed it with fire and had beams of light coming from outside. To be in that space and to know that it was real, it was awe inspiring for me.

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves streams on Amazon Prime.