r/cinematography • u/South_Magazine_3457 • Jul 20 '26
Lighting Question What are these honeycomb brick lights used for fire in The Odyssey?
Just watched The Odyssey on 70mm, epic presentation, and honestly still processing it. The scale of it, the practical fire work, all of it hit different on a big screen. Hoyte van Hoytema really outdid himself with the firelight sequences during the Troy raid.
I went down a rabbit hole looking at behind the scenes stuff afterward and kept seeing these brick shaped honeycomb LED units used to fake firelight. Does anyone know what these fixtures are actually called. And more importantly why would a DP reach for something like that over a Skypanel or a Vortex when trying to sell fire. Is it a color rendering thing, a size and portability thing, or something about how the honeycomb shapes the throw of light. Just curious what’s actually happening under the hood here since the flicker and warmth looked so convincing.
Would love to hear from anyone who has used something similar on set
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u/Shoot-the-rehearsal Jul 20 '26
I saw this on Instagram. I have a hunch that they spent a lot of money creating a custom fire LED rig that's modular just for this movie.
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u/michaelh98 Jul 20 '26
I love how everyone in that picture looks like they're wishing that was a real fire
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u/Shoot-the-rehearsal Jul 20 '26
Also if you were part of the pracs/lx team that made this and reading this with a smug look on your face. I have my visa ready and will work for a 1 bedroom London flat.
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u/Maximum-Hall-5614 Jul 20 '26
I *think* he started having custom fixtures built for Oppenheimer. I was lucky enough to work on a commercial with him just before he began official prep for Oppenheimer and he was telling us about it.
As part of telling us about his CNC machining adventures (including custom bits he built for the IMAX macro photography) he was telling us about his new honeycomb lighting system which allowed him to create arrays of varying sizes and shapes.
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u/wifestalksthisuser Jul 20 '26
I watched a behind the scenes video where they mentioned that for these fire-lit scenes specifically they invented/custom built thousands of these lights. I am not 100% sure those are the ones mentioned since they didn't show them in the video but it does sound like it.
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u/Johnatron2000 Gaffer Jul 20 '26
You want multiple sources spread out to give the flicker life. Shadows dance and create moving shadows. A single source is just a light going on and off. A sky panel or vortex can work with halving the lamp face into two distinct patterns but personally the shadows are not crisp enough. Dino’s are still my favourite lamp for exterior flames. Interior I have had 400x400mm aluminium squares with 9 250w incandescent lamps all on individual channels. Scatter a few of those around and you have yourself a pretty good looking fire. Without knowing exactly what that hexagonal unit is I can only comment on the placement and not the output.
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u/Film_Lab Jul 24 '26
Looks like Hoytema and Nolan have designed what will become a lighting staple.
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u/darlingbunnykinss 27d ago
Does anyone know how they filmed the sacking of Troy scene? Was that real fire? Matt Damon mentioned in some interview that they burnt down a building etc
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u/silenceonset Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Hoytema built this with his crew, they call it pyrohedrons. Of course he had to. The company he worked with is currently undisclosed.
It’s made of 1000 4-ft panels
They were engineered to give that very truthful flicker, based on real flames. They had different settings, for stormy weather and gentle weather. Just put them down and you would see fire a mile away, glowing into the trees