By “Our Man in LA’ Iain Blair
Brazilian-born cinematographer Adolpho Veloso ABC AIP was critically-acclaimed for his work on the 2021 Sundance hit drama Jockey. Directed by Clint Bentley, it earned him a Spotlight Award nomination from the American Society Of Cinematographers (ASC).
His latest project, Train Dreams, reunited him with Bentley, and it recently premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival where it was snapped up by Netflix for a reported $16 million.
Starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones, the lyrical period drama tells the story of logger Robert Grainier, a devoted family man who finds himself separated from his wife Gladys (Jones) and their daughter as he works largely in isolation with the railroad to open-up the untamed west in 1920s America.
“When I read the script I could really relate to Joel’s character,” says Veloso. “It’s so similar to a cinematographer’s life, where you’re going away for months at a time, and working with people who become your new family. And then, when you come back home, you almost feel displaced. So, I understood the story on a deeper, more personal level.”
In terms of finding the right visual approach, the DP and director began by studying their last collaboration.
“We asked ourselves, what did we do well in Jockey and what do we dislike completely now?” he notes. “How can we evolve the things we liked and make them even better, and how can we avoid the mistakes?”
Another key reference was the films of famed Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky.
“In Jockey, we did everything handheld. The camera was just moving all the time, and we wanted to do a lot of that on this film too. But we also wanted to portray nature in a still, magnificent way, like Tarkovsky, but also without going that route all the time and being fluid for whatever the scenes would ask for.”
As an example he cites “a kind of a dream sequence, a big fire seen through Gladys’ perspective, and we were thinking a lot about how to do it. After watching Wong Kar-wai’s use of slow shutter speeds to blur images and create a feeling that everything is like an impression, we thought, ‘That’s it.’ So, then we tested and explored that look for that specific scene, and our overall visual approach was a bit of everything – many different references, still images – as we wanted to find beauty within all the chaos and roughness of the era and the story.”
The film was shot almost entirely on-location and the team scouted “for about two months, which is a long time,” he reports. “But the locations were so spread out. At the start we wanted to be based around Spokane in Washington, but then we realised that we had to expand and ended-up shooting near the Canadian border. We also shot a few things near Seattle.’
In terms of the camera package Veloso decided to shoot with the ARRI Alexa 35.
“When we knew that we were going to shoot digital, that was the only option for me,” he stresses. “I’ve been working with ARRI cameras for many years now, and I just feel it’s the best one out-there, because of the textures and the dynamic range, especially on the Alexa 35. I felt like we could shoot the way we love to shoot, relying a lot on natural and practical light, which we did for at least 90% of the movie. It was just natural light or real fire, real candles and stuff like that, and having that dynamic range really made it possible. Our gaffer Kevin Cook and key grip Ryan Fritz did great work enhancing the candle light and fire light.”
For lenses, the DP and director decided to use two different sets. “One set that we wanted from the beginning was the Kowa Cine Prominar Spherical lenses, for the period look and for the textures that we could get in the forest and nature, and also because of the flare.” he explains.
“I think it is the most beautiful flare ever made on a lens, and it totally fitted the look we wanted. But we also needed speed for the night stuff in the interiors, because we were shooting basically just with natural light, so we decided to shoot those scenes with Zeiss Super Speed lenses, just because of the speed and texture. It’s also the lens we shot Jockey with, so there was also a sense of, okay, this is a comfortable place for Clint, and we know it works.” The lens package also included an Angenieux Optimo 12x Ultra 26-320mm.
Veloso didn’t work on a LUT with a colourist. “I usually just go with the regular LUT, which in this case was the Rec.709, mostly because I don’t tend to diverge much from that,” he notes. “Later, when we’re grading, I feel like it gives a general sense of how colors really behave. And I’m always trying to keep that and of course bringing more texture and making it more interesting, but not really diverting too much from that.
“Our colourist was Sergio Pasqualino, my longtime collaborator from Brazil. We’ve been working together for years. He also did Jockey, and he does an amazing job in the DI of just bringing texture and finding the right levels and bringing colours, but without manipulating it in a way where everything feels manipulated or painted. It’s just natural.”
The shoot “was very hard, as it was a really tight schedule,” he reports. “We had just six weeks, and for a period movie with a lot of scenes, plus a lot of big action scenes with stunts, extras and choreography, that was moving a lot and having to shoot in so many different and remote places that took a long time to get to, it was really tight.
“So from day one, Clint was reworking the script the whole time to see what he could cut, what we could rearrange, what we could combine to with something else so we could shoot faster.”
The filmmakers also had to be very adaptable to changing weather conditions.
“When you’re out in nature, things change all the time, so you can plan for a sunny day and now it’s raining,” he says. “OK, let’s make it work with rain, and maybe the scene can be even better. So, I feel that most of the time we were just open to whatever was happening, instead of trying to manipulate it too much.”
What was the hardest scene to shoot, and why? “Definitely the two big fire scenes because of the scale,” he reports. “The first is a huge fire in the forest seen from Grainier’s perspective. Of course we couldn’t burn a real forest, and as we were relying on real fire for everything else, we had to match this specific scene using a lot of artificial lighting.
“So, it took really amazing work by the lighting department and the grips and also the SFX departments to make it look real. then in post we added some VFX. But almost everything is practical, and the fire colour and flames were made by the lighting department. I feel they did such a creative job that when you’re watching it, you can’t really tell it’s not a real fire. That whole sequence was, for sure, the most challenging one.”
For the second big fire sequence, seen through Gladys’ perspective, the team shot on a volume stage in Seattle, “because of what we wanted to do with the shutter speed to get that dream-like quality,” he explains. “We couldn’t rely on VFX that would have been very complicated for them to add later. So we needed to have everything in-camera, which is why we shot it practically. But besides that, everything was shot on location.”
Grading was done at Bleach in Sao Paulo with colourist Sergio Pasqualino.
“Sergio worked his usual magic on bringing texture to the image, and at some point I thought about looking at old B&W footage that has been coloured, and how that looks,” he notes.
“Because it’s coming from a B&W image, it kind of has a feeling that you’re looking at something that’s old, but it has a new colour to it. And that’s what we ended-up trying to emulate a bit – but not in an exaggerated way, because we didn’t want that look to get in the way of the narrative or the emotions.
“We felt that by getting that texture, without forcing it or going really extreme, you could end up with the 2025 version of something shot in 1920, and we felt that that colourisation of something that wouldn’t have been possible back then was kind of a cool thing to try to get.
“So, we really respected the colours the way they are. It was just like trying to bring a bit of texture and create that kind of weird feeling that you’re watching something old, shot a long time ago.”
