20 Movies That Took HUGE Risks (And NAILED It)
8. Shooting With Only Natural Light - The Revenant
The Revenant is truly one of the most insane productions in modern filmmaking history, if only because director Alejandro González Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki decided to shoot the film with entirely natural light.
Even the most basic camera setups in films are generally assisted by additional studio lighting, and so to shoot most of the film in the remote expanses of British Columbia with only god-given light is absolutely absurd by any typical method.
Because the cast and crew's lodgings were roughly an hour away from the shooting location, Iñárritu was limited to incredibly small windows of time each day to get the desired look, causing shooting to drag out from a planned six months to almost ten, resulting in the budget also ballooning from $60 million to $135 million.
It's a truly ridiculous way to make a movie, and yet fortunately for Iñárritu, The Revenant went on to win Best Director, Actor, and Cinematography Oscars while also grossing more than $500 million globally.