It’s his world

From playing the guitar in an indie rock band to leading the visual approach to one of Facebook’s latest campaigns, Thomas Revington is no stranger to both sides of the camera.   

Like many cinematographers, South African-born Thomas Revington’s passion for his craft stems from his childhood, where he grew up with a camera practically glued to his hand. “I had this obsession over taking photos, which quickly developed into moving pictures and film – I really loved it,” recalls the rocker-turned-DP, speaking from his new base in Los Angeles.

Revington studied Film and Television at Johannesburg’s prestigious Wits University, but it was an extracurricular pursuit that catalysed his cinematography career: joining indie rockers Shortstraw. In their new addition, the band found themselves not only a talented guitarist, but a ready-made videographer who would go on to document their international tours and capture their music videos. “We’d do the videos together and all pitch in, but that’s how it all started,” he explains. “It was kind of strange, but I really liked being behind the camera: it was a cool way to experience life and capture it.”

Further professional projects soon came Revington’s way, and he began to dedicate ever more time to his career behind the camera. “Like a lot of filmmakers, I was passionate and I just wanted to shoot everything and everything,” he says. “I had this tiny Corsa; I’d pack it full of gear and go and shoot something almost every other weekend.” His work brought him to London in 2021, and earlier this year he moved halfway across the world once again, this time to California to establish himself in the US market.

Will moving to LA mark a new direction for his career? “I love commercials – I enjoy getting really creative – and I like the right music videos – but the general direction I want to be in is more storytelling,” he says. “I’ve always had a thing of, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, it’s about the storytelling.”

Fusing real and virtual

The Meta campaign “It’s Your World” marks his first major stateside commercial, shot in Mexico City in summer 2022. Directed by Georgia Tribuiani, “It’s Your World” follows a young woman navigating a fantastical city sprinkled with colourful animated characters, fusing the real and the virtual worlds.

Revington was enchanted by Tribuiani’s treatment: “It felt like her imagination was spilling out into the world, and these incredible images and characters that come to life. I thought it was an awesome challenge – like, how are we going to get this huge, floating dragon to come in and out of this building? I really enjoyed that.”

He adds that they wanted the cinematography to be all about her colourful characters. “I remember for one of the wides, we had to close down this huge intersection. We were shooting it wide and early morning, so it’s a space that feels so empty. But then, when you put the animation into it, it just came alive. It was incredible.”

The DP’s love for prep and previs suited the project well, as it involved a rich collaboration with the VFX team. For each shoot, he pulls together a book of reference visuals and sends them to the director. “Even if we’re talking about the same thing, I think it’s so useful because, say, your idea of blue and their idea of blue in a situation might be different. We want to have some sort of scale,” he notes.

One interesting tool Revington has been using in prep is the AI image generator Midjourney. He explains, “I did a music video recently and I was sitting there with the director and we didn’t have money for a storyboard, so I said, ‘Let’s jump into Midjourney and pull up a couple of images.’ I think one of our first images was this girl walking with a huge boombox, putting it on the floor and pressing play. Then we started to type things like ‘black-and-white studio’, ‘young cool girl’, ‘boombox’… you type in all those elements and it works. We managed to storyboard a music video in an afternoon. I think it still misses a human touch for sure, but it’s a useful tool.”

Seeking texture

Although the commercial was shot just after the Alexa 35 made its grand entrance in mid-2022, Tribuiani sought a more human, textured look for the shoot to ground the animations that illustrate it. Revington opted for the ARRI Alexa Mini LF with Canon K35s, lenses which he loved. “They have the crispness and the sharpness of modern lenses, they’ve got the technical ability, they don’t fall apart but they have beautiful textures. They’re a little bit soft, but not too soft.”

His only concern was pairing the softness of the lenses with the animations, but after chatting to the post and VFX teams and shooting some tests, they worked well. “They did a flawless job of combining those two worlds [real and animated] and added a realness to our world,” he says.”

Two Laowa lenses were also used: a 24mm for the opener, which begins with a delicate close-up on the main character’s eye, and a 12mm Laowa rectilinear for extra width. “That was really fun to play with because it makes you feel like you’re moving through spaces really quickly, like when we’re in the bath or on the streets,” says Revington. “It gives you almost like a video game feeling.”

He worked closely with gaffer Carlos Sánchez to create a naturalistic light for “It’s Your World”, allowing the storytelling to come to the foreground. The pair used soft light where possible, so nothing would detract from the animation or the characters, and to keep the atmosphere light and happy. Another key collaborator was The Mill’s colourist Philip Hambi, who brought his expert eye to the grade.

One of the project’s most interesting shots sees the camera fly ‘through’ the front window of a bus, then all the way down the aisle to the back seat where the main character is sitting. This involved using a Trinity stabiliser so he could easily walk and spin all the way through the bus, keeping the camera stable. On the day, however, things didn’t go as planned.

“Essentially, the Trinity couldn’t get all the way down to the bottom. It was no-one’s fault – I think it was just unlucky,” Revington remembers. “We were thinking, how are we going to do this? But as I’ve come from a documentary and music background, I’ve always been super comfortable holding cameras. So, I said, give me the 12mm.”

He enlisted 1^st AC German Betancourt to help him build a small, wieldable camera package to use for the shot. “I watched it back and it was actually quite a smooth motion, so it’s worked out a lot better than I thought.”

Of his work on the shoot, Revington is most proud of how he managed to keep things simple. “We had a lot of moving parts, lots of challenges and weather issues, but I think it just flows,” he reflects. “It’s not too over the top, and it’s not too flat. It’s such a great balance between this animation and online life but integrated with real life. It was a great mix of design and filmmaking.”