GOING OFF THE GRID 

Bringing Light Cycles from the Grid to the real world in Tron: Ares was no small feat. Jeff Cronenweth ASC explains how he shot a sci-fi spectacular that’s the latest in a series with a storied visual legacy. 

It began with a call from Jared Leto. Jeff Cronenweth ASC, a double Oscar nominee who has worked with David Fincher, Kathryn Bigelow and Aaron Sorkin and shot music videos for Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, had never taken on a VFX-heavy blockbuster of this scale before Tron: Ares. 

“We had done Fight Club in ’99 and had stayed acquaintances throughout the years,” Cronenweth says of his relationship with Ares star/producer Leto. That’s not to say that there wasn’t anyreluctance on Cronenweth’s part. “I had passed on quite a few sci-fi adventure-type films because I felt like most of the stuff I’ve shot has been humanity-based drama stories and I just was worried that it wouldn’t have the depth, and the connection to humanity.” 

But he was convinced after reading the script and speaking to Leto about striving for the substance of Blade Runner, shot by his cinematographer father Jordan Cronenweth ASC, citing the climactic scene with Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford. At that, Leto “recited both characters’ parts, the entire end sequence,” says Cronenweth. “And so, we went into it thinking that we would get a lot of humanity in it.” 

Disney’s Tron franchise is unusual in sci-fi, with just three standalone films in 43 years. In Tron: Ares, ENCOM and Dillinger Systems race to crack a code that could bring digital creations into the real world. 

“I really appreciated the 1982 original,” says Cronenweth. “Tron pushed the boundaries… And then when Joe Kosinski and Claudio Miranda ASC ACC made Tron: Legacy (2010), that was outstanding, shot in native 3D, [using] light sources and technology that we hadn’t seen before. So, when this came along, again we used and embraced every new kind of technology we could to bring it forward and keep up with what had already been done in the past.” 

Pause for thought

After strike delays, the shoot ran January to May 2024, with pick-ups in early 2025. 

“We had so many different challenges, physical challenges, in crafting it,” Cronenweth says of his relationship with director Joachim Rønning. “I thought he approached these sets and the action scenes with creative, progressive, filmic storytelling. I’m very proud of the way the camera moved in Tron and the way it immersed the audience in the action.” 

Despite the massive VFX component, Cronenweth says that when shooting the heavily storyboarded action sequences, “you just kind of lose the massive blue screens and focus on what’s real in the frame and shoot it like you would a drama.” As well as having sequences that take place within the virtual world of the Grid, much of the action in Ares spills into the real world, including a standout set-piece that sees the iconic Light Cycles racing through nighttime Vancouver. 

Tron: Ares required Croneweth to break out of his comfort zone with the sheer amount of kit that was required. “[We used] everything you can imagine: every trick, every toy,” he says. “[If] you light five city blocks at night, you don’t want to have to do that again. Every night we did that, we’d run our array vehicle, which was a custom made truck that had the ability to lift and lower the array rig which had 11 cameras on it, down each street and then have all of our plates that we needed.”  

The choice of camera and lenses was led in part by the need to define the film’s different worlds. “I like to say the red and blue of Dillinger versus ENCOM is kind of like the black cowboy hat and the white cowboy hat, and you know who the good guys and the bad guys are,” he smiles. Shooting tests with the film’s lightsuits and various props (“every helmet and every disc, and every baton and everything else”), he found that “Red was the most representative of the colour”. And because of the IMAX release, Cronenweth wanted a large-format glass, which led to a special collaboration between RED and ARRI, who partnered to deliver LPL mounts. “I was fortunate that they did that and that’s the path we took. We used the large format ARRI DNA glass with the RED Raptor XL camera bodies.” 

The post-production process – during which Cronenweth worked with colourist Stefan Sonnenfeld at Company 3 for the first time – was something that would’ve seemed like science-fiction to the creators of the original Tron in 1982. “There were times where I was at their facility in Santa Monica, Dave Seager, the visual effects supervisor, was at Disney, Stefan was in New York and Joachim was in London. And we’re all looking at real time colour corrections and talking to each other and I thought that was incredible compared to what we used to go through.” 

The experience hasn’t changed Cronenweth’s future approach, but it reinforced the value of preparation “to kind of do [what] Hitchcock and even David Fincher does, where you make most of the movie in the prep so that you give yourself the best opportunities when you’re there. And then to me, it doesn’t matter if it’s a toothpaste commercial or a movie the scale of Tron, the same kind of considerations and thought must go into it in preparation to have success on the shoot days.”