Pedro Luque: Goya 2024 for Best Photography

The masterful alternation of analog and digital resources by Pedro Luque in 'The Snow Society' by J. A. Bayona, squeezed to unsuspected limits both in real environments and in LED volumes, have been recognized by academics with the Goya 2024 for Best Direction of Photography.

José Luis Alcaine y Leonor Watling have been responsible for giving Pedro Luque a Goya that has been the “most challenging job” of the director of photography's career, he knew how to capture drama and hope in inhospitable environments: “If we were going to take 500 people to work in the snow, we couldn't stay in the mundane, but rather we had to look for the extraordinary,” acknowledged the photographer on the stage of the Valladolid Fair.

Luque has shown off his know-how of approaches and techniques to be able to involve viewers in a timeless film despite the fact that it tells a story that took place half a century ago: “The recording has included LED screens in the studio to helicopters in the mountains, including drones, extended backgrounds in post-production, digital interventions in the visual effects and very extreme color.”

Luque decided to shoot the film in a ARRI Alexa Mini LF using Panavision's T-Series anamorphic lenses, although this was only the beginning of image processing marked by analog processes: "We passed the film through 35 millimeters and, once it was finished, we printed it on film and then scanned it."

This mix of techniques and approaches, as Luque himself acknowledges, has been “an act of magic, showing one thing and doing a different process on the other hand.” However, this coordinated effort by the entire IT technology team The Snow Society, recognized in the form of multiple awards in the 2024 edition of the Goya, made the Uruguayan creative achieve his main objective: to create a “universe and a unique realism.”