Production: Disclosure Day

Janusz Kamiński reveals how practical effects, grounded lighting and realism helped shape Steven Spielberg’s latest extraterrestrial thriller, Disclosure Day

Words: Oliver Webb | Images: UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND AMBLIN ENTERTAINMENT

If you found out we weren’t alone – if someone showed you and proved it to you – would it frighten you?” That question is the premise of Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s return to the big screen. The film was lensed by his long-term collaborator Janusz Kamiński.

Kamiński has shot every Spielberg film since Schindler’s List (1993), which won him an Academy Award for best cinematography. What makes Disclosure Day unique is that it is their first creative collaboration to unfold in the present day, after having  previously worked together on historical pieces, including Saving Private Ryan, Lincoln and Bridge of Spies, and futuristic stories such as Minority Report, AI Artificial Intelligence and Ready Player One.

American parallax

“Disclosure Day is inspired by existing material. The US government has recently released files which suggest that there is knowledge within both the administration and the scientific community that these phenomena do occur,” begins Kamiński.

For him, the challenge was how to make a film that isn’t science fiction, but hyperreal. “It’s suspenseful, dramatic and more rooted in religious polemics. How do I make it entertaining without it feeling flaccid, like so many modern films that tackle contemporary issues?”

When it comes to the look of a film, Kamiński usually doesn’t have specific conversations with Spielberg about his visual interpretation. Instead, the aesthetic is driven by the script and the action. “We didn’t discuss any visuals, simply because they were written into the set and the script,” he says.

The film opens with an almost film-noir aesthetic, which Kamiński admits is to purposefully misdirect viewers. For the opening sequences, he pays homage to classic seventies noirs, such as The Parallax View, All the President’s Men and The Panic in Needle Park. “Both Steven and I love American movies from the seventies, not only for their visual language but also their storytelling,” he explains.

Kamiński points to the work of cinematographer Owen Roizman, ASC as an influence, mentioning The French Connection, Three Days of the Condor and his other work with Sydney Pollack. However, he “did not want to emulate those images,” he says. “The aesthetics are very different to mine.” 

Designing Disclosure

Disclosure Day consists of a number of sets, designed and constructed by production designer Adam Stockhausen, who has collaborated with Spielberg and Kamiński on numerous films since Bridge of Spies. One of the main sets featured a semi-government organisation that monitors all of the information and events to do with UFOs.

“It was a huge set that had massive walls of monitors,” says Kamiński. “It feels very contemporary, and has a bit of a modernistic shape. That already controls the visuals to an extent. Our other sets included existing homes and roads as well as a TV studio. Since the film is rooted in recognisable environments, the challenge was to capture the scale and beauty of those spaces but without overcomplicating the visuals.”

Kamiński explains that the lighting is often incorporated into the set design, which is the usual method on a Spielberg movie. He points to The Terminal as an example. “We built the set just outside Palmdale in this massive Boeing facility hangar. Everything worked within that; the staircases, vending machines etc; and the light was incorporated into the set. We had to light it to the extent that it of course looks functional and realistic, so we can control the lights within the set to create drama, comedy or whatever.”

That method is key to how Kamiński approaches Spielberg productions, and Disclosure Day was no different. “The production designers have a strong early influence on what the movie looks like,” says Kamiński. “They’re the first individuals who look at the locations and present the original sketches and designs to Steven. I come in a bit later and manipulate the existing choices to facilitate the story. I then play around with different lighting styles and with the colour, so that’s my contribution, as well as looking at how the characters interact with each other within the light.”

Close encounters

The main lighting challenge for Kamiński, however, was in the film’s large-scale action scenes, which included a car chase and a train sequence where the characters experience life-threatening situations. “The train is travelling in one direction while the cars are approaching from the other. I used the light available on location. Then, when we went into the stunt sequences, we needed to recreate that same light.”

Kamiński wanted to take a more contemporary lighting approach for the project. “The lighting was not classical, there’s no three-point lighting or anything like that. It is a much stronger soft light with a little bit of punch. I like the sense of light and how the characters are illuminated by light rather than moving through dim, underexposed, bleak environments. Steven and I have a certain look and that look gets altered from story to story, but essentially there are motifs in our language we repeat because we are drawn to them.”

Despite its grounded aesthetic, Disclosure Day retains the visual gloss associated with Spielberg’s films. “We weren’t trying to reinvent ourselves after working together for the last 35 years. We have worked together long enough that there is an established visual language between us, though I still adapt my style for every film.”

Although he naturally has visual panache, Spielberg was focused on performances here. “We also had very little CGI when it came to the action sequences,” explains Kamiński. “In fact, it is mostly practical effects with some removal of wires and increasing the speed of the train, but those guys are actually clinging onto the train. It’s not moving at great speed. For the car chases, we are smashing through structures and windows get blown, cars get flipped.”

Maintaining authenticity was also important when depicting the film’s extraterrestrial phenomena. One crucial concern for Kamiński was depicting those phenomena in a way that felt convincing while maintaining the film’s realism. “Of course, we have been prevented from knowing the reality. As we have seen in recent news, those realities are now being slowly revealed. For the film, we are creating these big events where ships interact with present-day life.”

To film those sequences, Kamiński wanted to produce a sense of light travelling from a far distance and shadows moving across the ground as if the ships are either descending or ascending.

Practically achieving those effects required a combination of drone lighting and digital augmentation. “We utilised drones with mounted lights to create the necessary lighting effects, whether it be flaring the lens or moving the shadows across,” says Kamiński. “Flying Monster’s drone work was spectacular, and we could move around easily and follow the cars. Then Mark Butler, our visual effects supervisor, would create the rest in post with CGI.”

Happy accidents

Kamiński captured the film with Panavision’s Panaflex Millennium XL2, accompanied with Panavision C and T Series lenses. “The majority of the film was shot on 35mm negative,” he says. “For the TV studio scenes, I used a Sony VENICE 2 Extension System (aka RIALTO Mini) because it would have been too laborious to shoot those with 35mm. It also has to do with the film’s sensitivity and the brightness of the screens in the studio. You can dial into 1600 and 3200 ASA and those screens on-set will give you enough illumination that you don’t have to supplement much with other lights. I love film. There’s definitely a difference, but it just wasn’t practical to use the film emulsion in those scenes.”

Additionally, Kamiński did not want to use lenses that would produce too much distortion, and so he tried to stay clear of flares. “There is still the odd flare though,” he adds, “but these are very restrained compared to what I have produced in the past.”

West Side Story, for example, features an entire sequence consisting of flares. “I usually have two sets of lenses: the clean anamorphics for normal, realistic and non-invasive photography, and then another set for work that requires more of an effect. It’s a rather conventional approach in terms of lenses.”

That consistency in visual language is rooted in the decades-long rapport between Spielberg and Kamiński. He explains how there has always been a strong sense of trust, and Spielberg’s sets are always a comfortable working environment. “There’s also that sense of familiarity, not just with Steven, but with the producers, production designers, editors – everyone. You know you are in good hands and so you’re willing to push it to another level without fearing that you might fail.”

Sometimes those so-called failures can even result in unforeseen successes. Kamiński describes achieving interesting shots throughout his career as a result of making mistakes. One famous example is in AI Artificial Intelligence, when the main character played by Haley Joel Osment is first introduced.

“There’s a beautiful image of Haley coming out of the elevator and the shot is out of focus,” describes Kamiński. “That was completely by mistake. I was playing with the focus and had zoomed in, and it ultimately made the final cut because Steven really liked it.”

Kamiński notes that, when you don’t have that level of trust or understanding with the director, the film’s world can end up becoming too safe. “Safe isn’t interesting, and you always want to push boundaries. My relationship with Steven gives me that chance to fail and allows us to take risks.”

This professional relationship and method proved effective once again on Disclosure Day. A similar happy accident occurred during filming one of the house scenes that star actors Josh O’Connor and Eve Hewson. “All of a sudden, the light came between the actors,” says Kamiński. “The colour of the light was slightly cold and reserved, and perhaps a little too shadowy, but we embraced it. It looks dramatic and great.” 

Kamiński is happy with the final result of the film, and admits it has moments he thinks are visually beautiful, although not in a conventional way. For Kamiński, those unplanned moments often produce the most emotionally resonant imagery.

“There’s a Danish painter called Vilhelm Hammershøi,” he says. “His work is reserved and his use of light is very colourless but a little theatrical. His paintings by windows are often soft and slightly surreal, but very emotional – and our shot had elements of that. It wasn’t planned at all – Hammershøi wasn’t an intentional reference. Throughout his work, he paints lots of figures standing in open rooms with doorways and windows, and the colour palettes are desaturated and quite stark. A couple of scenes in Disclosure Day have similarly beautiful, stark imagery.”

This article appears in the June/July 2026 issue of Definition