Dailies from the Edge of the World: Wild Horse Nine
The World's Most Remote Film Set
Wild Horse Nine is only the second feature film ever to have shot on Easter Island. The first, Rapa Nui, was made in 1994. Thirty years on, writer-director Martin McDonagh, who first visited the island over a decade ago and became determined to build a film around it, secured the trust of the Rapa Nui council after twelve months of negotiation, committing to a strict “leave nothing behind” approach to the shoot. Easter Island is a UNESCO World Heritage site; its thousand-plus Moai statues are sacred. There was no local crew, no production infrastructure, no commercial cargo flights that could cover all of the equipment needed for the shoot. Production needed to ship much of the gear, cameras, and period vehicles in from Santiago by boat.
The film stars John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents dispatched from Santiago to Easter Island in 1973, in the weeks before Pinochet’s coup. The feature is lensed by cinematographer Ben Davis BSC and produced by Blueprint Pictures with Film4 for Searchlight Pictures, which releases the film in cinemas this November.
Cinelab Film & Digital were brought in to support the production with a full suite of services:
Remote Digital Dailies Lab
Dailies Colour by Darren Rae
16mm and Super 8mm Film Processing and Scanning
35mm DFD (Digital-Film-Digital) Transfer of Digitally Captured Footage on to Kodak 250D Stock
Fully Calibrated Remote Grading Sessions via RePro Stream between London and Easter Island
35mm Release Prints
The production’s choice of location made this one of the most logistically demanding projects Cinelab has taken on - and one of the clearest demonstrations of what a genuinely remote dailies workflow looks like in practice.
The Challenge
Easter Island presented a compounding set of difficulties that ruled out conventional workflow approaches from the outset.
Satellite internet on the island heavily favours download over upload speed, with usable upload bandwidth as low as 10 Mbps, around 25 times slower than the minimum ordinarily recommended for this kind of project. The island’s extreme remoteness meant there was no possibility of returning for re-shoots, making reliable archive of all camera media essential, so that production could re-use camera cards with confidence, keeping the production shooting. At the same time, the production required fully graded dailies delivered simultaneously to editorial, post, and the studio, across multiple continents and time zones.
In parallel, cinematographer Ben Davis needed daily colour review sessions with his long-standing dailies colourist Darren Rae, based at Cinelab in London. Cinelab also provided 16mm and Super 8mm film processing and scanning, and a 35mm DFD filmout for the final image.
“Fully remote control or fully on-site workflows simply weren’t an option for this project. For remote control the internet connection must be rock-solid and sending all the personnel and expertise this job warranted to Easter Island just wasn’t practical or possible. Our bespoke approach gave the production the best of both worlds.” Christy Kail, Head of Workflow, Cinelab Film & Digital
The Workflow Solution
A Hybrid Local / Remote Model
Having provided dailies for McDonagh and Davis’s last island-based collaboration, The Banshees of Inisherin, Cinelab was brought on to develop a no-compromise dailies workflow for the production.
The solution was a carefully architected hybrid: a Cinelab dailies operator deployed to Easter Island to handle the functions that demanded physical access to full-resolution media, while dailies colour grading had to be performed remotely from London, due to restrictions on how many crew could be on the island.
The onsite Cinelab operator handled media ingest, LTO archiving, and performed QC checks from full-resolution files hosted on Iodyne’s encrypted Pro Data shared storage system. The footage was relayed to London via StarLink, where Darren Rae and the Cinelab dailies team graded and distributed to all stakeholders - leveraging Cinelab’s high-speed London infrastructure rather than placing additional pressure on the island’s limited upload capacity.
In the event of any connectivity interruptions, the dailies operator on Easter Island would be able to step-in and provide temporary dailies to the crew and could facilitate high-quality reviews for heads of department.
The workflow extended across a second phase of production as it moved from Easter Island to Santiago, Chile. The same core process travelled with them, with RePro Stream used throughout Easter Island and Santiago locations.
“Various possibilities for this workflow were floated, such as temporary ungraded dailies, or shipping rushes to Santiago every day (2,000 miles away) - but in the end we didn’t think the production and studio should have to compromise on quality or speed. We wanted to give everyone the same service from Easter Island that they would have got shooting on a stage at Pinewood.” Christy Kail, Head of Workflow, Cinelab Film & Digital
Live Grading via RePro Stream
A RePro Stream link sent a direct stream from Cinelab’s London facility to digital imaging technician Lincoln Benjamin’s calibrated DIT cart on set. This allowed Davis and Rae to conduct live dailies review and set looks together in real time, without the delay and colour uncertainty of sending stills back and forth.
Before the shoot began, Davis’s on-set monitoring kit was brought to Cinelab for calibration, ensuring that what Davis was seeing on Easter Island corresponded accurately to what Rae was seeing in London.
“The beauty of remote grading is that the technology doesn’t care whether you’re ten feet away from each other or ten thousand miles away. What matters is the connection - and the relationship.” Darren Rae, Head of Colour Grading - Longform, Cinelab Film & Digital
The time difference between locations was absorbed naturally by the rhythm of production. Davis reviewed dailies first thing on set each morning; in London, Rae and the team ran sessions in the afternoon. Rae would typically complete a first-pass grade before the session, flagging the final take of each setup for Davis to review rather than working through entire rolls live.
"On Wild Horse Nine, we needed to collaborate across significant distances. Using RePro, we were able to send high-quality and low-latency signals from our colourist at Cinelab in London to monitors and iPads on Easter Island. This allowed Ben to work with the colourist remotely in real time, making decisions as if they were in the same room. When working with both film and digital formats, maintaining visual consistency across locations is essential, and RePro made that possible even in such a remote setting." Lincoln Benjamin, Digital Imaging Technician, Wild Horse Nine
The Creative Relationship: Davis and Rae
A significant factor in the success of Wild Horse Nine’s remote workflow was the long-standing creative partnership between Ben Davis and Darren Rae. A relationship built across numerous features, including The Banshees of Inisherin, The Woman in Cabin 10, and Dr. Strange.
Their shared history meant the remote grading model functioned very smoothly. The trust built up over many years and a shared understanding between the two meant Rae had a good sense of where Davis instincts lie and this allowed the live sessions to be about review and refinement rather than discovery.
Davis would often bring director Martin McDonagh into the remote session, joining from set. Occasionally Davis would step away mid-session and leave McDonagh in conversation with Rae directly – a reflection of his trust in him.
“Whether you’re in Ireland or Easter Island, it’s the same people. Wild Horse Nine felt very much like Banshees from a working perspective - same crew, same relationship, same process. The geography is just different.” Darren Rae, Head of Colour Grading - Longform, Cinelab Film & Digital
Look Development and DFD
The visual brief for Wild Horse Nine was rooted in a 1970s period aesthetic: warm and textured. The production was shot on ARRI Alexa 35 with a DFD 35mm transfer planned from early on. If you want for the film look but for some reason you cannot shoot on film, Cinelab's signature DFD process is the next best thing.
The DFD (Digital-Film-Digital) process entails transferring digitally captured footage on to Kodak film stock via ARRILASER, then developing the negative and scanning back to a high-resolution digital file. The process adds real grain, texture, and film characteristics such as halation to the digital image, giving it an authentic film look.
With a DFD transfer, stock selection becomes part of the creative conversation. Davis and McDonagh opted for Kodak’s 250D film stock, a popular choice for its noticeable grain and classic film characteristics.
“I mean, originally Martin and I both wanted to shoot on film, it’s always been Martin’s preferred medium. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily always my preferred medium. I like both film and digital.” Ben Davis, Cinematographer Quote: British Cinematographer (Issue 138)
Alongside the main Alexa 35 digital acquisition, Wild Horse Nine incorporated both Super 8 and 16mm film formats. The script called for Sam Rockwell's character, Lee, to carry a Super 8 camera as a personal artefact. The camera used was a Canon Super 8 from 1972, loaned to the production by Cinelab CEO Adrian Bull from his own collection – meaning it appears on screen as both a prop and a genuine period piece. Davis also brought an Arriflex 16SR, shooting the island at sunrise and sunset, often on days off or at weekends. All Super 8 and 16mm footage was processed and scanned by Cinelab.
Finishing colour was led by Adam Glasman at Goldcrest, with additional colour by Laura Pavone and Finlay Reid.
“Initially, my intention was that whenever Sam was in a scene and he had the camera, we’d load it with film, and he’d shoot it. But then I realised that Sam wasn’t a particularly good camera operator! … Fair play to the guy – he’s acting in a scene. I don’t expect him to catch perfect footage!” Ben Davis, Cinematographer Quote: British Cinematographer (Issue 138)
Serving the Full Production Pipeline
Cinelab worked closely with 1st Assistant Editor Nicola Matiwone and Disney’s Imaging Science department to ensure the hybrid, distributed dailies workflow would not create complications downstream for editorial, conform, or VFX. Deliverables were distributed from London, keeping Easter Island’s upload bandwidth free for the live monitoring stream.
Remote the New Normal
Wild Horse Nine illustrates where remote dailies workflows have arrived. The technology; StarLink, RePro Stream, and point-to-point monitoring, has caught up with what was promised for more than a decade. The tipping point, Rae suggests, has been reached in the last two to three years.
“Remote grading has been embraced to the point where it’s almost the more commonplace model. There are no limits to the remoteness, really. The only limit used to be the connection. Now, with the technologies available to us, you can run a grade session from almost anywhere.” Darren Rae, Head of Colour Grading - Longform, Cinelab Film & Digital
The conditions that once required a colourist to travel, or editorial to be embedded in a distant facility, are no longer a barrier. Wild Horse Ninedemonstrates what that looks like in practice: logistics handled seamlessly so that the creative partnerships can do their work, unimpeded, from halfway across the world.
Wild Horse Nine arrives in cinemas November 2026, from Searchlight Pictures, Blueprint Pictures and Film4.