Jeff Cronenweth ASC Sheds Light on “Tron: Ares” with Astera

Acclaimed cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth ASC is no stranger to crafting unforgettable images that illuminate profound human dramas, but Tron: Ares was a step into uncharted territory. Directed by Joachim Rønning and starring Jared Leto, this third entry in Disney’s Tron franchise marked Cronenweth’s first science fiction film. A project that promised spectacular visuals with an intimate human story at its core, the film presented a challenging mix of distinctive looks across three different digital worlds as well as “reality”. Cronenweth and gaffer Stuart Haggerty turned to Astera, deploying hundreds of Titan Tubes, Hyperion Tubes, and LunaBulbs in innovative configurations that pushed the boundaries of interactive lighting.

When Jared Leto–Cronenweth’s collaborator from Fight Club–first approached him about Tron: Ares, the cinematographer was hesitant. “I’ve passed on a lot of sci-fi movies because I just couldn’t relate to the story,” Cronenweth explains. But after reading the script and discussing Leto’s vision, something clicked. “If we could get to the humanity and the relationships at the core of the story–I thought we would have it.” Indeed, at heart Ares is both a love story and a journey of self-discovery. A disarmingly warm performance from Leto as Ares, an artificial intelligence seeking to be more than a digital denizen, grounds the film amidst high-octane action sequences and eye-popping set pieces.

The scope of Tron: Ares was enormous. With 14 weeks of prep (extended by strikes to several months), four-camera setups on multiple units, and massive sets at Vancouver’s Mammoth Studios, the production could have been overwhelming. “Luckily we had a lot of prep, and it really paid off,” says Cronenweth. “You make most of the movie in the pre-production–you eliminate as many of the problems and obstacles as you can, so on the day, you’re left with trying to make the best performances and scenes possible.” The extensive preparation allowed him and the team to develop sophisticated lighting solutions that would make the impossible feel natural.

Working with production designer Darren Gilford, the crew wrapped an entire football field-sized studio in blue screen, rigged hundreds of interactive lights, and built practical light sources into nearly every set. “Every time there’s a lightbulb in a scene, it’s a LunaBulb,” explains the cinematographer, referring to Astera’s lightbulb-shaped fixture, featuring their Titan LED engine color science. “Most of the lights built into the ‘grid’ (the Tron franchise’s hyper-stylized ‘digital frontier’) sets or into Dillinger’s office are Astera Tubes.”

Ares marks the first time in the series that programs exist outside the grid, creating a unique challenge: how to differentiate between three distinct digital worlds (the Dillinger grid, the Incom grid, and Jeff Bridges’ legacy grid) and the real world.

Each grid world was given its own color palette: Incom featured a soft blue, Dillinger was saturated red on black, and Bridges’ grid incorporated desaturated aqua and pastel tones with grain as an homage to the original 1982 Tron. “Inside the grid, I tried not to ‘light’. Instead, we built light sources into the sets,” describes Cronenweth. Each grid set practically glows, with geometric lights adding slices of dimensionality to futuristic architecture. “I like the idea of letting the actors organically find those sources–although we did end up also adding accents, a key, or this and that.”

By contrast, the real-world locations embraced a grittier aesthetic. In the Dinkum transfer station, which serves as a 3D-printing-esque gateway to the grid, compact battery powered Astera AX3 LightDrops integrated as practical alarm strobes and fire alarms on the walls. AX3s were also strategically placed in the parking structure where Eve Kim (Greta Lee) pushes Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) off a multi-story drop, mid adrenaline pumping motorcycle chase. “That parking structure had three different types of color lights in it. Normally you’d replace them all, make them uniform, and paint the walls. But we decided no, let’s embrace the mixed light sources and embellish–that’s part of the magic of the real world.”

The film’s most impressive Astera rig became known affectionately as “the Monstero,” a 20-foot by 20-foot frame packed with over 200 Titan and Hyperion Tubes–the highly controllable 16-pixel 40.7” (104cm) and 32-pixel 79.9” (203cm), respectively, baton-shaped LEDs. Designed by gaffer Stuart Haggerty and built by key rigging grip Dave Mackey, the massive light source was mounted on an articulating head attached to an extended forklift, allowing the monster rig to be positioned and moved with precision.

“I needed quite a large source to be able to run animated imagery through it,” Cronenweth explains. The Monstero served a critical purpose: creating interactive light for scenes where characters interact with holograms, like how the grid-denizens experience communication with a human programmer. “I used that Monstero as a light to match and blend the visual effects. It was unbelievably effective.”

What started as a planned ones-off for a single set became an essential tool throughout production. “We ended up dragging it from set to set to set,” says Cronenweth. “And we even made a mini-Monstero that we could use for smaller setups.”

An Ares spin on a classic Tron visual concept involves characters inside the data stream itself. Literally surrounded by a torrent of ones, zeros and pages of digital information, all while dressed in partially reflective wardrobes, a blooming cascade of light helps sell the effect. For these sequences, Cronenweth created an innovative ‘ring light’ using Astera tubes, but not in the traditional beauty light sense.

“I animated that ring light with data patterns, never falling off, but always opposing each other. It just gave this sense of light motion that was different than everything else,” he describes. Each pixel in a Titan tube could be individually programmed and controlled for the effect. The eight-foot circular rig created light that felt alive and computational, immersing the characters viscerally inside the flow of information.

Of course, no Tron property would be complete without the iconic Light Cycles, which leave particulate trails of light in their wake. To sell this effect, the team supplemented the LEDs built directly into each bike with HydraPanels, rigged to the side. When the stunt drivers hit the streets, the compact (6.5″ x 3.3″ x 1.7″ / 16.5cm x 8.4cm x 4.3cm) panels delivered the practical component of these signature light trails. “The HydraPanels gave us that cutting-edge look while being durable enough for the stunt work,” Cronenweth notes.

One of the noted strengths of Astera lights is their ability to cleanly change intensity with no color shift, all controlled remotely. “We used a lot of dimmer board interaction, not just for interactive lights, but during complex blocking or camera moves,” Cronenweth describes. In a practically invisible trick of lighting, as Leto strides a lengthy corridor in the Dillinger grid, the illumination adjusts with him. “Lighting to move from one end of the set to the other and land in a close-up is very challenging–requiring fades and lights coming up that weren’t on before. “We really used all the tools that we had at our fingertips to manage that and have seamless transitions of light during shots that weren’t obvious to the audience.”

The film’s complex camera moves required equally sophisticated lighting. “In the grids we utilized Sisu for their motion control rigs–not to do repeatable shots, but so that you could have mechanical, very direct, prescribed movements that were inhumanly perfect, to counter real life.” Lights fade up and down during takes as the camera moves through space, maintaining proper exposure and mood without the audience ever noticing the adjustments. “It’s almost like an engineer of a music concert, or the conductor of an orchestra, adjusting all the musical tones,” Cronenweth says.

“It’s been a game changer for me,” he says simply. “Throughout the evolution of Astera, they just got smarter and user friendlier.” The ease of use proved essential on a production the scale of Tron: Ares. “It’s crazy what you can get away with,” he says. “Drop one behind something that’s a little bit too shadowy, run in, drop it down, don’t worry about it–it’s good for hours. I put them everywhere. I carry them all the time and they’re always there just to grab one when I feel like something’s missing somewhere.” The film is grittier than its two predecessors–both visually and sonically (with an original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails). Cronenweth’s approach uses lighting and camera movement to make the grids feel polished and mechanically perfect, while the real world remains messy and textured.

Ares is more than a technical achievement for Cronenweth. In this latest feat, the cinematographer and his team have created a visual experience that feels both cutting-edge and emotional–a fitting tribute to the Tron legacy and a promising step for the franchise.

Tron: Ares is now streaming on Disney+.