How ‘Train Dreams’ Achieved Its Nostalgic Cinematography With DP Adolpho Veloso

Racking up several wins at this year’s Indie Spirit Awards, including Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Cinematography, Train Dreams was a deserving winner of the evening. A simple, refreshing, and tonal look back at one man’s life in turn-of-the-century America.

Noted for its passionate storytelling, historical accuracy, and keen eye for finding the beauty of the American Pacific Northwest, the cinematography of Train Dreams is one of the reasons that the film has found such critical success.

To learn a bit more about the cinematography and which cameras and lenses were used for the project, ZEISS has put out a fun interview with Veloso that goes over how he brought this beautiful film to life.

ZEISS Interview with Adolpho Veloso

Along with the interview featured here, if you’re even more curious about how director Clint Bentley pulled off this period drama adaptation of Denis Johnson's source novella, you should first and foremost listen to the No Film School podcast episode with Bentley and editor Parker Laramie here.

We’ve also chatted with Bentley in the past about his previous Sundance-standout film, ___Jockey,___in this interview here.

What’s nice about this ZEISS interview is that cinematographer Adolpho Veloso, ABC, AIC, gets to really get a bit deeper into the technical decisions that he and Bentley went through to create the unique look for the film.

Train Dreams Camera and Lens Selections

According to the interview, Veloso and Bentley decided to shoot the film on ZEISS Super Speed Mk.2 lenses, which particularly helped the duo pull off the low-light scenes.

This selection, when combined with the use of the ARRI Alexa 35 cinema camera, gave the filmmaker and DP plenty of dynamic range to work in naturalistic settings and capture scenes which looked real, lived-in, and almost documentary at times—yet always with a nostalgic, cinematic look.

Train Dreams is a powerful film and one of the breakout hits from the festivals this year, and can be a great inspiration for those looking to find simple yet poignant stories to tell as they launch their own indie filmmaking careers.