Oliver Bokelberg, ASC Captures "Last Days" on Leitz HUGOs
Last Days (2025)
The feature film Last Days follows Christian missionary John Allen Chau on a search for purpose and community while wrestling with a deeper calling that pulls him away from his loved ones and toward an uncertain future. Directed by Justin Lin and shot by Oliver Bokelberg, ASC, the film will premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Seth Emmons: How would you describe the basic plot of this film?
Oliver Bokelberg, ASC: Last Days is a feature film directed by Justin Lin. I worked with Justin on the pilot for a series called “The Endgame” before he asked me to do this film with him.
The film is based on a true story that appeared as an article in Outside Magazine. It’s about John Allen Chau, a 26-year-old Asian-American kid who had been studying at Oral Roberts University, a Christian university in Oklahoma. In a search for belonging and purpose, he sets out on a journey to missionize one of the very last untouched tribes on the planet on the Indian island of North Sentinel.
Through the film we follow three particular timelines that converge as the film progresses. There is the protagonist story of John, portrayed by our lead actor Sky Yang. Another follows his father, Patrick (Ken Leung), who wishes he could stop John. The other is a policewoman on the Andaman Islands, Meera (Radhika Apte), who searches for John to prevent him from going to the island. We knew that we wanted to give each of these stories a unique visual treatment.
What ways did you decide on to separate the stories?
John’s story is based on his recollection, the writing he left behind in his diaries. Much of his motivations and desires he had acquired from watching Hollywood movies. We set out to follow his dream and used traditional camera movement to build some real Hollywood moments. With Patrick we avoid movement and live in a controlled, composed setting. The camera is stable and center punches. Meera’s is a handheld world, longer lenses, a little more frantic. These styles blend as we progress through the film and the stories converge.
We did not want to separate our stories by bold differences, but rather feel similar with subtle reminders. These concepts came up in conversation with Justin, and from there I went on my journey of discovery on how to deliver and build these concepts. One way was to separate the different storylines by using different sets of lenses. During prep and testing I had fallen in love with the Leitz HUGOs. But Day One, our first scene up, I had conceptualized it to be photographed with another set of lenses. We started shooting the scene, but it just didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like the movie we had dreamed of making. In response, we tried on a HUGO and it started feeling good.
Filmmaking is an interesting process. On set it's very guttural. It becomes emotional. Pre-production is a journey, a discovery, where the mathematical brain work happens. That's when I overthink things. But that's the beauty of being on set, you let loose, let it flow. You have done all the prep work, all the brain work, but then you’re in it and have to be open to change. So on that first day I decided to pivot and shoot the whole film with the Leitz HUGOs.
What was the process like for choosing the lenses for this project?
Justin knew he wanted to shoot the film at 1.85 aspect ratio, and use spherical lenses. Those were two things we had decided early on. From there I started exploring lenses. March of 2023 I went over to Keslow Camera and I had them pull out every lens. We tried different focal lengths just to get a feel for them, running lights through them, seeing the flares and seeing how they behave. I started narrowing them down. But somehow I wasn't totally excited. I didn't feel it. I was still only in a very technical relationship with the lenses.
We were just about finished when Brad Wilson walked in saying, “FedEx just arrived with the first set of Leitz HUGO lenses. You might wanna take a look at these.”
They handed me the lenses and just looking at them they offered everything I was hoping for: compact size, weight, shallow focus. We put them on the camera. I liked their softness. I liked the flares. I liked the imperfections, if I may say that. I wasn’t looking for perfect. I was looking for likable.
I knew immediately that these were the lenses I wanted to use for the John storyline. I still planned to use another set for the other stories, but I felt that these were the main lenses I wanted to do the film with.
The only problem, there were only very few sets of HUGO at the time. So the question was, can we even get them? We were going to shoot in India, or maybe Thailand, with a move to London and maybe California. We were travel heavy and didn’t know where the camera package was coming from yet.
I had talked with Rainer Hercher from Leitz about the lenses at the ASC Awards that year. So I reached out to him and he helped secure and complete a set for our shoot. ARRI London was great in supporting us and servicing the film, but at the time were missing the 18 mm Hugo. The 135 mm wasn’t even released yet. Rainer was able to deliver both on time. We also had the 50-N mm, the Noctilux lens. Once the set was complete we were happy to go with it.
When Justin and I did our first makeup camera test we were exploring how we wanted to approach intimacy with John's character. There are a couple shots in the film where he’s very much into the camera, into the lens, breaking the fourth wall. I remember looking at the regular 50 mm and it was good. But then I told Justin, “Wait, we have a secret weapon here.” I pulled out the 50-N mm, put it on, and opened it to T1.0. We were both blown away by it. Justin fell in love with it immediately. It became sort of our kryptonite for those close ups.
There are only a handful of those shots in the film. I think one is the second shot in the movie, but it's very strong. Shooting that lens at that wide aperture worked really well and made it easy for this love affair with the lenses to be shared with the entire team. We knew we had something special.
The lenses are technically well built. The focus rings are in the same spot for all the lenses so it's a quick lens change, which is always good. The close focus is really nice. The weight. The marriage of the ARRI Alexa Mini LF together with the Leitz Hugos made a very compact, lightweight camera. These were all plus points for me.
We knew we would be traveling quite a bit of the world and we were going up in the jungle here and there. We were able to fit all those lenses in one case. That was a big deal, to be able to travel like that, to have them all in a carry-on flight case. It just all came together.
My dad was a photographer and he worked a lot with his Leica M6’s. A long time ago I pulled out a couple of his old M lenses. I still have his Noctilux. For me there's almost a romantic love towards them, you know. It just made the perfect match.

How did the images turn out?
I worked with a great DIT Joe Coffey on set, and wonderful colorist Andre Rivas at Pictureshop. We found ourselves going back to our dailies, since we liked where they landed, mostly adding a bit of contrast and punch in final color.
The lenses offered a beautiful consistency throughout the range. They do have a little bit of a soft contrast, which I think is helpful in achieving not only nice skin tones, but being able to dial them around and be able to maneuver them well. I'm more interested in the imperfections. I probably introduced less vignettes on this movie than ever before. I probably used fewer power windows on this film than I had before because there is a natural beauty to the lenses.
I did use a little bit of a filter for much of the film, maybe ¼ or ½ Tiffen Glimmerglass. Not sure I completely needed it, but it's that fear of digital sharpness. When we shot on film I never really used any diffusion filters. I always felt that the depth of the film stock covered you in regards to softness. But these lenses are really gentle on skin. I had the same feeling with the SUMMILUX-Cs, which I’ve shot with a lot, but even more so with the HUGOs. There’s a real softness.
It’s funny how sometimes you have to remind yourself when committing to your look. If I’m not operating I’m sitting close to the monitor seeing everything, every little aberration. It’s easy to say, “This isn’t resolving properly,” or wonder if something needs to be recalibrated. But no, that’s just the character. That’s the character I was looking for. You remind yourself that you don’t want it to be perfect. You tested lenses looking for something not perfect because perfect is mathematical and soulless. Especially with digital cameras I’m trying to find some soul in the image in the few tools we have, so a lens having character is essential.
Speaking of operating, did you operate on the film?
I operated the three or four most intimate scenes where we went handheld with a single camera. When there are multiple cameras and a tight schedule part of my job is to be thinking about the next setup and moving stuff forward. I was composing shots and wasn’t needed behind the camera. All of our camera operators did a fantastic job. In Thailand: Picha Srisannasee and Himanshu Dubey; the UK: Chris Bain and Andy Banwell; and in California: Harry Garvin and David Mun.
I still love operating and sometimes there is a benefit to operating yourself because you can edit in your head. When you’re handheld you have freedom to move around and have the ability to say to yourself, “I’ve got that shot,” and move on to the next one.
In those few scenes I built the lighting in a way that I could move and be flexible. I could leave the space to the actors, let them do their thing, and move around like a fly on the wall picking up shots while editing in my head. I’ll get this angle, that angle, this other angle, move in for the close up. Then maybe do a lens change, check with your director, and do it again. I can’t as easily translate that to an operator, especially if there is a very limited amount of time. Sometimes if you have a long-standing relationship with an operator you can get there, but it takes time to build that understanding and trust so that they feel the freedom to move like that.

Can you describe one of those scenes?
John, our lead character, is going a bit crazy in his hotel room and begins to destroy the place. We were running late that day, I think we had an hour or an hour and a half to shoot it. We also realized that the room was too small to have two cameras plus AC’s in it. In the moment we just decided that I would operate it. I lit it pretty basically with practicals knowing that I could defend myself a bit and keep an eye on the lighting. Sky is really wonderful and was very much in character during that scene and I was able to document it. It was almost a documentary style, which was a happy accident because we didn’t walk in thinking we were going to shoot it that way. Sometimes being on location and being under time pressure puts you in situations for these happy accidents. They make for the best scenes and I think whenever you allow for it, you win.
I never loved moving walls, but when you’re working in a studio you get into the habit of everything can fly, everything can move to get into the perfect spot. But it’s the same idea that when you have all the time in the world and all the equipment you can make perfectly composed, perfectly atmospheric images, but sometimes it’s more successful for the story when you reduce, when you have restrictions. You always have to allow for what comes out of that.
There was one scene that actually went the other way that was pretty cool. It takes place on a balcony looking onto a dark street. In the conversations with Justin during prep our reference images for the scene had sodium vapor street lights. At the location in Thailand all the streetlights were these blue LED lights that are going up everywhere, and it didn’t feel how we wanted this movie to feel.
This is one of the beautiful things about working with local crews. Every place you go they have different strengths you might not expect. I turned to my local gaffer and said, “I really don’t want these blue LED lights. I want them to be sodium vapor.” The next day he brought from his warehouse these big street light looking things with sodium vapor bulbs in them and said, “Do you want this?” I said yes and he and his crew climbed the buildings on the street and wired these lamps over top of the old lamp sources and all of the sudden the street was lit with sodium vapor. It was amazing how they were able to deliver that.
I try not to hold on too tightly to what has been discussed in prep because sometimes that just hinders the process. I try to approach each scene with an attitude, or maybe a concept of an attitude, and then adapt to whatever is being found the day of. We have to over-prepare to allow ourselves to be nimble. The work we do in prep will allow for a certain freedom that pulls the best out of a scene, allows for surprises, and hopefully a bit of magic.


Overview
DoP Oliver Bokelberg
DoB December 21, 1964 (age 60 years)

Last Days
2025 | movie
DoP Oliver Bokelberg
Director Justin Lin
Leitz lens HUGO
Camera ARRI Mini LF
Production Companies Gotham Group | Outside Magazine | Perfect Storm Entertainment
Equipment Supplier ARRI Rental | London
Country USA
Lens used
HUGO
Legacy
