Wonder Woman Wet Plate Collodion Photograph

OK, so I'm a little late to this party.

I just saw "Wonder Woman" a few months ago as we checked it out from the library to watch with my oldest son as he just had his tonsils out and needed to be taking it easy. We all enjoyed it.

I watched some of the "extras" the following day, and there was one called "A Photograph Through Time" which was about the photograph that started the movie. (And the same photo was seen in "Batman vs Superman" as well.)

Present-day Wonder Woman looking at the photograph from Bruce Wayne.


The photo seen in a collector's book about the movie.

The man who plays "Charlie" (far right in that photo) talked about shooting that photo as the first day on set:

That was the first thing that we shot, before we’d even shot a scene [for Wonder Woman] we shot that photograph. It meant that when we eventually got around to shooting the scene that the [photograph] is from, we had to really painstakingly recreate it. Because we [took the photo] against a half-built set, in a way sets were still being built at that point. So by the time we came around to filming that scene, probably around five months later, the sets were much more developed. So we had to find a way to recreate the exact same image after half a year had gone by.

Anyway, the "extra" about the making of the photograph is pretty interesting. They worked with photographer Stephen Berkman and actually shot a traditional wet plate collodion photograph with (approximately) a 5 second exposure. They shot about 20 versions to get one that worked the way they wanted it to. There's a LOT more on the DVD/Blu-Ray, but here are 2 short clips about the photograph in Wonder Woman, and the 2nd video shows a lot more of the actual photograph (and the director and producer discussing it):

Direct link: youtu.be/Px6bjPksY2E


Direct link: youtu.be/R2DTz6RsWpo

Here's a little more about the making of this photo from Screen Rant and from Cinema Blend. But I recommend watching the DVD or Blu-Ray and seeing a lot more about this in the extras.