Constantine Makris: Image Control & Post Production

From American Cinematographer, Legal Eagle by Eric Rudolph (October 1998)

While the show is closely identified with its New York setting and production base, it is produced by Universal Television, which is based in Los Angeles. This means that postproduction is done 3,000 miles away. The long-distance marriage has created some problems that Makris has recently taken steps to solve.

"They literally take our unprocessed 35mm negative and put it on a plane to Deluxe in Los Angeles! The postproduction staff began getting a bit creative, changing things I'd done. The squad room walls are green — not blue, as they have appeared to be in some shows. If I say an actor should have an orange half-shadow on his face, well, he should, because I'm the person being paid to light this show. Sometimes I want to warm up a scene with a one-quarter CTO. But when I see the show, the scene is not warm — it's white. For that reason, I started using a 1/2 CTO where I previously might have used a 1/4... Steve Garfinkle, our Kodak rep, suggested using their Grey Card Plus system. Up to that point, I had only been giving post a gray scale. With Kodak's system, with its calibration of the telecine, the colorists' job is to simply match his copy of the Grey Card Plus card to the card we film. If they do that, the show should look the way it was intended to when it reaches the home screen."

- Constantine Makris, ASC

Adrian Biddle: Moonlight Approach

From American Cinematographer, Paging 007 by Ron Magid (December 1999)

Cool blue moonlight proved to be an important source elsewhere in the film, though, and Biddle generally creates his version of this lighting effect though some basic timing work. He details,

"I don't particularly like the blue color of HMIs, so instead of using one of those, I'll use a tungsten source for the moonlight, and then warm up my interior lights with some sort of CTO for [temperature] contrast. I then have the lab to print the scene for normal skin tones, which makes my tungsten moonlight key go slightly cold."

- Adrian Biddle, BSC

Peter Menzies Jr: Color Temperature

From American Cinematographer, A Few Bad Men by Jay Holben (July 1999)

"We went pretty saturated with our colors. Sometimes I'd put three of four layers of full CTS on a lamp so it would go into a really weird orange-red spectrum that was close to sodium-vapor in color. As the film went on, we added more color as we got braver about the look, always keeping the actor's skin tones around 2400*k so that they maintained that nice warm look.

I love mixing color temperatures. For the last couple of years, the boys have made fun of me for not using any two lights of the same color. When you do walk down the street in real life, though, nothing is perfect-- there are weird fabulous colors all around you. In my opinion, using something other than white light all the time just makes a scene more realistic. We used a lot of theatrical colors, too. I haven't used traditional CTO for quite a while, since I prefer to use CTS. It drops the color temperature down another 400*K and has a bit more yellow in it than orange."

- Peter Menzies Jr, ASC

James L. Carter: Color Temperature

From American Cinematographer, Tuned In Talents by Christopher Probst (May 1999)

"I'm a heavy mixer of color temperatures. I truly believe in letting things go. If the outside was slightly blue and the inside was really warm, that was great. When I did daylight scenes, I'd make the sunlight slightly warm. When we'd go out on the streets at night, every so often I'd let things in the backgrounds go that fluorescent blue-green. I felt that made things look a little more real, a little more like New York, instead of always trying to correct everything out. I have a gel pack for a sodium-vapor effect that I call 'moldy pumpkin.' Depending on how I feel on the day I'm shooting, it consists of 1/2 CTO and pale or light salmon. I like that weird orangy-pink color. I remember reading a study about streetlight colors, and it said that there is more crime in areas lit by sodium-vapor lights. With that in mind, whenever things got really gritty, or we were in a scuzzy area, I would use those sodium-vapor colors. I think it's an oppressive look."

- James L. Carter, ASC