Jean Yves Escoffier: Pools of Light & Night Exteriors

From American Cinematographer, Card Sharks by Jean Oppenheimer (October 1998)

For night exteriors, he used a Lee 104 deep amber gel to suggest the warm sodium-vapor lights now being used in the Big Apple (the city formerly used mercury-vapor streetlamps, which weren't as warm). "The night stuff was beautiful," marvels New York-based gaffer Ramsey. "Some of the streets where we shot were very mundane, junky little lower East Side streets. But the way Jean Yves shot them, with the contrasts and pools of light, really brought them to life."

Night street scenes are Escoffier's favorite milieu. "I love to do the city by night," he says in a reverential tone. "It is like a painting." With a laugh, he adds, "I am a happy person by night."

The cinematographer sought to make the film's exterior night scenes more dramatic and expressionistic. "People who are addicted to playing cards are like night birds," he suggests. "They have strange minds. They are alone in the world. I didn't want them to appear in the normal light of the city by night, so I completely changed the light."

Escoffier created his dramatic nighttime exteriors partially through the use of Dino lights, which were aimed through custom-made cookies to create strong pools of light, so that people walking down the streets would travel in and out of the illuminated areas. The characters' faces were almost always highlighted with eyelights, which were either attached to the camera or held by a crew member walking beside the actor.

Matt Faw: Creative Use of Eyelight

From American Cinematographer, Cleopatra's Cinema of Submission by David E. Williams (September 1998)

In the film, Robert slowly poisons Zack and later seals his weakened foe in a metal-sheathed, coffin-like box hidden beneath the house. A closed-circuit TV system allows the two men to converse.

"Zack is in the box for virtually the last third of the film. To keep that visually interesting, we really worked to create a variety of camera angles, but our lighting had to remain constant."

- Matt Faw

It was determined that the lighting had to be incorporated into the box's structure, so recessed panels were built into the side walls, covered with translucent Plexiglas, and lit from behind with small tungsten fixtures. From the front, Faw utilized a small lamp with a gobo featuring a ring of small holes. This created a circular highlight in actor Boyd Kestner's eyes. As the character weakened, Faw progressively covered successive holes in the gobo pattern, slowly diminishing the reflection and suggesting the character's fate.

Jeff Cronenweth: Separation and Underexposing Faces

From American Cinematographer, Anarchy in the U.S.A. by Christopher Probst (November 1999)

"The general game plan was to make sure that the actors separated from their environment and then play the actor's edgelight off of the practicals as much as possible without actually 'lighting' them. For this film, we didn't necessarily want to be able to see directly into their faces. It was more interesting and appropriate to the story to force the audience to pay attention. Faces were generally underexposed 1 1/2 to 2 stops, though it depended upon the scene. If the scene called for the audience to really be able to see them, I'd make the faces closer to 1 1/2 stops under. In either case, it was still important to feel the presence of their eyes, so we often played with eyelights-- everything from obie lights to Kino Flos taped to the matte-box-- which we usually kept three stops under."

- Jeff Cronenweth, ASC

"We lit faces mostly with Kino Flos covered with 1/4 CTO and muslin. The angle and direction of that depended on where the practicals were. If it was a door shot, the key may have to come from the top, or if a pillar got in the way, we might bring it in from the side. David and Jeff wanted everything to be as natural as possible and allowed areas to go dark. We then played with creating blacks that you could just read into with hints of reflections for texture."

- Claudio Miranda, Gaffer for Cronenweth on Fight Club

Jordan Cronenweth: Two Way Mirror Effect

From American Cinematographer, Cinematography for Blade Runner by Herb A. Lightman and Richard Patterson (July 1982)

"One of the identifying characteristics of replicants is a strange glowing quality in their eyes. To achieve this effect, we'd use a two-way mirror-- 50 percent transmission, 50 percent reflection-- placed in front of the lens at a 45 degree angle. Then we'd project a light into the mirror so that it would be reflected into the eyes of the subject along the optical axis of the lens. We'd sometimes use very subtle gels to add color to the eyes. Often, we'd photograph a scene with and without this effect, so Ridley would have the option of when he'd use it."

- Jordan Cronenweth, ASC