From ICG Magazine, Smells Like Suburban Spirit by David Geffner (May 2000)
Wild Roses and Gothic Guises
Nearly all of the special effects were executed in-camera, except a potent, computerized image of roses bursting from the teenaged bosom of Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari). Most of the truly provocative floral images occur during Lester Burnham's fantasy sequences. One mesmerizing shot featured roses tumbling down onto actor Kevin Spacey, who is gazing up from his bed at the object of his forbidden desire. As shot, actress Suvari lies on the floor amidst a bed of roses- some real, some artificial- with the forced perspective walls rising up on each side to camera. "We dropped roses from above and reversed the footage," Hall notes. "I was up behind the lens with a small paint bucket filled with rose pedals. My AC [Clyde E. Bryan] was sitting on the crane next to me, with a bucket of rose pedals as well. We had a Condor to the right and one to the left of camera, and the prop folks had large garbage bags filled to the top with rose pedals. Because it was a fixed camera, I had both hands free to drop pedals above and below the lens so the flowers would land right on Kevin. We used something like 250,000 rose pedals for that effect."
I read, discuss, and discover new things about cinematography everyday. Most of it, I consider incredibly interesting. Everyday I will share one of those things, maybe more if I have time.
Showing posts with label condors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label condors. Show all posts
2.8.09
Ellen Kuras: Filtration & Lighitng for Hot NYC 70's Summer
From American Cinematographer, Psycho Killer by Andrew O. Thompson (June 1999)
Much of The Summer of Sam transpires during the sweltering summer of 1977. As a result, Lee wanted the imagery to indicate the intense heat of a New York city summer—which, as any resident of the Big Apple knows, is marked by a muggy, humidity-filled atmosphere. As a visual guide, Lee asked Kuras to view his 1989 film Do the Right Thing (photographed by Ernest Dickerson, ASC). Kuras also watched Natural Born Killers and two versions of the Jack the Ripper story as a primer on serial-killer films. After conducting several tests on emulsions and exposures, Kuras opted to use antique suede filters in front of the lens during day shooting. This tactic lent the colors a more monochromatic look, as well as a period Seventies feel.
"Spike wanted a ’hot’ look, so I tried to give him as many hard backlight and sidelight edges as possible. Those [highlights] had to hug the edge of the frame. I also advised the grips not to dull down the cars or do wetdowns so that the kicks, highlights and glares would play as much as possible, and so the streets would have a blown-out look. While we were shooting, the weather changed quite a bit from hour to hour—in the morning we would have sunshine, and in the afternoon it would cloud over and sometimes rain. Trying to keep consistency throughout a scene was difficult without a lot of available room to put lights or Condors out of shot. We were often on a dead-end street, and we sometimes were backed up right to its end."
- Ellen Kuras, ASC
To convey the sense of humidity and atmosphere at night, Kuras employed pre-exposure flashing. During preproduction, she experimented with filters and a Lightflex, but found the effect somewhat confining.
"The Lightflex gave a haze to the film that was very similar to New York’s hot, humid nights, during which the blacks aren’t really quite black. However, we would have faced the problem of double reflections from headlights playing off the filters in front of the lens. We often had cars driving straight at camera, so I would have had a lot of double lights going through frame. We sandwiched filters as much as we could, and used a tilting matte box, but we just couldn’t avoid the reflections in certain situations because the camera was moving so much. Flashing was a viable way to achieve the same effect while keeping the image clear of double reflections."
- Ellen Kuras, ASC
Much of The Summer of Sam transpires during the sweltering summer of 1977. As a result, Lee wanted the imagery to indicate the intense heat of a New York city summer—which, as any resident of the Big Apple knows, is marked by a muggy, humidity-filled atmosphere. As a visual guide, Lee asked Kuras to view his 1989 film Do the Right Thing (photographed by Ernest Dickerson, ASC). Kuras also watched Natural Born Killers and two versions of the Jack the Ripper story as a primer on serial-killer films. After conducting several tests on emulsions and exposures, Kuras opted to use antique suede filters in front of the lens during day shooting. This tactic lent the colors a more monochromatic look, as well as a period Seventies feel.
"Spike wanted a ’hot’ look, so I tried to give him as many hard backlight and sidelight edges as possible. Those [highlights] had to hug the edge of the frame. I also advised the grips not to dull down the cars or do wetdowns so that the kicks, highlights and glares would play as much as possible, and so the streets would have a blown-out look. While we were shooting, the weather changed quite a bit from hour to hour—in the morning we would have sunshine, and in the afternoon it would cloud over and sometimes rain. Trying to keep consistency throughout a scene was difficult without a lot of available room to put lights or Condors out of shot. We were often on a dead-end street, and we sometimes were backed up right to its end."
- Ellen Kuras, ASC
To convey the sense of humidity and atmosphere at night, Kuras employed pre-exposure flashing. During preproduction, she experimented with filters and a Lightflex, but found the effect somewhat confining.
"The Lightflex gave a haze to the film that was very similar to New York’s hot, humid nights, during which the blacks aren’t really quite black. However, we would have faced the problem of double reflections from headlights playing off the filters in front of the lens. We often had cars driving straight at camera, so I would have had a lot of double lights going through frame. We sandwiched filters as much as we could, and used a tilting matte box, but we just couldn’t avoid the reflections in certain situations because the camera was moving so much. Flashing was a viable way to achieve the same effect while keeping the image clear of double reflections."
- Ellen Kuras, ASC
27.5.09
John Schwartzman: Simulating a Rocket Launch
From American Cinematographer, When Worlds Collide by David E. Williams (July 1998)
The "firing room" a control center featuring a set of massive 25'-tall windows looking out onto launch pad 39B was one area at NASA where Schwartzman did do extensive lighting. The extra illumination was very necessary, given that he was replicating the awesome blast created by a shuttle liftoff.
"The firing room is the closest spot to the pad during a real launch. Of course, I couldn't get cameras in there when we shot our night launch. But they gave me clearance to work there even though [the Endeavor] was really on the pad and ready to go up a few days later. We could shoot in there from 8:30 to 10:30 p.m. just two hours."
- John Schwartzman, ASC
Schwartzman began his lighting earlier that day by replacing NASA's warm-white fluorescents with Kino Flo 3200°K tubes. Outside, 10 Dinos were mounted on 86' Condors and positioned near the main window, along with ten 70,000-watt Lightning Strikes units.
"The firing room is located on the fourth floor of the building, so the top of this window is about 80 feet in the air. To create a moonlight effect, I also ripped in a couple of 18Ks to add some nice modeling on the interior walls. Then, as the guys went through the countdown and got to T minus four seconds, we throttled up eight Dinos on dimmers to simulate the shuttle's engines, which are very warm when compared to the solid rocket boosters. During an actual launch, the shuttle's engines burn for a few seconds, coming up to 100 percent of their capacity. But they're not enough to lift the shuttle; when the boosters kick in, the orbiter instantly shoots upwards for 88 seconds until they burn out. The boosters are so bright that at night they light up half the state of Florida. To create that effect, we instantly brought up the rest of our Dinos and set off all of the Lightning Strikes units. What was great was that we didn't use actors for that scene; the real NASA launch team came in on their own time to do it. They later told me that our launch lighting was very similar to the real thing, but maybe a bit brighter and more dramatic. That was neat."
- John Schwartzman, ASC
23.5.09
Peter Menzies Jr: Lighting Rain & Flood
American Cinematographer, Photographing at Full Flood, by George Turner (January 1998)
"The backing was quite easy to light. Because it was on dry land, but in the tank in was always a struggle to move lights around. Then we tried lighting balloons, and they really helped us out. They were flexible, safe, and provided a beautiful quality of light. When we floated the balloons, the rain obscured the power cords coming down from them. We didn't have to worry about lighting from Condors or towers or anything else. To see all of those glowing balloons floating up over the set was pretty surreal! It could look absolutely beautiful when we backlit it, but a flood isn't a beautiful thing. We didn't backlight much because we really didn't want a theatrical look; we wanted it to look real. Also, if we had backlit the rain, we wouldn't have had the depth we wanted on such a large set. It was great to see the whole set without it being washed out by backlit rain. Most of the time I'd crosslight it, but sometimes we'd just throw 360 degrees of light with the balloons. Quite often, you couldn't even see the rain falling. Instead, you could just see it on the water's surface, which really enhanced the realism."
- Peter Menzies Jr., ASC
"The backing was quite easy to light. Because it was on dry land, but in the tank in was always a struggle to move lights around. Then we tried lighting balloons, and they really helped us out. They were flexible, safe, and provided a beautiful quality of light. When we floated the balloons, the rain obscured the power cords coming down from them. We didn't have to worry about lighting from Condors or towers or anything else. To see all of those glowing balloons floating up over the set was pretty surreal! It could look absolutely beautiful when we backlit it, but a flood isn't a beautiful thing. We didn't backlight much because we really didn't want a theatrical look; we wanted it to look real. Also, if we had backlit the rain, we wouldn't have had the depth we wanted on such a large set. It was great to see the whole set without it being washed out by backlit rain. Most of the time I'd crosslight it, but sometimes we'd just throw 360 degrees of light with the balloons. Quite often, you couldn't even see the rain falling. Instead, you could just see it on the water's surface, which really enhanced the realism."
- Peter Menzies Jr., ASC
14.5.09
Emmanuel Lubezki: Large Soft Boxes
From American Cinematographer, Galloping Ghost by Stephen Pizzello (December 1999)
The crew's grim slog was brightened a bit by Lubezki's lighting setup, which comprised three giant softboxes suspended from a trio of 250-ton construction cranes. The roof of each unit contained six 24-light (Par 64) Dinos aimed downward, while three of the sides contained a trio of 9-light Maxi-Brutes angled at 45 degrees. According to gaffer John Higgins,
"Our initial idea for that set was to have a tank-track road ringing the set, and we did tests with various lighting rigs at positions we could access from the tracks. That idea proved to be impractical for many reasons. Instead, we decided to suspend these very large soft sources on rotating bases that could be positioned at any point above the set and still be kept hidden. The art department built a fantastic scale model of the set, and when we studied it we though there might be three points where we could position our supports. We eventually located a company that had three 250-ton telescoping cranes with a reach of 67 meters [approximately 220 feet]. The art department then made working scale models of these cranes, which we positioned around the model. This test confirmed that the only way to reach all points on the set was to use three cranes. We then did a test with a half-size version of our rig, which confirmed that our theory would work."
- John Higgins, gaffer for Lubezki on Sleepy Hollow
Each of the completed soft-boxes consisted of a 20' x 20' base with sides 12' high built from scaffolding. The units had to be strong enough to be suspended safely with the lights attached, and the set''s roads also had to be reinforced to support the cranes' weight. Each box could provide 250k of light, and full gridcloth was affixed to the bottom and sides of each. Long black ropes were attached to the corners of the rigs so the crew could control their rotation from the ground. The last lamp mounted on the base of each rig was a 70k Lighting Strikes unit, and the power to the rigs was provided by twin 200k generators. The rest of the power for the set was provided by three other generators, while a complete cabling system was wired and then buried during construction of the set. The system enabled the lighting crew to deliver large amounts of power to any part of the set very quickly.
..."In a funny way, using the cranes was cheaper than lighting the sets any other way. When you rig immense softlights up on cranes, you can move them really quickly. Each rig has only one light, and you can put it anywhere you want, which allowed us to do more setups a day. We also didn't have to use much supplemental lighting at all-- almost none, in fact. Sometimes from the ground we'd add a bit of fill light just to see the actors' eyes and so forth. Any extra lights we used on the ground were always aimed through diffusion grids. Bu the time the light reached the subjects it was simply a 20' by 20' gird of light, so it almost didn't matter whether we were using 10ks or Mini-Brutes. A cinematography purist might not agree with that statement, but once you put the light through so many layers, it really doesn't matter what kind of fixture you're using. I would basically tell the crew which stop I wanted, and John Higgins would pick a light and use it to fill a 20' by 20' frame."
- Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
The crew's grim slog was brightened a bit by Lubezki's lighting setup, which comprised three giant softboxes suspended from a trio of 250-ton construction cranes. The roof of each unit contained six 24-light (Par 64) Dinos aimed downward, while three of the sides contained a trio of 9-light Maxi-Brutes angled at 45 degrees. According to gaffer John Higgins,
"Our initial idea for that set was to have a tank-track road ringing the set, and we did tests with various lighting rigs at positions we could access from the tracks. That idea proved to be impractical for many reasons. Instead, we decided to suspend these very large soft sources on rotating bases that could be positioned at any point above the set and still be kept hidden. The art department built a fantastic scale model of the set, and when we studied it we though there might be three points where we could position our supports. We eventually located a company that had three 250-ton telescoping cranes with a reach of 67 meters [approximately 220 feet]. The art department then made working scale models of these cranes, which we positioned around the model. This test confirmed that the only way to reach all points on the set was to use three cranes. We then did a test with a half-size version of our rig, which confirmed that our theory would work."
- John Higgins, gaffer for Lubezki on Sleepy Hollow
Each of the completed soft-boxes consisted of a 20' x 20' base with sides 12' high built from scaffolding. The units had to be strong enough to be suspended safely with the lights attached, and the set''s roads also had to be reinforced to support the cranes' weight. Each box could provide 250k of light, and full gridcloth was affixed to the bottom and sides of each. Long black ropes were attached to the corners of the rigs so the crew could control their rotation from the ground. The last lamp mounted on the base of each rig was a 70k Lighting Strikes unit, and the power to the rigs was provided by twin 200k generators. The rest of the power for the set was provided by three other generators, while a complete cabling system was wired and then buried during construction of the set. The system enabled the lighting crew to deliver large amounts of power to any part of the set very quickly.
..."In a funny way, using the cranes was cheaper than lighting the sets any other way. When you rig immense softlights up on cranes, you can move them really quickly. Each rig has only one light, and you can put it anywhere you want, which allowed us to do more setups a day. We also didn't have to use much supplemental lighting at all-- almost none, in fact. Sometimes from the ground we'd add a bit of fill light just to see the actors' eyes and so forth. Any extra lights we used on the ground were always aimed through diffusion grids. Bu the time the light reached the subjects it was simply a 20' by 20' gird of light, so it almost didn't matter whether we were using 10ks or Mini-Brutes. A cinematography purist might not agree with that statement, but once you put the light through so many layers, it really doesn't matter what kind of fixture you're using. I would basically tell the crew which stop I wanted, and John Higgins would pick a light and use it to fill a 20' by 20' frame."
- Emmanuel Lubezki, ASC, AMC
13.5.09
Peter Menzies Jr: Night Exteriors Approach
From American Cinematographer, A Few Bad Men by Jay Holben (July 1999)
Due to the film's considerable number of night scenes, a major consideration was how to define the night look. Both Menzies and West chose to forsake "Blue" moonlight for a more practical approach.
"I wanted every scene to have that oppressive feeling of muggy Southern heat and I thought that any cool colored light would kill the feeling. As a result, we worked in warm tones. We chose locations that we would paint in darker colors like reds, ambers and oranges, and we stuck to Peter's main night plan, in which moonlight never came down from above. All of the night sequences were lit as if the illumination being generated purely by practical sources on the ground."
- Simon West
"In keeping with Simon's warm look, I went with a more sodium-vapor approach for all of the night sequences. We colored all of our lights to have that yellowish sodium feel. [Given the widescreen frame] a lot of the lights on the ground were going to end up in the frame. Obviously, they were not real streetlights, but film lights placed off in the distance and simply gelled to look sodium colored. Simon loved that idea, and once we defocused them, they became these wonderful background elements that resembled anything-- other buildings, streetlights. They created fantastic visual expanse without us having to light everything with Condors. Speed was the other added benefit. By keeping everything out of the air, and not minding that lamps were in the shot, we were able to move much more quickly and cover a lot more ground in a short period of time."
- Peter Menzies Jr, ASC
Due to the film's considerable number of night scenes, a major consideration was how to define the night look. Both Menzies and West chose to forsake "Blue" moonlight for a more practical approach.
"I wanted every scene to have that oppressive feeling of muggy Southern heat and I thought that any cool colored light would kill the feeling. As a result, we worked in warm tones. We chose locations that we would paint in darker colors like reds, ambers and oranges, and we stuck to Peter's main night plan, in which moonlight never came down from above. All of the night sequences were lit as if the illumination being generated purely by practical sources on the ground."
- Simon West
"In keeping with Simon's warm look, I went with a more sodium-vapor approach for all of the night sequences. We colored all of our lights to have that yellowish sodium feel. [Given the widescreen frame] a lot of the lights on the ground were going to end up in the frame. Obviously, they were not real streetlights, but film lights placed off in the distance and simply gelled to look sodium colored. Simon loved that idea, and once we defocused them, they became these wonderful background elements that resembled anything-- other buildings, streetlights. They created fantastic visual expanse without us having to light everything with Condors. Speed was the other added benefit. By keeping everything out of the air, and not minding that lamps were in the shot, we were able to move much more quickly and cover a lot more ground in a short period of time."
- Peter Menzies Jr, ASC
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