American Cinematographer - January 2007 - 42

Fear and

Fantasy

Navarro and his
crew

had to

light the dark
pozo set entirely
from above,

through

a

10'-12'

hole at the top,
and ceiling

height onstage
was

limited. The

solution was to
surround the

opening with
lights shooting
into

a

silver

card overhead,

sending

a

generous
bounce down
into the well.

about it.

keep things dark is not necessarily
having very low levels of light.
Today's film stocks are very sensitive,
so they can actually see quite a bit
more

in the dark

areas

than you

would

imagine. To keep things dark,
actually have to have highlights
at a stop where the film doesn't have
an opportunity to reach in - some¬
thing where you might think you're
at a T 1.4 but are actually at a T3.5.

you

That also avoids milkiness. On this

contrasty."
that for most of the

film, the look is pretty
Lee says

shoot, "We were well outside my
comfort range - it was throw-yourmeter-away dark! In most interiors
and in a lot of the night work, we
were

playing down in that range
you're getting on

where the number
the

meter

number

bears

no

correlation to the

the lens." On top

of that,
production's only dailies were on
high-definition video. "With video
dailies, you're never quite sure what
you're getting, so I just trusted
Guillermo [Navarro], who would
say, 'That's fine, it's enough light.'"
the

42

January 2007

The filmmakers'

Many times, the way to

on

mixing of

color temperatures was equally bold.
In the storage room, for example,

approaches were fairly simple and
straightforward," continues the
gaffer. "I didn't have a bank of 900
outside

the

Pars

this

construction

only obvious source is daylight;
light is glimpsed through the
doorway and appears quite cold, yet
the palette inside is warm. "If you
look at that set closely, you'll notice a
lot of weird stuff going on colorwise," says Lee. This was partly
because "we would be doing a setup
and the light would be one way, and
by the time we were done with the
setup, the clouds had rolled in and it
was
a
very different feeling."
Meanwhile, the lamps pushing in
the windows stayed at a warm color
temperature. "Guillermo [Navarro]
was

aware

and
scene

of the color imbalance

might decide from
that it

was

scene to
desirable, or at least

interesting," says Lee. "It was a deci¬
sion both Guillermos made instinc¬

window

a

crane.

light the scene where Ofelia
a tunnel and finds a giant
frog, the answer was drilling tiny
holes [into the set] and putting tiny
lights outside them, and trying to
pick out little bits here and there. We
had a little fiber-optic light on the
crawls into

camera

for her face, and that

For about 70 percent
was

light in the

eyes, a

there, a little bit of fill

was

was

on

the face."
One of the few "toys" the
production allowed itself was a

sausage-shaped lighting balloon,
crew gelled Steel

which Navarro's
Blue

illuminate the final

wide shots and there
film

some

a

tion here

or

it.

little bit of
little bit of reflec¬

just to get

the end.

the

was

of the movie, I

somewhere in there with

kind of card

the

"Part of what

a

came to

tively. If it worked for them, they'd
let it go, and they have enough expe¬
rience to know what they will get in

about

on

When the time

to

scene

labyrinth. "We had to

balloon because there

were so
was no

in

use a
many

way to

liberating

really rig anything in the labyrinth,

that

which

the

was

built around trees," recalls
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