American Cinematographer - January 2007 - 57

shadows

by dim firelight. "We
golden age of
'the best and the brightest,' where
extraordinary power was put into
wanted

cast

evoke the

to

the hands of a few and the result was

and secret operations,"
says Richardson. "But initially the
intentions appeared honorable,
hence the quality of light."
proxy wars

Richardson and Ian Kincaid,
his

longtime gaffer, based their
lighting scheme on practical fire
effects generated by propane bars, a
technique they had improvised
while

on

location for Oliver Stone's

Heaven & Earth

first lit

{AC Feb. '94). "We

exclusively with flame
we were
caught in a

a scene

bars when

huge storm in remote caves in
southern Thailand," recalls Kincaid.

"Electricity became incredibly dan¬
and daytime became as dark
as
night, so we lit an enormous area
simply by igniting these long flame
gerous

bars. The Skull and Bones initiation
seemed to deserve

scene

a

similar

look." Richardson also

preferred the
propane bars for their realistic
effect. "The vast majority of fire
effects appear to me to be just that:
effects," he asserts. "To my eye, the
variant provided by the propane

shot at shutting
"After
with

it all down," he adds.
developing a plan complete

extractor

fans, ventilation

schemes and escape maps, our spe¬
cial-effects crew had to design a sys¬
tem

of baffles and hoses that the

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bars is rich, realistic and creamy.

Beyond that, the flames and smoke
generated by the bars created an
atmosphere that the actors could
draw upon, which was vital for Bob
as a director." (The crew
apparently
found it less inspiring: Tavenner
recalls that "after

take, the

one

room

got so filled up with propane soot
that it

was

almost

unbearable.")

Firelight sounds simple
enough, but Kincaid also faced
some formidable
rigging challenges,
first in converting the electric
torchieres approved by the art
department to accept propane
rings, and then in convincing
the

administrators

of

was

filmed,

flames in the
course,

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Bronx

Community College, where the
scene

art

department could disguise and the
sound department could not hear!"
With all parties satisfied,
Kincaid and Richardson supple¬
mented the scene with "two large,

sausage-shaped lighting balloons,
four 6-foot-long flame bars, and
Blondes gelled with CTS powered
through mercury flicker-effect
gags," says the gaffer. For a later
scene in the same location
depicting
a
mud-wrestling ritual, Richardson
created "an ominous cloud of light"
by rigging two 4'x8' 6K softboxes
gelled with V2 CTS to the ceiling and
pushing the light through a dimmer,

to allow real

building. "Then, of
the fire department got its

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57
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American Cinematographer - January 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 2007
