American Cinematographer - May 2008 - 41

two LRX Singles and three Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1200s mounted on each one of them. The whole thing was run off a wireless DMX, so we could program a bunch of cues. Because of the building’s contours, we had to use some crazy angles to get the wash we wanted.” With the exterior lit, the filmmakers still had to tackle the hall’s interior, where Bauman used 8K balloons for general ambience. “We used a lot of stuff on Max menace arms — China balls and things like that — and we had a perimeter run of Xflos around the entire façade to give us some underlight on the walls, which slope upwards.” The Xflos, Bauman explains, “are made by a newer company called Litegear. They’re dimmable fluorescents and they work off T8s, which are smallerdiameter tubes than standard T12s.” The interior space also gave the team a chance to use moving fixtures, a favorite tactic of Libatique’s. He explains, “You can control them from the ground and bounce them into cards, and then there are no lights or flags on the set. There’s just a light on the ceiling pointed down to a card that’s offscreen.” Inside the hall, their moving fixture of choice was the Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1200. The fixtures are “fantastic, and they’re very acceptable to the sound department,” notes Bauman. “We could bring them in close and use them like traditional lighting instruments.” Shooting on two Kodak Vision2 film stocks — 200T 5217 and 500T 5218 — Libatique was able to check his work with select print dailies throughout the shoot. “I was rating [5218] at 400, and my printing lights were always in the 40s,” he details. “I rarely expose a key; I just take a reflective reading everywhere and then determine where I want the film to be. I was shocked at the sensitivity of 5218. Around the middle of the shoot, I started to rate it at 500 and brought my printer lights down a bit. The more I underexposed the film, the happier I was; printing in the 40s, the contrast was unbearable to me.” The production’s dailies were handled at FotoKem by color timer Don Capoferri and productionservices supervisor Mark Van Horne. “Mark was a champion for the film,” notes Libatique. “He’s got the eye of a timer and the knowledge of a lab technician, but at his core, he’s a filmmaker. He knows all the things that go on in the lab, and he went above and beyond to help me.” FotoKem also provided the production with hi-def video dailies; to help communicate his intent, Libatique used Gamma & Density’s 3cP colormanagement system. “3cP is pretty similar to Kodak’s Look Manager, but it has a few more isolations of color and gamma — it’s a bit more precise. Look Manager has worked great for me, but 3cP is Mac-oriented, and the learning curve is a bit simpler.” Libatique processed his film normally, but he notes that Taylor pushed 5218 one stop for secondunit photography of a large, nighttime freeway sequence. “He needed the help from an ASA standpoint, and he felt comfortable with it,” says Libatique. “I had pushed 18 before, and it wasn’t necessarily the look I was going for in this film, but that was a night scene, and 18 has so much latitude that if you go with a broad lighting setup, you should push it if you want to create any kind of contrast.” The freeway sequence pits Stark, in his Iron Man armor, against Stane, who has used similar technol- Left: As in Stark’s home, the daylight ambience in Obadiah Stane’s office is provided by rows of LumaPanels. Below: Stane (Jeff Bridges) basks under the glow of the Tokomak reactor. To create the impression of the reactor going on the fritz at the end of the film, Libatique employed DL.2 moving fixtures, which project moving video images that can be manipulated within the projector to change shape and color temperature. “It’s an invaluable effects light,” says the cinematographer. Top photo courtesy of Michael Bauman.

American Cinematographer - May 2008

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