American Cinematographer - July 2008 - 51

challenging is the cells; they’re physical structures designed to keep people in, so cabling is quite an ordeal. “Rigging gaffer D.J. Lootens discovered we could run some cabling through the air-conditioning ducts, and then he also discovered every two cells had their own small water-heater between the walls,” Krattiger continues. “We could get a cable into the small shaft between the cells where the heater sat, and from there we were able to feed 100 amps into each cell to power a little fluorescent fixture. In the rest of the facility, we used [Kino Flo] Image 80s in the ceilings and some Par cans to create pools of light.” After getting out of jail, Hancock becomes entrenched in a battle in a hospital, a sequence shot onstage at Sony Studios in Culver City. The set featured a 120'-long corridor lined with about a dozen rooms, and to light the hallway, Spisak and Schliessler incorporated 1'-wide floor-to-ceiling fluorescent banks behind frosted glass along the walls. “We came up with the idea that as the fight progresses, the power would get knocked out little by little, and the corridor would get darker until we were just down to emergency lighting,” says Schliessler. “Since we were doing this lighting gag, we wanted to actually see the fixtures go out one-by-one, and we figured if we worked them into the walls, we’d get a much better feel.” The fluorescent banks comprised 8' and 6' Kino Flo tubes. Krattiger explains, “Since the fixtures themselves were going to be in the shot, we didn’t want them to overexpose too much, so we ran all the lamps back to a dimmer board, where Scott Barnes was running the show. Scott programmed cues to knock out some tubes and flicker some others as the damage happens. We added a few Image 80s to supplement the lighting and ran those back to the board, too; because there are eight independent channels on an Left: Too hurt to fly after a hospital punchup, a bruised and battered Hancock leaps away from a scene. Below: To light the action, which director Peter Berg wanted to shoot on location rather than on a greenscreen stage, Schliessler and his crew hung three 24' Airstar Hybrid Tube balloons from 60' Condors. Image 80, you can DMX-control each tube in the fixture, so Scott did the same kind of effect [with the Image 80s] as the action progressed. It worked really well.” The filmmakers used 9-light Fay globes for the hospital’s emergency lighting. Schliessler notes, “At the end of the scene, the power is out, the emergency lights are on, and, of course, the fire sprinklers go off — it’s a very dramatic look.” Hancock makes his escape by bursting through a ninth-story window and plummeting to the street below. Injured and unable to fly, he can still super-jump, and with a few grand leaps, he makes his escape. “Peter decided he didn’t want to shoot that sequence against greenscreen; he wanted to do it for real,” says Schliessler. “We shot the scene at night in downtown L.A., just across from City Hall. Hancock leaps out of the hospital building, lands, is nearly hit by a car, and then starts taking bigger and bigger leaps to get away. It’s all covered in one continuous shot after he lands on the street.” To capture the action, 2ndunit director/stunt coordinator Simon Crane supervised the rigging of two massive cable rigs 40' above the street, one for Smith and one for camera operator Bielan. “Peter wanted to keep the [camerawork] handheld,” explains Schliessler. “We flew our camera right alongside Will all the way down the street.” Krattiger adds, “The shot runs about three city blocks — he’s basically leaping from the Cal Trans building to the Los Angeles Times building, right down the center of the street. Unfortunately, a new police station was being built right there at the time, and that structure was belowgrade, so we couldn’t hide anything behind it. That caused some headaches!” “You approach these kinds of sequences with a wish list,” muses Schliessler. “I tried to scout those locations two or three times at night American Cinematographer 51

American Cinematographer - July 2008

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