American Cinematographer - July 2008 - 66

Laugh Factory Lighting is used to even out skin-tone differences between Fey, who is fair, and Baldwin, who is tan, when they are in the same scene. In Donaghy’s office (far right), where they frequently meet, Baldwin is often keyed with cool fixtures through the windows while Fey is positioned close to warm practicals. ple use with fluorescents, but as long as it’s lit, you can’t see what kind of light it really is.” “Unfortunately, we have a lot of scenes in the hallway, where logic dictates that the light come from ˇ above,” Cernjul laments. “I prefer to light from the floor, so we sometimes use a few lights on stands, adding diffusion to make them look like one large source rather than many smaller ones.” For most of ˇ these “fluorescent” settings, Cernjul maintains a neutral tungsten ambience, but in a few key areas, such as Lemon’s office and Maroney’s dressing room, he adds some CTO and/or Cosmetic Peach gel. The look often becomes more unusual in the studio and backstage area. “We can get a little funky in those areas because the average viewer doesn’t know what really happens backstage on a network show,” says Dodd. “When we’re doing one of the skits, we don’t have to do anything a specific way. There was one bit where Tracy was playing the Wolf Man in a Thriller-like music video, and all we used were hard backlights on the smoke and some passive bounce behind the camera as fill. Another time, we did a dream sequence where Donaghy becomes Richard Nixon, and all we used were very hard 5Ks overhead aimed through snoots and just blar66 July 2008 ing down on him.” In an episode in which Lemon wants to present herself in an incredibly good light to a former boyfriend, she waits for him on the studio floor in light designed for one of her performers. “We lit her like a supermodel,” says Dodd. “We used a big soft source and then slightly harder back edges. It’s not at all how we’d normally light Liz Lemon.” Throughout the second season, the production spent more time on locations, often shooting secondary plotlines concurrently with a second unit in order to be able to do the location work without expanding ˇ the schedule. Cernjul notes, “We’re proud that whenever we go out on location, we try to show New York as much as possible. We do some lighting outside but try to make the most of existing light sources. I love mixing color temperatures, and we do that on the street with sodium-vapor and fluorescent lights and whatever else we find. I always try to simulate the color temperature of the source in the frame rather than having everything look [neutral]. We’ve also started mixing color temperatures in the studio so that the difference between the look of locations and studio work isn’t so noticeable.” The production has shot a number of scenes in real restaurants, where they also try to respect the existing sources. “The problem is that restaurant lighting is often overhead, and it’s not nearly enough to read,” notes Dodd. “So the production designer might put in some sconces or lamps for us to use as practicals, and then we use China balls above the tables, usually with 250-watt tungsten bulbs dimmed down. We don’t often use locations that feature windows, so we don’t have to worry about building our light level up to match. We did do a day scene in the Rainbow Room, and we covered all the windows with ND.3 and ND.6. I prefer that combination to ND.9 because it gives you more control; if it gets a little darker outside, you can just pull one gel. We lit everything inside the Rainbow Room with HMIs to build up the light level so the film could hold detail inside and out.” For an episode late last season, the production had one of its most complicated location shoots yet: Lemon had to run through John F. Kennedy Airport to try to catch up with her ex. This was a day interior shot in an active terminal at JFK that had large windows everywhere. “We lit with HMI balloons — an 8K and a 16K — and 18K, 6K and 4K HMIs,” recalls Dodd. “We had to use a lot of lights to build up the interior because we could see out all those windows. We had three hours to pre-

American Cinematographer - July 2008

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