◗ The Aliens Strike Back Top: The production re-created Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats onstage for a sequence involving a school bus full of children. Middle: Förderer keeps tabs on multiple cameras. Bottom: The cinematographer checks the frame on a setup involving an Oculus stabilized head. 54 July 2016 American Cinematographer cinematographer explains. "This makes the shot not only cheaper but that much more effective. Roland is a master at this. He has an 'eagle eye' for making sure that the principal elements of a shot have clean silhouettes that [don't overlap] the effects. In a movie like Independence Day, when you're cutting to a new shot every few seconds, you only have to deflect [the viewers'] attention for a short period of time. "So many cinematographers and gaffers obsess about the perfect blueand greenscreen," Förderer continues. "They spend hours carefully making sure it's all evenly lit and always at a consistent stop. The truth is, as long as you have an evenly lit area around your main subject and enough contrast to separate the subject from the background, the rest of it doesn't matter. The effects artists will matte it out, anyway." One sequence shot on stage in New Mexico employed photographic backings. While in the first Independence Day an iconic scene featured Will Smith's character dragging an alien across the barren Bonneville Salt Flats in northwestern Utah, this time around the flats are the setting where a school bus full of children race for their lives. Concerned about the cost and practicality of sending the production to the salt flats, the producers asked Förderer whether there might be