A High Price for Progress Right: Savides eyes the crowd as cast and crew prepare to film a gay-rights rally that Milk addresses despite receiving a death threat. Below: Rain towers stand ready to augment a scene in which Milk gives a speech at City Hall. sion. Explaining how he got the shot, Savides details, “Everything behind the camera is blacked out. We lit James up to a good stop with Kino Flos directly from the ceiling and shot with a lens that was long enough to keep his reflection way out of focus at the start of the shot. You don’t even know he’s there until we pull focus; at that point, his reflection appears in the glass.” The production filmed all scenes set in Milk’s apartment on location in a Victorian house in the city’s Haight District. The film’s opening scene finds Milk sitting at his kitchen table, talking into a tape recorder. “More often than not, kitchens were lit by a single ceiling light back then,” notes Savides. He knew he’d found just the right fixture when he spotted a wooden ring light Condiotti had built years ago to mount on a camera. The gaffer explains how he modified the light for Milk:“It’s 36 inches in diameter and has wired porcelain sockets into which we screwed Photofloods. We hung pieces of bleached muslin 38 December 2008