American Cinematographer - January 1987 - 35

unnoticed in Los
three days.

Angeles for

sat

"We

about

NOW THE SECRET OF
ROCK-STEADY IMAGING
IS IN THE BAG.

gun-shy
shipping film after that,"
were

Green recalls with

very

wince. "So,

during the last few days on loca¬
tion, we didn't ship any film out.
We kept it and had to make sure

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what we had was correct before
we left. And we still finished on
schedule.
"As an introduction for a
new

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wonderful

things."
In

the bus sequence,

Highway is sleeping when

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talk¬

ative soldier named Stitch (Mario
Van Peebles) flips on a reading

light and starts a conversation.
"That reading lamp actually lights
the scene," Green says. "Aside
from passing car lights, that was it.
We pan a lamp on a stand for
headlights and pass a kukaloris in
front of a standing lamp to mimic
streetlights. That, along with
blowing rain on the windows, gave
a feeling of motion.
out

"We did it in a blackedwarehouse and created our

own

rain;

sort

cess.' The

of 'poor-man's

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pro¬

hand¬
and the

was

held
not Steadicam
bus was rocked with two-byfours. The operator applied a cer¬
tain amount of movement to the
camera and the combination felt
-

flexibility of hand-held shooting.

tripod, right? But

better

bus interior in rain

support from
Departures, Ltd. combines the stability of a tripod
camera

\\ sC< 0°'
/K
1

pretty close to the real thing. The
operator just rested the camera on
a

sandbag

held it in his lap.

"We built

our own

read¬

ing lamps into the bus. The origi¬
nal ones weren't adjustable, so we
put in lamps that were both ad¬
justable and of a higher intensity.

"I didn't
to

light

necessarily want
the faces but I didn't

them to be in silhouette, ei¬
ther. So we let the outer edge of

want

*s>

light illuminate them, with the ac¬
tual focus down in their laps,
where it would

normally be. Then

diffused the light a bit to get a
little spread; you could see enough

of their faces that

way."

\o'

^S°NVVV

American Cinematographer - January 1987

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - January 1987