American Cinematographer - January 1987 - 65

shot,

we had to go to nightshifts
because there were only two de¬
mons with wings and there was a

shortage of demons! My assistant,
Dave

Hanks, and I worked

coarse

moves

out

the

and the demon's

basic flight pattern, and then Tom
St. Amand would do all the min¬
ute

animation

the demon itself

on

make its wings
forth."
There is a
to

flap and

so

everywhere. The idea is to use
people in black stocking suits,
shoot them against a white back¬
ground so we won't have to do
any more blue screen elements,
and then put them into the shot as
a

matte."
In addition

to this gran¬
diose vision of Hell, another beau¬
tiful set-piece of the film, also shot

by Farrar, is

brief, albeit
spectacular, view of Hell courtesy
of the ILM miniature department,
pyrotechnic experts Peter Stoll
and Bobby Finlay, and cin¬
ematographer Farrar. The huge

molten mass that a
Murphy watches
solidify into a chamber in Sardo's
mansion. "Eddie Murphy is stand¬
ing in a doorway looking down
a

shocked Eddie

into

a

blood colored

suddenly

assumes

morass

which

the shape of

a

miniature set is one of the largest
ILM has ever built
it is the size
of a small room and required a
record number of lighting instru¬
ments to illuminate its countless
caverns. "Mike Olague was re¬

Gawley and Claudia Mullaly cast
panelled walls out of wax, layered
in different colors, from photo¬
graphs of the real mansion. We

sponsible for lighting the Hell

printed them backwards

set," Farrar recalls, "and he used

the

over

ioo lights to make it look
hot, and there had to be
many, many sources from all kinds
of little places because he had to

shape of the

that

to

-

-

hide them." Several passes were re¬
quired on the set, using different
colored lights, to achieve the
proper

shifting shades of the in¬

ferno. Dozens of passes were re¬
quired to add all the multiplane
flame effects to the landscape, as
well as the blackened bodies of
the multitude of damned souls

writhing throughout the
burning valley.

seen

"It's for

a

scene

where

Sardo is

talking to the Master of
Hell," Jones explains. "The se¬
quence begins with a blue screen
shot of Sardo against a brick wall
which suddenly breaks away be¬
hind him. The camera pulls back
from Sardo at the same time he
flies backward into Hell, where
this huge vista of reddish caverns

point he comes
rock, where we lose
him using a wall of flame, and then
we substitute a projection element
opens up.

to

of him
era

At

one

rest at a

on

the rock. After the

pans across

cam¬

the landscape,

Sardo zooms even further back,
where we see bodies writhing
around and flames coming up

room," Farrar beams. "Steve

melted them down and then
morass seems to

room.

so

Mostly, I had
posi¬
to

be

positioned above a wall that Mur¬
phy would be looking straight at.
The walls actually had to be tilted
downward below the camera so
the wax could all run downhill.
Each wall had to be shot sepa¬
rately, and I had to make sure that
up so

that all

the little panels and cornices
would fit together just right, and I
had to make sure the wax was run¬

ning the same way each time.
Three nine-lights were all that was
needed to melt those walls. They
gave me the light and the heat.
Since each wall measured three
feet by four feet, the tricky part

rigging enough troughs to
all the excess wax that was
melting into the buckets!"
As complex as the effects
for Golden Child are, it is perhaps
fortunate, though surprising, that
there are only four matte paintings
was

carry

in the entire film. Two of these
the purpose of establishing

serve

the

Himalayan locales of the film's
opening and closing sequences,
while the other pair of paintings
create

the interior of

monastery.
done

Around the dock,
and around the world,
ARRI equipment is

that

melt into the

get into some very strange
tions because the camera had

they would all line

ARRItime.

a

Buddhist

The paintings

were

by Chris Evans, Sean Joyce,

working in film and video.
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in any

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January 1987

63
American Cinematographer - January 1987

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