American Cinematographer - September 1989 - 72

SPECTRA
AND

The

use

of color became

important to the film's look.
Everything involving Kuriyama
Enterprises, for example, was de¬
signed in blues, grays and blacks

very

suggest Takeshi Kuriyama's
(Ron Ikejiri) stoic nature and sup¬

to

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pressed humanity. These cool
colors would be punctuated spar¬
ingly by the red of glowing light
panels or the red setting sun of
the company's logo. It added an
element of malevolence to the

otherwise subdued environment.
At one point, Pentan vis¬
genetic designer, Robert
Thorton (Rick Foucheux), at his
terraforming operation on the
planet Inisfree. Thorton is her
its her

mentor, so his environment was

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designed with colors suggesting
warmth and comfort, a sunset
look enhanced by C.T.O. placed
on the key lights. Later, when
Pentan and Brickman reach the
wastelands of Elysium, site of the
film's climax, the scenes have an

yellow-greenish hue suggesting a
sky before a hurricane.
Eighty percent of Beyond
the Rising Moon was photo¬
graphed in and behind our 2000
square foot warehouse. Because
we were next to
noisy businesses,
we shot at
night from 6:00 p.m. to
3:00 a.m. Our crew of seven con¬
sisted of a camera loader/focus

puller, two sound men, one grip/
prop man, one make-up man,
John Ellis and myself.
We completed our live
action photography in nine
weeks. Eight months of effects
work now lay ahead. With winter
upon us, we cleared our studio of
the sets and built a model shop in
the corner that was small enough
to heat affordably. Through the
cold months Gagnon, Ellis and I
constructed

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30 miniatures.

Hoyt retreated to his own warmer
shop to make an elaborate V12
scale version of Brickman's ship.
The first model up for

photography was an elaborate
forced-perspective cityscape of
Star City. It was built from canni¬
balized model kits and computer
circuit boards. Thousands of

holes

were

September 1989

drilled and backlit to

suggest distant city lights. It was
degrees in the studio, and yet I

40

had to take

portable air condition¬
ing units and blast cold air under
the model cityscape to keep it
from melting down from the in¬
tense underlights. Because we
needed to photograph the minia¬
ture at f/22 for maximum depth of
field,

had to shoot long expo¬
and animate the camera

we

sures
move.

Our main effects camera
Bolex Rex 5 with a JK ani¬
mation motor. Ounce per ounce, I
think the Bolex is the most ver¬
satile inexpensive 16mm camera
ever made. Over half of our shots

was a

required multiple exposures, and
the Bolex's registration consis¬
tently held up to the challenge.
Because

we

didn't want

degrade the image of our ef¬
fects with optical printing, all
shots were completed first gener¬
ation in-camera. It became quite a
chore devising ways to shoot a
space dogfight with the kinetic
energy of Star Wars without the
use of
computer driven cameras
and blue screen matting.
As an inexpensive alter¬
native, we devised a camera plat¬
form that slid along a wooden
bed. An exacto-blade glued to the
camera carriage served as a point¬
er
measuring the increments
against a finely calibrated ruler.
Many of our moves were ani¬
to

mated

as

small

as a

V50 of

an

inch,

an eye strain after 200
frames of photography.
For the space dogfight

quite

scene,

I'd photograph the models

frame

by frame against a black
backdrop. Motion blurs for the
faster moves were created by
moving the camera towards the
model during the exposure.
Whirling, backlit star fields were
double-exposed in later, using
test references to know when to
black them out as vehicles passed
in front of them. Laser fire was
simulated by placing tiny light
bulbs at the wing tips of space¬
craft and then swiftly moving the
camera

shutter

past the bulbs while the

open. The effect pro¬
duced actual light streaks that
was
American Cinematographer - September 1989

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