American Cinematographer - December 1994 - 68

The elements
used to create
the

digital
composite shot
of Aziz' leap
onto the back

the Harrier.

of

which Doug Smith augmented
with paper, leaf and smoke ele¬
ments shot on our Digital Do¬
main stage, one of our supervis¬

ing animators, David Isyomin,
came
up with the basic digital
heat and distortion look

on

the

ground."
Locking all

composites and model shots,"
Bruno reminds us. "By hanging
the full-sized jet from above on a
crane in front of a
TransLight
backing of Miami, we could raise
it quite easily on wires! That was
tricky because we were shooting
through glass, so we had to re¬

involved 85 greenscreen compos¬
ites at the time, would ever look
100 percent real. There were too

many variations of technique.
Suddenly it occurred to me that if
we could
put the whole jet on the
roof, we could do practically the
whole sequence in-camera, be¬
cause

of these ele¬

ac¬

the

tually see the
city in the
background!"
A
quick
phone call to

job of visual ef¬

Michael

fects postpro¬
duction su¬

provided all

together

ments

into

a

seam¬

lessly realistic
shot

was

Lantieri, who
the "dinosaur
interfaces" for

pervisor Price
Pethel. "Each
shot had to
have its own

Jurassic Park,
led Bruno to
Mark
Noel,
who operated
the motionbase systems
that
moved
Stan Winston's

choreography
for heat, which

changed as
the
plane
lifted
off,"
Pethel recalls.
"We character¬
ized the heat

life-sized di¬
nosaurs. This

signature as a refracting or lensing agent which distorted the
Harrier and the
it looked like

area

around it, so

fuzzy blur around
wings from above and a wavy
distortion emanating from two
nozzles on the underbelly when
a

the

seen from the side. We needed a
whole animation team to create
its characteristic shape as it

away from the ground for
each shot." Pethel also sampled,
moves

flopped and tracked the engine

move the cables behind the
glass,
using a new software we devel¬
oped called Whatwire, which

took a while because of the ripple
effect caused by the glass win¬
dows. We also used Whatwire to
remove the
annoying seams from
the TransLight backing, which
made a shot that wasn't sup¬

posed to be

an

effects shot

an

ef¬

fects shot!"

Although that sequence
failed to reduce the number of ef¬

time, Bruno informed Noel that
he'd be using the flight simulator
for its intended purpose in con¬
nection with their Harrier

mockup

jet

except that it would

-

be

atop the Brickel Building, a
skyscraper in the heart of down¬

town Miami! "We set the motion
base with the jet on the Brickel

Building's rooftop elevator hous¬
ing," Bruno smiles, "which gave
us

total tilt-and-roll and

a

45-de-

gree downview of the entire city.
We realized if we put a building
at the horizon in our camera's

fanblade, shot when the real Har¬
riers landed, into the mockup's
Duvateen-draped intake to create

fects, it led Bruno to

the illusion of

jet engine.
Having now successfully

gets hung up on a missile and
thought, 'If I could take a section

background, then

sold Arnold's initial takeoff and

of the full-sized Harrier wing and
missile up onto a Miami rooftop,
we could see Aziz
hanging on the

mockup on the motion base. That
way, the landscape would appear
stationary while the jet appeared
to be flying over Miami. This
gave Jim total freedom to shoot
the Harrier and the city in sun¬
light, in-camera, and eliminated
about 50 composites."
Using this live-on-therooftop technique, Bruno was

a

real

piloting of the Harrier, Bruno
figured the production might as
well amortize the cost of Don

Pennington's lifesized jet mockup. The trick was deciding where

a

stunning

realization: "I looked at the storyboarded sequence in which Aziz

missile, as well as the street be¬
low, and it would all be in-cam¬
era!' It would

no

longer be

an ef¬
the initial

else it could be used. Bruno's first

fects shot. So that

stroke of

genius was to employ
mockup for True Lies' signa¬
ture shot of the Harrier rising

concept: we'd shoot the actor on

the

a

outside the windows of the ter¬
rorists' office building base. "I

would solve a lot of problems. I
don't think any of us were con¬
vinced that the sequence, which

was

66

we'd

trying to cut the number of

American

Cinematographer

real

was

wing on the roof and elimi¬

nate 'x' amount of shots. That

December 1994

crosshairs,
the

we

camera

could lock off the

pan and dolly
around our Harrier

able to shoot almost every shot of
the Harrier in the rescue se¬

quence,

from the moment Arnold
American Cinematographer - December 1994

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