American Cinematographer - December 1994 - 76

half-speed to compensate for

at

the

camera

rate. The shot was

supposed to be from above, but I
actually shooting the cyclist
horizontally across the stage. To
compensate for that and create
the illusion of a higher perspec¬
tive, we tilted the bike up 20 de¬
grees to equal the angle of tiltwas

down we wanted on the camera.
The cycle itself was also on a tilt¬

jet in flight. The Harrier was
flown by a Navy pilot and shot
with a gyroscopic camera from a
jet ranger helicopter that panned
with the jet as it headed into Mi¬
ami. The gyroscopic camera had
trouble keeping up with the Har¬
rier, which appeared very blurry

turning

and bounced from side to side in
the frame, so Krepela's first line

'turned' in the air, so that he'd

of attack was to stabilize the shot.
"We totally stabilized the shot by

ing rig to simulate the arc of its
jump, so we tilted its nose up at
the beginning and down at the
end to give us an actual perspec¬

blowing the frame up, but Jim
thought it was too much,"
Krepela explains. "Instead, we

tive shift

reduced the shot and did

we

couldn't do in the

computer. This helped create the
feeling that the bike was about to
land. We also turned the bike

a half¬
stabilization on it, so it looked
like the cameraman was trying to

slightly counterclockwise on a
turntable to keep its simulated
angle of trajectory parallel to
camera.
Although the camera
isn't moving in the final shot, we

up with the jet. It actually
added energy to the shot."
In the original plate, the
Harrier flies out of the sun, then
turns and flies away from camera
towards Miami. This created an

had to

interactive

move

to create the
was

the camera on stage
illusion that the bike

moving. During the length of

the shot, we did a 20-foot motioncontrol pullback so the bike
would appear to enter the frame
from left to right."
After the stage photogra¬

phy was completed, Boss Film
composited the "Bonaventure"
rooftop and the pool into the
Hyatt hotel background plate.
Then

Boss

continued

the

motorcycle's arc across the street
and reduced it in

perspective so
hitting

keep

Krepela
double

as
-

lighting problem for
he shot footage of a
wearing makeup to

enhance his resemblance to

Schwarzenegger - against green
screen on Boss'
stage. "I watched
the shot many times and did a

away from or doing
double-takes toward our lockedoff camera, so Jim would have a
lot of variations to choose from,"

Krepela says. "I also had a mov¬
ing keylight which started be¬
hind Arnold's double and came
around during the shot as he

appear backlit when coming to¬
ward us and frontlit as he flew

from us."

away

The final

step was re¬

moving the real pilot, who wasn't
allowed to fly the Harrier with¬
out his helmet and jacket, and
replacing him with Arnold's
double. "The first job was to paint
out the pilot, whose helmet was
much bigger than our double's
head," Krepela recalls. "Once we
picked the take of the double we
liked, we tracked it into the plate.
We did a bit of skip-framing to
make sure the speed of both ele¬
ments

was

touch

was

consistent. The final

getting this greenscreened character to appear to
be behind the jet's glass canopy,
which

was

largely

of
R.M.

a matter

lighting."

-

number of takes of the double

Fantasy II Adds
Fuel to the Fire

it would match the bike

the

pool in the live-action plate.
days, thanks to digital
technology, the inevitable hard

These

cut that

would have blended the

bikes, and which has spoiled
lot of effects in the past, has

two
a

been

replaced with the CG
equivalent of a dissolve. "We
were
pretty well lined up, but we
wanted to blend seamlessly from
one

bike to the other

so we

did

a

morph between our green-screen
bike and their stuntbike over one
or

two

frames," Krepela beams.

seven True Lies shots
handled by Fantasy II, most were
of the fix-it, make-it-cut variety
that the company's founder,
Gene Warren, has excelled at for

blast

many years: adding muzzle
blasts during the ski-slope chase,

ing for the water

knife

glints during the fight atop

the Harrier, and extra smoke and

flying debris

close-up of
Arnold in the jet after its canopy
is shot away. But there was one
spectacular shot that James
over a

Cameron handed to his old

"That final

ciate because he knew it

right on
bike hit the water."
Boss Film also handled

specialty:

match-up was done
the frame as the stunt

74

Of the

asso¬

was

his

a huge dock explosion
that erupts toward the water

The original background
plate boasted an enormous prac¬
tical explosion that spewed up¬
wards and arced out, but the
never came toward camera
and there were no flames head¬

see Arnold swimming
underwater as a huge fireball
rose behind him. "The whole la¬
goon was

Schwarzenegger to take

done

American

December 1994

Cinematographer

us,

on

"so for

continuity, Jim wanted this shot
to show flaming gasoline head¬
ing toward the lagoon and be¬
coming an imminent threat to

tough shot that placed Arnold
into the cockpit of a real Harrier

dive.

supposed to be

fire," Warren reminds

Arnold.

a

Arnold. Yet,

posed to

surrounding the terrorist com¬
pound and forces Arnold

a

or

in the next cut, we were sup¬

to

me
a

Jim turned this shot

over

because he knows I've
lot of this kind of stuff and
American Cinematographer - December 1994

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