American Cinematographer - June 1995 - 34

And he said, 'Not!' Ultimately, I
think he was right. The scene was
a

chew-out session between Skin¬

(Mulder's superior, played
by Mitch Pileggi) and Mulder,
and was lit with a half-light on
ner

Skinner's face. The

use

of the

smoke gave

the scene a nice
claustrophobic feeling of com¬
pression that I really liked. I at¬
tribute that to the

use

of the at¬

mosphere. Even though I don't
like to bring the creepy world

The

episode "Duane
Barry" also marked the first time
Bartley and Chris Carter worked
together directly on the set. "Pre¬
viously, it had all been verbal
communication between

John

and me about what the show
should look like," Carter ex¬

the wall

or

fences."

Again working with the
trusty T2.8 exposure, Bartley em¬
ploys for nighttime exteriors his
two uncorrected 18K HMIs on
cranes

for

backlight, giving him

T1.4 to T1.4/2.0, and fills in the
faces to a T1.0 to T1.4 depending
a

the subject matter. To keep the
lighting naturalistic and efficient,
light sources are often motivated
by existing streetlights and cor¬
rected to match what's already
on

at

a

location. "We have the 18K

HMIs for

backlight," adds

Tickell. "Then we'll

32

use

the exist¬

Another

striking image
Barry" is inside an
ship where Duane is being

audience too much. You

Murray de¬
signed and
made a glass
operating table

just

want to feel that there's

inscribed with

something there."
John Bartley

strange alien
patterns.
"Graeme did

tremendous amount of work; my
hands were [already] in so many

phases of the production, as
writer and executive producer,
and I also end up producing a lot

wonderful

a

job designing that

table," Bartley recalls. "When I
came in there and saw it I said,
'We

can

have fun with this.'"

The

(Steve Railsback) has taken the

production team built
big sheet of
glass painted black with clear
strips in a grid-type pattern,
placed over the top of a pit at the
studio. "We then put a 10K
down in the pit and shined it up
through the glass," Tickell recalls,
"smoking the room so that you
have all of these little rays shining
up through the pattern in the
glass. Then we used a couple of
lekos to highlight his face here

employees hostage in the hope

and there."

that the aliens he believes

Having won the Golden
Globe Award for Best Dramatic

of inserts. But it was a tremen¬
dous experience. I had never di¬
rected before, and even though I
had very definite ideas, John
shouldered

a

lot of the

weight of

my inexperience so that I was
able to communicate my ideas
onto film directly."
A considerable amount
of "Duane Barry" takes place in
a

travel agency,

where Duane

are

try¬

ing to abduct him will take one of
the hostages instead. After a sud¬
den unexplained blast of blinding
white light, however, the power
in the building shuts down and
the only interior illumination
provided is from emergency
backup lights. "Those lights
didn't go by chance," says

ing streetlights but enhance them
just so it looks like we're using
the practicals that are out there.
We found that Lee #232 Super
White Flame gels match sodiums
very closely, so we'll put that on
tungstens. You may see a wash of
light that looks like it's coming
from a streetlight, but it's us put¬
ting it on a building or street."

Carter. "The

American

June 1995

Cinematographer

images of the

in "Duane

"You don't want to show the

-

on

of the best

alien
"tested." For the scene, art di¬
rector Graeme

Barry' I took the chance to
episode, which was a

an

Tickell, the opportunity to start

terns

one

'Duane

direct

Frightening viewers is

light patterns makes his job all
the more enjoyable.
"I love to light at night;
it's like giving yourself a big
blank canvas and you go out and
paint - a splash of light here, a
little splash there. Lighting back
alleys, city streets - you can use
the practical lights that exist, or
you've got fire escapes that you
can
put light through to put pat¬

of blackness; I do not want to see
where he's coming from.' And he
did it and I think what resulted is
show."

the The X-Files' raison d'etre, so it
follows that a good majority of
the scenes occur at night. For

rie

It's

was left to John
and the directors to interpret
whatever that would be. With

plains. "Then it

that's outside into the FBI, I think
in this case he made the scene
better."

with total black and paint in
those menacing shadows and ee¬

out of

complete darkness.
risky! I remember John light¬
ing that scene and I said to John,
'Darker! I want him coming out

comes

reason

I had

a

that I wanted
pools of light created by the
auxiliary emergency lights -
it helped set a mood.

power outage was

"When Mulder and

a

the table, which was a

Series, The X-Files

seems

to be

about

testing limits. And with a
photographic style ranging from
an
abyss of blackness to blinding
white light, Bartley is also skirt¬
ing the boundaries of NTSC's
transmission capabilities. "You
don't want to show the audience
too much. You just want to feel

that there's

hard to

something there. It's
keep that dark look."

Though the show faces a
brutal time slot, "I think it's the

Friday night thing now,"

says

paramedic first enter the travel

Tickell.

and Duane Barry shuffles
sideways out of the darkness
with his gun pointed at them, he

lights and watch The X-Files."

agency

"People gather, douse the
American Cinematographer - June 1995

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