American Cinematographer - June 1995 - 54

Learn

to

SHOOT FROM
THE MASTERS

Kodak

Cinematography
Master Class

Series
Shooting
for

Drama

lights were three stops underex¬
posed.
While Legato felt con¬
strained by gravity on Earth dur¬
ing the launch sequence, he de¬

about

advantage of the
weightless environment of space.
There, where the notion of up
and down is

virtually nonexist¬

ent, he added a roll to almost

every shot of the Lunar Ballet.
"Since every shot was composed
for wide screen, the Saturn V
rocket became what amounted to
a

pencil shooting through the

middle of this black horizontal

frame. That made it difficult to

Peter James

get really nice compositions, un¬

Realism

with Allen Daviau and

Sacha

Vierny

Fantasy with

Sacha

Vierny and

to follow their movements,
which looked correct in this
era

Denis Lenoir

a dozen workstations,
where additional elements were
made. Dennis Blakey and Robert
Small created the CG ice and
condensation gas, Martha Snow
Mack painted reflected clouds in

pooled water

on the concrete
floor and interactive light ele¬

ments, and David Isyomin cre¬
ated particle water. The shot was
then composited by Adam Stark
into a seamless eruption of fire,
water and steam. The last thing
added was a digital camera shake
created by Simon O'Connor
and Mark Lasoff, which pro¬
vided the final bit of realism to
the shot.
An

explosion of another
waiting to rock the
Apollo 13 capsule. The disaster in
space, where the compressed
oxygen tanks ruptured in the ser¬
kind

was

weightless environment. So I
thought I'd try that, and it added

vice

ing a
built

Location

lot of life."
Another exquisite shot
shows the separation of the first

Lighting with

stage of the rocket as photo¬

Geoff Burton

with Dean Semler

graphed from inside the Saturn
V's second-stage cylinder. "The
idea was to replicate that famous
shot which was taken by a 16mm
camera NASA
put in the capsule
ring," Legato says. "The camera,
which was jettisoned along with
the stage and the whole ring con¬
nection, had a little parachute at¬
tached and that's how that film

popped and the gas blew out
through the gash," Legato says.
"It needed to be that big so we
didn't have to worry about scal¬
ing the gas. We built a hydraulic
ram inside to
push up against the
physical mass of the capsule skin.
Once again we used fire extin¬
guishers, this time to simulate the
oxygen that shot into space when
the skin ruptured." Andrew

Lighting

got to Earth! Although the film¬

DeGenova created and animated

makers would have been satis¬
fied with re-creating the original

computer-generated rivets pop¬
ping out of their holes at the mo¬
ment of explosion.

A

Shooting

Black

and

for

White with

Allen Daviau and Denis Lenoir

Studio Lighting:
A Comparative

Workshop with
Donald

McAlpine

and Denis Lenoir
Lighting Dances with Wolves

Dead Poets

Society with
John Seale

8

videotapes only

$279

$149 for any 4; $49.95

each

VISA/MC/AMEX

(shipping and handling extra)

call

today!

800-777-1576
First
56

we started
taking advantage of
that liability by adding roll to
those shots to find the optimum

composition. I first got the idea
from the weightless tests Ron
did early on for the movie. If the
actors went sideways, Dean
Cundey actually rolled his cam¬

^SfHo°ROTING

more

fects acts to take

Robby

for

but clearer and

vised the second of his three ef¬

til
Shooting

-

majestic - was painful. After the
rocket and gantry miniatures
were shot
onstage by visual ef¬
fects director of photography
Erik Nash, the shot went through

Muller and

with

ber it

a

shot exactly, they encouraged us
to find a way to take the curse off
of simply remaking the stock
shot. So as the stage fell away, I
added a little pullback to reveal
the interior of the ring and the
Earth below, which I hoped
would make the shot absolutely

awe-inspiring."
The concept was bril¬
liant, but the process to make the

shot look just

Light Video Publishing

j3hone^?n(^5^788(^^ax^n(^58^8^

June 1995

the way we remem¬

module, behind the Com¬

mand Module, was achieved us¬

full-sized "miniature." "We
a 1:1 section of the
capsule

for the shot where the rivets

As the service module
broke

apart, several panels blew

off and thousands of bits of mylar

insulation, the service module
lining, blew out. "The gag was
to see this explosion happen,"
Pethel says. "It wasn't a fiery ex¬
plosion so much as a fast out-gas¬

sing of
of the

oxygen

that tore the side

ship open as all the mylar
particles spun out into space.
American Cinematographer - June 1995

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - June 1995
