American Cinematographer - August 1995 - 70

cross-fade of watching something
as frenetic as an MTV video to

something as subtle as a documen¬
tary about elephants. We were also
trying to simulate the feeling of
changing from one channel to the
next, until finally the characters are
watching a black-and-white West¬
ern."

Explains Chuck Schuman,
establishing shot of the
boys and the three-inch men on the
bed, the camera dollies by them
looking past Patrick's knee - with
Boon on it
at the boys, and then
around to their point of view be¬
"In the

-

hind Patrick's knee toward the tele¬
vision

dollying around them
degrees." For the bluescreen
unit to photograph the element of
Boon sitting on Patrick's knee, "the
-

97.5

main unit's 10-foot

move

with 97.5

degrees of panning was translated
into

a

120-foot

crane move

and 97.5

degrees of rotation. To do that
Top: The Indian
(Litefoot) and
members of the

Cupboard
effects team
work

on

the

seed-tray set
built at Sony
Studios. The

massively
oversized

moldings and
hardwood floor

segment at left
help set the
scale. Far

right:

Another of the

did that, so I lit

from low, side

angles and warmed up the light to
play warm light on one side of
Omri's face and coolish light on the
other
effectively pulling the
white light apart so it wasn't just
one color
temperature. We hung 20
to 24 tungsten chicken-coops with
-

oversized set-

pieces
a

-

here

radiator -

gives Indian
sense

a

of scale.

216 and 250 diffusion underneath

Right: In the

to build

finished shot,
the 3" Indian

sense

stalks his prey
across the

hardwood

stands from the floor with Vi CTO
on

them."

"The chicken coops gave

plains of Omri's
bedroom.

base

light; to structure a
sunlight, we used 20K
tungsten units on Condors or high
a

of

overall ambient light that
would represent skylight," gaffer
West adds. "Once we had that light
set we would use the 20Ks on the
Condors as a sunlight source and
us an

back up that sunlight with other
lights on scaffolding or lights on
very tall stands to bring up key lev¬
els
raking them through trees,
-

66

usually coming in between two
buildings or kicking off a mirror
somewhere on a building."
A pivotal scene in the film
occurs in Omri's
parents' bedroom
ing MTV with their two bantam
buddies; Boon sits

on a

while Ornri and Patrick

are

on

watch¬

Patrick's

camera

the television and dim

tor also had to change. Initially the
light appears to be from a 3A left
sidelight, and then as the camera
goes behind him the light becomes

moonlight

trickling through

a window with
rain and occasional lightning, West
recalls that Carpenter lit the scene

bies

on

coming in at that low

ors.

We

Cinematographer

turntable. While the

moved in and

York, you never have pure sunlight

American

the

knee and Little Bear observes
from the bed. Lit by the light from

using "flicker generators in

angle. It's

out

approximately 60 feet - while
subject rotated. Boon was sit¬
ting on a topography mock-up of
the knee that rotated 97.5 degrees

creating shards of light on fences
and bringing up hot spots. In New
an

onstage within the same 17 sec¬
onds, we had the camera on a crane
moving on the z-axis only - in and

nection with

con¬

fluorescents, and Ba¬

variacs with different col¬

August 1995

were

trying to get the

back, that meant that
the key lighting relative to the ac¬

a backlight and then becomes a 3A
backlight from the right side. In the
plate shoot, the keylight was a

Baby. Scaling up for the bluescreen
American Cinematographer - August 1995

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