American Cinematographer - October 1996 - 50

making it black-and-white. We
experimented with crushing the
blacks, pulling the color out and
adjusting the contrast. We also
tested transferring straight across
and doing the manipulating in
the tape-to-tape stage. We tried
all of the different combinations
between the two stages."
Adds Nutter, "Establish¬

ing the look early on was also
very important to us, because
when you're doing a pilot, the
look of the dailies is vitally im¬
portant. The dailies have to look
close to how you intend the
finished product to look as pos¬
as

sible, because the studio
tives

execu¬

all

inspecting them or
asking how they look. I spent a
lot of a time with the people at
are

Gastown Labs in Vancouver, and
Above:
Rod
a

Operator
Pridy dons

Steadicam

equipped with

a

Movie cam

Compact for a
shot at the peep
show palace.

Right: Director
of photography
Peter Wunstorf

eyeballs
setup.

a

they wanted to lend it the burntan old
photograph."
Nutter expands, "The

out feel of

idea was that this character,
Frank Black, has moved to Se¬
attle to provide his family with
a home. This is a home that he in
a sense creates... even in an arti¬
ficial manner. For example, he's
had the house painted yellow
over the old colors to
give it new
freshness. There needed to be a
sense of warmth and richness
there. I think that the people in
this world who cherish the home
and the simple pleasures are the

people who actually

go out and
know what the term 'hell on

yellow house, things

are

safe, bright, warm and cheery.
But when we get outside of that,
it's usually pretty dark, it's rain¬
ing and there's a lot of contrast -
whether it's day or night."
Several methods were
examined to achieve the desa-

turated, monochromatic look that
the

dense blacks and

heavily because the challenge
with doing television, where
you're dealing with neg-to-tape

a

muted tonal

range of color. But since Millen¬
nium would be finishing in the
electronic-video presentation

Wunstorf, "Gary Wissner

thing," details Wunstorf, "we sat
down with everyone involved in

already
motif for

been talking about a
the show, which was a sort of
heaven-and-hell concept, with
heaven being Frank's home life
and hell being the other loca¬
tions: the

strip club, the cruising

and the forest. The police
station and morgue sets repre¬
sented more of a sort of gray
zone. That idea was then re¬
flected in the art direction and
areas

the

lighting. When Frank is at
home with his family in their

American

Cinematographer

grab hold of Martin

was

realm, this technique couldn't be

and David had been

able to

producers desired. Darius
Khondji, dramatic use of the CCE
re-silvering process on the release
prints of Seven [see AC Oct. '951
yielded fantastic results with

Earth' means - they've seen hell
on Earth."
"When I was hired," re¬
counts

48

new

incorporated.
"Before

we

did any¬

the visual end of this film, made
them read the script, and then
showed them the

photos and film
clips from which we were draw¬
ing inspiration. I also showed
them my reel and talked about
[which footagel on my reel might
apply and which might not.
"We then did tests at the
telecine-transfer stage to see how

Wells, who

transfer, is that there's

such

as a one-light transfer. But
because we wanted our dailies to
look as good as possible - and
because Martin knew exactly
what we wanted to be doing dur¬

ing the transfer - he actually did
most of manipulation himself,
although he didn't take all of the
color out. We didn't want to leave
it all to the tape-to-tape correc¬
tion. So what you end up seeing
in the

pilot is pretty much what

the dailies looked like."

Setting the tone from
Millennium's pilot

moment one,

film without

"Since this

October 1996

no

thing

opens

going too far and

the chief color

on

could pull color out - how to
get a sort of desaturated look on
we

was

The X-Files."
Wunstorf elaborates,
"We involved Martin very

timer

a

within the seedy bowels of
strip club.

run-down Seattle
scene was

the

opening
American Cinematographer - October 1996

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - October 1996
