American Cinematographer - November 1996 - 39

ries

prime lenses. He says, "We
had two of the 11:1 zooms - the
second unit had one - and we
could have used more, but they
weren't available. For me, this is
the best overall lens ever made and
I could practically shoot a whole
movie with one. It's just so easy
and convenient to

use a zoom

to

find your

shot - instead of chang¬
ing lenses or moving back and
forth
so
why not?"
The cinematographer
points out that while the use of
zooms reduced the
production's
lens order, it also required night
-

and interiors (shot on
Kodak's 500 ASA 5298) be lit for a
scenes

minimum

stop of T4. For maxi¬
flexibility during daylight
shooting, Zsigmond relied on 200
ASA 5293, which gave him "in¬
credible latitude and proved to be
mum

the best film to shoot with in South
Africa under the difficult weather
conditions we had. It gives you
beautiful blacks without losing
shadow detail. We also needed the

speed of this emulsion to be able to
Pola screens and graduated fil¬
ters for the sky, and, many times,
attenuators. These filters helped
us to
get the most out of South
use

Africa's beautiful clouds and make
the sky visually dramatic."

Zsigmond had considered
using 5245 for scenes when bright
sunlight was available, but decided
against adding another stock to the
mix. "When you're using 45 and it
starts getting dark, you have to
change stocks. And when you're
shooting with so many cameras,
it's easy for someone to make a
mistake while loading or unload¬
ing film," the cinematographer
says.
On their riverside location
near

the

Songimvelo Game Re¬

the production constructed
their key sets - a railroad station,
the bridge and a small town -
serve,

based

the

plans of production
designer Stuart Wurtzel. "They
were terrific," Zsigmond en¬
thuses. "The sets were built by
hundreds of local carpenters and
greensmen, and they didn't have
a
single bad angle. More than a
square mile of land around them
had to be planted with trees and
bushes transported in from a long
on

distance away.

"This

was a

lot of work

and very expensive, but being
there added tremendous texture to
the film that we never would have
had

anywhere else. Though this
South Africa standing in for
Kenya, we never could have shot
the film in that country because
they don't have the technical sup¬
port we needed."
However, the production
did have a Kenya unit, which shot
scenery and wildlife footage there
for early scenes in the film as
was

Patterson arrives in the eastern Af¬
rican nation from

England. Jack
Couffer was the director of photog¬
raphy, assisted by his son, Mike
Couffer, with Zsigmond's opera¬
tor, Neal Norton, on Steadicam.

"They used some 5248," recounts
Zsigmond, "but they didn't have
to worry about speed for land¬
scape shots."
Ironically, lions from
around the world were imported
to South Africa to play the film's
title characters, but as Zsigmond
recalls, it was extremely difficult to
find the right animals to work
with. "Two lions were brought in
from Los Angeles, but one was sent
back after
tacked

a

week because he at¬

trainer," the

reward them after

doing

but commanded their

a

trick,

respect by

really mastering them. Instead of
turning these animals into cats or
puppets, he could let them be lions.
So for many of our shots where we
needed the lions to be ferocious, we
used these two from France.
"We had arrived in South

Africa about a month before the
main shoot would begin and did a
lot of tests, like how to film the li¬

doing different actions: run¬
ning, attacking, hiding in the
bushes. But it was difficult just to
get them to move from point A to
point B. They're actually quite lazy
animals, especially in the heat.
They just lay down and do noth¬
ing, but we couldn't spend two
years shooting this film, so the tests
were
primarily important to see
what we could get them to do."
ons

For exterior
scenes

involving the
trained lions, an
area was

fenced off and
redressed

as

necessary to

represent
various

topographies.
"We had to

basically re¬
create Africa in

this

tiny space,
because if the
animals had
ever
we

gotten out

would

never

have found
them
says

again,"
Zsigmond.

distinct authenticity to
Darkness, safety precautions led to

strict limitations

on

how the ani¬

mals could be used. "This film
could not have been made with the

technology that was available even
five years ago, because of the way
we relied on
digital postproduction
to

combine

the

lions

with

was

"It was an accident - the lion
frightened - but he was in¬
stantly back on the plane and gone.

Stuart Robertson, as well as ef¬

Two others from France

and director of visual effects

fects

ally incredible. Their trainer didn't

supervisor Tim McGovern
pho¬
tography Chuck Schuman, both

November 1996

American

were re¬

lowland bush.

a

says.

cameraman

through the

But while the trained cats

added

people," says Zsigmond, credit¬
ing visual effects supervisor

a

Patterson hunts

Cinematographer

37
American Cinematographer - November 1996

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