American Cinematographer - December 1996 - 46

all of the equipment every time. I
also had to be careful not to over¬
whelm the existing practical fix¬

tures, which would pose a prob¬
lem for any cinematographer

working there."
Ian Kincaid had worked

three

previous films in Las Ve¬
including Casino (see AC Nov.
'95.) "It's always difficult to film
on

gas,

there, but the Luxor was very coop¬
erative," the gaffer says. "It's a very
open,

spread-out space and they
gaming areas avail¬

made several

able to

us.

"We knew

we

weren't go¬

ing to have the kind of control
had

we

Casino [at the

Riviera],
where we brought in two trucks'
worth of lighting, installed it in
ceiling rigs, set up dimmer boards
on

in a fake slot machine and ran
cable. Here, we had to move every¬

thing back out each night. And
Above: On

"l

location at the
Luxor.

Says

Kincaid, "We had
very low ceilings
in there. Our

basic

plan in

wider shots

was

to lock in the

shot and run
sources

-

or

use

Leikos to

pick up
elements of the
ceilings."
Right: A pair of
freedom fighters
(Tom Jones and
Annette

Bening)

confront the
Martians. "The

Young Electric
Sign Company is
the lighting
graveyard,"
enthuses the

gaffer, "full of old
neon

collected

from all
art

over.

we

The

department

handled all of the

electrical work

Invading Vegas

background in wide

As the Martians arrive in

shots. But

Earth's skies, their saucers hover
over such
important cities as

Washington D.C., Paris and... Las
Vegas - which makes perfect
sense, given Mars Attacks' decid¬
edly bent perspective. Yet while
the gambling capital may superfi¬
cially seem to be "ready made" for
the pictures' colorfully cracked aes¬
thetic, this portion of the shoot was
complicated from the beginning.
Recalls Wynn Thomas, "People
usually think there isn't so much
for the production designer to do
on a location, but the job in that
situation is to tie the elements you
find together with the rest of the

picture. You're not just choosing
locations and things at random,
and there has to be a process that
allows you to do that.
"We did a lot of scouting
in Vegas and were much more

because

because there is action

you're go¬
ing to have to do that dictates those

choices. You have to look at how
the actors are going to move, give
the

plan some shape and then pre¬
the space.
"We were going to shoot

pare

at Caesar's

Palace, but

we

weren't

able to

get in there. And the tonal¬
ity of Caesar's is very different
from the Luxor, which is where

we

ended up. I wasn't able to make
any color decisions until we knew
where we were going to be, and
there were a lot of elements im¬

were

death-ray

ironic, because people think Vegas

from 10 o'clock onwards. You have

is the kind of

place where

you can

just turn the

camera on

and it'll

to be out by seven or eight in the
morning, and you have to clear out

then had to

connect them on
cues

at the last

minute to

critical about

'blasters.

44

in

American

our

some

Cinematographer

"In the

great. But you really can't,

coordinate with

signs, but

had to

were

shoot¬

ing anamorphic."
look

choices than we
other places. It's

we

the

we

get the exposure up,

pacting those decisions."
Assessing the degree of
difficulty encountered at the
Luxor, Suschitzky says, "The main
problem with shooting in casinos is
that you can only shoot at night,

on

could often see
200 feet of

across

-

the frame line.

we
lot of cable.

there weren't a lot
of places where we
could bring it in;

low 40s."

Dinos

through
muslin all along

a

Plus, because the
casino area [at the
Luxor] is round,

big

and Maxi-Brutes

Then we'd

had

generally prefer a satu¬
rated look these days, so I made
sure that [the timing lights] were
pretty high on the scale. It's some¬
thing I generally do as a matter of
course. The postproduction stage is
helped if you print in the upper 30s

December 1996

end, I don't think

felt any great restriction,"
Suschitzky says. "We just had to
plan the direction we were going to
shoot in reasonably carefully. We
did manage to swing around and
shoot in the completely opposite
we

direction

quite a few times during
improvised moments. I was able to
use color
boldly because it seemed
appropriate in that location.
"Vegas is a night town, so
most of

our

exteriors there

were

done at

night. We had some quite
large exteriors that had to be lit
every night and cleared away each
morning. Outside, we were prob¬
ably in the f3.5 range on the high¬
speed 98 stock."
For

scenes

in which Mar¬

tians rampage

through Las Vegas,
vaporizing all humans in their
path, Suschitzky and Kincaid de¬
vised a lighting system to add ef¬
fect

lighting supposedly created by
American Cinematographer - December 1996

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