American Cinematographer - December 1997 - 105

When the shot counts...
incredibly high speeds, Batman
and Robin follow Freeze

over

turn to

Film/Video Equipment Service Co.

the
We're the "little

ice ramp, across the statue's shoul¬
ders and down its arms some 2,000'

big company"
Rocky Mountains that
knows how to get things done
in the

\

above street level. The Freezemobile then makes an 80' leap from
the statue's hand onto an adjacent

.1

I

for

our

customers.

After 20 years, we
what you

rooftop, with the Batmobile in hot

know
want-and we

pursuit.

Dykstra used a revolu¬
tionary approach for the live-action
process photography of actors
Clooney and O'Donnell as they
appeared to climb across the huge
statue. "We used large-format PIGI
projectors, which have a Xenon
source and are often used to
project
backgrounds for stage produc¬
tions. But instead of doing tradi¬
tional process, which involves an
intermittent pulldown of indi¬
vidual frames of film, we used a

big strip for the backing and
moved it continuously - almost
like a strip projection - onto the
rear screen, as our principals
climbed down the statue's shoul¬
der and arm. The technique was
similar to the old cycloramic

backings that scrolled

across two
rollers behind the actors, only this
was film
projected onto a rear
screen.

"Every effects house par¬
ticipated in this scene," notes
Dykstra. "The Vk-scale miniature
backgrounds were shot by the
Chandler Group, and then com¬
bined with a 3-D computer-gener¬
ated city and 2-D matte paintings
and miniature and CG vehicles,

plus the 3-D Freeze Ray. We in¬
tercut process shots of George
Clooney in the full-sized Batmobile
and Chris O'Donnell on the Redbird with miniature and CG ver¬
sions of their vehicles. When the

Batmobile

leaps from the roadway

to the

statue, that's a Vi-scale min¬
iature attended by a computer-gen¬
erated motorcycle ridden by a CG

Robin, created by PDI. We used
Warner

Digital's CG Batmobile in

the wide shots, but the 80' leap
from the statue to the building

again involved the miniature.
"It's getting to the point
where the

seams are

v the best!
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hard to see,"

Dykstra concludes. "I think we did
a
pretty good job of flummoxing
people

as to what's CG, what's
miniature and what's live action."
♦

VANCOUVER
FILM
SCHOOL

Vancouver Film School
#400

-

1168 Hamilton

Street,

Vancouver, BC CANADA V6B 2S2
American Cinematographer - December 1997

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