American Cinematographer - December 1997 - 98

The actual rope bridge
from which the Postman

plunges. Ashford's
ambitious plan to create
a 360-degree tiled
background of the
location for the

subsequent greenscreen
work

later

was

abandoned.

carry any

designa¬

tion

except for weird
slate numbers,"

Timme

who had to finish

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screen

your depth
of field?

work," Negron recalls. "I

had worked

as a

visual effects

su¬

Jo Jo Dancer and done
effects on King Kong [1976] before
I segued into storyboard work. On
films like Clear and Present Danger,
Fearless and Speed 2,1 was not only
a
storyboard artist, I also designed

pervisor

on

all the visual effects shots. On The

Postman, I

was

helping Kevin fig¬

of these visual
effects shots on paper, so when
Trish left the project, Kevin brought
me in to finish the show."
Ashford's downfall may
have been that her concept of doing
effects mainly in postproduction -
which had worked spectacularly
well on the huge ID4 project - was
ure

How well
do you know

150-plus visual

effects in time for the film's Christ¬
mas release. "They let Tricia go a
few weeks before we wrapped,
when we were coming back to L.A.
to do the majority of our green-

out how to do all

a low-key ef¬
fects film like The Postman. "I think

simply unsuited to
Tricia's

that of

approach
someone

was very much
who had grown

up in postproduction and who was
used to postponing the effects

work,

opposed to somebody
coming from the live-action side
who was used to doing more work
as

location," Timme says in retro¬
spect. "I just tried to shoot as much
on

footage

as

I could."

[Ed. note: AC's attempts to
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dSam

Ashford for comment were un¬
successful.]
Although Timme's role
ended when

subsequently had conversations
with Negron in which he explained
Ashford's intentions for

assem¬

with information about

camera

height, sun direction and time of
day, filters and lenses, among other
things. I went through this book of
notes and drawings with David,
marking the shots that had been
done for specific elements and
things like that."
Negron was able to use
many of the elements and back¬
ground plates that Timme had shot
for Ashford, particularly in The
Postman's opening sequences,
which take place in a massive dry
lakebed and a vast parking lot
loaded with cars. The dry lakebed
sequence was filmed in a rock
quarry called Leach Ponds in Tuc¬
son, Arizona, where the produc¬
tion built the remnants of a marina,
with a dock and a beached boat, in
the sand-filled environment.

Working at Cinesite with former
ILM CG supervisor Jay Riddle (Star
Trek VI), Negron used digital
mattes to remove the berm of dry
sagebrush behind the Postman and
his mule as they traverse the waste¬
land, creating one of the largest -
and most bizarre

-

lakebeds in

cinema

history. "Kevin and I never
could find a landscape that was
just right, so we designed this val¬
ley he was after," Negron explains.
"I went out and shot mountains
that fit with my designs, and we
then took the mountains out of
those plates and dropped them
into the desert to create a whole
new scene.

across

tains

were so

shots with Kevin walking

many
cover

Since there

the

dry lakebed, I had to

angles for all of those moun¬
to match the angles of the

bling the various effects shots. "It's
very difficult to take over for some¬
body else when you have 130 rolls

background plates. I found that the
best way to film the mountains was
to wait for frontlight; that way, you

of VistaVision

avoid

Depth of Field Test Chart
94

production wrapped,

he

had

explains.
"Thankfully, we
logged these plate data sheets

December 1997

footage which don't

having shadows, which

can
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