American Cinematographer - December 1999 - 70

oooo
mur

Above: The helicopter attack sequence was primarily filmed within an enormous
Pinewood stage, utilizing a chopper suspended from huge shipyard crane. The
aircraft's whirling blades would be added in post. Cameraman Adrian Biddle, BSC

(right) used careful camera movement to enhance the apparent air speed of the
helicopter, adding menace to the sequence.
800T at about 640

his 15th Bond

[ASA]."

Biddle utilized the 800T stock
exterior

establishing shots filmed
striking location in the oil fields
of the former Soviet republic of
Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea. Here,
a clandestine smuggling business has
been founded by 007's former
enemy, Russian crime boss Valentin
Zukovsky, who was first seen in the
1995 Bond film GoldenEye. The
decrepit exterior of Zukovsky's lair,
housed in an old refinery, consists of
rusted oil derricks surrounded by
water.
However, Zukovsky has
converted the interior of the complex
into a caviar factory. "We shot our
exteriors on that location at magic
hour, using just a few little practical
lamps to give the scene some life,"
Biddle says. "I used the 800T on all
the night exteriors there, which gave
me a very particular look. The stock
has its own quality as well - it's
slightly browner. I quite liked that."
When the production moved
on

on a

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Pinewood Studios to shoot

caviar-factory interiors (includ¬
an action-packed helicopter

attack

61 2 94500200

Australia

to

sequence), it was re-created

massive interior/exterior set

on

as

the

backlot. To enhance the apparent
scale of the structure, production

designer Peter Lamont (working

on

film) added a huge
backing all the way around the

black
set,

which

fitted with forced-

was

perspective catwalks and hundreds
of fiber-optic lights representing
distant oil fields. Asked if getting all
those fiber-optic lights to read
against the rest of the on-set lighting
was

difficult, Biddle insists it

was

really an issue: "Funnily
enough, it was such a big set that
even with all of our lighting, we were
only getting a T3 or [2.8/4 split]. We
never

shot the whole

scene

with the 800T,

so

at

about

a

T4

the fiber-optics

showed up pretty well."
Biddle lit the inside of the

factory primarily with Kino Flos,
using them as hanging practicals.
"The oil refinery was one of those
sets where I walked in and just knew
how it was going to look," Biddle
explains. "It had a 'factory' look to it,
so
this was the logical lighting
approach." However, the difficulty in

lighting this set

was not so much
creating enough illumination as it
was controlling its tone to support
the varied action that
within it. This includes
in which Bond

a

was

staged

comic

scene

Zukovsky
after he falls into a giant vat of caviar,
as well as the helicopter attack, which
occurs
shortly thereafter. Neither
rescues
American Cinematographer - December 1999

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