American Cinematographer - December 1999 - 72

with three pages

Nuclear

of dialogue. I had to
light the scene so you wouldn't ques¬
tion where the light is coming from.
It's what I call 'no-lights' light, and we
had to key it with something other
than moonlight."
Cool blue moonlight proved
to be an important source elsewhere
in the film, though, and Biddle
generally creates his version of this
lighting effect through some basic
timing work. He details, "I don't
particularly like the blue color of
HMIs, so instead of using one of
those, I'll use a tungsten source for
the moonlight, and then warm up
my interior lights with some sort of
CTO for [temperature] contrast. I
then have the lab to print the scene

weapons expert
Dr. Christmas
Jones (Denise
Richards) finds

herself trapped
in a sinking
submarine.
Biddle relied on

watertight
practicals -
courtesy of
production
designer Peter
Lamont

-

and

camera

housings to
shoot the
scene.

for normal skin tones, which makes
my

tungsten moonlight

key

go

slightly cold."
Due to the

epic scale of The
Enough, the caviar
factory proved to be one of Apted
World Is Not

and Biddle's

shoot

an

rare

action

opportunities to
in its entirety.

scene

The other action sequences were

generally handled by

up to three
units, supervised
veteran stuntman and second-

additional

by

camera

unit director Vic
sidebar

Armstrong (see

page 64), who handled
similar duties on the preceding Bond
intense

the helicopter
quite
quickly, but not really quickly
enough, so I'd move the camera
counter to its movement to give it the
right speed. Again, that scene will
come together in the cutting. The
second unit later shot footage of a
real helicopter on location."
itself.

spotlights

The

on

aircraft moved

However, Biddle didn't want
the

only

sequence

in the elaborate
to be the glaring police
sources

spotlights. His solution

was to

simu¬

late the fires
the

commonly seen during
oil-refining process, during

glow.

film, Tomorrow Never Dies, and

were

began his long association with 007
by playing one of the Japanese assas¬
sins in 1967's You Only Live Twice.
Despite the huge amount of

through

a

flickering

created

digitally, while Biddle created
their practical illumination on stage.
The sporadic source lighting
emitted by the fireballs erupting
from the refinery was generated by
20K running on dimmers. "I think
what

we

had about 20 of them, and

could simulate those

explosions
quite well by bringing them up,"
Biddle says. "I also added a bit of
warmth for the fire, depending on
how big it was supposed to be."
The gas-fire source motivation

we

excess gas is burned off. This
the filmmakers the option to
utilize a variety of flame sources, and

also

gave

more

added contrast to the illumination

taking place in utter darkness,"
Biddle reports, "and then went on

well, with the harsh spotlights cutting
68 December 1999

orange

The fire effects themselves

which

as

on

helped the filmmakers adhere
closely to their script, which

"described the

rest

of the

scene as

work involved, Biddle regrets not

being able to shoot every scene in the
picture, as he had on such actionand effects-heavy projects as Event
Horizon and The Mummy. "I would
have loved

to

have shot

second-unit stuff, but

some

our

of the

units shot

[concurrently] for six months, so

we

couldn't have done it any other way.
We'd still be shooting now!"

Apted, Biddle and Armstrong
initially split the work up between
the first and second units based

on

storyboards of each sequence. "We
found that the storyboards didn't last
American Cinematographer - December 1999

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