American Cinematographer - December 2000 - 44

Man of Steel
with Full Minus Green.

Detailing his camera and lens
package, Serra offers, "Our lenses on
the show were anamorphic Primos
and an anamorphic zoom; [we used
the zoom] very subtly during other
moves on an arm or [while]
tracking
[instead of for zooms]. We had a
Millennium, a Panaflex
G2, and a Panavision Millennium
XL, a smaller and very interesting
Panavision

camera

crane

that

generally used for

we

shots, handheld shots and

Steadicam shots.
aware

of when

Night

to use

was very

the Steadicam

and when to go handheld; those
techniques present two different
emotions, so he was very careful

[with them].
"For instance, there

important Steadicam
difficult shot
Above: The
crew

creates

artificial rain
for

a moody
nighttime

sequence set on
an outdoor

stairway. Right:
A

crane

equipped with
a

remote head

captures a shot
of

security
guard Dunne
arriving for
work at

a

football
stadium.

"The

general mood of the
train station is very contrasty because
it shows

a

dramatic

David makes

moment

Serra notes. "It became

favorite

when

important decisions,"
one

of my

signifi¬
cant scene at a hospital, where acci¬
dent victims are being treated. This
was a real
emergency room in a real
hospital that had recently been shut
a

down. One of the first shots shows

a

bleeding victim in the foreground
and David sitting on a gurney talking
to a doctor in the background. "That
was very simply lit," Serra explains.
"We just used fluorescents above
them for the foreground and the
background; there were no reflectors
or muslins." The
existing emergency
room drop-ceiling lighting consisted
of four-tube fluorescent fixtures. The
crew

replaced the standard tubes

with color-corrected Chroma 50s,
and one of these corrected four-tube
fixtures

provided Willis's key light.
body in the foreground was lit
by a four-tube daylight Kino Flo,
deployed as a high backlight pointing
The

toward the

camera.

The next

scene incorporates a
360-degree Steadicam shot as David

42 December 2000

hospital elevator into a hall¬
way, where he's met by a flock of
reporters. The fluorescent tubes in
the elevator were replaced with
a

Chroma 50s, but the
that the tubes in the

[scenes] in the film."

A train crash leads to

exits

fixtures

were

crew

discovered

hallway ceiling

nonstandard, and that

the available color-corrected tubes

wouldn't fit. Instead of

tubes, the

crew

replacing the
simply gelled them

near

was

an

sequence, a

the end of the film

in which David carries his wife up
some stairs. The Steadicam moves

around them in

an

which is intended

incredible ballet,

to create an

almost

magical feel, as if David's wife is float¬
ing. The actress [Robin WrightPenn] was supported by wires, and
the Steadicam operator circled them
several times." Although the scene
was filmed on a set, the complicated
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