American Cinematographer - December 2000 - 72

Dark Shadows
face from the

Schreck

eagerly
approaches his

side," Bogue

same

recalls. However, that illumination

favorite scene,

generated by the same light¬
ing unit we see in-shot beside
Malkovich when the camera pulls
back to reveal the entire film stage. "It
was a big space, and you think that
the [light on Ellen] comes from the
was

in which he will

finally get the
chance to bite
the neck of his
attractive

leading lady,
Greta
Schroeder

not

that's

unit

(Catherine
McCormack).

shown

equipped with

a

the

-

one

Lee low-color-

temperature filter to get that yellow
effect," Bogue notes. "In actuality, we
had to
had to

light that set twice, because we
change the light when you saw

Murnau and his crew."

Gorton, whose credits include

lights and from 575-watt to 12K
HMIs. Bogue then assembled a core
crew of four Brits before heading to
Luxembourg, where Shadow of the
Vampire was shot on stages and at
various

locations; there he hired about

10 additional

grips locally and from

France and Germany. "We had a whole

range of equipment for different situa¬

tions," Bogue says. "We had more

equipment than people, I think."
For scenes that replicated the
making of Nosferatu, Bogue was
determined

to create an

authentic

look that would mirror the

reality of
shooting films in the 1920s. "I did a

bit of research into old films before
started

shooting," Bogue says. "I
realize that
the lights back then were never the
same color temperature that they are
now. They were always sort of yellow,

we

don't think a lot of people

when

used

antique lighting on
the Nosferatu sets, I used Lee lowcolor-temperature yellow filters on
so

the
the

we

lights, combined with filters
camera,

to create a

on

[similar]

effect."

Bogue's
approach
and
painstaking production
design were so successful that
Merhige was actually able to open his
Gorton's

film with

a

shot from Murnau's film

of Greta Schroeder

the

virginal
toying with a kitten in a
balcony window, and then dissolve
directly into a perfect recreation
filmed nearly 80 years later, with
Catherine
McCormack playing
as

Ellen Flutter,

Schroeder

as

Ellen.

"I

watched

Nosferatu once and thought there
was only one place that light could
come from, so I bent the light around
the window

so

that it

came

onto

her

Ridley Scott's Legend, recalls, "That
was one

of the first

sets we

built in

this

big, empty steel mill, which had
stripped down because we
wanted great height. It was as accu¬
rate as we could get. [Murnau's
studio] was a huge space that still
exists in Munich, I think. They had
elevated towers all around the place,
so we built a big tower with Lucy's
house set on it. Our period lights
weren't quite as early as that, but the
been

cameras
were.

We

and the
were as

camera

equipment

careful about those

matchings as we could be, and it was
a strange, very surrealistic thing.
When you're filming something
being filmed, you actually pick up on
a sort of magical theatricality, and I
tried to provide that. We're not actu¬
ally looking at what the camera is
seeing; we're watching the camera
looking [at its subjects]. One of the
interesting things about this film is
that it provides that backstage anar¬
chy, which is often more interesting
than the sets themselves!"

The

vastness

of the stage set

and the unusual lighting

instruments

and filtration that

necessary to

were

the proper period feel might
have created some serious issues,
create

were

it not for

an

unusual choice of

film stock.

Merhige says he first
thought of marrying black-andwhite and color stocks,
transition
to

70 December 2000

the

so

he could

seamlessly from one stock
other as the film segued from
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