American Cinematographer - November 2001 - 60

The Ultimate Self-Destruction
The

mysterious
assassin

demonstrates
his superhuman

speed while
eluding the
police. In this
portion of the
sequence, Li was
lit with

a

helicoptermounted

searchlight and
the road
illuminated

was

6K Par units

(see

by a
Bebee Light
containing 15

diagram on
opposite page).
To capture the
scene's "money
shot"

-

a

police driver's
POV of Li

running away at
50 mph - Li
was placed on a
treadmill towed

by

a

trailer, and
McLachlan

universe in which the movie opens,

mercury-vapor,

ramped his

McLachlan used Calcolor lavender

cent

HMI lamp to create a
purple hue. "Purple's not
something you see a lot of in

two

camera

down to

12

fps while
firing strobe
lights
suspended from
a truss rig
positioned
roughly 8' from
the actor. This

footage was
digitally
printed back to
24 fps so it
later

wouldn't look
undercranked.

gels

movies," he notes. "In the tests,

closely at the Calcolor laven¬
gels, which are a calibrated color
made by Rosco. [Cinematographer]
der

Mark Woods

was

instrumental in

helping them develop it. The colors
green and magenta, or blue and
orange - are all calibrated to
complement each other, and they're
perfectly balanced to the way film
sees color. The system allows you to
use a
palette, and if you want to shift
the color one way, you can use the
color charts and have the lab print it
in a predictable, controllable way.
"I've been trying to do some¬
thing similar for years," he adds. "It's
always been difficult to make laven¬
der on film because of the way film
responds to that wavelength. We
played around with the Calcolors on
HMIs and underexposed things a bit

-

us

the colors would be rich; that gave
a fabulous tone. We used that

almost identical, with

slight varia¬
dressed and
lit. In Universe A, all of the practical
lights in the cell and all of the fluorescents were wrapped in the laven¬
der #6 gel. A small amount of clean
HMI light and uncorrected cool
white fluorescent light was mixed
in. "We had to give the scene a
different feeling than the others,"
McLachlan explains. "We needed
something extra down the hallway,
and because it was a practical loca¬
tion, we couldn't get much light
into it. In a spur-of-the-moment
move, we ran a strip of Kino Flos
along the floor. That produced a
tions in how

nice, hot

they

source

are

in the frame."

Some of the

subsequent action
place in a parking garage. These
scenes were filmed at stages in the
former Unocal building in down¬
town Los Angeles. "We used 60 Kino
Flo Image 80s with eight four-foot
takes

tubes in each fixture, and all of the

be

individually

system for the opening sequence, and

lights

for the second,

controlled," McLachlan details. "We

went

56 November 2001

we

looked

so

The sequences were shot in
different cell blocks. They are

on an

fantastic

uncorrected fluores¬

look."

back

to

parallel
a

sequence we

more

familiar

put

could

them in

every cement

bay

over¬

head

could make the

setting
really bright, mainly to create some
contrast. The script called for a
sudden, dramatic light shift as the
lights go out; obviously, some lights
had to stay on to illuminate all of the
action. We pre-hung several 5Ks in
the rafters to add kickers and edges
on the actors, and we play them as if
they're the emergency lights coming
on. It's a
way to get a picture with a
lot of snap in a hurry.
so we

"I knew we'd have

a

lot of

angles and that we'd have to move
quickly," he adds. "By having all of
those units wired into the dimmer

board, each of the eight tubes could
be controlled. I went around with my
meter and got absolutely the base

level we could work at, which in most
cases

meant

one

tube

smoke

that every third unit had
We added a bit of

on.

supposedly exhaust fumes
help the gun flashlights show
up and to help create separation
quickly. We had cool lights in

-

-

to

Universe A, and in Universe B we had

uncorrected, very blue 5600-degree
Kelvin bulbs, closer to daylight. In the
more

familiar universe

we

used

plain

fluorescents, Chroma 50 blues and
some

tungsten-colored units. We
American Cinematographer - November 2001

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