American Cinematographer - August 2002 - 33

give it a warmer, chocolaty feel. We also diffused most of the
interior lights through bleached muslin,
and they were sometimes doublediffused through 216 or 129. Whenever
possible, I used 12-by-12s and 8-by-8s,
and when we got into bedrooms I went

the rest of the wall."

with smaller sources."

we

tobacco filter to

The third

key environment is Sy's
inner-city apartment, where he
sequesters himself when he leaves the
sanctuary of the SavMart. "Sy's apart¬
ment is very minimalist, stark and
emotionally cold - not comfortable at
all," Cronenweth says. "It was a set we

and then back to the trunk of the

Cronenweth is
of

one

which

particularly proud
of the film's driving sequences,
was shot in the Sepulveda

Boulevard

tunnel

underneath

Los

Angeles International Airport (LAX). "Sy
is driving home from work at night, and
catch him in the tunnel underneath

LAX," the cinematographer explains.

probably more than a mile
long, and there are practical fixtures on
each side. We turned

on one

side of the

fixtures and

primarily with practicals. Sy's kitchen is
lit with fluorescents, and his bedroom

side of the tunnel when

has small

However, they weren't bright enough to
light Robin, so we read the color, got a

a

warehouse, and

we

lit it

practicals. An entire wall of his
TV room is covered with photos of the
Yorkin family, and it was lit by two indus¬
trial worklights that Sy had placed on
either side of the collage. I had the set
designer build a header, which allowed
us to create some soft toplight to fill in

We

"The tunnel is

photographed Robin against
the lit wall, which created an interesting
strobing effect. The practicals were
some sort of high-intensity tube lights
that they'd just finished installing on one

built inside

car.

hung Image 80s from the rig and ran
them all through a DMX controller so
that we could 'chase' the lights to mimic
the strobing effect of the background
lights. I then exposed for the wall behind
Robin, and we adjusted our lights to that.
It creates a very nice effect and matches
just enough that it feels natural."
■

we

shot there.

reading and mixed and matched our
lights to them.
"We built an elliptical horseshoe
rig that started at the hood of the car and
went up and around the driver's window

Correction
Our

coverage
of Sony
Imageworks' visual effects
in Spider-Man ("Crawling the
Walls," June '02) included three
photos that were actually test shots
of a method the filmmakers opted
not to use. The photos, which
appear on page 47, show Tobey
Maguire climbing a horizontal wall
against a greenscreen backing.
According to Imageworks publicist
Mary Reardon, all shots of Spidey
crawling the walls in the film were
completely computer-generated.

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American Cinematographer - August 2002

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