American Cinematographer - August 2002 - 38

Emotional Triggers
Crime-scene

photographer
Harlan Maguire
(Jude Law) is
hot

on

the trail

of victims.

audience. In this
about

case,

the film is

father who's

trying to raise
his son so that the boy won't grow up
to be like him. It's a powerful story
with great performances, but it's not
a
fun-and-games type of movie. It's a
stark story set in the Depression, and
it has a serious message."
a

The movie's theme of fathers
and

sons

also factored into the

production itself. Producer Dean
Zanuck read Collins' graphic novel
(which was illustrated by Richard
Piers Rayner) and sent a copy of it to
his father, producer Richard Zanuck.
The senior Zanuck subsequently sent
the book to Steven Spielberg. "To my
amazement," says Richard Zanuck,
"Steven called me two days later and
said, 'I love this. Let's do it.'" (The
Zanucks

co-produced the film with

34

August 2002

which

enthuses. "It

they give me
what he's thinking."
Mendes wanted

that

a

real

to

sense

of

shoot Road

Perdition

entirely on location in
Chicago and the nearby town of
to

Pullman

to

create

an

authentic

Midwestern look. The Illinois State
Film Commission

provided the film¬
makers with the Armory, the largest
location mainstay in Chicago. Large
enough to hold a football field, the
Armory is home to the Illinois State
National Guard. The facility offered
the filmmakers considerable flexibil¬

ity, and the interiors of the Sullivan
house and the Rooney mansion were
among the sets built there. "We
needed stage space in Chicago to
build a very large set, and the Armory
was
just that," says gaffer Tom Stern,
who

Mendes.)
Hall and Mendes agree

adds, "I love Sam's storyboards
because

also

worked

Beauty. "I think the

using a graphic novel as source mate¬
rial simplified one aspect of prepro¬
duction: they already had a form of
storyboard at their disposal. In fact,
"we did work from storyboards most

National Guard

of the time," Mendes notes. Hall

Armory

on

American

governor got

the

to move across

the

street."
Hall

appreciated the facility

because it gave him complete control
over his
lighting environment. "The
was a

wonderful spot in

set up

to

our

'studio,'" he

great space. We
did all kinds of work there, including
was a

'poor man's process' - night
driving scenes where we would shake
the car and create passing lights and
our

rain."
To transform the Armory into
soundstage, key grip Bill Young and
his crew hung greenbeds overhead to
facilitate lighting, and they hung
tracks around the periphery of the
Armory for a movable backing.
a

"Once the

sets were

built, it

was an

intensive

rigging process to put all
the scaffolding in and hang tracks for
the very large backing," says Young.
"We had to have an engineer inspect
the building and approve the hang¬
ing of all that weight from the ceiling.
It took a rigging crew of 10 almost
eight weeks to rig it.
"We
put up scaffolding
throughout the Armory to create
lighting positions, especially for
lighting the backings and lighting
outside the windows," he continues.
"Conrad likes

positions

so

to have those lighting
he can make the picture
American Cinematographer - August 2002

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