American Cinematographer - July 2005 - 68

Till Death Do Us Part
The

highly

reflective set for
Jane Smith's

office became

a

formidable

lighting
challenge for
Bazelli. "I found
that if we put

light behind [the
windows], the
luminescence of
the set bounced
it back and forth,

basically
carrying the light
throughout the
set. The

challenge was
making the
windows bright
enough to carry
the exposure,

but

not so super-

bright that they
looked blownout."

then the scene
might be played in such a way that
the concept doesn't work at all. You
have to approach lighting from an
acting point of view, not a lighting
point of view. When you see how the
characters act, you realize how you
have to light them."
concept on paper, but

Bazelli describes the Smith

them, I could be above frame line

a

and didn't have problems

acknowledge their assignment -
and increasing desire - to kill each
other. Tempers flare, weapons are
produced, and John and Jane leave in
separate vehicles to race each other
home. The New York driving scenes
were accomplished through the use
of rear-screen projection, a technique
"as old as filmmaking itself," as Bazelli
says. "It turned out to be one of the
nicest-looking scenes in the movie.
You need a little more space to set the
rear screen, but once you've done
that, you can get everything in your
negative."
As the sequence continues,
Jane gets home in time to turn off all
the house lights before her husband
arrives. The subsequent shootout

with reflec¬
High-angle backlight is great,

tions.

but the downside

was

that the

keylight couldn't be too high on Brad
and Angie or we'd get some weird
shadows. With all the windows,

The

Dana Arnold installed

as

is

camera

an

observer

at

this

point. It has more of a presence in the
action sequences, but in this part of
the story, we just let it play."
The

set

included

a

number of

large windows looking out on a
backyard, which was also built on
stage. "Avoiding reflections in big
windows is always challenging," says
Nakonechnyj.
Fortunately,
he
continues, "we had infinite rigging
abilities in the studio, and the luxury
of putting in greenbeds to position
lights exactly where they needed to
be. We used

July 2005

Smiths have

having a "sterile" quality,
especially at the beginning of the
film. "The tonality is very neutral -
almost an Ingmar Bergman feel.
When they have a candlelight dinner,
it's not about a romantic, candlelight
atmosphere. The candles are just
props, not the source of illumination.

house

64

Lights for ambience, and then,
greenbeds allowed us to
put backlights wherever we needed
because the

a

lot of overhead

Coop

sometimes
move

the

we

had

camera a

to

cheat the shots:

touch to make the

light work, and maybe
darker

than

we

go a

would

little
have

normally."
The

that

roughly 400 lighting units
Nakonechnyj and rigging gaffer
on

the sound-

configured into daytime
nighttime rigs; all of the instru¬

stage were
and

ments

"There

were

wired

to

dimmers.

only a few day scenes,"
the gaffer, "and we had big units
coming through the windows to
create shafts of daylight. At night, we
were

says

backlit the

trees

and other elements

outside the windows, and inside, we
did

traditional

Hollywood
lighting, with practical motivating
backlight, sidelight and keylight."
The house is the setting for the
film's centerpiece sequence, when the
more

tion
sary.

on

an

explosive confronta¬

the occasion of their anniver¬

The

actually begins at
location, where the two

sequence

restaurant

unfolds in

a

minimal

amount

of

ambient

light. "It was a good oppor¬
tunity to be dramatic, but also a place
where

we

could've

been

too

dramatic," says Bazelli. "Shooting

close-ups in cold half-light that simu¬
lates darkness wasn't an easy task. I
didn't want it to look like moonlight,
and I didn't want it to be

so

dark that
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