American Cinematographer - October 2005 - 46

A Model Thriller
Co-director
Steve Box

action had been shot earlier

adjusts one of
the bunnies

plaguing Lady
Tottington's
property. Like
Wallace &
Gromit creator
Nick Park, Box

got his start as
an

animator

-

his credits

include the

nefarious

penguin in The
Wrong Trousers
-

but neither he

nor

Park did any

animation

on

Were-Rabbit.
Riddett recalls,

"Steve and Nick
often asked the
animators for
almost

impossible
things, and I
would think,
'

You know how

difficult that will
be!' But that
didn't stop

them
asking for it, and
the animators

really rose to the
challenge."

near

Tottington Hall. Beneath the
assistant art director Andy

set,

prepping the mound of
signify the wererabbit's tunneling; the animator
would eventually animate the dirt
along a pre-formed trench to suggest
Brown

was

dirt that would

"We had

design a lighting
strategy that would work across all
the sets on which the fairground
scene was shot," says Oliver. "The
rides, sideshows, vegetable stand,
and the edge of the house were
covered in strands of tiny 12-volt
practical; there were 25,000 of them
across all the fairground sets, and
to

on

sense

on page

of

number of 12-volt 50-watt Micro

Ellipses rigged at ground level;
regardless of which way we were
looking, these units were always used
to provide warm back- or rimlight
on the characters. On very large sets,
I

sometimes used Strand

Profiles farther away,
at

50 to 70

16/30

running them

percent; these were

usually gelled with Va

or Vi CTB or
Bastard Amber. The characters were

front-filled with

gentle blue light,
Ellipses gelled with Lee 174
Vi Opal diffusion; for tracking

Micro

and

mounted

a

on

To create

wash,

the motion-control

an

ambient

"The chase

rig.

nighttime

mounted 4-foot, 4-tube

we

by blue moonlight," he continues.
"We then had fun matching the
camera moves required for the vari¬
ous foreground plates with the fair¬
ground backgrounds. Sometimes
this was just a matter of replicating
the correct camera position and
repeating the move, but this usually
required trial and error, as our sets
rely on false perspective and back¬
ground moves generally have less
apparent movement than the fore¬
ground. I'm sure there's a formula
for working this out, but I prefer to
judge it by eye.
in The

scenes

Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave
us to play with a variety of

allowed

visual

Kino Flos

animation tricks

of CTB

excitement," continues Riddett. "We

gelled with varying levels
high in the grid over the set.

"We made the house windows
the interior walls. As for the

conser¬

the roof, we always liked
the greenhouse looked in
Minority Report, and we aimed for
that same strange pinky/peach color
in the conservatory throughout the
film. I'm not sure how they did it, but
we used pale lavender gels and ran
the lamps at 70 percent."
vatory on
the way

The finale includes

this set alone. [See

41.] These gave a
depth and shape to the sets
and provided some fill, but they also
motivated the light on the towns¬
people, which was provided by a
diagram

shots, these lights were sometimes

glow by bouncing Micro Ellipses off

the creature's movement.

about 4,500

44 October 2005

against

greenscreen - not bluescreen,
because the foreground was filtered

a

chase

along the rooftops of Tottington Hall
fairground in the back¬
ground, and the filmmakers had to
wait until most of the picture had
been completed in order to have
enough stage space and fairground
with the

props to
set

construct a

single, massive

background plates. "The
complete with false-perspec¬

for the

set was

tive trees and hills

distance, and it

receding into the
usable for back¬

was

grounds looking in any direction
was practically self-illumi¬
nating, thanks to the fairground
lights," says Riddett. "A simple
rearrangement of fairground rides
was enough to create a different view
when required.
"A lot of the foreground

because it

to

create

hope we've developed these, but we
always return to tried-and-true
techniques, such as tracking our
puppets past large sets, or tracking
large sets past our puppets. These
techniques sufficed for most
sections of this chase

as

well. The

practicalities involved building one
large building and using a Milo
to move the characters past the
building while filming them one
animated frame at a time; obviously,
very

this

meant

follow the

the animator had

camera,

illuminate the

to

and that

large

set

we

to

had

evenly.

we built two units
20-foot section of the build¬

Alternatively,
where

ing

a

was

moved

mounted

one

on tracks and
frame at a time behind

the puppets;
and rigged so

the set was designed
that when it got to the

end of its travel, it could be returned
to

its

with

starting position and
no

carry on

apparent change. These

always filmed with
motion - moving the camera or
background during the exposure -
to blur the background."
By the time Riddett and
Oliver began filming these back¬
ground plates, they had begun the
sequences were
go
American Cinematographer - October 2005

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