American Cinematographer - October 2006 - 93

He describes the project's light¬
ing package as "pretty basic." In most
cases, he simply manipulated the exist¬
ing light and augmented it. "In the gym,
we used the available lights as toplight
and then brought in 12K HMIs that
were heavily diffused with half gridcloth. That was pretty much it." The
scene involving the detective and his
daughter required more expressive
lighting, however. Takayanagi used a
Nine-light Maxi-Brute diffused with
gridcloth to create a thin sliver of back¬
light on the detective, who sits by
himself in a dark, empty auditorium. To
illuminate the stage where the girl is
playing the piano, Takayanagi used a 5K
tungsten lamp (also diffused by gridcloth) as the keylight and Source Four
Lekos to create a backlight for the piano
that deliberately flared the lens. He also
underexposed the piano by half a stop.
The most difficult scene to light
was the school-board meeting at the

end, where Skelter is rebuked for his
actions.

"That

room

was

4 4 -I VV»

difficult

because it was

the second floor, and

didn't have the

budget to put lights
the cine¬
matographer. "So we had to find places
inside the room to hide lights. My gaffer
and I ended up putting a couple of 2.5K
HMIs on shelves in the corner to give
Skelter a backlight. And on the floor, we
used the Maxi-Brute with heavy diffu¬
sion as the keylight. Depending on
which way we were facing, it was the
key on either the [board members] at

outside the windows," says

the table

Skelter."

The film

was

processed and

color-timed at FotoKem, where it was

eventually printed on Kodak Vision
2383. Takayanagi was able to supervise
the timing, and he recalls that the main
issue was evening out the colors from
scene

to scene because of the mix of

natural light, fluorescent light and
daylight-balanced fixtures.
The most extensive post work
was the crowd replacement required
for the film's pep-rally scene, in which
hundreds of teenagers appear to fill the

Lighting inc. To

About 20 extras were filmed sitting
in different sections of the bleachers,

gym.

and Brad Kean used the software

appli¬

cation Shake to create the crowd. The

Takayanagi
(left) outlines
his plan for a
member of the
crew.

print back to film was performed by
FotoKem's Digital Film Services. Says
Burgess, "Everyone who sees the film
thinks the crowd shots
makes

are

real, and that

really happy, because if the
assembly shots didn't ring true, neither
would our make-believe high school."
me

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American Cinematographer - October 2006

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