American Cinematographer - December 2006 - 95

Motown Hitmakers
With the
camera

ready

to make a 360-

degree move
around the

action, Condon
watches
Hudson

run

through a song
Effie

uses to

audition for a
solo gig.

Dreamgirls?
Schliessler:

Very little, but
[theatrical-lighting designers] Jules
Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer were
just great. Having worked on Chicago
and The Producers, they came in with
so much knowledge about how we
could integrate film lighting with
theatrical lighting and make it all
work. Jules was next to
moment I

arrived

me

on set

from the

till we called

whenever I needed something
adjusted, he'd radio up to Peggy and

wrap;

she'd take

care

of it.

Film

Schliessler: About 20 percent
of our dailies were on film, courtesy
of Technicolor; the rest

high-definition [HD] video
by Complete Post. Mike Zacharia at
Technicolor coordinated everything
and was extremely helpful. I'd try to
see both sets of dailies in the morning
before work, but we were shooting
16-hour days, so sometimes I saw
film dailies just once a week.

wear

this show

would

-

and then,

once

the the¬

rigged, Jules and Peggy
would spend three or four days pro¬
gramming the lighting for the num¬
ber. Then I'd come in and spend 12
hours setting the levels and fine-tun¬
ater was

were trans¬

ferred to

language doesn't apply to
theatrical lighting. For example, you
can't ask your gaffer to throw a dou¬
ble into a certain light or diffuse it
with 216. Instead, you ask someone
to take a certain light down 20 or 30
percent. Everything has to go
through a dimmerboard and a com¬
puter, so it can be a fairly time-con¬
suming process. Typically, Jules and
Peggy would design their lighting on
paper, turn it over to the rigging crew
which worked 24 hours a day on

-

86 December 2006

ing during the tech rehearsal.
Did you have access to film
dailies so you could verify what you
were
getting?

After each tech rehearsal

on

Saturday, I'd shoot one super-wide
shot of the stage, with all the lighting
set up and stand-ins in place, and one
close-up. I tried to have the stand-ins
the

costumes

that would be

used in the number because many of
those were highly reflective, but
sometimes

they just

similar
printed
on film, and at 6 o'clock
Monday
morning, Bill, Jules, John and I
material. Those shots

screen

necessary

shot the

were

them. I could make any

adjustments before
number that day. If

hadn't been able
our

wore

theatrical

ing, I would

to see

we

we

film dailies of

lighting before shoot¬
have slept!

never

How did you

modify the the¬
fighting for shots where the
camera moves behind the perform¬
atrical

ers

to

show the audience?

Schliessler: That

was
tricky,
lights [VariLites Series 3000] are backlighting
the performers, and when you come

because

a

lot of those

around with the

camera

to

look

toward the audience, it becomes

frontlight, which looks terrible. At
first I thought I'd just take the levels
down 50 or 75 percent, because I still
wanted to feel the preprogrammed
lighting and color changes during
the number. But the first time

we

tried that, it took us about three

hours

change those levels! So I
my key grip, Mike
Anderson, and he came up with a
20-by-40-foot frame of light grid
that we just dropped in front of all
the theatrical backlights. It achieved
what I wanted instantly. It became a
beautiful, softer, more forgiving
light, and we didn't lose any of the
lighting changes. Sometimes we
added more layers of diffusion to the
frame, depending on the shot.
The theatrical lighting also
involved quite a bit of follow-spot
work. What kind of challenges did
talked

to

to

that present?
American Cinematographer - December 2006

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - December 2006
