American Cinematographer - February 2008 - (Page 28) Island of Lost Souls Right: Six 12light MaxiBrutes were mounted on the underside of the Brooklyn Bridge to provide backlight for a 300'-long barge that served as the evacuation point for Manhattan’s uninfected citizens. A nearby 15-6K BeBee Night Light provided low-level fill. Below: As the virus spreads, Neville rushes his wife (Salli Richardson) and daughter (Willow Smith) to a waiting transport. (Charlie Tahan), is a particularly pertinent example of the production’s location work. (Ed. Note: This scene was cut from the final film.) To shoot the sequence, the production shut down a 10-block stretch of Fifth Avenue. “We needed up to 200 production assistants, and they were positioned on each intersection, in the doorways of shops, at subwaystation entrances and exits — anywhere people needed to be controlled,” recalls Lesnie. “When 1st AD J.P. Wetzel called for a lockdown, each intersection responded in sequence, and the whole process often took at least 15 minutes to complete.” Shot early on a Sunday morning, the two-minute walk-and-talk was covered by two Panaflex Millennium XLs on Steadicams that were Garfield-mounted to dollies. Lesnie describes shooting the sequence as eerily akin to Neville’s experience: “While I was walking backwards, watching the monitors on two Steadicams, there were only three people in front of me as far as the eye could see, and it was dead quiet. I was completely immersed in the scene. For a brief moment, I felt what it’s like to be in an empty city. When ‘cut’ was called, a massive cheer went up from the thousand people behind us who were watching Will Smith, and it took me totally by surprise!” Another scene shows Neville fishing for his dinner at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he breeds carp in a pool at the 28 February 2008
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