American Cinematographer - February 2009 - (Page 16)

The production shot some scenes inside the Guggenheim Museum in New York, but other parts of that sequence were filmed on a replica set built in an old locomotive warehouse in Germany (above and below). ize the illegal activities within the system stretch into his own organization, and before long, he becomes a target. Teaming up with a district attorney, Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), Salinger travels to New York, Berlin, Istanbul and Milan on a life-and-death chase to topple the bank. A dramatic showdown at the Guggenheim Museum in New York sees Salinger and Whitman run into heavily armed assassins. “We felt that if we had a slow buildup of tension through the movie, it would grow toward this sequence, where it explodes and hits the audience full-on,” says Tykwer. “Many action movies open with a spectacular sequence that sets a standard the filmmakers have to keep running after, but we chose not to set a hysterical pace. When the action happens, it’s all the more overwhelming.” Because the Guggenheim sequence involves considerable destruction, it was never going to be filmed entirely on location. The production’s soundstage work was based at Studio Babelsberg in Germany, but none of the available stages was large enough to accommodate even a partial reconstruction of the Guggenheim interior. Finally, the filmmakers located an old locomotive warehouse nearby and had it refurbished by a structural engineer to suit their needs. Even then, only three levels of the Guggenheim’s famous spiral rotunda would fit beneath the building’s ceiling, so they were dressed first as the upper levels, then redressed for shots of the lower levels and the lobby. Tykwer relished the opportunity to effectively become curator of the Guggenheim for the sequence, and he chose to display the works of Julian Rosefeldt, a German video artist. “Our film is about a guy who has to hunt down an organization that represents a seemingly invisible system, and I thought video art was quite a logical thing to feature because it’s not physical like sculpture or paintings,” says Tykwer. “We built a 3- or 4-meter model of the Guggenheim that we could stand inside and figured out exactly where we were going to put the video screens and what we were going to do.” “I think we had 50 or 60 separate projections,” says Griebe. “The movie was produced by Sony, so we asked them for projectors, and there were endless technical discussions about lens and projector sizes. The biggest problem was the light power because we wanted the video images to have a lot of contrast, but I had to add some other lights to shoot the scenes. We did a lot of tests, including one where I didn’t add any lights at all; it looked really spooky with the screens as the only source, but it was too dark, so we gradually added lights until we found the right level. What made it difficult is that the Guggenheim [interior] is more or less white, so there are reflections and bounce light coming from every corner. Eventually, we used the projectors as they came because if you want more power, you have to use something like a Barco, which was too big. All the video projections were on hard disk, and we could control them with time code to make sure the right content was onscreen at the right time. It was very complicated, but I doubt anyone in the audience will realize how much work it involved!” The fact that the video projections partially dictated how much additional light Griebe could use for the scenes was actually something of a blessing, because there was very little room to rig lights either at the museum or onstage. “There was no possibility of putting up a lighting rig on the stage because the roof would not have taken the weight,” says gaffer Helmut Prein. “A tower rig was also impossible because of the shape of the set in correlation to the stage building. It was fortunate that the projectors necessitated low light levels because that prompted us to investigate helium balloons. We considered getting a custom-made elliptical 24K balloon, but there wasn’t enough time. Instead, we created a single soft source comprising three 4.8K helium tubes positioned side by side at the top of the set, above a layer of California Sunbounce medium diffusion.”¢ 16 February 2009

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - February 2009

American Cinematographer - February 2009 Contents Editor's Note Short Takes: Circus Production Slate: The International Reverte 2 Worlds in 3 Dimensions Dead Reckoning Embracing Anamorphic Citizen of the World Post Focus: Restoring Manhatta New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Peter Suschitzky

American Cinematographer - February 2009

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