American Cinematographer - February 2016 - 60

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A Unique Second Unit

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iding Dan Mindel, ASC, BSC in the
shooting of The Force Awakens was his
2nd-unit cinematographer and longtime
collaborator Bruce McCleery. The 2ndunit team, which includes visual-effects
supervisor and 2nd-unit director Roger
Guyett, has worked together on nearly all
of director J.J. Abrams' films, including
Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek and Star
Trek Into Darkness.
"The way that second unit is structured on J.J.'s films is different than typical
second units," offers McCleery. "We're a
fortunate team of filmmakers that has
been together on a lot of projects, which
brings about a level of comfort, intimacy
and trust that isn't necessarily the norm."
That trust, McCleery continues,
"allows J.J. to schedule the movie [so] that
he can go back and forth between the
units. We'll frequently work on sequences
that the first unit is working on, taking care
of the action beats and the more complicated and time-consuming aspects of the
sequence, as a traditional second-unit team
would, but sometimes we're handling
entire sequences just with second unit.
"Mostly, whenever you see someone
flying in an X-wing or TIE fighter, when a
set is on a gimbal, or there are a lot of big
battles or explosions and fight sequences,
or when characters are on wires, we'll
handle the brunt of that," he adds. "Many
of the ship interiors - with the exception
of the Millennium Falcon - we handle
those. We often dealt with really elaborate
visual-effects components with CG
elements. Because Roger is a very savvy
visual-effects supervisor as well as an
accomplished director, he knew intimately
what the background environment was
that we were inserting some element into,
and that was invaluable."
McCleery started prep on The Force
Awakens in early March 2014 and jumped
right into discussions with Mindel.
"During that prep I had a lot of time to
test," he recalls. "I would shoot tests for
Dan, which is part of our fairly unique
relationship. I've known Dan for more
than 20 years and we have a very comfortable sort of language and communication.
We do multiple rounds of testing, and I try

February 2016

to light each set several different ways,
working in cooperation with the art
department and wardrobe to try out
textures and colors and set dressings and
such. The art and construction departments were really fantastic. They worked
incredibly hard to have several huge sets
ready for these tests way ahead of time.
We'd try different atmospheric conditions; various lenses, gels, camera moves
and filtrations; we'd test highlights and
exposure bracketing; and then Dan and I
would watch these tests together in the
theater at Pinewood to figure out how to
approach each set. It sounds like a luxury,
but it really saves time on set. Later, when
we went back to shooting that set for the
film, I'd know that Dan went with
'Option C' from our tests and know
exactly how to approach my lighting."
Though occasionally the scenario
was transposed, 1st unit would generally
start shooting on a particular set and 2nd
unit would come in later to finish it off.
And although the 1st-unit crew would
move on, the lighting-board operators
would remain with the set, as they had the
detailed knowledge of 1st unit's cues and
decisions. The system relied upon the
close cooperation of the 1st- and 2ndunit lighting departments, led respectively
by Perry Evans and David Sinfield.
In the course of the adventure, Poe
(Oscar Isaac) and Finn ( John Boyega)
steal a TIE fighter to make a getaway, and

American Cinematographer

although the production had created a
full-scale TIE-fighter cockpit, the coverage demands for one particular shot were
too much for the small space. "It was
really hard to get in there with the
camera, and J.J. wanted to do part of the
scene [as] a 360-degree shot around the
characters," recalls McCleery. "Within
the set, it was impossible - there was no
way we could do that, so we had to rebuild
the set in CG. We ended up rebuilding
the fighter out of bluescreen [material] in
different layers and in exactly the right
proportions to create the physical restrictions of the cockpit, and to make sure we
didn't violate that physical space with the
camera, which was rapidly circling the
actors via Steadicam.
"The way I lit the scene came
mostly from the portals - with interactive light from outside motivated by the
raging battle - as well as from the set
itself," he continues. "To maintain consistency, we re-created the portals with bluescreen orifices and lighting gobos that had
bluescreen behind them, so that when you
looked out the portal you saw blue. When
we weren't looking at the portals, I could
light through the orifice and then have
electricians move the lights - which
were handheld, on cranes and [on tracks]
- out of the way when the camera came
around to see the portal. The characters
are flying around in the middle of a battle,
so there are moving and changing lights

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