American Cinematographer - March 2008 - (Page 33)

designed,” recalls Deschanel. “James Bissell, our production designer, did a spectacular job of designing the study and all its wonders. Everywhere we looked, there was really cool stuff — scientific equipment and remnants of bones and animals. Jim knows how to design things to work brilliantly with light, and it’s wonderful to work with someone who has that kind of eye. The room represents the origins of the story, so it was vital that it had a strange, magical quality. Jim’s work really gave it that. “The entire interior of the house was built at Mel’s Stages in Montreal, so we used a painted backdrop outside the study window to give it some sense of depth,” he continues. “We put light in specific places, just little touches and kicks, but mostly left the lighting up to Jared’s flashlight. I let the ambience fall several stops below the flashlight and gave Freddie specific spots to hit with it to kick light back on himself, but we wanted to let him fall into blackness to keep the sense of mystery and drama.” Gaffer Jean Courteau adds, “We used a couple of small Kino Flo fixtures to extend the moonlight ambience coming through the windows, and we used SureFire flashlights, which are incredibly bright.” The façade of the Spiderwick house was built in Cap Saint Jacques, a 700-acre wooded park in Montreal. Delays in preproduction resulted in a mid-September start date, putting the production right up against Montreal’s harsh winter. As it turned out, the filmmakers had to shoot exteriors in Cap Saint Jacques during one of the rainiest Octobers on record. “It was nuts,” recalls Deschanel. “We were outside in the middle of the day under the canopy of this dense forest, and it was rainy and overcast. I had planned on using Kodak [Vision2 200T] 5217 for all the exteriors, but I just didn’t have enough light. I had to turn to [Vision2 500T] 5218 for the forest stuff, and even though I was rating it at [ISO] 320, I was only getting something like a T2.2 at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. We had a scene outside the house where the kids try to burn Spiderwick’s book, and the flames were overpowering the natural daylight in mid-afternoon! It was really crazy.” For day and night exteriors in Montreal, Courteau brought in LRX Lights, Canada’s equivalent to a BeBee Night Light. The production used two LRXs to bring “daylight” through the dense forest canopy and work around the overcast skies. Closer in, Deschanel and Courteau used 18K HMIs bounced into bluedyed muslin to create soft, cool, ambient daylight; Deschanel had impressed Courteau with this tech- 33 http://www.universalstudios.com/studio http://www.universalstudios.com/studio

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - March 2008

American Cinematographer - March 2008 Contents Editor’s Note Short Takes: Bill Viola’s Ocean Without a Shore Production Slate: 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days Production Slate: Chantal: A Night at the Pyramids Magical Mystery Tour Some Kind of Monster Tantalizing Television Making Sitcoms “Sexy” Post Focus: Mega Playground Helps Set Look for Sibling Post Focus: Visual Effects Society Launches White Paper New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index In Memoriam: John McPherson, ASC ASC Membership Roster Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Wayne Kennan

American Cinematographer - March 2008

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