American Cinematographer - March 2009 - (Page 38) Cutting-Edge Camerawork Right: Telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) takes an order at Merlotte’s Bar and Grill, a set that created some challenges for the crew. Below: Sookie and her brother (Ryan Kwanten) visit in her kitchen. to someone with a 40mm lens and see that shallow depth of field with a very gentle falloff in the focus.” One of the show’s key sets is Merlotte’s Bar and Grill, where Sookie is a waitress. It’s a place where several of the main characters gather at least once per episode. “That’s where we do our highest page count each episode,” says Jensen. “Alan [Ball] was very specific that he wanted it to feel like a family place. We first considered using practicals and neon to light the set, but that proved to be a little too moody, so then we started rigging all the ceilings with fixtures, but that was tough because they’re hard ceilings, and we’re shooting so wide that we’re nearly always seeing them. We had to cut away sections of the ceiling that could be removed when they were off-camera so we could position Kino Flo DMX fixtures there. For season two, we’re cutting back a bit on the lighting budget, so the Kinos had to go. My gaffer, Evans Brown, came up with a fixture he calls ‘Triffids’ [named for The Day of the Triffids], which are basically homemade lightboxes. He took 750-watt Nooks and built an aluminum casing around them, sprayed black on the outside and white on the inside, and then faced them with 1000H. We have dozens of them in the ceiling; they have a nice, soft spread but can be really punchy. They’ve enabled me to lift the base in Merlotte’s and get more exposure to show off more wood in the sets.” Jensen also found lighting behind the bar to be a bit of a challenge, thanks to a header built into the set above the bar. He and Brown incorporated “Razor” lights, which were created by Denny Eccelston, Varese’s feature-film gaffer; the fixtures feature two black PVC pipes with long slots cut into one side, and a 2' or 4' Kino Flo tube is placed inside the inner pipe. By rotating the two pipes in opposite directions, the user can adjust the intensity of the light (by controlling how much light spills out the larger slot) as well as its direction. “They’re great tools for getting an edgelight or a little keylight into places where you just can’t put any other fixture,” Jensen says. The house Sookie shares with her grandmother, Adele (Lois Smith), is a location that initially gave Jensen some problems. “The house is small, and there’s a lot of white, especially in the kitchen, where a lot of action takes place,” he says. “Although white walls are usually something a cinematogra- 38 March 2009
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