American Cinematographer - June 2008 - (Page 32)

Vintage Indy The new woman in Indy’s life, stern Soviet agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), is far less gregarious than Marion. raphy of Raiders of the Lost Ark: the camera closes in on Jones’ shoes, then pulls back to reveal his shadow on a car as he dons his signature fedora, then finally dollies around to show his face in a close-up. “It was really beautiful to be able to reintroduce Indy 20 years later,” says Kaminski. Dubin recalls, “Steven made up his mind about that shot on the spur of the moment. It was our first day shooting with Harrison, and Steven was just playing around with the shadow of the fedora and realized what a great introduction that would be. It’s spectacular how Steven can bear the pressure of the whole film and still feel free to go off on a tangent and create a great shot 32 June 2008 out of nothing but his imagination. It ended up being a very complicated 270-degree camera move, but as usual, we were all up for the challenge.” A 4K Xenon lamp was used to create the hard shadow on the car in full daylight. “We were in New Mexico, and it was 108°, and all of our electronic lights kept shutting off because of the heat,” recalls Devlin. “So we came up with very elaborate air-conditioning and huts for all of the ballasts, and we made sure the heads and cables were out of the sun. We ended up giving a lot of star treatment to all the electronic lighting because it just hated being in that kind of temperature. Steven just smiled and said, ‘Well, that’s why we used arcs last time!’” Shortly after Jones is introduced, he is manhandled by some Russian goons and taken into the cavernous secret warehouse that audiences last saw at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The set featured endless rows of stacked wooden crates lit from overhead by scoop lights. “That sequence is full of action, and the set was so large you could actually drive a car across it at 25 miles an hour!” recalls Kaminski. “It also called for a lot of smoke, and when you have smoke, you can see light sources, and the whole thing can quickly start looking too theatrical. So our lighting style was a little more frontal rather than backlit. David worked with the art department to create a great, simple overhead lighting setup.” “We worked at a T5.6 stop, so the overhead lights needed to be super-bright, and we had to have them in the shot, so they had to read at a T16-22,” says Devlin. “We ended up using 4,000-watt practicals that were slightly oversized in relation to the bell housing, but because of the scale of the set, that’s not really noticeable. We had 120 housings made, and each contained four 1,000-watt Narrow Spot Par 64 bulbs. [Chief rigging technician] Mark Mele rigged it all up for us, and we did a lot of extra work so you wouldn’t see all those cables.” Following this sequence, the film moves to the college where Jones is a part-time professor of archaeology. These scenes were shot at Yale University, and for exteriors, the production altered storefronts and brought in hundreds of period cars and extras. Soon enough, Jones, accompanied by Mutt, gets involved in a high-speed motorcycle chase. At one point, the chase winds through the interior hallway of a library, which also served as one of the production’s standing cover sets in case of inclement weather. “It was a

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

American Cinematographer - June 2008 Contents Editor's Note Short Takes: "100 Days, " Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings Production Slate: Mongol Production Slate: Greensburg Vintage Indy A Prince in Peril Women's World 90 Years of Precision Post Focus: A 3-D Imax Work Flow for Wild Ocean Post Focus: 3cP Incorporates ASC CDL on State of Play Filmmakers' Forum: John Baily, ASC New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index ASC Membership Roster In Memoriam: Gayne Rescher, ASC Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up: Rob McLachlan

American Cinematographer - June 2008

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