American Cinematographer - July 2015 - 22

Malcolm, Jib and Diggy venture beyond their comfort zone when they attend a
nightclub party thrown by a local drug dealer.

a comedy, it was lit like a drama. "Contrast
is a huge tool for telling a story," the cinematographer says. "Take that away, and it
feels like you're painting with one hand tied
behind your back."
Dope's biggest setup was the nightclub, comprising a front exterior, alleyway
exterior and club interior, all shot at the Lacy
Street center. Due to scheduling, everything
had to be lit simultaneously. "Between
those three environments, we had almost
every lamp working," says gaffer Kyle
Warmack. "What drove the overall strategy
was the need to light very quickly and
provide total freedom for our two cameras,
all while being able to shift moods; the club
scenes have suspense, romance, comedy
and action, depending on which characters
are interacting."
The entryway where Malcolm tries
22

July 2015

to sneak in was lit with China-hat practicals
with 150-watt globes providing pools of
neutral light. Above those were Kino Flo 4'
four-banks with tungsten tubes gelled with
Rosco 4390 CalColor Cyan 90. Likewise in
the small back room where the shoot-out
occurs, China hats did the work, supplemented by a Rifa eX 55 with a control grid
over the entrance.
For the large, colorful club floor, the
goal was to light speedily from above.
During a day of pre-rigging, best boy electric
Andrew Gorrell rigged lamps to a poorman's grid of speedrail and C-clamps
attached to the overhead steel beams,
constructed by key grip Greg Flores and his
team. These held six Martin Mac 500
moving lights spaced around the set, and
eight Kino Flo Image 85s gelled with 90
Cyan, E-Colour 117 Steel Blue or 162
American Cinematographer

Bastard Amber. "We usually only used a
couple of tubes on each, since Rachel
always wants as much contrast as possible,
but we doubled the intensity on several
units to light the mayhem that ensues
during the police raid," says Warmack.
Around the perimeter were four
groups of Par cans gelled with E-Colour 104
Deep Amber and 106 Primary Red on
dimmer packs, as backlights for the crowd.
Every pillar in the club was fitted on all four
sides with colored Kino Flo tubes - four
tubes on each pillar, with red and green on
alternating sides - which were
programmed to blink on and off. Pink tubes
were used in the background, near the bar
and the entrance.
In addition, says Warmack, "the DJ
stage had two vertical rails in picture with
gelled Par 38 cans on dimmer packs, plus
two Creamsource Doppio daylight LED
units to act as sleek-looking audience blinders. All of the units were routed back to
lighting programmer Eric Androvich's
control board - a GrandMa2 command
wing. Between setups, he was out on the
floor with me with his remote, making
adjustments on the fly. No matter where we
were shooting in the room, we could swivel
at least three of the Martin Mac 500s to
work as a moving backlight, key or background accent."
In another party scene, as Malcolm's
band plays and his online Molly market
opens for business, the revelers record the
goings-on using smartphones and posting
to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
According to Paulin, the production made
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