American Cinematographer - August 2008 - (Page 18) Near right: Orr employed space lights, Par cans and various practical sources to light this underground cannabis farm, which appears first in a blackand-white sequence set in the 1930s. Far right: Rogen throws himself into what Orr describes as “action-movie cliché. Between shooting a variety of machine guns and getting to beat up Danny McBride, [Rogen] had a pretty fantastic time.” Below left (from left): Producer Shauna Robertson, writer Evan Goldberg, Green and Orr survey the barn interior, which was built onstage at Sony Studios. Below right: The villain’s goons hold Saul captive inside the barn. Ranch, while the interior was built onstage at Sony. Onstage, Orr used about 20 space lights to provide the base ambience. “Then, we incorporated fluorescent tubes as practical lights under some of the stalls, and I tried to hide Kino Flos to augment the corners of the barn from the ground,” he says. In the midst of Dale’s attempt to save Saul, an explosion sets the barn ablaze. To supplement the effects fire on the set, “we used two or three series of batten strips on a flicker through 4by-8 Full CTO,” says the cinematographer. “Shooting into the fire was tricky; it’s a hard thing to meter. It can fluctuate within 3 stops or more, and there’s a point where the flames become overwhelming and the backgrounds go too dark. We used the lights to keep detail in the background.” To light the barn exterior, Orr again employed three Condors with Dinos — one for backlight, one to rake the barn, and one to crosslight Dale in the foreground before he goes inside. “The barn was rigged with explosives, so I couldn’t have anything inside, but I still had to illuminate the windows,” recalls Orr. “I lined up about eight Ninelight Maxi-Brutes well behind the façade to bounce into the roof and light the windows, and I used strobes to simulate the gunfight going on inside.” For Orr, the most challenging location was a vacant newspaper-printing facility in Torrance, California, which the production turned into a secret underground facility used to develop exotic strains of cannabis. The space makes its first appearance early in the film, in a black-and-white sequence set in the 1930s, when the facility was under government care. When it reappears, it has been taken over by Ted, and though the plants are well-tended, the space is run-down. “We hung about 25 space lights from the ceiling, which was about 70 feet high, and we also used a series of Par cans that were spaced to mimic the grow lights [over the plants],” 18 August 2008
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