American Cinematographer - August 2008 - (Page 55) bigger or smaller than we expected. It’s all based on Wren, our proprietary renderer.” The Himalayan sequence also features an avalanche that was created by Rhythm & Hues via fluid dynamics. “The avalanche is completely digital and washes through a digital environment and then the physical set, and it had to come much closer to the camera than we’ve ever done before,” says Spears. “We used our proprietary fluidsimulation toolkit, which won an Academy Technical Achievement Award last year. Everything but the big chunks of snow flying off was rendered with non-traditional volumetric means to give it a look crossed between water, clouds and snow, in contrast to a traditional hard-surface solution.” The O’Connells ultimately locate Shangri-La, represented as a 130'x300' cave set with a large Buddha statue filling one side and a misty pool in the center. The set was built full-size onstage in Montreal with a section of greenscreen lit with Super Green Kino Flos at one end to allow for CG set extensions. The Eternal Pool of Life is filled with flowing CG diamonds. “Inside the pool, we had eight motorized Martin Mac 2000s with rotating mosaic-glass gobos to create the prismatic effect of the diamonds,” says Duggan. “We also simulated firelight with 12K Maxi-Brutes set on a random pattern with our dimmer board. It’s another example of using interactive lighting to enhance the visual effects.” Tomb’s finale comprises a huge land battle between the 5,000strong terracotta army of the Emperor and the 2,500-or-so Foundation Warriors summoned by the Sorceress. The practical portion of the conflict was staged in a desert valley in Tianmo, China; these scenes were shot in available light augmented by 18Ks on Condors for fill and backlight. Two hundred real Chinese soldiers were used as members of the Emperor’s army; Duggan and the visualeffects team maneuvered the troops through several takes in order to get a sense of the overall flow and size of the fight. “At times, the scale of the shots became so huge that the reference our visual-effects team got from the real army was enough information to complete a much larger scene,” recalls the cinematographer. “We were all closely involved in working out the perspectives. We Above left: Hanging lightboxes illuminate a street set built on the backlot at Shanghai Studios. Above right: Rick and Jonathan take in the sights as Evelyn chats with son Alex (Luke Ford) in the backseat. Below left: Heavy-duty construction cranes are mobilized on the mountain set. Below right: Crewmembers block out a crane shot that will traverse a rope bridge. American Cinematographer 55
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