American Cinematographer - September 2007 - (Page 22)

Left: A young Michael (Daeg Faerch) starts killing early. Right: Parmet (in hat) watches over a two-camera take of Michael on Halloween night. (Levy had to leave to the production early because of a prior commitment and was replaced by Bob Brown.) Along with Daniel, McDonnell and Sprattley, Parmet’s key grip, Vince Palomino, also returned from The Devil’s Rejects. New to the crew was gaffer Curtiss Bradford. “I hired Curtiss because I’d seen his work and knew he could handle big lights,” says Parmet. “In my experience of doing independent movies all these years, nobody has the money to light up whole streets, so I thought I’d better get someone with a few tricks up his sleeve. As it turned out, we had more night exteriors on this movie than I’ve shot in my entire career as a cinematographer!” The production’s first night exterior was on a Pasadena street where Bradford and Parmet initially planned to use large backlight sources, including two Dinos and a Condor equipped with Maxi-Brutes. However, the practicalities of the location quickly forced the filmmakers to improvise. “The streets there looked beautiful during the day, but when you try to get a big backlight in there at night, it just doesn’t break through the canopy of trees,” explains Bradford. “By the time we got to our second night exterior, we had a game plan: we rigged Source Four ParNels and Pars in the trees on dimmers to give the feel of streetlights on the sidewalk and on the street and the leaves, even though there aren’t any streetlights in the shot. Then we used our big lights to illuminate the background.” On the Maxi-Brutes and Dinos, he worked with checkerboard dichroic and tungsten Pars, which “basically come out 1⁄4 blue,” he says. “That way, we didn’t have to run a 1⁄4-blue frame in the Condors. As it was, we were putting the Condors right at the maximum weight with the guy [inside].” Pasadena, particularly the house that provided the exterior and some interiors of the Myers house, proved challenging for the grip department as well. Palomino recalls, “I was running two crews all the time. The second crew, 10 or 15 guys, would come in at 7 a.m. and tent the entire house in four hours so we could shoot our night interiors. Then we’d stagger guys during lunch so that by the time we got back, they’d have ripped the entire structure down and we could start shooting night exteriors. The next morning we’d start all over again. For interiors, we used a lot of practicals and brought in whatever we could through the windows. We’d start with one setup that would pretty much stay the same for the rest of the scene; we’d change a few things every once in awhile.” To illustrate the point, Palomino and Bradford lead the way inside the hospital, allowing the art department to clear the snow as the crew sets up for a corridor scene lit primarily with overhead fluorescents. Referring to the Optima 32 tubes that are replacing the hospital’s fixtures, Bradford notes, “Their output is really more like 3000°K. The ballast isn’t quite as good as Kinos. “Lighting for two cameras is always very challenging,” he continues. “You just have to be ready to run in with a little fill for the eyes. For that we used small Litepanels LEDs or an LED Koloris Kit from Kino Flo. Phil loves these LEDs. We can rig them on a car with an inverter and not have to bat an eye, and because they use so little power we’ve been able to have our inverter in the trunk with one battery.” To expedite the tight 38-day shooting schedule, production granted Parmet a full-time rigging crew, which was led by rigging gaffer Aaron Schulte, a regular of Bradford’s electric depart- 22 September 2007

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - September 2007

Contents Editor’s Note Global Village DVD Playback Production Slate Bourne Again Cultural Immersion Baroque Visions Once Upon a Time in Bucharest Short Takes Post Focus Filmmakers’ Forum New Products & Services Points East International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index ASC Membership Roster Clubhouse News Wrap Shot

American Cinematographer - September 2007

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