American Cinematographer - September 2007 - (Page 37)

To work out a lighting plan for an action sequence filmed in Berlin (standing in for Moscow), German gaffer Ronnie Schwarz used Google Earth to communicate with Wood, who was filming in London at the time. Lenny 2 crane on the roof for some shots, and we all agreed we could do it, but then all of a sudden someone got cold feet. The crane weighs a lot, and you can’t just check the building specs in Morocco like you can in Britain or America. The buildings are at least 100 years old, and they don’t have all that information.” The house-to-house chase also has Bourne jump from a rooftop into a window 12' below. He smashes through wooden shutters into a kitchen, and the chase continues through the apartment. This, too, was covered numerous ways, and Moriarty was particularly pleased with the subjective angle captured by Damon’s stunt double, who really made the jump with an Arri 235 strapped to his body. “I don’t know how it’s going to be cut together, but that shot really gives you the reality of someone taking that leap,” he says. For the action inside the building, Moriarty had to make the best of certain limitations. “We couldn’t bring in big units — you can’t even get cars near that area,” he says. “The largest lights we could use were 4Ks. Since all the buildings are in close proximity, we could put some of these units in windows of other buildings and make it look like the kind of direct, intense sunlight they have there. It was restrictive, but it worked well.” Inside the apartment, the crew built a rig into the ceiling (upside-down track, essentially) that could guide an operator following an actor from room to room, around corners, into another room and across to the next building. One of the shots Moriarty is most pleased with made use of a very low-tech rig. When Bourne runs across a roof and into a doorway leading to a walkway to the roof of the next building, it was important to be able to let Damon run at full speed with a camera staying ahead of him. “Obviously, you can’t have an operator running backwards as fast as a man running forward,” says Moriarty. “There was really no room for tracks in the doorway, plus you would’ve seen them in the shot. So instead, we rigged a two-wheel upright trolley, modified it with scaffolding poles and strapped an operator into it; we had three grips pulling it backward while Matt was running forward for about 50 meters. I’m quite proud of that shot and hope it’s in the film. Sometimes the simplest rigs work the best.” Gaffer John “Biggles” Higgins recalls that things got a little heated during the Morocco shoot. “There American Cinematographer 37

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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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