American Cinematographer - September 2011 - 40

◗

A Mighty Pen

Intent on destroying Shakespeare’s legacy, armed guards burn down the Globe Theatre and arrest Jonson, who attempts to save Oxford’s manuscripts by hiding them beneath the stage.

Haupt hung a lot of overhead fill light, subtly filling in the shadows with large bounce surfaces (bleached and unbleached muslin) and Lowel 1K Rifa eX lights aimed through 1⁄2 Soft Frost. To facilitate the lighting of greenscreen stages for what would eventually be day exteriors, Foerster’s crew hung almost 4,000 square feet of fireproof white fabric from the ceiling. On one side, five 15'x60' greenscreen sections could be lowered or raised as needed, while eight 4K and eight 6K HMIs were positioned on each of the other three sides; the light from these units was bounced off the overhead surface, which could be flagged off with netting to give the bounce some directionality. On the ground, 1K and 650-watt
40 September 2011

Rifa eX lamps were used as roving eyelights, as were a few ingenious “wok lights,” two-handled steel woks outfitted with an ordinary household bulb and covered with 1⁄4 CTO. The woks were connected to a dimmer board and could be programmed to emulate a flickering flame. The “Medusa light” was a variation on the wok light, featuring as many as 12 bulbs attached to flexible wire necks. “Often, fill light and sometimes even keylight was accomplished with adjustable flame bars or with the double-wick candles either handheld or mounted on C-stands,” says Foerster. Any movie about Shakespeare is bound to involve performances of his plays, and the book Lighting the
American Cinematographer

Shakespearean Stage offered the filmmakers a wealth of information about how plays were staged in the era. “Sometimes they started Act One in the afternoon and Act Two at dusk, and Act Three was staged in candlelight,” Foerster explains. “They even had devices to dim the candles at the proper time. There are descriptions of the performances at court, and how all of the candle smoke could make it seem as though you were looking at the actors through a veil.” At the Rose and Globe theaters, she adds, “they usually staged their performances in daylight and didn’t have much money for candles, so we cheated [those scenes] a bit for aesthetic reasons.” Performances take place in a number of venues throughout the film. When Elizabeth meets Oxford for the first time, the 10-year-old poet (played by Luke Thomas Taylor) is staging a performance of his work in one of the queen’s private chambers. The influence of De La Tour’s paintings emerges in the play’s final act, set in a gnarled tree lit by candles in metal intensifiers. Silberberg hid LED rope lights behind the tree branches to extend the firelight into the background. “There was a lot of candlelight and also a lot of tungsten light — small sources,” he details. “To provide a bit of soft front fill, we

American Cinematographer - September 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - September 2011