American Cinematographer - October 2007 - (Page 54)

Emotional Betrayal The crew prepares to film Chia Chih in a café, the scene that kicks off the film’s climactic sequence. “This is the lighting for the café before a transition to the sunset lighting,” says Prieto. “You can see the three 18Ks on Condors for sunlight, 4K Pars going through 12-by Full Grid for ambient daylight, and a Blanket Light for Chia Chih’s keylight as she sits in her booth.” percent going through 12'x12' frames of Full Grid. “Ang wanted this scene to look like they were inside a pink lantern,” says the cinematographer, “so I lit the set with an enveloping, pinkish soft light.” The third occurrence is the film’s climax, which progresses from late afternoon to dusk. “Rodrigo told me this was the most nerve-wracking thing he’s ever done as a cinematographer,” says Lee. The long magic-hour sequence was shot outside at Shanghai Film Studio on a reproduction of Nanking Road. (The studio had a street set, but Lee didn’t want to use it because he believed Chinese viewers would recognize it from previous movies and commercials. Lee had an exact reproduction of Nanking Road built perpendicular to it. Constructed full scale and without forced perspective, this street had 182 storefronts to dress and light.) The climax begins with Chia Chih waiting in a sunlit café on Nanking Road. To create the feeling 54 October 2007 of mid-afternoon light, Prieto started with 18Ks outside and 4K Pars tucked away on columns inside the café, bounced off of bleached muslin on the ceiling. A transition occurs after a cutaway to her coffee cup. When the camera tilts back up, golden sunset light is introduced, mixed with slightly cyan ambient daylight. She exits to the street, and a wide shot reveals the whole intersection in late afternoon light. “I had to come up with a way of creating this golden light with enough intensity to fight ambient daylight, and it became really tricky,” says Prieto. The sequence took 21⁄2 weeks to shoot, and Prieto had to maintain that light while shooting exhaustive coverage that ranged from rooftopsniper POVs to shots ramping from 24 fps to 48 fps to suggest Chia Chih’s acute fear. “Scheduling each angle to be shot in the shade of the buildings was a big challenge,” he says. “It took careful planning to pull off the illusion that it was all shot at sunset, because we had to film at all hours of the day.” An interior scene follows, when she and Yee go into the jewelry shop. After she is presented with the pink diamond, the ambient light changes to a slightly pinkmagenta hue. Afterwards, she rushes back onto the street, and it’s now near dusk, with a purple-and-gold sunset. She wanders in a daze, grabs a pedicab, and then is stopped at a blockade. For this huge exterior, Prieto relied on the digital intermediate (DI), which he carried out at EFilm in collaboration with colorist Yvan Lucas, to achieve the purple skylight. The golden sunlight again came from tungsten bulbs. “I was using [Fuji Eterna] tungsten film and had an 85 filter on the lens, which made ambient daylight neutral and tungsten light golden,” he notes. “I chose tungsten instead of Musco lights or HMIs to avoid gelling massive units. The problem was finding a [tungsten] source that could overpower daylight, one that would light an 80-foot stretch of street.”

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American Cinematographer - October 2007 Contents Editor’s Note Letters DVD Playback Production Slate Western Destinies Emotional Betrayal Palace Intrigue Unsafe Passage Short Takes Post Focus New Products & Services International Marketplace Classified Ads Ad Index Clubhouse News ASC Close-Up

American Cinematographer - October 2007

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