American Cinematographer - October 2007 - (Page 56)

Emotional Betrayal for Chia Chih, and it was also effective because I could shoot in any direction with two cameras. I had a 2stop-underexposed ambient light for the background, provided by toplighting through 12-by-12 frames of full grid cloth and Lighttools Soft Egg Crate on top of the set. We used Dedolights for accents on walls and decorations.” The final touch was the flashing diamonds: Lee wanted to see their light reflected on the women’s faces. After testing various means of achieving this effect, Prieto settled upon a low-tech solution: small pieces of mirror embedded in pieces of clay that were held and gently moved by electricians under three Dedolights on stands next to the camera. The lights were gelled pink, yellow and blue — the diamonds’ colors. “It was fun coming up with all these strategies,” he says. “We shot so much mahjong with that effect that the electricians got really bored and ended up making little figures with the clay. At the end, we had all these little clay ducks and birds with mirrors on them!” Another subtle touch was a special eyelight for Leung. “I wanted something to bring the devil out of Mr. Yee,” says Lee. Inspired by a scene in which Yee approaches a torture victim with a piece of red-hot steel, his eyelight became “a shimmering, reddish light on his eyes — the killer light,” says Prieto. (The scene was eventually cut.) To create this effect, Man-Ching bought red, yellow and white Christmas-tree lights, attached them to a white cardboard square, and secured them with transparent plastic. “It looked like a frozen pizza,” says Prieto with a laugh, “so it became known as our Killer Pizza Light. We also used it on other scenes, like a night car interior that was shot against greenscreen; in that scene, Yee talks to Chia Chih about his job, which includes torturing people. We created combination of soft moonlight — 4-by-4 Kino Flos gelled with Filming Chia Chih in a pedicab as the “sun” sets on Nanking Road. In search of big guns to create sunset lighting in the midst of broad day, the production imported Iride Concorde and Jumbo lights from Cinelease in Burbank and combined them with Dinos and Maxi-Brutes. Prieto recalled reading about the Iride multi-fixture lights that Italian gaffer Filippo Cafolla had designed for Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC years ago. Yung Ka Lok located some through Cinelease in Burbank. “They’re like clusters of Par lights with very spotty bulbs — extremely focused and very piercing,” says Prieto. He chose the Concorde 31, a 6'x6' hexagonal unit with 31 aircraft lights (ACLs) of 600 watts and only 28 volts, and the Jumbo 16, a 4'x4' unit with 16 ACLs. “I was afraid we wouldn’t be able to afford them because this was toward the end of the shoot, and we didn’t have a big budget,” says the cinematographer. “But Cinelease actually loaned them to us; we just had to pay for shipping. Otherwise, I don’t know how we would have done it.” Altogether, Prieto positioned three Jumbos, one Concorde, five to six Dinos, two 24Ks, and three Ninelight Maxi-Brutes down the cross street to create a sunset source. To beat the natural daylight, “I calculated that I had to be one stop over ambient with these lights. The nightmare came when the light level started to drop! We were shooting in winter, so days were short. When the ambient light level started dropping, we had to start turning lights off like crazy! It changed every second.” Lust, Caution also involved lighting effects so subtle they might register on viewers only subliminally. One example is the flashing diamonds described in the opening lines of Chang’s short story, a detail Lee wanted to include: “Though it was still daylight, the hot lamp was shining full-beam over the mahjong table. Diamond rings flashed under its glare as their wearers clacked and reshuffled their tiles.” To light the mahjong scenes, Prieto put a 150watt mushroom bulb inside the practical lamp hanging above the table, and around the sides of the bulb he added 216 diffusion on a wire frame; this allowed the harder light to hit the table while a softer, diffused light hit the women’s faces. “The bounce off the white tablecloth provided the key light, rounded off by the softened light from the bulb in the lamp,” he says. “It worked well 56 October 2007

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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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