American Cinematographer - October 2016 - 47

Left: The crew
captures a postexplosion scene.
Below: Shooting
handheld, the
crew follows the
action for a scene
in which Fleytas
and Curt Kuchta
(David
Maldonado) help
an injured Harrell
escape the
flames.

One of Chediak's most important and farthest-reaching decisions was
to light all sets with practicals in 360
degrees. This approach demanded an
enormous pre-rigging job, but it would
give Berg and the actors maximum flexibility while enabling Chediak's Zenstyle preparedness. "I mainly tried to use
the kind of industrial lighting you'd find
on [the real] rig," Chediak says.
Gaffer Andy Ryan adds, "At one
point, we had more than 4,500 practicals. Among that number, we had
different kinds of fluorescents, [including] explosion-proof fluorescents on all
the exterior rig sets. We had metalhalide fixtures, we had quartz work
lights - and we had more LEDs than
you can imagine that we ran off of our
four-channel LED controllers."
Each fixture was on its own
dimmer line, operating off MA
Lighting's GrandMA2 console, and
could be switched off on cue - when,
for instance, the rig's electricity shuts
down, leaving only emergency lights
functioning - or dimmed down to, say,
20 percent on the bridge when the filmmakers wanted the fire outside to read a
little hotter. "That in and of itself was an
achievement," Ryan says of the rigging.
"But then we had to make [each unit]

waterproof and GFI-protected, so if
something went wrong, it would shut
itself off." To manage that job, Ryan
assembled a fixture crew that included a
foreman, best boy and six others who,
starting eight weeks out, worked fulltime to build, wire and trouble-shoot
the thousands of units.
In selecting the fluorescents that
would dominate the rig's interior, Ryan
tested a variety of tubes, "from tungsten
to daylight to the various degrees of cool
white, because cool white goes in three
or four different colors," the gaffer
notes. "We had five different tubes that
we tested against set walls and
wardrobe. What we chose was a coolwhite tube that burned at 4,600K - a
little bluer than average."
Chediak worked closely with
costume designer Kasia WalickaMaimone to ensure that the red
Transocean uniforms worn by the oil
rig's crew wouldn't seem quease-inducing under the greenish fluorescents. By
taking that red more toward burgundy,
they found a compatible combination.
In addition, with Seagers, they tested
various colors of wall paint. "We ended
up going with a shiny silver," Chediak
notes. "It worked very well with the
fluorescents."
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Shooting the explosions that
doomed Deepwater Horizon required
extensive planning and teamwork
between all departments, including
Industrial Light & Magic, the lead
supplier of the production's visual
effects. The disaster broke down into
two parts. First was the blowout, which
sent dense "mud" gushing up like a
high-pressure geyser through the drill
floor; the second phase began when a
gas cloud spread throughout the rig,
October 2016

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