American Cinematographer - June 2012 - 42

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All Together Now
3,200°K and 5,500°K, and we also installed a lot of red LEDs for ‘emergency’ mode,” adds Napolitano. The lighting inside the bridge also included MR16s for accents in various soffits and cavities, and nine diffused 4'x4' bay lights gelled with 1⁄8 CTB for general toplight ambience. “We also used VL3000s, focusing them into a bounce card on the floor if we needed to accent different areas of the set,” says Napolitano. “They had the ability to go red for emergency mode.” The bay lights and VL3000s were rigged on truss motors so their height could be adjusted as needed. The bridge has a circular shape, about 60 degrees of which is taken up by a large viewing window. A total of 22 space lights were hung between the window and a bluescreen for general ambience, while nine soft boxes pushed tungsten-generated “daylight” into the set with more directionality. The center five soft boxes contained three Arri T12s gelled with ¼ CTB, while the outer four boxes each contained three 5Ks gelled with ¼ CTB. Each box was fronted with a 5'x8' frame of Light Grid and fitted with two 2Ks gelled with ¼ CTB and ¼ Plus Green (for scenes that required nighttime ambience). To give a sense of daylight bouncing off clouds and filtering into the bridge from below, 22 10-light cyc units gelled with ¼ CTB and 216 diffusion were positioned beneath the window. All of this lighting was run back to Booth’s dimmer board. “I use the High End Systems Hog 3PC as my main board and server, and I used a Lenovo 10-inch touch-screen tablet as a remote so I could stand on set with Seamus and Chris,” says Booth. “When they said, ‘Turn that off,’ I knew exactly what ‘that’ was, and I only needed to hit a couple buttons on my tablet to do it.” Rivaling the scope of the bridge was the set for the penthouse apartment of Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), situated atop Stark Tower in Manhattan. Surrounded by bluescreen, the penthouse set was constructed approximately 10' above the stage floor and

Fury confabs with Iron Man and Hulk’s alter egos, Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, respectively. These before-and-after frames showcase the window-replacement work the visual-effects team performed in the Helicarrier’s laboratory, and also illustrate the CG content that plays on the set’s monitors. The set was lit practically, predominantly with built-in B&M Lighting Mac Tech LED tubes.

tunnel walls to give some detail where the overhead lights weren’t playing.” To capture the action, Shield and Mahaffie mounted Arri Alexas and Canon DSLRs to the picture cars, and they also worked extensively with Performance Filmworks’ Edge System. “We had two cameras on the Edge vehicle, which was driven by Dean Bailey,” says Shield. “The A camera on the main arm was operated by Greg Baldi, with Tony Rivetti pulling focus, and [operator] Peter Gulla and [1st AC] Chip Byrd handled the B camera on a secondary remote head with a long lens.”
42 June 2012

Following Loki’s arrival, Fury assembles the Avengers aboard SHIELD’s Helicarrier, a futuristic aircraft carrier capable of operating both on water and in air. The Helicarrier’s bridge, a set built at Albuquerque Studios, serves as a primary site where the main characters gather. “We built many opportunities for accent lighting into the bridge,” says Chinlund. “I think we probably broke records for the amount of [LiteGear] LED LiteRibbon we used!” “We used hybrid LEDs that [dimmer-board operator] Bryan Booth could adjust to anywhere between
American Cinematographer

American Cinematographer - June 2012

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