American Cinematographer - July 2009 - 55

begins by telling each operator what he wants, and he can really play a scene out and cover the entire scene by reframing. That enables the actors to run through the whole scene. Then, on the next take, Tony’s on the headset telling the C camera to get a little closer on a hand or some other detail. He does coverage while he’s getting the wide shots. It takes a fair amount of time to set things up, but once that’s done, we go continuously.” For a new set or scene, two to three hours were required to set things up and start shooting the scene, both master and coverage, in one take. With this method, production shot two to three pages per day on a 72-day schedule. Pelham was shot in Super 35mm, and about 90 percent of it was shot on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219. Preferring a thicker negative and higher printing lights, Schliessler often rates his film stock slower and/or lights to a healthy stop; he rated the 5219 at 400 ASA. (He used Kodak Vision3 250D 5205, rated at 200 ASA, for day-exterior close-ups to match stunt work filmed by 2nd-unit director/cinematographer Alexander Witt.) “Because we used available light and practicals in the MTA control room, I lit it to about a T4 because Tony sometimes likes to use an extender or double extender on zooms, and that makes you lose a stop,” notes Schliessler. “We didn’t use extenders that much in the control room, but we did use them in the tunnel. Tony loves to be on the long end of the lens, and I lit so we were ready for that.” The control room was built onstage and designed to largely match the specs of the real MTA headquarters, including 9' ceilings. With four cameras, most of them moving all the time, lighting had to be practical and built into the set. “We had to come up with a lighting scheme that would facilitate four- camera setups, and that’s the main reason we went with underlight or toplight directly overhead,” says Schliessler. “With that, we could maintain continuity in the look.” The control room features numerous desks and a wall of video screens that display the status of the various subway routes. (The images were rear-projected onto the screens.) Recessed fixtures in the ceiling held 3200°K fluorescent tubes. Dropdown fixtures at the rear of the room and background wallmounted sconces were 4100°K Osram tubes with three or four points of green to provide color separation. “I wanted to keep the fluorescents in line with that greenish tinge government buildings have, so I used Daylight Green fluorescents,” says Schliessler. “We added Half CTB to the sconces to separate the walls a little more.” Garber’s dispatch desk received extra treatment in line with the top-lit and bottom-lit look. Kino Flos, 4x2 and 2x2 units with 3200°K tubes to match the overheads, were flown above the desk, just below the Train interiors were filmed onstage at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. The set was built to match the real train’s interior, with the exception that the entry doors were widened to accommodate dolly track. American Cinematographer 55

American Cinematographer - July 2009

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