American Cinematographer - July 2015 - 51

homage to [Spielberg's] style of camera
movement and blocking. Steven doesn't
really do a lot of cutting; he lets things
play and moves the camera to create
new frames [within the same shot]. We
lived on a 50-foot Technocrane for most
of the movie, which was a lifesaver -
especially with a Taurus base, which is
an all-wheel-drive base that can level
itself off. That thing can get into places
where the crew can't even get into!
Because the terrain was so uneven and
so soft, we'd never have been able to lay
dolly track; as soon as we put a dolly on
it, it would have sunk and we'd have lost
our level immediately. The Techno and
the Taurus base allowed us to move the
camera in a very fluid way.
"Colin was adamant about not
shooting coverage just for the sake
of shooting coverage," continues
Schwartzman. "I would say, 'Let's put
the B camera over here and get this little
bonus shot,' but he'd shake his head and
say, 'I'm never going to use it.' He really
knows what he wants. I have great
respect for his talent."
Nearly all scenes shot in Hawaii
were day exteriors. "We wanted to take
every advantage of Hawaii," says
Schwartzman. "We were on really beautiful parts of the island, but the weather
is very unpredictable; it changes on a
dime, and you can lose sunlight in a
matter of minutes. You have to carefully
plan and hope that your plan works out
with the weather. The film only spans
about 16 hours of time, so we had to do
our best to make the changing weather
look the same.
"Overall, I was trying to do the
least amount of lighting in the jungles as
possible," he continues. "But because we
were working with young kids, our
schedule was incredibly tight. Once they
were on set, the meter started running
and we couldn't stop to say, 'We'll shoot
in three hours after this storm passes.'"
When lighting the day exteriors was
necessary, Schwartzman says he "stuck
to the usual suspects," such as 18K
HMIs for backlight or bounced into
Ultrabounce for fill.
In place of Condor cranes, the

Top: The crew
prepares for a
nighttime
exterior scene.
Bottom:
Schwartzman
lines up a shot
from under a
vehicle.

production made generous use of
Pettibone Cary-Lift construction vehicles, which, like the Taurus, feature selfleveling bases. The crew could drive
them into the jungle and hang 18K
fixtures as high as 70' in the air to create
backlight from a vantage that a traditional Condor could never reach. "These
vehicles can get you out of a lot of trouble," Schwartzman attests.
About one-third of the film takes
place at night, but only a week's worth of
night shoots - including "the big
jungle shootout," notes Schwartzman
- were shot in Hawaii. Asked about
the challenges of shooting at night in
the jungle, the cinematographer offers,
"When there are heavy greens - like
there are in Hawaii - they tend to
significantly absorb any blue light, so if
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you backlight the jungle with the typical
blue 'moonlight,' the leaves just go black.
We tended to warm up our fixtures by
using 1⁄2 to 3⁄4 CTO on our HMI backlights - generally 18K Arrimaxes - to
avoid turning the jungle into a black
hole." Because 18Ks quickly burn
through gel, the production opted to use
specialty dichroic-glass filters made by
Dwight Crane Ltd. in Toronto.
"This is an action movie, so it's
fairly rich in contrast," Schwartzman
notes. "By the time we get to the night
[scenes], we know who all of the characters are, and I was able to get more
aggressive with the look. For close-up
work, I'd typically use an incandescent
fixture - like a Blonde - bounced off
a card, and cool it off a bit with 1⁄4 CTB,
keeping things closer to 3,400K than
July 2015

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - July 2015