American Cinematographer - August 2008 - 33

watching the chase. And we looked at The French Connection because it’s such a classic.” Roe’s goal in lighting the chase was “basically to create backlight,” he says. “The actors run down Homer, which slopes downhill, then turn left and run down Cordova, and the camera looks all the way down both streets, so we had to light a large area.” Tickell, who worked out the street-lighting scheme with rigging gaffer Sean Oxenbury, recalls, “This was the biggest rig on the show, and it happened in the first two weeks, and Sean and his team pulled off some miracles to have it all in place in such a short time. The most difficult part was getting all the gear onto the rooftops; in the whole run, only two lifts were used, a 135foot Stinger crane with two 24-light Dinos, and an 80-foot Condor with two Nine-light Maxis and a 20K. Everything else was from rooftops.” (To see a diagram of this lighting, visit www.theasc.com/magazine in August.) Roe kept three cameras running for most of the chase. An insert car sported a Genesis (with the 4:1 Primo) on a Libra head and crane arm, and a Genesis and a film camera (both with 11:1 Primos) usually mounted low on the back. To capture shots swooping down low over cars, a Genesis with a 4:1 Primo was used on a Cablecam rig set up along a stretch of Homer. McInally and Wrinch also shot from a Lynx personal utility vehicle, using a Genesis with prime lenses or the 2876mm Optimo. The unfinished building the characters enter toward the end of the chase was actually a real construction site. “We’d scout the building, and when we’d go back a week later, we’d discover there were two more floors!” Roe recalls, shaking his head. “All our gear had to be brought in and taken out on the same day — we couldn’t leave anything in place.” There was a bright side, however: “I thought the existing work lights at the location were really cool, and we used them as the basis for our lighting at the location and onstage, where we built portions of that set.” The work lights ranged from small quartz to large glass scoops, according to Tickell. “Our set decorators found matches to the glass scoops, and we used 1K and 2K tungsten bulbs in those along with the 500-watt quartz lights,” says the gaffer. Many of these lights were put on the ground, as though they’d fallen, “to give us some low light and create a scary feel,” adds Roe. On the building’s roof, McInally used a Genesis to capture Mulder’s POV with a 360-degree Steadicam shot, and two 500-watt quartz bulbs bouncing off the floor were the only augmentation for the ambient city light. “The Genesis is fantastic for what I’d call ‘adventurous nights in urban territory,’ and the chase was the perfect place for it,” says Carter, who adds that the Genesis material (recorded in 4:4:4) cut in “beautifully” with the film footage (5218 pushed to 1,000 ASA). At press time, Carter was less sure of the Panasonic HD footage, which later came to include some second-unit material in addition to the chase shots. “My editor would always say, ‘I’m scared of that P2,’” says Carter. “It was great fun to operate, but it has a video look, and when intercut with film, it does call atten- Above: The kidnapper (Callum Rennie) surveils his next victim during her workout. Left: The filmmakers capture the action with an Arri 435 on a HydroHead on a crane arm. “The original practicals at the location were too green, not bright enough to illuminate the underwater shots, and not quite in the right spot,” recalls gaffer David Tickell. “So we bought our own — large, openface scoop-like fixtures — and rebuilt them to handle Par64 narrow bulbs. Those were strong enough to push through the water and illuminate the pool.” American Cinematographer 33

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American Cinematographer - August 2008

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