American Cinematographer - August 2011 - 68

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Once Upon a Time in theWest

Above: The titular cowboys ride against the invading aliens in the film’s climactic showdown. Right: Lonergan and Dolarhyde run for cover.

lights were, and if they were in the low 30s I knew I’d hit my mark.” The cinematographer also communicated with Clark by e-mailing him color-corrected digital stills. “Every day I take stills, and every night I put them in Aperture, color-time them, write an explanation of what I’m aiming for, and then e-mail them. It’s really more for me than it is for [the lab]. It’s tedious, but I’m more in tune with my work when I do it.” Flashbacks in Cowboys reveal clues about Lonergan’s life before he awoke as an amnesiac in the desert. For those sequences, Libatique crossprocessed color-reversal Kodak
68 August 2011

Ektachrome 100D 5285. He adds, “I didn’t do anything else to it. Usually I would push it, pull it or bleach-bypass it [in addition to cross-processing], but I played it pretty straight because, again, Jon’s more of a literal guy.” Libatique used Kodak Vision3 500T 5219 for interiors and night scenes. As with any self-respecting Western, one important interior was the saloon, which was a part of the Absolution set at Bonanza Creek. Libatique recalls, “I walked into the space and thought, ‘It’s too dark to drink in here!’ There was no way they wouldn’t have any augmenting light; something would be illuminating the
American Cinematographer

interior aside from windows.” Accordingly, as with the town’s exterior, frosted hurricane lamps were used to hide small bulbs on flicker gags. To boost the overall light level, Bauman’s team “built overhead soft boxes with 250- and 500-watt globes, and it was all on a dimmer board so we could warm up the color temperature,” says the gaffer. “It gave a soft toplight look [motivated by the set’s] chandeliers.” To supplement candlelight and other flame effects both indoors and out, the crew made regular use of covered wagons, diffusion-wrapped batten strips the crew dubbed “John Fords” in honor of their cinematic inspiration. They utilized a few different iterations, but the typical John Ford was “about 2 feet long with six globes wired to three dimmer channels,” says Bauman. “Most of the time we put Lee Fire gel on it to simulate firelight, and that worked pretty well. If we needed more throw, we sometimes used HPL 6-Lights; each channel is controllable, and we could run each [globe] through a flicker gag. But the John Ford was really our workhorse.” The film’s titular aliens are introduced slowly, and it’s not until the searchers arrive at the riverboat that one of the creatures is finally shown onscreen. The day before AC’s set visit, the crew had filmed that first appearance, utilizing a puppet created by

Top image courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic.

American Cinematographer - August 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - August 2011