American Cinematographer - August 2012 - 38

◗ Batman to the Max
ers tried to stage action in the shadows
of tall buildings or beneath one of the six
20'x20' UltraBounce flyswatters they
kept on the periphery of the set. Closeup
work was augmented with a 4'x4'
beadboard or 12'x12' UltraBounce.
Garcia describes the approach as “eliminating
reflections and unwanted light as
opposed to taking the sun off everything
and bringing in 18Ks to relight the
scene.”
Gotham City’s night exteriors
were shot in New York and Los
Angeles. While scouting the locations,
Geryak took photos at Pfister’s intended
exposure levels — most of the night
material was shot at T2-T2.8 on Kodak
Vision3 500T 5219 — and then jotted
notes on the photos before sending them
to each city’s respective rigging gaffer,
Jeff Soderberg in Los Angeles and Clay
Liversridge in New York. Using the
lighting diagrams, the rigging gaffers
would return to the locations and secure
the background points they needed to
light “so that by the time we got to set,
the background was already roughed in,
and we’d have more time to light the
foreground based on what the actors
were doing,” says Geryak.
Of all the night-exterior work, the
Top: Director Chris Nolan confers with Bale on set. “The demand of a sequel is that you be bigger and
better,” Nolan notes, “but the demand of a good story is that you stay true to the characterizations,
the story, and the elements that define the characters and the world you created.” Bottom:
B-camera/Steadicam operator Scott Sakamoto maneuvers an Imax camera on a Steadicam rig while
capturing a shot of Gary Oldman, reprising his role as Gotham Police Commissioner Jim Gordon.
nearby chase helicopter. “An MSM and
a Beaucam were mounted underneath
the helicopter,”
says Hall.
“The
Beaucam was there as backup, and only
the MSM was rigged with remote focus
and iris. Both cameras performed well,
and the Imax footage was used in the
final cut.” The scene ends with a spectacular
Imax shot looking down into the
fuselage as Bane’s men cut the plane
loose over Inverness.
Despite such complicated action,
Nolan says his decision to set much of
the story during daylight hours created
38
August 2012
his biggest directorial challenge. “I
made that decision because I thought it
was the last barrier to reality we hadn’t
yet jumped over,” he says. “It’s a lot
easier to disguise the fanciful nature of
the characters and the story when you’re
working in the dark.”
Day exteriors were filmed on
Kodak Vision3 250D 5207, with locations
in New York City and Pittsburgh
serving as parts of Gotham. Pfister’s
approach to these scenes was mainly
about controlling sunlight to keep the
working stop close to T4. The filmmak-
American Cinematographer
Batpod chase through the streets of
Gotham was easily the most intensive,
calling for nearly eight city blocks of
downtown Los Angeles to be lit almost
entirely from the ground up. “L.A. uses
LED lamps in its streetlights now, so
there was very little usable practical
light,” says Geryak.
Soderberg’s rigging crew posi-
tioned Nine-light and 12-light MaxiBrutes
to uplight background buildings,
creating splashes of light to give them
texture and shape, and rigged more than
80 streetlights with two 2K Blondes
each that were wired back to dimmers.
The lighting console was positioned in a
room in a nearby high-rise hotel that
offered a bird’s-eye view of the streets
involved. The majority of the chase,
which involved a helicopter as well as
dozens of stunt drivers in cars and on
motorcycles, was lit by these streetlights.
Additionally, at different points along

American Cinematographer - August 2012

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