American Cinematographer - August 2012 - 62

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Right: A frame
grab of Quaid
inside his
apartment in New
Asia. Below: The
crew prepares a
setup on the
“exterior” portion
of Quaid’s
apartment set.
me close to an f16 through the
window.”
For practical lighting inside the
China Fall, production designer Patrick
Tatopoulos incorporated a number of
LED strips and small fixtures into the
set, and Cameron made full use of the
integrated fixtures while supplementing
with some soft sources, mainly Kino
Flos. Cameron and his gaffer, Patrick
Reddish, built a number of soft boxes
using Kino Flo Barfly fixtures with
black foamcore snoots and white bed
sheets for diffusion on the face. Six 4x4
HMI lighting balloons provided low
ambience.
“One of the advantages of the
China Fall through the center of the
earth. As the ship passes the earth’s core,
it goes through zero gravity, and the
travelers can see the brilliant light at the
planet’s molten center. The China Fall
set was built onstage at Pinewood on a
rotating gimbal. The camera moved
with the set on a nodal rig (designed
and fabricated by Mike Johnson) that
fit onto a Libra head and rotated the
camera on its optical axis.
For moments when the ship
passes the planet’s core, Cameron
wanted a lighting effect that would
suggest molten lava. “It looked a bit like
a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert,” he
laughs. “We had a massive rig of 50
lights outside the small windows of the
62
August 2012
ship. I used a cluster of [Chromlech]
Jarag fixtures, several rows of MR16s
that were designed for rock ’n’ roll lighting.
They react to dimmer cues very
quickly and can go from zero to 100
percent almost instantly; if you use
Nine-light Maxis, it can take them a
little more time because of the size of
the filament. For the core rig, we put
those Jarag fixtures on a vertical tower
along with a 7K Xenon, and we
surrounded the Jarags with almost 100
Par cans. Then we’d move that up and
down to get the feel of the ship passing
the core. It was a massive rig, especially
considering the small size of the ship’s
window, but the effect was quite
impressive. At 800 ISO, the effect gave
American Cinematographer
Epic is that you can immediately see the
results of pumping in just 5 more foot
candles of light,” notes the cinematographer.
“That’s particularly helpful when
you’re going in for a close-up, because
you can very easily fill the eyes.”
When the ship arrives at its desti-
nation, emergency lights signal the end
of the journey. A set of Atomic 3,000watt
Xenon fixtures was rigged into the
set for this effect.
Thanks to a number of collabora-
tions with director Tony Scott,
Cameron has developed a stylistic
approach that incorporates multiple
cameras. “Tony and I would often have
four or five cameras in a kind of visual
symphony, and I now work a lot with
three and four cameras,” he says. “You
always add cameras when you do action,
American Cinematographer - August 2012

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