American Cinematographer - August 2019 - 49

Back in Time

PAR bulbs] into muslin, and then back
through another muslin. Some people
call that bounce-diffusion combination a
'book light.'
For Leo's close-up, we added what
we call a 'low glow' floor bounce from a
K 5600 1,600-watt Joker above. The
source is warmed up a little by using
unbleached muslin and ¼ Straw gel.
You favor muslin for your soft
sources.
Kincaid: We try to use organic
materials like muslins whenever we can.
We use plastic Grid Cloth, but we avoid
it when we can, and we try to ban
Styrofoam beadboards from the set - I
live at the beach, and we see a lot of
Styrofoam floating around.
Why did you choose Maxi-Brutes
for bounces?
Kincaid: They're easily adjusted
without dimming or changing the color
- you can take out 1⁄ 12 of the light with
each switch. And you can pan the banks
to spread the light wider or focus it
tighter.
Maxis are not part of what I would
call 'modern filmmaking,' where people
try to light without generators, just plugging into the wall - which is becoming
easy to do with LEDs. Maxis are heavier
on the crew, but they are a really soft,
powerful, adjustable light - and, in my
view, they're creamier.
You had some huge night exteriors on this film.
Kincaid: Our biggest lighting
setup was about three quarters of a mile
on the Marina del Rey freeway, which
we closed down for one night [for a
scene in which Booth drives home]. Most
of that was shot car-to-car. We put nine
80-foot condors on the opposite side of
the freeway. Each condor had two Arri
T12s creating pools of light, and four soft
boxes through a neutral Grid Cloth for
an ambiance between those pools. The
soft boxes were 4-by-8-feet with six 1Ks
inside.
So each condor shone down 24K
of hard light and 24K of soft light.
Kincaid: Yes. We also placed some
lights on freeway overpasses and onramps.

pp Nine 80' condors help to illuminate a stretch of freeway that the production closed down from
dusk to dawn. p Pitt drives a Volkswagen Karmann Ghia that was "stuffed with a pumped-up Subaru
engine," Kincaid notes, adding that the actor was "lit with a 2-by-4 LiteGear [fixture] that was raised to a
level where Brad could safely see under it to self-drive."

The scene driving down
Hollywood Boulevard in 1969 is an
amazing re-creation of the period.
Kincaid: It was a major undertaking. We lit one three-block section,
then took it all down and did another
three blocks. It represents weeks of
work by 20 people on the rigging crew
- led by rigging gaffer John
Manocchia - and probably another 20
set dressers. Hollywood Boulevard
was meticulously and faithfully
restored to how it looked 50 years ago.
How did you light the street?
Kincaid: There were four of our
condor tungsten sources at each interwww.ascmag.com

section; each condor had four 6K soft
boxes with a Full Grid diffusion and a
1 ⁄ 2 Straw to warm it up. And the rest of
the exterior is a mélange of everything!
We put strings of bulbs wrapped in
Teflon underneath the awnings; each
string was on a dimmer channel. We
hung [2K] Blondes on every light post,
and then hundreds of practicals. We
changed out all the marquees to LEDs.
How did you light DiCaprio
and Pitt in the car?
Kincaid: Their car was towed
down the Boulevard on a lowboy
trailer. Brad and Leo were frontlit by a
2-by-8-foot soft LED box with LiteTile
August 2019

http://www.ascmag.com

American Cinematographer - August 2019

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