American Cinematographer - November 2016 - 36

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Return of the King

The crew readies a car-crash scene.

Beyond Ash himself, the character's 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 has
become an icon of the franchise. At the
beginning of season one's second
episode, "Bait," the spacious ride plays
host to a freewheeling fight scene
between Ash, Pablo (Ray Santiago) and
the Deadite-possessed Mr. Roper, even
as the car tows Ash's Airstream trailer
down a country road. For background
plates as well as the location exteriors of
the car, the production chose a length of
road almost a mile long, lined on one
side with 23 sodium-vapor streetlights.
"We changed those to mercury lights
that emitted a cool white light," Cavill
notes, "and we shot our backgrounds
specific to the angles we were going to be
shooting in the car on the rear-screen
set: out both sides, and from the front
looking through the back window at the
trailer."
At the speed the car and trailer
were traveling, Cavill tested and found
he would need to create the effect of a
streetlight moving across the vehicles
every six seconds to match the lighting
on the backgrounds. So, onstage, Cavill
rigged three 6' Chroma-Q Color Force
72 LED battens in a shallow U shape
lengthwise over the car, with a slight bias
to the driver's side. Another Color Force
72
provided
an
unmotivated
36

November 2016

"amber/sodium traveling light from the
passenger side," recalls Cavill. "On location there were no streetlights on that
side. There was nothing but paddocks,
but I occasionally needed something
between the streetlights on the fill side,
and the amber light was a good fit."
To further help illuminate the
car's interior when there were no streetlights, the cinematographer adds, "I
pushed a bit of a cold 1⁄2 CTB, ambient
base light into the car, using a T12
through a heavily baffled 12-by-12 Full
Silk to create a sourceless night-light; I
ran cutters through it occasionally to
match the 'sim trav' feel. I also used a
thin layer of atmosphere through fans
across the car, which I believe helped
make the backgrounds more credible. I
like to use atmosphere on set. It's moody
and it carries the light; I also like the way
it reaches into the blacks - it's almost
like free lighting."
Testing had previously revealed
that the 16'x9' rear-projection screens
used onstage - which employed 15K
and 20K Christie projectors - did not
offer a high level of output, so considerable attention had to be paid to eliminating spill onto the screens. "The screens
were giving us a base of T2.0 for day
exteriors, but for night it was more like
T1.0 at 800 ASA," notes Cavill. "I shot
American Cinematographer

the night [footage] at 1,280 ASA. The
LEDs put out a lot of light, but it sprays
everywhere. It was an elaborate process,
eliminating all that spill with deep,
baffled snoots on the lamps; blacking out
every surface of the car that wasn't seen
[on camera]; and blacking out the studio
from the camera [and] back."
A Christie 20K projector was
mounted from above on a 45' JLG
knuckle boom and aimed straight down
into a 25'x18' screen positioned over the
car in order to create reflections on the
front windshield. "We had shot plates
looking up and forward at the mercury
streetlights so that back in the studio,
shooting through the front of Ash's
Oldsmobile, we could play the 'reflections' of the streetlights passing over the
windscreen," details Cavill. "It was a
finicky undertaking because the Delta is
an old car with a lot of curves. The windscreen itself has quite a pronounced curve
as it comes into the pillar; it acted as a
convex mirror, which meant the reflection screen ended up having to be
lowered until it was virtually touching the
car."
Garbett gives due credit to "our
fantastic second-unit cinematographer,
Andrew McGeorge, and his excellent
crew. They did an amazing job over both
seasons supporting us, shooting many
incredible stunts, action, Evil Force
POVs, and often shooting entire
sequences."
In the season-one episode "Fire in
the Hole" - shot by Cavill and directed
by Michael Hurst - Ash and Amanda
fall foul of militia survivalists who believe
their friend Lem (Peter Feeney) is the
victim of government chemical testing
and that the duo are agents. Of course,
Lem is in fact a demonically possessed
Deadite, and the handcuffed Ash and
Amanda are the survivalists' best hope at
dispatching the demon. Not understanding any of this, the survivalists throw the
pair into their bunker.
"Michael embraced the idea that
the survivalists would have emergency
lighting - sodium-vapor-colored practicals set into bulkhead fixtures in the set,"
says Cavill. "It gave great justification for

American Cinematographer - November 2016

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