American Cinematographer - August 1987 - 57

how

a

never

scene

have

should be shot, I'd
elaborate on the

to

ization in the hands of

some

for¬

eign adversary. Although the

consequences

battle lines have been drawn in

knew
what he didn't

strong shades
Laszlo chose

of his approach. Joe
exactly what he needed and

need, and that's the
way we shot the picture. I think
the final result is very worth
while."
One of the

most

reward¬

aspects of shooting Innerspace
was the opportunity it provided
Laszlo to experiment with the new
Kodak 5297 stock, which was ex¬

the interiors were mixed with the
exteriors. Just before we started
the picture, Kodak released the
emulsion but it was not commer¬

cially available

-

in fact, they only

had some hand marked 400 foot
loads to give as samples.
"When I tested it, it
looked so unbelievably great that

persuaded Kodak to give us all
samples because they didn't
expect any of the emulsion would
be commercially available until
last September, by which time

we

their

of our exterior shoot
would've been finished. Bob Rowe
of Kodak in Los Angeles was really
fantastic he called all over the
most

a

subtle

contrast

in

lighting the color schemes to char¬
acterize the relatively low-tech lab
of the good guys versus the supersophisticated lab of the bad guys.
"Our first shot in the bad

ing

tremely difficult to get in sufficient
quantities in time for the sched¬
uled start of shooting last summer.
"The 97 has an incredibly good
emulsion," Laszlo says, "and we
used it in daylight interior and ex¬
terior situations, especially where

of black and white,

guy's lab

in the
office of the film's villainess, played
by Fiona Lewis," Laszlo recalls.
was

actually

set

"Because of the nature of this par¬
ticular character, everything in her

office was painted white and
there should be an icy cold,

I felt
busi¬

nesslike, non-compassionate type
of feeling to the set, so I proposed
to light it with an icy blue.
Through the Venetian blinds of
this office, however, we caught a

glimpse of the lab itself, which at
that time, I had lit with the regular
32-3400 Kelvin lights, which in
comparisonwould have appeared
quite orange. At this point I men¬
tioned to Joe that I thought it
would be a good idea to carry this
blue theme in Fiona's office right
on through into the lab. Iknew
that to use the orange lamps in the
lab would be more than a prob¬
lem, it would be a mistake.
"We stopped shooting

and re-gelled every light in the out¬
side lab, even though at this point

they could only be glimpsed
through the window of Fiona's of¬
fice. That took quite a bit of doing
because

we

could

not

go

up

through the full ceiling of the set
to get to our lights. It was a practi¬
cal ceiling, so in order to do that,
would've had

we

to

reconstruct

the

ceiling. All of the lights were
suspended from the studio ceiling
above the ceiling of our set on
pulleys, so we had to lower these
lights, pull them to the side, gel
them and raise them back up

again. It was worth it.It is also a
very good identification in con¬
trast to the good guy's lab, which
was done with normal, cheapo
overhead fluorescent lights. Con¬
sequently, you have no doubt at
any time during the film, just by
looking at the color of the lamps
in the two labs, where you are.
"The wonderful thing
about working with Joe was that
the moment I said the bad guys's
lab was going to look orange and
that I felt it shouldn't be just blue,
but very blue, he said, 'Do
it!'
those are the only two words
-

he said. I mentioned it would take
hours to do and that we might lose
the whole afternoon's shooting,

Tuck

(Dennis Quaid)

prepares to enter

pod.

-

place and just about hand col¬
lected the emulsion so I could
have it for the film. It really
worked great, and I'm very pleased
to claim the distinction of being
the first cinematographer to use
the new stock in a feature film. We
also used 5294 and 5247 through¬
out the shoot."
As with most of Dante's

films, the characters of Innerspace
fall neatly into two categories:
good guys and bad guys. In this
case, these groups are represented
by two rival factions of scien¬
tists
an underfinanced team of
conscientious inventors who want
-

to

turn

over

the results of their

experiments to our government,
and a bunch of ruthless, wellheeled hoodlums who would
sooner see the power of miniatur¬

August 1987

American

Cinematographer

55

his
American Cinematographer - August 1987

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