American Cinematographer - July 1990 - 48

A terrible explosion
precedes the re¬

to

get over these feelings is to go
day by day. If it is a hundred days
of shooting or three days of
shooting, it is always one day of
shooting. It starts in the morning
and ends in the evening. And you
have to get through this day and

lease of air to the

planet. Debris flies
everywhere with
the help of giant
fans and grips with
trays of studio glass.

then you can concentrate on
next

the

day."
Most of the film was shot

on

stage, but there were a few

location exteriors. Finding loca¬
tions that Verhoeven and Vacano
could imagine as futuristic in the
ancient town of Mexico City
seemed like another insurmount¬
able problem. "We have a science
fiction film and we are looking
for something that looks like the
future. We think, 'Oh yeah, it has
to be high, steel and glass/ Imme¬

diately, I think, most Americans
would arrive in Houston

or a

place like it, where there is some
of the most modern and futuris¬
tic architecture. Paul and I knew
Houston already because we had
intended to do Robocop there. So

thought that is where we
would go.
"But then we hear, 'Gen¬
we

tlemen, you have to shoot this
film in Mexico because this is
where we have the contracts.
There is no budget to take a big
crew to Houston. You have to
find your futuristic world in
Mexico.' We thought oh, damn.
We drove around for three or
four days in the city and we

Logistics were unbeliev¬
able. It took
and a half to

much

as

as a

week

rig the lighting on a

stage. Sometimes it took four to
six weeks to build the set and yet
rarely was the first unit on a stage
for

more

than

a

week. Vacano

understandably over¬
whelmed by the size of his task.
"The question was, how do I keep
a handle on these events? Pre¬
was

lighting one stage while shooting
on another is what you normally
do, but we had to pre-light stage
A, while we were pre-rigging
stage B, completing shooting on
stage C and trying not to run into
the second unit

46

fects shots whenever we had time
for them.
"That created yet an¬
other problem. The budget, no
matter how big it might be, is

always limited below the line. We
had only so much money in it for
lighting equipment. Normally
you have money for a certain
number of lights plus a few to get
you started on a second pre-light.
And that's all. It actually turned
out that we had most of the

up

most of the time. We used every

single light in Mexico City and
from everywhere around!"
In

spite of the odds, Va¬
became philosopical about

stage D. We
had to leave maybe two more
stages up to do some special ef¬

cano

American

July 1990

on

Cinematographer

stages

and in some stage of lighting

his

predicament. "The only

way

found

nothing. We were worried.

'How

can we

do this if we aren't
allowed to go to the only place
that we think looks futuristic

enough?'
"We started to notice
that there were some interesting

things happening in Mexican
architecture. Especially the ways
they use concrete. We looked a
little closer and we began to think
that, although it was very oldfashioned in one way, it was very
futuristic in another and it wasn't
steel or glass. All of a sudden we
started to find really great loca¬
tions.

They are completely differ¬

ent from what

everybody would

expect and I think that is very

good. It

was a

really big ad van-
American Cinematographer - July 1990

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