American Cinematographer - August 1990 - 29

photography career almost ac¬
cidently, at the tender age of ten.
"My father bought me my first
camera,

and

we

went to an air

display featuring the Royal Air
Force. With my roll of film and
my new little still camera, I pho¬
tographed some planes. I was
preparing to photograph a Can¬
berra jet bomber flying by, and
just as I pressed the shutter, the
plane suddenly exploded in
midair. I got a couple of expo¬
sures off, and then the plane just
disintegrated completely, right
over the
runway, in front of the
crowd. I went home to my little
bathroom that I'd blacked out,
and developed my first roll of

film
film.

I'd

got the explosion on
My father took it into the
newspaper the next day and sold
it for something like $100 - an
amazing amount of money for a
kid that age. So I decided photog¬
raphy looked like the right thing
for

-

me

to

do," he chuckles. "That

Opposite Page:
McClane (Willis)
hides in a venting

experience made me feel the
power of the camera."
Wood brought his clean,
luxurious visual style to Miami

system. Above:
The airport set
with exterior
forced perspec¬
tive model.

Vice, and honed his action skills

during the three years he photo¬
graphed the popular series.
Nothing could have prepared
him, though, for the massive
production that was Die Hard II.
"The scale was amazing.
I've never seen so many trucks in
my life. It was like a mile and a

Below: Cinema¬

tographer Wood
on

set.

half of trucks," he exaggerates.
"And there was no way around
this. In order to do the shots, we
needed every one of them."
Another distinguishing
characteristic of the Die Hard II
shoot (the first being its size) was
its constant battle with a foe of

Mother
Nature. The production was
dogged by weather problems
from beginning to end. Filming a
major motion picture that takes
place almost entirely in a blizzard
became a major headache during
even

greater stature

-

they

thwarted to a certain
by the lack of snow.

were

extent

"I think

tried every
possible way of making snow, on
the air and on the ground," Wood
we

of the driest winters in years.
The company chased the
snow from Denver, Colorado to

"We used chipped ice to
the ground, and that
worked quite well when we were
shooting close to it. In the air, the
most effective was the plastic
snow, and whenever possible we

Moses

used that. But in

one

Lake, Washington, to a

military airstrip in the north
woods of Michigan. In each case,

says.

cover

wouldn't allow it because it
would have gotten into the jet

engines. At one point, we tried
soap flakes, which looked good
but got in the actors' eyes - ev¬
eryone would be crying. We also
tried the old remedy which is
potato flakes.
which is

"We also tried Jet-X,
a sort of
shampoo foam,

which worked in the distance but

instances,

eventually proved ineffective. It

it became

environmentally unac¬
ceptable. At the airports they

would wind up as sort of soap
suds which, because they weren't

August 1990

American

some

Cinematographer

27
American Cinematographer - August 1990

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