American Cinematographer - November 1990 - 73

William Bald¬

win, Oliver
Platt, Julia
Roberts and
Kiefer Suther¬
land place
Kevin Bacon in
a

state of near¬

death.

Rome and Egypt look brand new!
When that story happened Rome
was

already old and Egypt was
Cleopatra has zippers on
dress, and they are visible. It

Chicago is a beautiful campus but
it wasn't what

found

we

wanted. Then I

Loyola University, which

ancient.

was

her
becomes unbearable!"

and is a mixture of Gothic and Art
Deco - exactly what we wanted.
"I was calling the style of

Obviously, each individ¬
ual production brings the de¬
signer face to face with new and
different challenges. Flatliners is a
strikingly different kind of picture
which offered a great deal of crea¬
tive freedom, yet it demanded a
quality of solid realism to make
the fantasy stand up.
"What I tried to do with
these sets is to assure that they
have weight and age and every¬

thing looks
for

a

as

if it has been there

while," Zanetti began. "The

script calls for Harvard or a simi¬
university. My first impulse

lar

great. It's right by the water

climber,

meaning a period in the Twenties

his

Thirties in which Deco be¬
modernistic and absorbs

give this feeling of 'temple.' This
is the basic idea: the place were
you become a doctor is a temple.

billboard of an enormous face five
stories high. The window he
comes from is inside one of the

found the Museum of

eyes, so when he jumps out you
see he's
coming out of a great
head."
The artist made it clear
that the idea was not arrived at

Also,

we

and
remnant of the

Science

Industry - a
Century of Prog¬
ress
Exposition of 1933-34 - and
we added those
buildings to be
the part of the university that had

thought would work, I came back
here to do the sketches that show

the origin

how it would work," Zanetti
continued. "Then I started to or¬

-

and the end of life. Then we tried
to find an appropriate campus. I
flew to Chicago. The University of

he goes in and out of
floor apartment

many influences including the
ideas of the German architects, to

comes

physical metaphor. My first

perfect metaphor

so

fourth

through the window. The location
chose has a high brick wall. It
went through a lot of stages, but
finally we painted on it a huge

or

idea was, to have a university by
the sea, because the water is a

clear

ment, the interior of which was
built here. He is a mountain

the movie 'Flash Gordonian,'

been closed down.
"After I went to Chicago
and found the locations that I

that, because the movie deals
with death, we needed a very
was

hectic because every location
involved a lot of changes, even the
houses.
"One of the characters,
for example, lives in an apart¬
was

we

entirely as a matter of picturesque
whimsey but actually is a part of
of several visual themes that
devised to lend unity to the
overall picture. "There are frag¬
ments of bodies throughout the
one

were

entire

movie," he explained.

department with local people. It

"There are fragments of sculpted
heads and hands and a big piece
of statuary of feet. Also, there are

November 1990

American

ganize

a

small version of the art

Cinematographer

69
American Cinematographer - November 1990

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