American Cinematographer - July 1992 - 38

They wanted to know what my
plan was, if I had a plan and how I
was
going to do this! Most of my
prep time had to do with checking
out the sets and coming up with a
plan."
Czapsky's plan, forced on
him by the fact that the massive sets
came right up to the
permanents,
was simple and
straightforward. "I
had to figure out some way to hang
my lights from the permanent
beams," he explains, "and the an¬

Czapsky pulls
out all the

f-

stops for this

stunning tableau
of Bruce Wayne
with the home
fires

burning.

swer turned out to be a bunch of
Trilite rock-and-roll trusses. These

trusses

were
long metal pipes ar¬
ranged in a triangle, so we just at¬
tached our lights to the pipe using
steel fitting clamps. The weight

limit of each truss

was

about 750

pounds, so I'd fly lightweight rockand-roll cans, baby juniors and a
bunch of Mole Richardson 9-light
maxilights on them and hang them
in the midground above the top of
the frameline and our actors. I
could lower or raise the truss on a
chain motor, but they didn't always

hang horizontally and sometimes
the

one

at frame left would be

higher or lower than the one at
frame right. Once Tim blocked the
scene, we'd usually have a couple
hours to set up, so we'd quickly
hang our trusses. Fortunately, I'd
put together a great crew who were
able to throw the equipment up
and move it around quickly. Barry
Lopez, my flyman, has done Broad¬
way shows and is an expert at
hanging stuff.

36

ing and a certain amount of seren¬
dipity during principal photogra¬
phy. "Tim makes careful choices

they enjoyed on the Florida location

about the actors and he's fanatical
about the design. Yet, for someone
who cares about the look so much,
he just sticks all of those things in
there and lets them go by them¬
selves!" Czapsky marvels. "It
sometimes seems like a circus, but
it's much more of a mystical thing
for Tim in that he trusts that what
will come out is going to be great.
When you feel that, it makes you
want to work hard."
Burton and Czapsky

fish bowl because we were on the
lot and there were a lot of people

found shooting on Warner Bros.'
Burbank soundstages very differ¬
ent from the "hands off" situation

lights was a big issue. The studio
people were worried about it from

American

July 1992

Cinematographer

of Edward Scissorhands. "Batman
was more like
shooting in a gold¬

watching us, even though it was a
closed set," Czapsky recalls. At no
time was this more true than when

he

began planning his lighting ap¬
proach to the film's numerous
oversized sets, which filled the stu¬
dio soundstages to bursting. "They
built the sets right up to the ceiling,"

Czapsky says. "If I was on a stage
that was 65 feet high, the set walls
went 65

feet up, so placement of the

the moment

we

started to prep.

"The basic workforce unit
the Par bulb," he adds. "They
were like
big headlights and went
into those maxis and the hundreds
of rock-and-roll cans. Most of my
was

lighting on Batman came from cans
with spot, medium or flood bulbs
in them; I almost always used a
spot because I needed the throw
when I was lighting from 60 to 70
feet up. They were crude, no-main¬
tenance lights that put out a tre¬
mendous wallop. They could bum
upside down, they lasted a really
long time, and I could hang and
burn them quickly. I also used a
bunch of Socapex lights, which are
six rock-and-roll aluminum Par
cans on a bar with one
multipin
American Cinematographer - July 1992

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