American Cinematographer - July 1992 - 57

Twice the Light or
Twice the

Spread.

up all the time. That's the style of
the picture; it was Fincher's idea
and I think it paid off."
The unique approach cre¬
ated one major challenge for
Thomson and his crew-where do
you hide the lights? "Down below
on the floor," Thomson states. "Or

through windows. There's always
a corner
you can tuck a light
around. My main problem was the
passages in the prison; they had no
windows and were completely

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covered over, yet we were sup¬

posed to track down all of them!
lights on the floor,
around our dolly track and that sort
of thing. We couldn't put them in
front of us, though, because they
We laid the

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would've thrown our shadows on
the ceiling as the camera went past.
These shots had to be backlit so the
shadows of the camera and the
boom and the crew and everything
else would be thrown behind us.
The problem was that since the

lights

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them, so I had to hide them with old
tin

cans

and rubbish. That became

problem in itself because
these were long tracks; when we
used the Steadicam we were going
around about a quarter-mile of cor¬
ridors. I never lit anything from a
gantry or a rail. I don't normally
anyway, but on this one I couldn't
because we were always looking
up people's nostrils!"
The January to June pro¬
quite

a

duction schedule was due to the
film's special effects, but despite the
extra

leeway, Thomson found he

still had to race to get all the shots
he wanted. "We were working
fourteen to fifteen hours a day

sometimes, six days a week, just
because of the

logistics. When

you're dealing with sets of this size,
it really takes time to build up

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steam, and after a few takes, you
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Needed Extras

up again. The alien is basically only
a
guy in a rubber suit who can't stay
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$550.00
$200.00
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American Cinematographer - July 1992

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