American Cinematographer - March 1993 - 45

Mateo and 6th Street in downtown

L.A. The scene's climax involves

a

shootout at a pharmacy, which pro¬
duction designer Philip Harrison
built into the nearby office of a con¬

veniently empty warehouse. "We
pulled part of the office apart and

use of this
technique in
the opening credits of Avalon, and
I actually spoke to him about it be¬
fore we shot. He used it to achieve

sync with that, and you can use
harmonizers and other sound

a

very soft, nostalgic look, while I
tried to give it a real edge to fit our

equipment to enhance it."
After passing his trial by

character. It's a real seductive look;

fire, Watkins felt that he could settle

Daviau's

built the set inside and around
what was left, approximating a

we

covered-off set," Harrison noted.

tern

"It gave us

double-printed every third
frame and then repeated that pat¬
on an off-note. So it runs up to
[the normal] 24 frames, but it has a

the security of a
soundstage while working on loca¬

very

tion."

type of thing is done incorrectly, it

Six Panavision cameras
needed to record the action. In
addition to two ground place¬

becomes

were

ments, one unit (the

lightweight

Panaflex) was mounted on a
Steadicam, one was hung from a
Matthews Cam-Remote, and two
others

were

surrealistic feel. When this
a

little

dysfunctional and

notice it. If it's subtle, it's very
alluring: you're not quite sure
what's happening, but you know
something's different. We also ran
another configuration to achieve a
lot of chatter and stuttering that we
you

could sync the words to later. You
can hold five, six or seven words in

down and concentrate

on

achiev¬

ing the three major looks that
would reflect Maggie's transforma¬
tion into a complete human being.
"As the story progresses, the look
begins to elevate to a more normal
appearance," Watkins said. "I
thought of the movie's three phases
in terms of the character

-

pre¬

birth, birth and after birth." The
wild

experimentation of the film's

first 20 minutes, he pointed out, is
meant to reflect the character's un-

placed atop Titan

To light up the huge area,
the crew used Beebe nightsticks, 80cranes.

foot-high lighting rigs that are a bit
smaller and more mobile than fullsize Musco lights, as well as

lackapodium lightning machines.
"I preferred the lackapodium units
to strobes because they're more
controllable; you could pull the le¬
ver and release
gases and strike it
with a match, which gave us a bet¬
ter feel for the

effect," said Watkins.

"When

you're undercranking you
can make it last longer, and vice
versa when you're overcranking.
The lackapodium is also less pre¬
dictable in its bursts, so it gives you
the cracking sensation of real light,
kind of like a filament burning
down. The point of the scene is to
introduce this druggy, completely
crazed character, to show the audi¬
ence that this is a person who's hit
rock bottom."
Watkins opted to open the

'SjW

MARRIOTT

HOll

sequence with a long Steadicam
shot that tracks the young hood¬
one of whom is dragging a
body. Maggie's point of view
was simulated by shooting Super 8
footage through an anamorphic
front and then blowing it up until
the grain reached the size of
golfballs. The hoodlums' jittery,
unpredictable natures were simu¬

lums,

dead

The seventh

floor of the

Century City
Marriott goes up
in flames. The
effect was
achieved

lated via the variable frame-rates.
"We

through the use
of pressurized

shooting a lot of this
early stuff at 16 frames," Watkins
said. "I was very taken with Allen
were

mortar devices

installed in the
hotel suite.

March 1993

American

Cinematographer

43
American Cinematographer - March 1993

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