American Cinematographer - March 1993 - 48

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46

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"I was trying for the feel of old-

style Washington government,
stuffy and rather hidebound," said
Harrison, whose credits include
Badham's Bird on a Wire and The
Hard Way; Outland (with Peter

Hyams); and Ken Russell's
Lizstomania and Valentino. "The
usual Pentagon-style architecture is

rather dull. This is more what it
would look like if Miss Havisham
lived in the White House."
Watkins made sure that
the painstaking craftsmanship will

a

said with

lot of different salmons, 107s and

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those helps to divide the bricks so

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109

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teresting color."
To boost the look of the

screens

cameraman

help them stand out, and we used

or

a

tweaked the reflections from the

again and then spackled

see curls of smoke. We used a little
bit of minus green on the bricks to

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salmon with

them

every detail. The set was de¬
signed for anamorphic, and it com¬
posed very nicely for the format.
We tried to create a feeling of depth
and infinity by using some smoke
in the atmosphere, but not to the
point where you close a door and

sale

LLD. Sometimes we'd mix

brick, hand-trowled them, painted

see

To

subtle, muted kind of coral that

helps to bring out skin tones with¬
out affecting the backgrounds; they
don't muddy out a white wall. The
812s, on the other hand, bring out
a little bit of the red. If
somebody
was a little blue, for
example, we
might double them up or use an

light emanating from the various
computer screens, the crew
bounced some low soft lights; they

appreciation. "We shot it so you can

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through 180° horizontally or vertically
and tilts 10° up or 15° down - even while
tracking through the heart of a miniature
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a

go unnoticed in the nation's
theaters. "We had people in here
who hand-painted every single
not

them," the

The motorised

Vi CTOs; he also employed enhanc¬
ers and LLDs. "The enhancers are

helped to visually broadcast the
set's various pillars and arches, and
to place them better in their proper
spaces. Watkins generally used
longer lenses for a more intimate
look, while noting, "In anamorphic,
long lenses are pretty much cut in
half-a 180mm is really a 90-but
you have the same depth of field
that's listed on the lens. The longer
lenses just fit in with the look we
were after. Instead of
keeping ev¬
erything in focus, we wanted to
direct the audience to what

was

glow from his practicals.
In addition to the sound-

stage work and the Marriott explo¬
sion, Watkins and Co. confronted
two other large exterior setups -
one at New Orleans' Mardi Gras,
and another at Griffith Park, the site
of the film's climax.
For the Mardi Gras

se¬

quence, which follows Maggie as
she embarks on a "hit," Watkins

accompanied Badham and a small
the annual festival. "That
of the more insane experi¬
ences of
my life - there were a
million and a half people within
four blocks!" he marveled. "It was
like a big fraternity keg party, and

crew

to

was one

shot everything-the floats, the
parades, the outlandish costumes.
I handheld through crowds, and
we also set
up on various balconies
overlooking the streets." Once the
group returned to Los Angeles,
we

Harrison and his team constructed
a
mockup of New Orleans on
Warner Bros, backlot streets. "They
built a canopy out over the street,
and we shot mainly with practical

lighting to match the look of the real

keep the faces

Mardi Gras," Watkins continued.
"We used a lot of neons for the

areas

screen."

of the actors, whose costumes also
conformed to the blacks, greys and
whites of the color scheme, from

disappearing into the abyss of
blackness, Watkins did

some

addi¬

tional daubing with his filters. To
pull out skin tones, he used 14 and

March 1993

Watkins also added white cards to
the desktops to produce additional

of the

happening in certain
In order to

by placing pieces of flat
glass in front of the actors' faces.

storefronts, added some steam
smoke, and hung the kind of lan¬
terns

you'd find in New Orleans."
Later, at Griffith Park,

Watkins orchestrated the confron¬
tation between Maggie and another

assassin, dubbed "Victor the
American Cinematographer - March 1993

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