American Cinematographer - August 1993 - 58

Light

the next

after
death?

be

juttering

across

the

foreground object

in this
case, Biff Tannen's car-to give the
a

-

audience a focus. It's like the old
'waiter in the restaurant' pan trick,
which cinematographers used for

We know that

eventually
Lowel equipment must

even

one

screen," Trumbull says. "We came
up with the idea that there had to

years to cover up

mppt its maker

blurring and

strobing."
The Trumbull team

set to set. In addition, Trumbull
commissioned longtime colleague
Ron Schmidt (whose expertise is

fish-eye lens format. Because
straight lines shot with a fish-eye
lens become curved at the edge of

special camera engineering) to cre¬
ate a compact camera that could be

everything in the movie
irregular and curved. In Hill
Valley, every possible line is curved
streets wind, street lamps have
crook-necked poles, signs and win¬
-

dows are round

or

oval. Other than

that, says Trumbull, "we just
dreamed up situations that we
could make irregular and natural¬
istic. This is a movie made specifi¬

Nellie Zimmerman

"Within

back

one

were

week, the stands we sent

returned either repaired or

replaced, free ofcharge. It is nice to
know that there

are

still

some

companies who take pride in the work
and service they provide to their customers.

"

-Becky West
West Virginia Radio and Television
"/ have

the past

always used your products in
because they have always been

the best. Now I have another reason...
you care

and you back up your products
with service
-

"

Hugh C. Daly

JHD Productions Ltd.

®

56

lOHBF

cally to adapt to all the difficulties
of the format. Irregular trees, ir¬
regular rocks, irregular caverns -
every shape is irregular."
The fish-eye perspective
also proved to be an obstacle when
it came to lighting the miniature
sets. "When you're shooting with a
fish-eye lens, there is no place to
hide the lights," says Trumbull.
"You can't have a stand or a flag or
a 2K
anywhere. The lighting had to
come

Zimmerman & Associates, Inc. Film
and Tape Production

booms that were rigid enough for
motion-control photography but

light enough to move swiftly from

to be

-

Mike Sorensen of Apogee to create
four graphite and carbon-fiber

came

construct

today's world of take the money and
run, to find a company that unll stand
by its product makes us want to sing
your praises... "

cally reduce the frame rate, from
three to thirty seconds per frame,
and move the camera extremely
slowly. Trumbull commissioned

up with a drastic but ingenious
scheme to combat the cartoonish
distortion inherent in Omnimax's

the frame, Trumbull decided to

"In

lets in very little light and the only
way to compensate was to drasti¬

from inside the set itself.

Throughout the film, there are
thousands of lights hidden behind
buildings, trees, rocks. It was just
incredibly difficult, because not
only do you have a fisheye lens, but
you have a fisheye lens moving
through the environment. If you
move
deep into a set, you might
find that a light that was hidden
before is

now

revealed."

Trumbull decided

that shooting at f/22 was
for maximum clarity and

field.

early on
essential
depth of

"Everything has to be sharp

maneuvered in the

narrow
pas¬
sageways of the miniatures and
instill a strong sense of danger in
the viewer.

Perhaps the most jarring
sequence in the film occurs when
the DeLorean swerves straight into
the roaring mouth of an ill-tem¬

pered Tyrannosaurus Rex. "It was
one
of the toughest shots,"
Trumbull admits. "We thought it
would be really fun because that's
something you can do in a simula¬
tor film that you could never do in
a movie. In
regular movies, usually
you'll be going through some chase
sequence and you'll narrowly miss
something. We said, 'To hell with
it, let's just hit everything!'"
The fit of the camera in the
dinosaur's mouth determined the
size of the entire Tyrannosaurus
robot and thus the size of the vol¬
cano

environment, which

was

lit¬

tered with odd, tree-like rock for¬
mations in which to hide lights. A

complicated system of some 26
motors, each a separate channel in
the computer program, was
needed to control the smooth and
very slow movements of the tenfoot-tall Tyrannosaurus robot. The
addition of ten channels for Biff's
car and ten channels for the camera,
both on separate booms, made the
shot a virtuoso execution of mo¬
tion-control photography.
Trumbull maintains that
the true piece de resistance of the film¬

because your eye is wandering all
over the frame. Otherwise it's like

ing was a scene near the end of the

watching a 3-D movie."

pears to be sliding helplessly down

In effect, special motioncontrol booms had to be created for
the cameras, since the f / 22 aperture

Lowel-Light Mfg., Inc.
140 58th Street Bklyn., NY 11220
(718) 921-0600 Fax: (718) 921-0303

August 1993

film in which the DeLorean ap¬
a

bubbling, volcanic river of lava.
"Universal wanted a big

waterfall

scene

at the end because
American Cinematographer - August 1993

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - August 1993
