American Cinematographer - March 1995 - 75

On the

Spot

Filming 27 Stories Up
by Mary Hardesty
Shooting interiors using natural light can
be risky, but add to that two cameras,
images projected onto glass and painted
surfaces, 20 computer monitors, two
dozen actors and a location on the 27th
floor of an unoccupied office building in
Los Angeles' busy mid-Wilshire district,
and you

have the latest commercial as¬
signment of director of photography
Curtis Clark, ASC.
"When you're shooting high up
in a big building it's great if you can make
use of the natural light, because it's usu¬

ally afterthe scouting and location selec¬
place that the reality of pull¬
ing cable up 27 stories sinks in," ob¬

tion takes

serves Clark, whose credits include spots
for AT&T, DuPont and Ocean Spray. "Be¬

cause we were so

light the

scene any

high up, to correctly
other way and dupli¬

Clark used the GPS Satellite

navigation system to accurately time
sunrises and sunsets. "It was very valu¬
able in terms of establishing a schedule
and deciding on a call time, because it
shows you the path of the sun for your
particular location. Also, it enabled us to
determine exactly the earliest time we
could start shooting and at what time the
sun would have a direct path between
the buildings across the street and into
our

office block. You couldn't do

some¬

thing like this without one."
In addition to lighting the ac¬
tors, Clark had to worry about synchroniz¬
ing the computer monitors' video screen
roll with the camera as well as lighting
several projected images. "A multi-lay¬
ered front and back projection situation
is no easy trick to set up or light," Clark

cate our results we would have needed

says.

helicopters with lights hovering outside
the windows acting like levitating Musco
Lights."
Time and money restrictions

Before the six-day shoot, Clark
took black & white portrait shots of sev¬
eral of the key actors in expressive

meant that the use of a

stage set was not

option for Clark's latest spot, a :30
MCI ad featuring frenetic stockbrokers
wheeling and dealing in what appears to
be a Wall Street trading room. The spot,
an

"Financial Broker," which called for a
cool and steely look, lent itself perfectly
to the use of a natural light source. "I
was able to use the warmth of the natu¬
ral light source to get natural-looking
flesh tones and let the rest of the scene

cooler," says Clark.
Clark augmented the natural
light with bounce cards and a variety of
reflectors, including silver and white
Griffolyns and mirrors. "I took advantage
of the quality of the color of the sun as it
changed," says Clark, whose trick was to
use a series of 81s. "That way, if I
needed to make the

shots,

scene a

because the natural

light

bit

was

warmer

getting

well as color slides we shot of
beaches, traffic, and New York Wall
as

deliberately degraded
these images to create impressionistic

and

forms that you never can

a

judgment call."

seek intensive,
hands-on, industry-based
training in the motion pic¬

Street

scenes.

March 1995

We

quite make out.

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ture arts, we offer 4 of the
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was

cooler, I could do so in very small Kelvin
shifts by taking temperature readings

making

If you

in the office space.
"One of the

projection screens
just outside camera range and the
glass partition picked up the reflections,
so we had multiple layers of the actual
actor, his projected image and the pro¬
jected image being reflected in the par¬
titions," explains Clark. Fie shot these
images at 120 frames per second so that
when the image would be projected nor¬
mally, the frenzy is slowed down to allow
for a good glimpse of the trading-floor in¬
tensity. "We had some additional pro¬
jected images, including a few stock

go

Vancouver
Film School

Fie used classic portraiture tech¬
niques - single-source lighting against
a black background - and shot with
5222 Kodak stock. These images were
then projected onto walls and glass par¬
titions that were designed and installed
poses.

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***

73
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