Lighting

Gary Goddard

This is all part of our night shoots. We shot... I think we shot a total of about... I actually think we shot a total of like four and a half to five months, and probably half that was night shoots. And that was, again, for a very deliberate reason. When Ed Pressman came to me with this movie, the concept was, look, we have to do He-Man on a budget, so we want to bring him to Earth. I said, okay, well, if you bring him to Earth, you've got to shoot night, because at nighttime, we can create a look for the characters with lighting...

36:40 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

that will keep them believable. But it's very difficult to have people like Tila and He-Man, Beastman, whatever, walking down Sunset Boulevard at high noon. But at nighttime, with the streets wet, with a little bit of mist in the air, a little bit of wind, it can be believable. So the decision was made early on that when we bring He-Man and the characters to Earth, we're going to do it at night. We're going to use lighting to...

37:09 · jump to transcript →

Gary Goddard

So we had to anchor off the camera again. Yeah, every one of those shots for Boss would always require at least two hours by the time you set up and by the time you do it. So back to the lighting issues. You'll see that when this door comes under attack that it's all nighttime. Soldiers played against night. Everything's played against night. We used lighting to, again, try and make the story seamless so that you're not sitting there going, you know, what...

38:08 · jump to transcript →

That says, good luck, by the way. That's Russian graffiti there. And Eddie can expound a little bit on the challenges of editing this. Yeah, this was, the coverage, the raw footage was extraordinarily good. And it's beautifully lit. It was quite an easy sequence to build an assembly of because there was just so many great options and great angles.

3:45 · jump to transcript →

And you had to. And we used every tiny, every single angle was in this. And it was hours and hours of it. This shot, we had 15 minutes at the end of the day. Look at that beautiful backlight there, the sunset. You just nailed it. It's a beautiful one-er again. It was dictated entirely by necessity. I had no time. And Tarzan is so good. Everything he's doing is so active in these scenes. He's phenomenal. Greg Tarzan Davis, who plays the character of Degau behind Briggs.

38:50 · jump to transcript →

We were just always there giving ourselves the options. I love this shot of Isai. So good. The light in this scene, all of this stuff. Again, another set designed by Gary Freeman. Yeah. And lit by... What's interesting is, watching this, you're not aware of the fact that that establishing shot of Gabriel walking in, or Isai walking in past Grace, was shot over a year before we shot this scene. Yes.

51:25 · jump to transcript →

My name is Alec Gillis. I am the co-designer of the creature effects for Alien³ of Amalgamated Dynamics Incorporated. I'm Tom Woodruff, Jr. I'm Alec's partner in Amalgamated Dynamics, co-creator of the Alien effects, and I was in the rubber monster suit. I'm Richard Edlund. I was the visual-effects supervisor on the show. It's the last movie we ever did totally photochemically, actually. Right. This was on the cusp of the digital age. We did have some digital elements. When the alien's head cracks at the end it was a digital shot. That was the only one. Styrofoam floor. - Yes. We had a better Styrofoam floor for that where we'd covered it with metallic dust. It made a more interesting effect. I've always been a little self-conscious of those Styrofoam floors. Plus, that alien juice is pretty mean stuff. I think it's interesting that you can fly through space in a Styrofoam ship! Hey, there's a glimpse... Was that it? That scan, that was a fun scan. There it is - the multilayered sculpture. Are those your star fields too, Richard? - Yeah. I'm Alex Thomson. I was the director of photography on this movie, Alien³. I actually got involved because the original cameraman was Jordan Cronenweth, who did Blade Runner for Ridley Scott, beautifully in my opinion. But Jordan became ill in the first four days of shooting and had to leave the production. I was asked to take over, and I was honored to be able to try and match to his lighting. All I heard, and I wouldn't know if there was any other reason whatsoever, was the fact that Jordan wasn't well. We knew he had got Parkinson's. We knew he had that. You could see he wasn't a fit man obviously when I used to go and talk to him. He was a great character. I liked him very much. I knew him from Blade Runner. I'd met him on Altered States, too, cos Stuart cut that, didn't he? But I'm convinced it was the fact that he wasn't well enough to continue. I know it was a sad loss, but at the same time, I love Alex's work. I did Legend with him. I did Legend with him. Yeah, and I love him anyway. And I did The Saint with him. I love this shot, and I love the fact that it's a model. I just still feel that these miniatures have a quality that CGI spaceships just don't have. Do you think that, Richard, or is that just me? Am I being old-fashioned? Well, it can and it can't. I mean, it depends. On Air Force One I would never have made any models now. It depends on the kind of stuff. This is obviously special effects. These are models shot by the second unit, by Tony Spratling, up in the north of England.

0:59 · jump to transcript →

You notice in these sequences, the camera is near the ground so the ceiling becomes more important than the floor and one is shooting up people's nostrils. This was an approach David Fincher wanted, which I think is terribly effective indeed and makes it more distinctive than the other three, rather, in my opinion. I tried to keep it fairly shadowy, so that it looks moody. Where I could, I brought the light from the top because it's unusual for the light to come from the floor, but one had to be careful about it obviously. The difficulty was getting light into the eyes so we could see what the actors were thinking but not at the expense of the mood. I remember at Pinewood Studios when the sets were going up, Fincher would have us walk through the sets just looking at the scope of them. It was truly amazing to see these things go up. Norman Reynolds is a great production designer. He builds the world. It's very difficult to control him cos George would tell him on Star Wars "Don't build that. We're gonna paint it", and the next day - "It's too late. It's built." When they sent us over, we said "Why are we going to London?" They said "It's the sets, the set design, the artistry and the craftsmanship." And it really was very true. British actors is another good reason to go there. Somehow the British accent does a lot for these movies, I think. Vincent has had a deep, abiding interest in Luddite monks, and had done a great movie called The Navigator, where these monks dig their way through the earth, coming out into the 20th Century. It was a great movie. But, anyway, the original idea was that this was a wooden planet built by the Luddites and in the bottom of the planet, symbolically, the reactor was kind of hell. The technology that kept this thing going was emanating from the bowels of Lucifer. What drew me to the project first was that it wasn't a retread kind of sequel. It was a completely new idea, and some of it survived in the final script. David was entirely in control from the beginning. He put his stamp on it. He was the director and nobody ever questioned it. He was completely in control of the set and everybody hung on his words. He was definitely doing it. There was no weakness in it at all. He was very, very confident in what he was doing and wouldn't be swayed. He had this vision and that was what he was going to do. He came under quite a lot of pressure from 20th Century Fox to hurry up or do it the quickest way or the most expedient way, but he wouldn't listen. He would do what he wanted to do, quite rightly, in my opinion. As I say, his compositions are marvelous and the use of the frame, and so on. David had been a cinematographer before he became a director, so he knew lighting. He knew what was good and what was bad. That's not to take away from David Worley, the operator. His contribution was enormous as well.

10:16 · jump to transcript →

The light coming from the top was a 4K xenon lamp, which gives you very straight beams, which I thought would be quite a good idea. I shot it up through a mirror because you can't tilt them down or the condenser burns. But we had a mirror above the set and I shined it from the floor onto the mirror. This autopsy scene was a favorite of Fincher's, too, because we had created a body of Newt that had multiple layers of tissue, skin and musculature that could be cut through, and the bones opened up. It's a lot of graphic coverage that's not in the final movie. The body of Newt was actually based on... Alec and I had done a life cast of Carrie Henn during Aliens, and while we were in London Bob Keen's shop actually had a casting of the head. We were able to get that and remold it, so we were able to duplicate what the actress had looked like some five or six years previously. There is intercutting here with the real girl as well. She has a lot of fuzz on her face. - Yeah. Backlit fuzz.

17:31 · jump to transcript →

to make it look more warm and passionate. So he came up with the idea of a color. He was suggesting using more of a red, orange, and green as a key color. That will make it totally different from the first one. The first one was a little cold and have a blue lighting, and even though the set is pretty dark, but I want this one a little more charm, more open.

22:03 · jump to transcript →

more warm and more passion. The thing I like about Thomas E. Sanders, all of his designs just look so real. He like realistic. He like everything look real and also have a great passion feeling. He made model for every set so we could figure out about a camera angle and the atmosphere, the lighting and how everything work.

22:31 · jump to transcript →

What am I doing here? And I also want every scene in Spain, you know, they're all moving. So a lot of camera movement and special lighting to make every scene look pretty much like a dancing. No matter the party scene or the cartridge, the balcony scenes, every scene, whenever we see Spain, it's all moving. It's pretty much like ballet dancing.

23:01 · jump to transcript →

the classic thing you need to do as a director when you can, which is don't let the actress watch while you're rigging all this stuff. And it was terrifying looking, for real. What really worked best here for me was that in terms of directing, everything was neutralized. The audience feels like, oh, this is calm. Yeah. Everything's fluorescent. There's no shadows. There's no contrast. So that's, for me, as a lighting cameraman, I want to make sure that that is there. But to get into this room and then

23:51 · jump to transcript →

And there is such a thing in nature, and they don't give a shit who you are. And you have to outwit them. How many days did you guys have to shoot this? Not a lot. Because I remember reading, wasn't this shot in January of 88, and it was released in August of 88? I couldn't tell you. It was January for sure. That's a pretty crazy turnaround. These guys are eating ice cubes to keep their breath from reading, and I couldn't backlight them. Oh, I remember this was a nightmare.

37:22 · jump to transcript →

that's insane like again I've seen this movie a million times and I feel like you can like especially now like you were saying before Chuck about like seeing a mat and you know maybe we were more forgiving back then than we are now with the technology that's there but how miniatures can still trick the eye and they're better for lighting a good miniature is amazing because it literally has depth even though it's smaller it's just scale and this was in a you know this was in a warehouse in Castaic

38:17 · jump to transcript →

before we were going to shoot, like the research we did in Russia, and then learning about nuclear physics and spending time with a gentleman from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who basically educated us on nuclear physics and working with that. There's a particular lighting effect from...

29:41 · jump to transcript →

glow that was effervescent in a way and wouldn't contaminate the actor's skin and can be lit from a top light UV source that doesn't actually light the actors. So you could still dramatically light the actors and stay true to the set and the available light that's in the set and get this magical hue that's coming off the flooded reactor compartment. And so through that process and trying to be economical, we found out that we could get powdered quinine. And so we

32:42 · jump to transcript →

where the conning tower itself was the most weight. And so then that presented problems for us because you don't want to compound the problem. So we couldn't bring lighting equipment in as close as we wanted it to, and we couldn't bring cranes. And we kind of had to counterbalance everything that you bring within a certain circumference of the conning tower itself.

51:46 · jump to transcript →

playing himself. They did a great job with the sets and the lighting.

7:25 · jump to transcript →

Run away or head towards? Well, no matter what, I'm sure that Greg is really happy that you brought that up. This is the shot I was talking about earlier that, you know, there was clearly rain in the background. As these lights pan, you would see the rain being, you know, backlit by the light. I think you're looking at other things at this moment. Yeah, you are. You are, and I think it all works out. If you notice, there's no... You can't see anything in that pit back there on that shot. We still want to spend the money.

19:07 · jump to transcript →

Big shots like that, you don't think about, but not only do they have to be lit and we have to rehearse it and get everything ready, but then we have to light all those flambos and light all the torches and wet down the floor. And sometimes by the time you're done, the floor is dried up or the fires have gone out. It's a funny thing about torches. You see all these people use torches in movies and you think, well, they last forever. Those torches, any kind of torch like that, they'll stay lit maybe three or four minutes, max.

37:27 · jump to transcript →

I can see a few echoes of the lighting design in something like Inferno as well. Yes. The second of the Three Mothers films by Argento. Sure, sure, exactly. And, you know, we wanted a kind of future retro look. So it's film noir. It's a detective story. You know, a man, well, he's not a detective, but he's certainly investigating a disappearance.

13:13 · jump to transcript →

The look we wanted was a graphic novel style look to it, and hence the lighting, the gels, the colours. So we have Steven Berkoff here, who was riding high very much so at the time with, I think his play West had just come out, hadn't it, just before you started shooting this? Yeah, I think he just came off Beverly Hills Cop. He had indeed, yes. And he complained that he felt his acting was constrained and he was, you know...

14:02 · jump to transcript →

So the lighting's going to disappear around four o'clock. Yes, I think there's one shot where you can see that it's darkened slightly that was probably caught just at the end of the envelope that you had available. And I thought, how the hell is he going to, you know, read eight pages of dialogue or whatever it was and remember it? But bless him, look at him. Yeah.

15:21 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

I got the idea for this robot fight while I was staying in LA. I had jet lag, I was in a hotel room, I couldn't sleep, so I turned on the TV, and there was this infomercial for a boxing training device. This thing looked like a big plastic dummy of a man, and it had lights for its eyes and lights for its mouth, and when one of these lights lit up, you were supposed to punch or kick it in that spot. And when I was thinking up ideas for what Lara would do in her training, I thought, well, she's gonna have something a lot more advanced

1:06 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

This scene shows up particularly Peter Menzies Jr.'s beautiful lighting. Everything in the film is just exquisitely shot. I'd worked with Peter before on my previous film, The General's Daughter, and I loved the look of that film, but I think in this film he really surpassed himself, and every single shot and every single scene is quite exquisite, and this is a very good example of it, with the light flooding in through the window on Lara at the desk.

9:34 · jump to transcript →

Simon West

careful and pernickety about how they were doing their research. Lara would wade in there with a hammer and just cut to the chase and get on with it and just smash the thing so she could get the information she needed. This clock was beautifully made by a real clockmaker and it really lit up inside and every piece worked on it and it was a beautiful piece of workmanship made of solid brass and we had two or three different versions of it that did different things and also we built a gigantic I think three or four foot across

17:23 · jump to transcript →

You know, the one thing that we really attempted in the photography of this film is we really tried to get motivated natural sources as much as possible. And even on a low-budget picture, we were always trying to work the lighting into how the film was made from the design point of view, even though the design was primitive in a lot of ways. And so fire came into a lot. You know, we tried to light a lot of the sequences, either with candles in that particular scene. We have a couple of scenes by firelight.

10:31 · jump to transcript →

you know, trying to make it like a creepy little storage room and kept it really dark. Here was our attempt at shooting using natural lighting again. We got the flame. We used like a little flickering effect, which is one guy walking along with the light sort of flickering it. It might have been a little obvious. I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. This was supposed to be a cat, but we didn't have a cat, so somebody, I think our...

33:00 · jump to transcript →

You know, we went to great lengths to actually rent this flashlight from a special effects house that had this really powerful beam. Because once again, trying to use the motivational lighting in the film. Have that lamp in the middle that's going to be an integral part of the fight sequence. Because he's going to turn the light on and it's going to be swinging around and give you some impressionistic lighting during the fight scene.

46:15 · jump to transcript →

Expressionistic, non-set set. I love the way Cortez lit this. It's like you're peeping through a keyhole at her. That's an uncredited lady named Gloria Paul. And this is the first of many sets which really is no set. It's just the chairs and the gentleman sitting there and the lighting.

4:01 · jump to transcript →

And it was beautiful, too, the way they were both facing in the same direction, you know, to show the inner divorce. Now, this is an interesting scene, I think, from a rear projection point of view, because originally a lot of this was shot with Emmett Lynn and then thrown away. Instead of going back to the lake again, this is done with rear projection, and it's extremely well lit by Stanley Cortez. You wouldn't really know it, I think, that it wasn't made on location. Absolutely right. You mind my cussing, boy? No.

31:10 · jump to transcript →

Now, this is a set that's not a set. It's just all background. The bed is in the foreground, but there are no other walls except the background wall, which, as you can see, is designed and lit sort of like a chapel for this human sacrifice. Answer me. It's a very ritualistic scene. And doesn't some of the scene remind you of Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, too? Absolutely. Expressionistic. Again, it's a silent, expressionistic influence.

38:34 · jump to transcript →

kind of patio windows. They came from a big manufacturer before they really got into vogue. And we bought all these units which was built into the set. And the interior of the set, you know, is well lit. But we wanted this kind of rostrum where the actual diamond satellite was being erected in the center. And I remember we wanted like a scaffold that was something different.

57:55 · jump to transcript →

And he said, what do you want? And I had no idea at that time of what to use. I knew Vegas quite well. And I thought, let's say we want to shoot in downtown Vegas for four nights or five nights because there's all that free lighting, which is terrific. And we do a car chase. Let's do what you couldn't do it in Piccadilly Circus. Let's do what you can't do in Piccadilly Circus. Let's do it in Vegas.

1:03:11 · jump to transcript →

You know, or if anything, start off the movie the way Bond starts today with something fantastic and then get into the story. But this turned out to be right in the middle of the picture, which is really not the way it's supposed to be. As cameraman Ted Moore discovered, one of the advantages of shooting at night along the Las Vegas strip is that no additional lighting was needed. This confused Harry Saltzman, as Peter Lamont recalls. Harry said to Ted Moore, you haven't got any lights down here. So he got his meter out and he said, no, it's F8.

1:05:05 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

Next to nothing. In fact, only one engine worked, I think. As far as I remember, it slightly tilted to one side as it moved. Don't worry. But as a film set, it was okay. But all of this is the wonders of art direction. And lighting, of course. Right outside that window, you would now see Heron Dock. I bought this pub about two years ago, Charlie.

47:42 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

and a lighting man's nightmare. You get reflections everywhere. We've got people sitting in front there, but that floor, believe me, is a mirror. And you've got to keep the light off it, otherwise you get the light coming in the wrong direction. Phil Mayhew, who was my lighting cameraman, did brilliantly. That sort of thing doesn't happen twice in one day. You should level with us.

57:02 · jump to transcript →

John Mackenzie

Victoria, unless you tell us what Harold's bad problems are and how he's dealing with them, I'm going to tell you what we're going to do. Tony and me, we're going to leave the table. We're going to check out of the Savoy. And as they were going to have us, so we put up with all the inconveniences and all the problems like the mirrors, reflective light and all that. And Phil actually lit it. You see, he couldn't hang lights or anything. He's lit almost this entire scene. You see these bulbs of light on the table? That's how he did it.

58:24 · jump to transcript →

One little thing I noticed... I mean, I didn't catch it when I was directing Jeff with this, is that when he plays Clu, he plays it with this strange computer accent, this mechanical accent. And now, when he's being tortured, he loses that, and I wonder whether he noticed it. We got so caught up in being in the scene that nobody realized that at the time. Clu's torture sequence is a great example of how light is used to create emotion. Lots of different filters were used on him as a part of that torture sequence. There are, basically, ripple glass effects, there's silk screen steel mesh, exposure changes, hand-done animation. When he's energized by the MCP, there are other filters that were used on the camera to give him that multiple-effect look. In this particular case, it was silk screen mesh, steel silk screen mesh that was on the taking camera and was spun around on the lens as a part of that effect. Dillinger's arrival to ENCOM in his personalized chopper was an interesting sequence. I took drawings of the chopper, schematic drawings, and created the design motif that you see on the chopper. And then over a two-day period, I applied these designs to the chopper myself with these varying sized, 3M reflective tapes. So, when we are shooting this sequence, what we are basically doing is flying air-to-air in another chopper parallel to this chopper. And we have a very low-intensity light source right near the lens of the camera, which is shooting across and reflecting directly back at the camera off of this 3M material. And it was a red light source, so it gives you the appearance that the chopper is either backlit or has some kind of neon lighting system on it. Again, there was the attempt to, for the outside, the window, to have the grid type of atmosphere and, kind of, cross-pollinize the electronic world with reality. Oh, I remember this stuff. Nice desktop computer built right into the glass. Touch screen. - Touch screen. I still want this desk. This was done with rear projection under the desk. The whole set had to be built up on the stage so that we could put a giant mirror under the set and project it in the old-fashioned way. There were technicians who were basically controlling light switches to different light boxes underneath this desk to light up different areas. The type itself, when it writes itself on, is actually matted into the scene from a computer graphics created type. And again, the view behind Dillinger is indistinguishable from the electronic world. And whose voice is the MCP? It's David Warner's voice. - Yeah. Yeah. It was just electronicized a little bit. End of line. Someone pointed out that they finally figured out that the reason that Bruce Boxleitner's character was wearing glasses is because he was supposed to be a little bit of a nerd. I think that was the intent. Just the readouts on the computers in the real world had to be pre-programmed ahead of time so that they wouldn't have rolling bars on them when we photographed them. Here you see another attempt to link the electronic world with the real world. The cubicles that the office workers are in are not dissimilar to the cubicles that the game players are in. And the intent was to have them go on forever or almost for infinity. Now, what thematically is happening is that at the time, computer people... Programmers were very concerned that the IBMs were going to take over the world of computers and exclude people. That they were going to be... That the system was going to be tyrannical. And what we're trying to show here is that the... Corporately, they've put a stranglehold on the system, and that the programmers are not being allowed the access that they want. And access for them is vital for their work. This character, Alan/Tron, is still inside the world of ENCOM and is more in balance. He seems... He's one of the people that's going to deal with the system from the inside. He's got a very methodical program in Tron, whereas Flynn is no... He's a renegade now. He just doesn't fit in and he's at war with the Dillinger character. The name Tron is derived from electron. Some programmers think it refers to "trace on, trace off." But that... We learned about that afterwards. There's a program in Japan called TRON, which is an educational school program, which has been running since 1985. And ENCOM was the only name we could find that wasn't already registered as a corporate name. Whereas Alan and Flynn are aligned with their counterpart programs, Dillinger has aligned himself with the tyrannical Master Control Program. So, the MCP is the ultimate controller, the big mainframe, the antithesis of the personal computer. The sequences that take place at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory were interesting in their concept and in production. It was a very complex place to work. It was a very tight area, and we worked on this film with 65-millimeter equipment. And Bruce Logan, the DP, had his hands full. Sixty-five-millimeter film technology is quite cumbersome compared to Panaflexes and Panavision cameras. The size of the camera body itself, the limitations of the lenses, blimping the cameras... They're huge, so to get them in these cramped quarters was difficult. We were the only ones... Only film company ever allowed access to shoot in there. And nobody's been back since. A lot of this was lit, practically, by the fluorescents that are in there. It almost looks like a set. Yeah. We were very lucky that Lawrence Livermore let us use this facility. Because the cost of building a set this elaborate would have been astronomical. The Lawrence Livermore Lab is where they had the largest laser in the world. I don't know if it still does today. And they did a lot of research for NASA. Lawrence Livermore Lab was very cooperative with us, and allowed us to, really, kind of, run free through this particular area of the laboratory, which was their linear accelerator. So, we went into the one particular area, which we found most interesting for the area where Flynn gets de-rezzed, and where you first see the matter transportation effect, where the orange is digitized and deteriorated and then reassembled. In this particular case, we are seeing an orange, which was created by CGI by Triple-l. Animation that was done by the effects animation department, which was headed up by Lee Dyer and the effects animators, John Van Vliet, and John Norton, Barry Cook and Michael Wolf, Chris Casady. The name of that laser, by the way, Is Shiva, the Hindu goddess of creation and destruction. The 16 billion-year life cycle, she's got the drum of creation in one hand and the fire of destruction in the other. ...femain suspended in the laser beam. Then, when the computer plays out the model, the molecules fall back into place and voila! So simple. Why didn't I think of that? - That's right. Use that on Star Trek all the time. It's funny how they just kind of, just blow it off. Another afternoon's work down in the lab. Exactly. - Teletransportation, okay. Just digitized matter, no problem. Tomorrow we'll do watermelons. In a week, a human being. No, that comes sooner than that. A-ha! Oh, you're giving it away now.

7:08 · jump to transcript →

One little anecdote here is that the cameraman that was up on the platform shooting this, the viewfinder of his camera was broken, the pellicle mirror had shattered, and he couldn't see anything through the camera and he just aimed and shot. He didn't want to slow down the production by telling anyone that he couldn't see anything, and held his breath all the way till dailies, and the shot worked out. Oh, that's right. 'Cause there weren't very many 65-millimeter cameras available, and all this was shot in 65 millimeter. Yeah. When we opened these cameras, they still had the sand of Lawrence of Arabia in them. Well, Flynn's arcade was in Culver City. Yeah, it's across the street from the old MGM lot, which is now the Columbia lot, but now renamed as Sony Pictures. Now, there was actually a loft at the location. But then the re-shoot... The close-ups were the re-shoots on a stage. Yeah. That's the... The actual... The practical location. Space Paranoids. Space Paranoids. I take my son to the arcade in Westwood. We go once in a while. I have to bring my earplugs. But I've never seen an old couple like that in a video game arcade. That's right. We knew that Bally was going to release a video game simultaneous to the release of the picture, and therefore we wanted to have the design of the game in the arcade and the game in the real world that people would actually play be very similar. So, we go to Flynn's, and we see Flynn playing the electronic game and fighting off a Recognizer. That is the console which we created for the film that represented the game that Bally was going to create. Although, obviously, at that time, there was no way that a computer game could have real-time, interactive, full raster graphic imagery. So, it was a prediction of the future of the way games were going to evolve, and that is what we're now seeing in CD-ROM games and the games that are in home computers and arcades today. Jeff did get very good at video games. We had some on the set. Yeah, he was remarkable, and one day you suggested that we videotape him while he was actually doing it. And look at the neon in the back. I'd forgotten about that. OA, right. I don't think any of the actors actually went so far as to get themselves a computer and spend hours backstage... Programming. -... learning how to program and... That didn't happen, but they got as far as games. Battle Tank. We used to play a lot of Battle Tank. Battlezone. Yeah. Battlezone. There you go. Now, as! recall, you... We re-shot this sequence. Yeah, and I don't even remember... The lighting... To match, I think, the lighting of the game arcade. Well, I think, actually... - We changed dialogue. Did we? - Changed dialogue. And here's a little secret. We told the studio that we needed to redo it to match the lighting. Well, see, /... Still using the same excuse. That's right, you're still... You're still well-programmed... - /'// never tell. The lighting didn't match. The casting process was interesting. Originally, I'd pictured Jeff's character being younger and the Tron character being older. We were affected by some things that were definitely outside of our control. Tron predates Splash, and people forget that, really, Disney was having a hell of a time getting popular actors to work for the studio. And it had been a tough time for Disney. And it didn't help that we were saying, "Yeah, we want you to wear these funny costumes." And Jeff was always enthusiastic about being part of the picture. The Tron character... Bruce was... I don't think Bruce was quite as adventuresome at first, although he got into it after a while. I would have liked to have seen Bruce possibly be a little, I think... I had pictured him as sort of a younger Kirk Douglas. I think he would have been better if he had been a little older like he is now. I like the way he looks now. And I think Jeff... I was surprised at how physical Jeff was. I thought that... I pictured Flynn being a little more geekish or a pencil neck, and Jeff is very physically strong. So, in that sense, the two became somewhat similar, although their personalities and what they represent are completely different. One little anecdote is that... I can't point back at the character of Tron and say, "There were all these actors." Or, "It was between this one and that one." But I do remember one surprising actor who really wanted to play this part, and it was Peter O'Toole. - Yes. Oh, he wanted to play the part of Dillinger. No, it was Tron. Tron, that's right. I think we wanted him for Dillinger and he said, "No." And I had this amazing scene with him in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel where... In his hotel room where he said, "I can do this!" And he started leaping from one piece of furniture to the other and screaming that, "I want Tron on my tombstone right next to Lawrence of Arabia!" And who knows, maybe he would have been great, maybe I really missed it right there. All these interiors... Shooting them, these low-light interiors, in 65 millimeter is very difficult, because the depth of field, the focus plane is incredibly short, and it was a real struggle. And some of the close-ups, we actually had to run light stands up the backs of the actors through their jackets as braces, so that they would stay in the exact same spot, so that we could keep their eyes and faces in focus. You know, if your file was in there... - Hey, wait a minute. If we can get in there, I can forge us a Group 6 access. Well, shall we dance? And ENCOM was shot in downtown Los Angeles. I forget the building. Of, the Transam building? Oh, yeah, the Transamerica building. At the top of that was the helicopter pad. This sequence between these two heads of the company really expresses the philosophical problems that the other characters are going through. Again, the office is designed to mirror the other world in terms of its graphic look. Wasn't there something about the cold, corporate look as well, Steven? There's your door. - There's the door. The scene where they sneak into ENCOM and open the door that is 10 feet thick or 12 feet thick, that's a real door, that's not a prop movie door. That's an actual radiation door at Lawrence Livermore. ENCOM isn't the business you started in your garage anymore. In one scene, you see a number of things flip up into four corners. Images. That was a traditional optical that had to be done, and opticals in those days would take two, three, four, five weeks at least, and it was a big task. It was like making its own little movie. You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from the system, but we helped create it, and our spirit remains in every program we designed... That line is one of the key lines in the whole script, about the human element that the programmers put into the system. And it's this discussion between those two characters that really elevates the picture well beyond a video game movie. Now, the reverse was shot, actually, on the Iot, so there's a reverse... Getting into the Disney vaults? Yeah. Lawrence Livermore was quite proud of the fact that although this door weighed tens of tons, or whatever it was, it was so well hinged that you could open it by just pushing it. One person could. In fact, you found... I believe you saw that door as we were taking a tour of the facility and you Said, "This would be a great place for them to sneak in." So, you kind of re-wrote the scene to accommodate that huge door. And the irony is, as he punches the buttons, that the giant door opens, and no strength is exerted, but it's opened automatically. I kind of inherited the job of not only setting up the giant rear projector and the mirror and all that stuff, but I also had the job of putting together what would end up going onto the desk. That's an actual wireframe on there, for the carrier, as you See... Right. - ...in the film. I began searching around for footage to go onto the desk, and it was getting late, and we were about to shoot this thing in a couple of days, and I just ran out of stuff, so I put the flowchart from the film on there, and probably things out of my address book and anything I could... I was down to pulling things out of Life magazine and re-photographing those. I was just running out of stuff to put on the desk. What's interesting about this protagonist, Jeff Bridges' character, is that he's actually, um... He's a creative, technical type, and he's fighting for his creations, he's fighting for his work. I think that's pretty unique. He is somewhat of a paranoid character. But with some reason. With some... Yeah. - Some good reason. Dillinger will never know we've been in here. Good luck, hot shot.

16:15 · jump to transcript →

We just passed a Cray computer, that large, refrigerator-like computer. That was, at the time, the most powerful computer in the world. This Is... - Was this set at Triple-/? Where is this? No, this was picked up at... Wasn't this picked up at Lawrence Livermore? Yes, I think this is right, this is Lawrence Livermore. And again this is another kind of discovery. As we were getting the tour, you said, "Well, we could use this for their transition." This is a Set. So, af this point we've got two hackers, one, in essence, illegal, and the other one legal, both trying to correct the system, get on the network, what we now call the Internet. Bruce Logan, the cinematographer on the film, and Peter Anderson, the cinematographer on the second unit, did a miraculous job of lighting up the set with a lot of light, but taking all the light off of the desk so that you could see the rear projection come up through it. It's pretty clever.

26:45 · jump to transcript →

Oliver Stone

because the nights don't last that long we had rain mosquitoes real mosquitoes and bob richardson my dp and i was our first big film together and bob was struggling with you know lighting nights in the jungle it's not easy with very limited equipment we went with the idea of at least in the day times of a hard to see look in the jungle nothing is

27:01 · jump to transcript →

Oliver Stone

Chris continues writing. Home. But he stops writing here, he says. This is rain against sun. This is tough. We were scheduled for rain, too much sun, but we lit it anyway. I mean, the sun pops the rain out, so we went with it. It's a strange look, but it did happen in Vietnam. We would occasionally have rain and sun.

1:03:16 · jump to transcript →

Oliver Stone

Towards the end of the schedule, we're running out of time. Shit. In struggling to deal with how do we light this huge battle at night with a limited amount of time and money, we didn't have the money for the lighting, certainly,

1:37:15 · jump to transcript →

Darius came to the set as it was being built, and Nigel would explain some of his intentions. Darius made suggestions and they created opportunities for lighting. They were like two siblings, plotting. It works well.

6:12 · jump to transcript →

I remember these signs - this is the psychological tests - and Jean-Pierre had something specific in mind, in terms of the primitive drawings of apples and pears and cows and cherries and things. He went through an amazing amount of artists trying to get primitive-looking drawings of fruits and little tidbits. It turned into such an assignment. He couldn't find anybody who could nail that style. Which had something to do with what he had seen as a Child - basic, primitive illustrations, which actually come back in his film Amélie. We get a sense of that naive, childlike graphic thing, which comes from a children's book, which, I think, is a really big deal in Jean-Pierre's imagery. I love Dan Hedaya. I love the Coen brothers' movies. You remember, he played in Blood Simple, the first movie of the Coen brothers. Interesting casting. I wondered if Jean-Pierre would have picked Dan Hedaya had Jean-Pierre grown up in America and seen Cheers. I love the lighting. You had a lot of lights coming up from the floor. Exactly. We used an optical process, and the folks were very nice with me because they made all the prints in the world with the process. And it was very expensive. And they made maybe 3000 prints with the process. The name of the process is ENR. It was invented by Storaro, the Italian DP.

8:49 · jump to transcript →

I love this shot because it's a simple effect. The ball is on the hand at the beginning of the shot, we do just a pan, and it works. I remember, Sigourney Weaver didn't believe me. She told me "Jean-Pierre, it doesn't work. It's so silly, so weird." I said "Believe me, I am sure." But I was pretty worried about this shot. And it works. There's a shot that you could claim, Pitof, as a digital shot, except it's real. When she throws that ball? It's amazing. This shot was supposed to be digital. What Jean-Pierre wanted is to make an impossible throw. Sigourney did it for real. This shot is real. Look at that. How many takes? I think it was six takes. - Six takes. Yeah. I was here when we shot that, and I feel in her eyes that something was weird. And she made it. Wow. - I had a little problem with Sigourney. The ball is going out of the frame and then back in the frame. I said "Sigourney, I'll fix that and I'll make a perfect path." So you feel the impression that the ball is always in the frame - like this ass - and... That's a silicone butt that we made. That's my favorite shot. I love this part of the film. And... Tell the story of this shot, Hervé. That's one of the famous Jean-Pierre Jeunet's favorite scenes, where somebody's putting polish on his shoes. When I got the rushes, I said to Jean-Pierre: "Well, you remember you did already that scene before." And you just didn't realize it. You didn't remember. The design of the wheels, something Eric Allard had developed way back, right after Short Circuit. Each wheel, instead of treads, they had ball bearings that would roll independently, so it could turn and maneuver. I think he had it patented, and I think NASA was using the design as well. This is a stupid idea. When you arrive in the States the first thing you see is the TV, because you don't sleep. And what do you see on TV? This kind of show. This miniature was not very big. This was pretty small - three meters diameter. That's nine feet to you non-metric folk. And this - you composited Aliens. Exactly. That's miniature and greenscreen. A very composite shot. Was a lot of passes to have the light and the texture and the depth and the atmosphere. For the alien, obviously, it's man in suit. It's very difficult to shoot an alien with a man inside, because it looks like a man inside. You are obliged to shoot very close. Here's Tom Woodruff. - Here's Tom. You were talking about being on the set. Here's the deal for me: being on set in these suits, it's even more claustrophobic than being on set, because I'm literally... I've got some slots for my eyes and breathing, but there's no real interaction between what I'm doing and anybody else on set, in terms of talking or just getting a break. I can interact with the actors and they can respond during the course of the action, but then, once the shot is over, it's like total isolation. But people love you when you're in the suit, Tom. Brad Dourif was great here. It was creepier for me on my side of the glass than it was for him being on his side watching me. I like Brad Dourif in this film. Yeah, he's twisted. Wonderfully imaginative actor. Brad and that creature were dating for a few months right after they completed this scene. I love what Darius did - the slime. He put a lot of care into shooting these and designing the lighting. He, at times, would almost build a cage of fluorescence around the alien, so that you'd get a million little kicks off of the slime. so that you'd get a million little kicks off of the slime. He kept coming back to us and asking for thicker slime, because the stuff in the other movies was too runny. He wanted a quarter-inch build-up, so we went to a slime that was almost like gel. It really had a different look. It was a pleasure to work with Winona Ryder. I remember, sometimes I tried to direct her, and she told me: "Jean-Pierre, take it easy." "I have a lot of imagination. I'm going to give you some improvisation." Remember, at the editing room, everything worked, all the time. In this scene, Winona was feigning drunkenness so she could slip out. Since she's a robot, she can't be drunk. This is a nice shot with the 10mm. It was a very short corridor and it looks so huge. This is a matte painting from a French guy, Jean-Marie Vives. He worked on Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, too. It's fascinating how there's a hint of City of Lost Children in the look of the sets. That's what I love about style, ultimately it just permeates everything that somebody does. That's a clever idea. That's gotta be Jean-Pierre. Very Jean-Pierre. It's great. This set is pretty high, and we used it again at the end of the film in the chapel. The same set but horizontal. - Really? Yeah. - I didn't know. When Jean-Pierre started the movie, he spoke little English - he always had an interpreter with him - and by the end spoke better English than me. Than I. - You see? That's what I'm talking about. It's amazing, because he didn't speak a word of English when he started. Sigourney Weaver loves to have the director very close to her. She hates when the director is very far away behind the video. It was a very good relationship, because, I remember, after a take she looked at me and it was unnecessary to speak. Just one look and we knew if the take was perfect or not. It was unnecessary to speak about the take - just a look. This is a scene that's almost vaguely erotic between Ripley and Call, the two females discovering each other inside of that tube.

27:46 · jump to transcript →

This shot here is another ILM matte painting composite shot. And it was done, actually finished before that previous shot. So you can actually see some differences between the two and the lighting.

1:12 · jump to transcript →

Joe got run over by a camel. That wasn't supposed to happen. Would you do that for any amount of money? I mean, I'm sorry. They get thrown off a camel and get trampled by it. It doesn't seem right. Shooting inside this volcano was a little difficult just because of the lighting. We were always losing lighting, and it was just changing dramatically throughout the day. So, as you can see... White sky, blue sky. White sky, blue sky. Sort of like...

39:25 · jump to transcript →

Jaws. But in the desert. But in the desert. In fact, when we were shooting this scene, sequence, we shot one side and it was so beautiful. The lighting was just, the sun was just so perfect.

39:55 · jump to transcript →

He's also, like Edward Norton, an actor who can accomplish incredible things with stiliness. He's hardly moving here. But his intensity is like a laser beam. If one were nude, say, it'd be better to have outdoor privacy for that sort of thing. You think the yards are a factor when he selects victims? Yes. And there will be more of them, of course. Victims. You'll be wanting lots of these little chinwags... I love that line. "lots of little chinwags, I take it." I need your opinion now. Then here's one, You stink of fear under that cheap lotion. You stink of fear, Will, but you're not a coward! That's a nice shot. Yeah, this is my editor's favorite shot in the movie. Mark said this was his favorite shot. And I held on it, which I was... You could've cut away from it, but it's very powertul. Edward was very good here. The lighting was great and it just worked. ...poor dullards.

35:24 · jump to transcript →

This is my least favorite shot in the whole movie only because it felt like the camera was attached to his back. Maybe I should've scripted it so that there were more specific reactions to him there. No, there was. I shortened it, actually. I love the lighting in here because it's an infrared lab. It's supposed to be black, but how do we see if... It's supposed to be pitch dark. And Dante just... The highlights. Here was a moment that I was sort of proud of as a screenwriter. We've never got a really good look at Dolarhyde's face in this movie. We've seen him from behind, in the stocking mask, in the shadow. We've held him back like the shark in Jaws. We havent really seen the killer. And now, we're going to see him for the first time as a blind woman can't see him. That's the kind of effect that you love to make happen as a screenwriter. I'm very proud of the fact that we didn't know she was blind here until this moment, which is written so beautifully. It's held back. She's moving around like she's seeing. You don't notice it unless you know the Story. And then this little moment and then his reaction to it.

50:59 · jump to transcript →

I've always tried to hang on to what that cougar looked like. But by now, to tell the truth... This was made-up stuff that was not in the book. But I knew that they were going to have that scene later with the tiger, the sedated tiger, and I wanted to set up some deeper meaning to that scene for her. So I added this little section. You don't say much, do you? There was actually a scene that was left out. That was his arrival, but Mark thought it was unnecessary and Nis... - When they first arrived and walked into the apartment for the first time here. One of the things that amazes me about Ralph is that he... The script so often gives him so little to work with. The character is painfully shy, he speaks in monosyllables. This was a scene that I used to test the actors. - I remember seeing the test at the auditions. This is the scene that helped me decide that the actors that we tested werent right for the role because they can get the Dolarhyde torturing Freddy Lounds scene, but to have a vulnerability here... But you still have to fear this guy. It's a tremendous feat of acting to accomplish as much as he does with so little to say. My biggest worry going into production was that we would not be able to find an actor who could do everything that this part needed. This is a part where the actor has to bring so much, and the script doesn't help him as much as it does other actors. This is really where you see his imperfection, which is his cleft lip, which Matthew Mungle, who is a brilliant make-up artist and effects make-up artist did such a realistic job of. I tend to do a Iot of tests for hair and make-up and the tattoo. We spend a Iot of time. When you work with Dino and Martha, do they want input into those kind of choices or is that left mostly to you? I love working with Dino. Not only is the guy a legendary producer, but it's great working with Dino and Martha together because... It's a whole other energy. - Each one has their own opinion of things. Right. They are a great producing team. -/ never work with a producing team. - They are very shrewd about script. You did a lot of work with Dino and Martha before I even came on board and you delivered a first draft, basically, that was shootable. - The first draft was green-lit by the studio and it had a lot to do with Dino and Martha's notes because they are very shrewd about what the audience needs to know, and when they need to know it. The sense of the rhythms of the story, and the rhythms of the acts, they have a really good grasp. This is my favorite section of the film. This is where the pace really... It seems like it really takes off here. This is Run from Run-D.W.C. who unfortunately, I cut out of the film, not completely, but... That was him. - That was the top of his head? That was a wonderful appearance. The story really takes off here. The pacing of this section, to me, is very exciting. The music and the editing. This is where I was telling Harvey, "Can you do it twice as fast?" Harvey tends to pause in the strangest places. But it always comes out very natural. He's a brilliant actor. You had always wanted to work with him? - Always, yeah. You had always wanted to work with Harvey. Ever since I was a kid, I was just... I grew up on him. ... possibly from the Tooth Fairy. This was a Dante shot. - It's a spin. "Let's go around him." I said, "I don't want to get dizzy." He said, "No, it's an urgent scene." It does create the urgency of what's going on here, that events were spinning out of control as suggested by that. Because of 9/11 we couldn't fly a helicopter through the Washington skyline. So that was one of our few CGI shots. It's really called a composite, because we shot a plate and then we took a shot of a real helicopter. This was done on the set. Ralph read this on the set. - Standing next to them? Not when we were doing the scene, but he just read it once and this was the take we ended up using. This is a one-take performance. He was just so in the mode. He reads this letter very well. I love all this sort of hi-tech, FBI forensic stuff, and it's something that we couldn't get a whole lot of into the script because of just sheer space considerations. So where we could do these kinds of things, it was really fun. I love that shot, and that shot... All the shots of Lecter in this... Brett, you love all your shots. - I know, not all of them, but those specific ones. I like all the lighting changes through this. This is Tony Hopkins' stand-in. This is the only... I wondered why he had a British accent. I wondered why the superintendent of a hospital in Baltimore had a British accent. He migrated. This is Ken Leung who's been in three of my other movies. On the right? He's a great stage actor from Broadway, and he was the villain in the first Rush Hour, and he was in Family Man. He's just a... He's very good with this part. - He's excellent. He's really very real. ...are transparent to infrared. These could be the tips of "T's" here... This whole sequence is quite close to the book. Tom Harris is very well-grounded in all of these procedures. It's just a real gift to the screenwriter to have an author have done so much research, and be so on top of these things. ...they made that up. Three "T's" and an "R" in "Tattler." How do you communicate through a tabloid? You got what? News stories. This scene was much longer really, but we realized in the playing of this scene that the audience... This is an example where the audience was ahead of everybody. We shortened it because the characters just seemed like they were... The audience already knows who Dolarhyde is at this point. We held him back for as long as we could, but once we've shown him, the audience is just getting ahead of you. - That's my favorite shot!

55:10 · jump to transcript →

the lighting effect is yes yeah yeah and all the time we're getting themes from the new world symphony i think they made some remarks and they weren't very good so we cut them out now this is grady's place where he his little business security business i think

10:09 · jump to transcript →

How many times did you have to recut the film to get it down to an hour? Like about five or six times? Yeah, and then it was taken away finally and cut by the projectionist and the company lawyer, as far as I remember. It looked like it, too. So this is the original? This is the original. This is your cut. Gosh, that lighting is good. I'd forgotten how good it was.

14:16 · jump to transcript →

So he used that dummy as kind of a poetic imagery. We're going back to the lighting, to the visual look of the film, what Ken was going for in contrasting this garish neon underworld of China Blue and Shane, contrasted with this very kind of bright naturalistic suburbia that we see in the home of

1:03:50 · jump to transcript →

I had such a hassle with Harry Dean because I wanted him to jump out and get his feet wet. And we had all kind of extra shoes and socks prepared for him, but he would never put his feet in the water. Of course you don't know. You know, I eventually ended up laying in that river as a lighting stand-in on a science fiction shortly after this film was done. And it was basically I was instructed by Del, if you want to be an actor, you have to do everything. That includes lighting, stand-in, whatever you have to do.

23:40 · jump to transcript →

Sandbag, whatever it takes. So I was a lighting stand-in on a science fiction, and in that last scene where I show up on the gurney, that was an actual infection that I got in my eye. As a result of lying in the L.A. River. Yeah, and all the malathion that they were spraying all over the place. Hey, but you earned your dues.

24:09 · jump to transcript →

You did get a graduate degree in Repo Man, didn't you, Zane? Here's the scene you were talking about. Yeah. And the reverse. Oh, that right there. That's beautiful. And that's what I call a split diopter on the lens. So it's got two focal points. It's got one on Cy and one on Harry Dean. It's vertical, right? But you'll see his hand will go out of focus. Look at the lighting on Cy and the lighting on Harry Dean. Yeah. Very, very good. Cy, did you ever think about getting a roach clip? No.

39:16 · jump to transcript →

Actors are using flashlights in a movie. They're using flashlights for the same reason we use flashlights, which is they can't see, except with the flashlights illuminating. So this scene was basically lit with flashlights and some sneakily hidden bounce cards. Well.

25:23 · jump to transcript →

Beautiful mystery to them. I love churches. I love the architecture of churches. I love the way light plays on churches. I'm always astounded as to how badly churches light themselves. So we had to completely change the way this church was lit. Lovely church. Just harshly and flatly lit. And again, I think that architecturally a church is so dramatic that it was...

35:26 · jump to transcript →

You snooped through her stuff without asking to? When I was looking for something. What are you looking for? A connection. I spent a lot of time on the color of these walls because I was going to put, obviously, skin tones against them. And I wanted them to be warm and complement the skin tones. Well, not really. It's mostly just kind of like a hobby with her. You're always trying to make things look like they're lit.

52:58 · jump to transcript →

all these cobblestones are. And the other thing to remember is the phenomenal lighting by Rob Hardy and Martin Smith, our Gaffer Martin Smith cinematographer, Rob Hardy. The choice of this sort of greenish light on one end. White there. Yes, well, it's tungsten. He's got a tungsten color that he really likes that's given this entire movie this feel, this almost...

8:29 · jump to transcript →

We're actually going to jump out of the plane, aren't we? We have to do all of this for real. For real, while you're falling. While I'm falling, we're going to have to get and switch the tanks. Yes. This is the Grand Palais in Paris, France, which was kind enough to let us shoot there. Beautiful. DJ Harvey. Great, great choice. Thank you. Thank you. Look at this lighting. Awesome. Now, Peter Wenham, our production designer, was really amazing. We only had a limited amount of time in the Grand Palais, and so I said to Peter, I want you to build a set.

27:22 · jump to transcript →

Yes, and remember, I didn't like the suit at the beginning. And then you're like, we went the day before. I said, keep it. Keep tailoring the suit. I was like, Jeffrey, thank you very much. Jeffrey Kurland, our costume designer. Fantastic, fantastic guy. And then look at that. Thank you, Jeffrey. It all looks like design. Yes. And it's actually the movie gods smiling on us, right down to Rebecca's eyes, your eyes. Look at that, the lighting. Yeah. And by the way, some of that is natural light.

1:13:59 · jump to transcript →

One of the things that seems to me so interesting is that it really, it begins much more like, almost like an experimental film. Yeah. It doesn't look like a Hollywood film at all. It seems much more like, and it doesn't seem like an American film, really. Well, to me, I think it does, it is redolent of RKO's particular kind of gothicism, the lighting and the production values at RKO. But it's a fantasy, it's a dream.

1:56 · jump to transcript →

And it's like Joseph K. in the trial coming before the courts of law. There's this strongly expressionist lighting similar to the stuff we saw in the projection room as we get into this room. And it's all about money being transformed into some kind of spirituality and myth. It's like you're bringing forth the holy tables to be observed here.

17:53 · jump to transcript →

to the chapters in Mr. Thatcher's manuscript. That lighting, by the way, was similar to Welles' stage lighting, and it's meant to be a kind of allusion to the Nuremberg Lights. Exactly, yeah. This is like from his Julius Caesar, right? Yes, yeah. And so it's about fascism. But you know, that's the funny thing about this film, and again, why it has the status it partly has, is it's all...

18:29 · jump to transcript →

You know, it has that sort of work a day, you know, fluorescent lighting, you know, office chairs and desks that have probably been there for decades. You know, the New York City subway system has been around for a long, long time. This tunnel, by the way, is again in and around the Court Street Station. And as you said before, Nathaniel, there's a New York City Transit Museum. And this was the station's

13:52 · jump to transcript →

And as I said, of course, the Godfather. But Owen Roizman has said that when he went to that set, he didn't have to light it. They would turn the lights on and they had these fluorescent lights and they really did little or no lighting. They would use like a white bounce card occasionally, but the fluorescents were probably, you know, brighter than normal fluorescent lights, but he didn't have to light this. And, you know, one of the things about this movie is

25:04 · jump to transcript →

It's lit mostly from practicals. Now, when they're in the subway tunnels, you will see these little lights periodically going away from camera. And those are real subway tunnel lights. But what Roizman did, which was really kind of ingenious, at least I thought so, was he put in...

25:33 · jump to transcript →