Page 26 - Fujifilm Exposure_5 The Wings Of The Dove_ok

Exposure USA
MAKING THE
continued from previous
“I have six 10Ks, fully spotted on desks and areas of the office. This brings the ambience in the office up a little. It is easier to get exposure with this hard and hot light. Something over exposed in an interior set gives the illusion that a source like the sun is penetrating through a window or skylight and makes it look more natural to the eye and less like a movie set on
a sound stage.”
With the walls made of red brick and the railings a
strong blue, the set has a strong visual quality. To enhance these colours and give the actors who are usu- ally wearing muted ‘office attire’ the best look possible, he has four 6x6 soft boxes with six spot PARs and full grid and 250 above the set, one in each corner. This cre- ates a softness he uses for a 3/4 backlight and brings the stop right up to f2.8.
“Since this is a comedy/drama, we strive to have the unusual as well as the usual,” says Dickson. “One of our other standing sets, which started out to be an occa- sional joke, has become a fun and challenging lighting job. It’s our co-ed bathroom. There is a door for the men and a separate door for the women as you would expect, but they all end up in the same place.
“Inside, we have four stalls and a sink with gimbaled mirrors. The set is painted dark gray. I wanted to give the flat gray walls some texture, some sort of life of their own,” he continues. “This was not only just another set to play dialogue in, it was to have a personality all its own. Most of the scenes played in there were private per- sonal conversations and I wanted the bathroom to take on its own special character. I didn’t want this to have the usual fluorescent look to it.
“So, I had my grips build 4x4 black cards with shards of broken mirrors attached to them and suspend- ed above the set. “We then used 1200 watt HMI PARs, without lenses, shooting them directly into the mirrors. This makes a speckled pattern on the walls, giving the room some texture. It gives us the sense that there is something else coming from above, through a strange window. I let the HMIs go uncorrected for day scenes,
Photos: Left ; Calista Flockhart stars in Ally McBeal, Right; Cinematographer Dennis Smith with star Dylan McDermott on the set of The Practice; opposite page bottom; The cast of The Practice in their chambers and a tense scene in the cells.
which gives the muted gray walls a blue pattern and then I put double full CTO on for late evening and
the various night scenes.
For Dickson, working with computer generated images for Ally McBeal is just working with another tool. “I became an avid 3D animator and model builder after I shot the pilot for Babylon 5,” he explains. “I had always seen a need to incorporate highend effects work with television production. I recently did three shots in a tele- vision movie that I photographed completely CGI, that I
did at home on my PC. I think it is a great tool.”
A confirmed PC technician, Dickson loves to exper- iment with effects, importing frames and models of sets to look at camera moves and lighting using Lightwave and Soft Image. “This working knowledge enables me to have a kind of shorthand with our special effects coordi- nator, when we do these shots,” he continues. “Being able to create mattes or morphs in live elements extends
our creativity to unimaginable levels .”
Dickson does rely on post for some of the enhance-
ments needed for the flashbacks and fantasies. “That way, we can concentrate on the set ups and make the extra difference after we’ve finished the shooting,” he explains. “To give us the post latitude, I will light the sets in a natural way, but often over exaggerate the high- lights. This way, in post, we can desaturate and blow out the highlights. I crank the light up so that something a lit- tle over will go way white, bring the faces up past normal values, and select certain colours for emphasis, popping more red and green into some shots.
“I look forward to each script, knowing there will be something new and different to do. Now that we’ve been picked up for another series of episodes, production is starting to give us more to do. They are building a full- blown Starbucks coffee house. We’re getting our own courtrooms. Who knows what else we’ll come up with? The stronger the show gets, the more we can do.
“The key to Ally McBeal is stretching the limits of the normal television programming-with story, and with cinematography. Each fantasy or flashback has been unique. I love the challenge of finding a new and different way to portray the interior and exterior life of this young woman who is trying to take life one day at a time, her way,” says Dickson. ■ COURTESY OF FUJIFILM USA
T
The stories, involving drug possession, stalking, wrongful death, assisted suicide, and other legal chal- lenges, also focus on the human lives of the lawyers involved. They are not infallible. They are flawed. Sometimes they make mistakes just like in real life.
“When David and I discussed the look for the series (the pilot was shot by Theo van de Sande, ASC), he said he wanted the gritty reality of Seven, that muted grey/blue look. Although we knew we couldn’t do exact- ly the same thing on television, we used it as a basis. My determination was to make the highlights brighter and the shadows deeper and go farther than Theo had in the pilot. We wanted to make it as strong as possible, for television and not to compromise wherever possible.”
To do that, Smith chose to shoot with Fuji stock. “I did the pilot for 7th Heaven on Fuji, rating their 8571 at 400 ASA and was hooked. It has the best grain structure and latitude for this type of show. When you use HMI lighting with their daylight stock (8561), you get a won- derful pastel quality without losing the realistic quality of our show. It couldn’t be better.”
Even though he is comfortable with Fujicolor, he is always testing something new on each show. Sometimes it is pushing the stock, other times it is an unusual piece of equipment, filter or gel. “My gaffer Scotty Guthrie and my key grip Shunil Bopajari and I are always looking for new things,” he explains. “During this last season we’ve tried every type of light from the Beebee and Musco lights to candlelight. We’ve even come up with a few new pieces of equipment. Good fun it is as well.
Shot, like Ally McBeal at the renovated Renmar Studios, The Practice sets feature the firm’s office with
his is cinematographer Dennis Smith’s sec - ond season on The Practice. Veteran of shows like Picket Fences as well as pilots for 7th Heaven and Travel Agency, he’s enjoyed tack- ling this legal drama, set in a small Boston law firm. It stars Dylan McDermott, Michael Badalucco and Lara Flynn Boyle.
EXPOSURE • 26 & 27