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“To stay in character with the single-source lighting, [key grip] George Patsos, Mo and I were bouncing 6P flashlights off 1-foot-square beadboards or off the ceiling to provide the faintest little reflection on the top of Will’s head,” he continues. “When the camera is following Will, there’s no light apart from what’s coming out of the flashlight and hitting the corridor, furniture or walls — if Will isn’t lighting it, it’s not being seen. At any given point, he was 2 to 4 stops under, so we were running close to the edge of capturing information. It’s a testament to the negative that it’s all there. Francis said he wanted a scary scene, and I certainly found shooting the scene scary, albeit for other reasons!” Another interior location that proved demanding was a Manhattan apartment Neville enters in his never-ending search for food and other supplies. Styled in a contemporary manner, the apartment was a large, open space with low ceilings, exposed-brick walls, wood beams and large windows running down one wall. The space is dark when Neville cautiously enters, and he rips down the window blinds, letting sunlight flood in. “In keeping with other shots in the film, Francis wanted this scene to be covered in masters using the Steadicam,” says Lesnie. “I knew I’d need a lot of light through the windows because we were shooting wide and moving around a space with low ceilings, so there was nowhere to hide lights inside. “Mo suggested using Arri 18K Pars, which are the same size as 18K Fresnels and put out a staggering amount of light,” continues the cinematographer. “The sheer intensity of their output meant the light reached the far end of the apartment. The lights were positioned to come in at an angle to the windows so that when Neville goes right up to the window and rips down the blinds, the light bounces around, exposing the entire apartment. I sometimes diffused windows that were out of shot to soften the light that was hitting one part of the apartment. Sometimes it was going into an area of overexposure, but as long as the ratio was right, I knew I could control that in the digital intermediate [DI].” The plot of I Am Legend has two main arcs: the contemporary story of Neville’s struggle to survive in deserted New York, and flashbacks to the events that lead up to the biological disaster. The filmmakers shot the post-pandemic sequences in anamorphic 2.40:1, and the flashbacks in Super 35mm. “The contemporary night sequences show an empty urban landscape with no artificial light and a natural ambient night feel, but in the nighttime flashbacks, the city is full of life, and there is artificial light everywhere,” explains Lesnie. “By using spherical Primos almost wide open and 5218 forced 1 stop, I could maximize available light on location.” A pivotal flashback sequence involves Neville and his family (Salli Richardson and Willow Smith) driving down Dover Street to the East River, where a large crowd is waiting. In the ensuing chaos, Neville’s family is evacuated and he is forced to remain behind. The entire scene took nearly a week to shoot in January 2006, when the city experienced extremely cold weather, and involved permissions from more than a dozen agencies, 1,000 extras, a multitude of large military vehicles, Coast Guard boats, and two helicopters. “It was a large undertaking complicated by Francis’ desire to be able to cover the action in masters, as well as other setups,” recalls Lesnie. A handheld PanArri 235 follows Neville’s family through a crowded military checkpoint and down onto the helipad, where a Coast Guard helicopter flies into shot and lands. The camera was equipped with a 15-40mm Angenieux Optimo Zoom, and Lesnie describes the combination as “a terrific one for tight situations. The zoom could be used surreptitiously to move into nicely sized close-ups.” Several cameras were running all the time, along with an aerial unit supervised by David B. Nowell, ASC. In order to maintain momentum, the location was set up to enable shooting in any direction quickly and easily. Highlights along the river were provided by weatherproof portable light towers; powered by portable generators, each unit had four 1K metal-halide lamps on a tower 15'-30' high. “Those lights could be placed anywhere and then left alone, so we scattered them all over the place on both sides of the river,” says Lesnie. To light the Brooklyn Bridge and the surface of the East River, Lesnie placed four 10K Xenon lamps at the Brooklyn end of the bridge; two were directed at the uprights of the bridge structure, while the other two glanced across the surface of the water. On the Manhattan side, a phalanx of Dinos with spot bubbles and 18K Pars illuminated the Manhattan Bridge in the background and provided some modeling on the Brooklyn Bridge. For the Nevilles’ approach to the evacuation point down Dover Street, 18Ks and Dinos with dedicated generators lit buildings in the background, while underneath the FDR Drive, which runs along the Manhattan side of the East River, Lesnie used sodium-vapor lamps to cast an orange/yellow glow over the military checkpoint. The crowds trying to escape New York are held in a containment area surrounded by cyclone fencing, which Lesnie lit using weatherproof 250-watt and 500-watt quartz lights on each post. “With the amount of practicals on location, it was inevitable we’d be shooting into the sources, but the Primos handle it very well,” says the cinematographer. “Francis was quite happy to have some flare and artifacts because he felt it increased the feeling of immediacy.” The actual point of evacuation was a helipad on a 300'-long barge next to the Brooklyn Bridge. Lesnie took advantage of existing gantries on the underside of the bridge to mount six 12-light Maxi-Brutes to provide backlight for the evacuation point. “By not using HMIs, we were able to run off the bridge power,” he notes. “Also, 12-lights are easily adjustable, which made them perfect for this application. I also had two boom lifts down on the ground with 18Ks in each in case we needed to bring up any areas.” Low-level fill was created for the helipad area by a 15-6K BeBee Night Light positioned nearby on Pier 17, home to the South Street Seaport. Taking into account Law-rence’s predilection for handheld and Steadicam-mounted cameras very close to the action, Lesnie frequently used Panavision E- and C-Series anamorphic lenses; some of the Cs were modified for closer focus by lens technician Dan Sasaki. “We were carrying Primo anamorphics as well, but we regularly used diopters on the Es and Cs,” Lesnie notes. “Focus pullers Gregor Tavenner and Bobby Mancuso calibrated every lens with the full range of diopters. If we wanted to use a C-Series 50mm with the #1 diopter, the measurements were already drawn up and the disc was just popped onto the follow focus; a second set was also made for the remote focus. We changed lenses with diopters so frequently that we’d have lost an hour or two a day if we’d been waiting for the lens to be marked up each time. It was a great practical solution that saved us an enormous amount of time.
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