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The Iwo Jima sequences in Flags were shot on the visually similar black sand beaches of Iceland, but the deserts of California gave Letters a distinctly different look. A combination of subtle visual effects and a few key sequences shot elsewhere helps sell the illusion. “For a beach sequence in which the soldiers are digging gun emplacements, we actually trucked in tons of black sand to dress a beach in Malibu,” recalls Stern. “The background was then extended with CGI, and our visual-effects supervisor, Michael Owens, did a great job of helping us achieve what we did. For example, in the beach scene near the end of the picture, Kuribayashi is wounded, on his knees, looking out on the ocean. That beach was near Calico, about 200 miles from the ocean — it’s within a mass of volcanic rock and a couple thousand acres of lava flow just off the highway to Vegas. Michael very skillfully inserted the Pacific Ocean into the background of a few shots, and it worked perfectly.” Though Owens’ work with Digital Domain is most evident in the film’s combat sequences, visual effects again added to Letters’ scope in one of the picture’s last shots. In it, the captured Saigo, wounded and weak, is carried by stretcher to the beach and placed in a long row of American dead and wounded, while landing craft and fresh G.I.s continue to pour onto the beach into the distance. “Elements of that shot, among several others, were actually recycled from Flags,” Stern reveals with a laugh. “We shot Kazunari on our dressed beach in Malibu, and we didn’t have any landing craft there. Michael provided all that. ” Day exteriors on Iwo Jima burn with sunstroke intensity, suggesting the punishing heat Kuribayashi’s men endured while readying their defenses. But while the California desert locations don’t exactly match the look of the Pacific isle, they link thematically. “The Japanese camp, the tank emplacements, all of that was filmed in Calico, not far from the entrance to our caves,” Stern says. “But a tiny bit of Iwo is very sulphurous and dry, so there is a sort of basis in reality here. But we didn’t have volcanic sand, so we ended up with a palette that was more dusty than black.” As Dunkerley notes, “We never used any electrics for any of the daytime scenes, so the lighting was really more about using a 4-by bounce card to shovel some light into the eyes. That was our approach on Flags as well.” Night sequences were another matter, however. The military-style aerial flares used in Flags were used on occasion, “but we didn’t use as many, in part because much of the film takes place before the invasion,” notes Stern. “So a lot of our night lighting was more standard night illumination.” Dunkerley observes, “Our primary problem with lighting out in the desert was the difficulty of the terrain. We couldn’t use a lot of the big units we’d normally use to light up huge areas, because there were no roads. It was often difficult to even get a Condor in. On top of that, we couldn’t pre-rig anything during the night, because it was just too dangerous to be out there moving heavy things around on cliffs and ledges in the dark. All of our rigging had to be done during daylight hours. And we didn’t have a rigging crew — it was impossible to justify it because every day was a split. So during the day, my best boy, John Lacy, would take half the crew to get the night work ready or mop up the mess from the night before. It was too dangerous to clean up every night, so that had to be done during the day, too. My biggest challenge was to use every light I asked for; I knew how difficult it was to get each of those units into place. Dunkerley’s workhorse sources for major night scenes were Arri T12s. “They are extremely powerful at full spot — I’d say you get more bang out of a T12 at full spot than you do a standard 20K,” he says. “We had about a dozen of them and a couple of Arri T24s, which we usually had on Condors. But, again, because of the location, the Condors only helped us now and again.”
What helps finally cement the illusion of being on Iwo Jima “was that we actually went to the island with Ken Watanabe for a series of sequences in which Kuribayashi walks the beaches, climbs Mount Suribachi and devises his defense,” says Stern. “It was a pretty small group of us who went — an operator, 1st AC, 2nd AC, loader and grip — so Clint pitched in as a camera assistant when we needed help. He has a bright future in the camera department if the acting and directing don’t work out!” For Stern, Kuribayashi “has many of the qualities of a Shakespearean tragic hero, and Ken played him with an innate sense of nobility, so we tried to support that sense of power whenever we could. The scenes done on Iwo Jima are a part of that. I don’t know if there really were men like this, but that’s how we treated him, due in a large part to how Ken played him.” Dunkerley cites as a favorite the scene in which Kuribayashi and his dwindling troops listen to a Japanese radio program: “He’s sitting in what’s left of his command center, cut off from his men, listening to this song sung by a children’s choir urging on the defenders of Iwo Jima. It’s a series of slow pushes in on Kuribayashi and Saigo, and their faces are just barely, barely lit. There was no music when we were shooting, of course, so they were acting against nothing, and the lighting on their faces is so dim that we were nervous about seeing the dailies. But the dimness of the light on their faces draws your eye, makes you look that much closer and really brings you in. It’s a balance, because you can go too dark with something like that, but when it’s right on that edge, it’s magic.” Going into the picture’s final grade, Stern believed Letters would descend even further into the near-monochrome world depicted in Flags, but that proved not to be the case. “There’s a lot of darkness in this picture, but in the end we fiddled around a bit and pulled back because it became too overpowering,” says Stern, who reteamed with TDI colorist Jill Bogdanowicz, another Flags collaborator, on the DI. “So much of the film is in caves that … well, it reminded me of the old joke about not wanting to hit your high note too often, but in this case it was the low note. The story and characters ended up carrying the picture where it needed to go. The DI is a great tool if used in a controlled environment — you know, with adults. “We added some color saturation and increased contrast here and there, just to have some visual relief,” he continues. As they did on Flags, he and Bogdanowicz isolated and amplified reds, particularly blood and military insignia. “In some of the early scenes, we also highlighted and enhanced the amber-reds found in explosions and muzzle blasts,” he says. “Set against the backdrop of this dry, dusty island, these colors of destruction really pop. In all, the work on Letters was done with a much finer brush than the one we used on Flags.”
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