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“I’m impressed with the new Vision2 stocks,” he adds. “I especially like 5218, which is a great stock. It’s very fast, with nice definition in the shadow areas. What Kodak has done over the last few years is so good that it’s hard to think that in the future, we might not use film anymore. I hope film doesn’t go away too fast.” The cinematographer’s mandate to “break up the light” is evident during scenes set at police headquarters, the first set built in the Armory. Production designer Kristi Zea worked from photographs of the actual Boston State Police building, which has a stark, poured-concrete aesthetic. The set was built on a platform that stood about 20' off the ground to facilitate the illusion of height through a series of large windows. A TransLite, measuring roughly 40' high by 200' long and lit with Skypans, provided views of the Boston skyline along two sides of the set. To accommodate the contrasty aesthetic Ballhaus sought, Zea’s team made some adjustments to their initial plans for the set’s built-in lighting fixtures. “Kristi worked with us on GoodFellas, and she did a wonderful job on this movie as well,” says the cinematographer. “In following the design of the real headquarters, though, she initially planned to install overhead fluorescents throughout the office set, but those fixtures create a bright overall light that has no drama. Instead, we installed Par cans, which we softened so that we had a direct light with both bright and dark areas. We also did a lot of work with Venetian blinds, using 20Ks coming in from outside the set, or Arri T-12s on the inside, aimed through the office’s glass partitions. That was my approach to the police department, but I tried to maintain that look in the rest of the film as well. I always wanted to create contrast in the frame.” Gaffer Andy Day, who has worked with Ballhaus on several projects after being recommended by the cinematographer’s son, Florian (also a director of photography), offers further details on this set: “At the real police headquarters in Boston, they have recessed fluorescents in 1-by-4-foot overhead bays with eggcrates on them. Kristi replicated those bays, but Michael wanted a more noir look, and he also wanted to be able to control the overhead lighting with dimmers. There were more than 200 holes in the ceiling that we had to fill with some kind of light, and we experimented with a few different types of units. In the interest of the look, convenience and economics, we settled on 1K Par cans with diffusion frames that we could change or remove as necessary. That gave us a lot of flexibility and a good base illumination for the whole set. Because all of the overhead units were on their own dimmer circuits, we could adjust them to create light and dark areas. Our dimmer-board operator, Kelly Britt, is a real wizard. He has a lot of gags, including wireless ones that allow the actors to activate their own lighting cues. I also had a handheld remote-control device that allowed me to stand next to Michael and hit a cue.” A large “skybox” rig, con-structed by key grip Mitch Lillian and his crew, helped provide exterior illumination for the set. Day explains, “Rather than rigging a bunch of Dino lights, we created a big box that gave us an ambient but directional skylight that we could aim through the set’s windows. We started with some Par truss, which is primarily used for rock ’n’ roll shows. The grips then built a lightbox on the front of the truss and ran it around both of the set’s exterior sides. The whole rig was on a chain hoist that allowed us to raise and lower it or tilt it up and down. We could move it in and out according to the shot, and the fact that it could tilt allowed us to aim it precisely. Our main concern was that we had a lot of material to shoot in that big space, and the skybox helped us create some variety in the lighting. We wanted to be able to mix up the look as well as make the lighting appropriate to the time of day. Boston also has a lot of climate changes, so the special-effects guys even set up a rig that could pump out some Boston fog.” The bulk of the show’s lighting equipment was provided by Panavision New York, but most of the stage rigs were provided by See Factor, a Long Island City rental house that often services theatrical productions. Because the Armory has only a basic power supply, two 10,000-amp Cat Power generators provided electricity. After scenes in the headquarters set were completed, a crew dismantled it and built other sets, including an apartment and the lobby of a converted industrial building. During this phase, the production worked in Boston, where key locations included Costello’s high-rise apartment and a shipyard where a climactic shootout takes place. Costello’s dwelling, designed by Zea to reflect the character’s refined taste, was a real apartment in Charlestown, near the Navy Yard that is home to the USS Constitution (a.k.a. Old Ironsides). Day says the apartment proved to be “really tough” from a lighting standpoint: “It was a number of stories up in the air, so we couldn’t do anything from outside in terms of sun control. The ceilings were kind of low, and it was a fancy building with a lot of restrictions. Our solution was to use smaller units and light locally.” Ballhaus adds, “I tried to have some dark elements in that setting, because we didn’t want it to be too friendly. Our lighting there was not very bright, but you could see the characters and some elements of the room in the background. We used softer units to match the light that came in through the windows. For example, we bounced some 2Ks into 4-by-4 showcards.” At the shipyard, the filmmakers went to the opposite extreme, because they faced the challenge of lighting a structure that measured 400 yards long and 100' high. Ballhaus offers, “The scene there involves a secret meeting, and I decided to illuminate the space from outside, as if the light from the shipyard were coming into this huge building. We had one BeBee Night Light set up where the main entrance was, and on the other side we set up lots of Dino lights, maybe 20 of them, coming through the windows. For fill light inside I had two balloons, along with car headlights and lots of smoke. It looked very dramatic.” Another major Boston setting was the Chinatown district, which serves as the backdrop for a lengthy nighttime foot chase involving the two main characters. “Billy follows Colin to a porno theater where he’s meeting with Costello, and then tails him through Chinatown,” details Ballhaus. “But along the way, Billy’s cellphone rings, tipping off Colin that someone is following him.” The lighting for this scene, according to Day, was designed to be eerie and almost hallucinogenic. “Blade Runner may have been mentioned, so there’s a lot of steam and colored light,” says the gaffer. “At one point, the characters are in a dark, unpopulated alley, and the next moment they’re out on the crowded streets. Marty and Michael wanted that scene to look very otherworldly, and the ambience is very disorienting, with a lot of color and a mixture of light and dark areas. To create that fantastical quality, we used Condors to position some bigger lights gelled different colors, and then we mounted a lot of additional units on walls, on fire escapes and behind crates.” Back in New York, a key scene involving an exchange of microchips between Costello’s mob and an Asian gang was staged at a large structure in Red Hook, Brooklyn, that once served as a grain depot. “That was a strange location — it was a very big place with a number of empty silos,” says Ballhaus. “There was water on one side and land on the other. Because the scene involved another secret nighttime meeting, I decided to light it mainly from the outside. For the interior of the silo where the two gangs meet, I just used one spotty overhead light, an open 5K pointed straight down to create a hot area between the two gangs that fell off into darkness. Outside, we set up lots of big lights. From the water side, I lit the location with one BeBee light; from the other side, I used a lot of big Dinos to create shafts of light that the characters could move through.” Day notes that the silo proved to be an effective setting, serving as a “giant snoot” for the 5K. He adds that the Dinos, which were gelled with Lee 013, were intended to simulate “the type of big, ugly, sodium lights you might find in a parking lot. We also used that look in the Boston shipyard as a way of tying together our nighttime crime scenes. On the BeBee light, we added 1?2 CTO to create some color contrast; the result was a kind of yellowish sodium color on one side of the setting, and a bluish look on the other. Michael also occasionally liked to mix in some green, either by using 1?4 or 1?2 Plus Green gels for tungsten units, or by leaving fluorescents uncorrected or intentionally using Cool White bulbs. You would normally avoid that kind of look on a different kind of movie, but he wanted things to be a bit lurid sometimes.”
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