Father Geek here in ol' Austin, Texas posting our "reporter of the isles," Ms Moon Yun Choi's follow up to an interview she filed with the great Oscar-winning cinematographer Dean Semler awhile back. I'll tell you this, I may not have especially liked the new Disney ALAMO flick, buuuut I have NO complaint with the "LOOK" of the film, its beautiful, incredible even... Dean did his job and did it quite well. Its just the script, directing, editing, and music that suck big time. Sooooo, check out the info below... this guy, knows how to light and shoot as good as anyone... Here's Moon Yun...
Aloha, Moon Yun signing in from Hawaii...
Here's Moon Yun...
Aloha, Moon Yun signing in from Hawaii...
This reports represents two isles spread across the globe: Australia, the island nation; then Hawaii, the Pacific state.
First we start with Australian Dean Semler as he shares some "tricks of the trade" that the Oscar-winning cinematographer used for BRUCE ALMIGHTY and THE ALAMO, which is currently in theaters. I have yet to see THE ALAMO but I'd love to check it out just to see his camera work for the elaborate set.
Lighting Up The Night: Dean Semler, ASC, ACS
During a trip to Hawaii to accept the Eastman Kodak Award for Excellence in Cinematography at the 2003 Hawaii International Film Festival, director of photography Dean Semler, ASC, ACS outlined some of the tricks he employed on BRUCE ALMIGHTY and his latest movie, THE ALAMO.
In 1990 Semler won both an Academy Award and the American Society of Cinematographers Award in cinematography for DANCES WITH WOLVES.
Semler has manned the cameras for a spectrum of films that include CITY SLICKERS, WATERWORLD, which was shot entirely on the Big Island, as well as DRAGONFLY (shot partially on Kauai), XXX, WE WERE SOLDIERS.
Semler detailed his approach to shooting night scenes in Los Angeles for BRUCE ALMIGHTY, which was directed by Tom Shadyac and produced by James Brubaker. Shot on the back lot of Universal Pictures, the set was created to represent Buffalo, N.Y. In order to gain total control, the cinematographer lit up a large area about the size of several city blocks. For Semler, lighting at night traditionally looks fake because there aren’t “big lights” in the sky at night except moonlight. However, he thinks film moonlight also looks fake. “Moonlight is very difficult to recreate since only a certain area can be lit evenly and then the light falls off,” he explained.
Rather than having moonlight and using Bebee light or Paskal light as a backlight, which he’d traditionally use, Semler decided that this time he would attempt a very soft overhead bounce so the light was coming down soft in the same way the ambience of an overcast sky hovers over a city. The night scenes were shot at a town square surrounded by buildings. Semler estimates the area to be about the size of two football fields.
He wanted Los Angeles lit up by street ambience so all the lights coming from the neighborhood and from the streets bounce off of the lower layer which would result in a soft top light. “In order to achieve that I had a frame (designed) which was 60 feet by 40 feet,” said Semler. “It was made out of rock n’ roll truss and they had it on power winches on four corners. It was fairly heavy and on that frame we put a skin (which) was a soft reflective material called ultra bounce. It’s a very gentle reflective surface. We had to get that up in the air so we brought in to the set an 180- or 200-foot crane which we hid behind buildings.”
With the frame propped up, it reached about 130 to 150 feet above the set so there was a giant frame hanging in the sky with the grips secured on each corners with thin black ropes so as not to show up. They were tied to backs of buildings. “For light sources I bounced six 12K HMI powerlights into it,” he said. “It’s 5,500 degrees Kelvin, which is a blue light used for day light. I didn’t want blue light so in conjunction with the powerlights I bounced into it (about) five or six Dino lights which is a Tungsten light source with very narrow spotlights called Firestarters. They are very powerful lights (and) punch a long distance. I bounced a combination of the Tungsten light and the blue light from behind buildings and on top of buildings from the set straight up into this giant mount surface. I got the most magnificent soft light…even under the large area. The whole neighborhood glowed. We looked like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (OF THE THIRD KIND) this rig over the top.”
That approach gave Semler a uniform reading over about 100 yards. He was shooting in 500 ASA Kodak (Vision 500T) 5279 stock. Since the 5218 hadn’t come out at that time, he shot with his old favorite the 5279 Kodak stock rather than 500 ASA. From over a distance of about 100 yards he achieved a very even two eight, which he says is a terrific basic shooting stock. Using that gave him the ability to shoot in any direction at any time.
For the night shoots, Semler was filming the riot scenes in BRUCE ALMIGHTY. The fires burning during the street riots played off so well that they gave different sources of light. With that effect, he added other little lights representing the car lights. “Basically this light source was this giant wonderful glow in the sky ring, which thank God for the evening there was no wind and we didn’t have any problems from that end of it. It was just very efficient and worked very well.”
Semler wanted to utilize the same techniques on THE ALAMO because there were also big areas to light at night. However the weather in Texas proved unpredictable and rain would be a threat to production. Semler chose a different route and used the Muscos lights. “The bounce wouldn’t have worked. If we had to pull it down out of the sky because of the wind, we’d have to stop shooting. I don’t think anybody wanted that so I went instead with the Muscos lights.”
The Muscos lights were placed back from the set roughly 1,800 to 2,000 feet, which was a long way back. They punched it with a set from that distance and penetrated light fog while still obtaining the shots needed for THE ALAMO. However since it was blue light that couldn’t be mixed with Tungsten light because of the distance, Semler will remove it digitally.
