While the ASC strives to make its website as accessible as possible, the content here is many years old and online for archival and historical reasons. Unlike the rest of our website, it's not feasible to make it completely accessible. Please email us at webeditor@ascmag.com with any questions about this content, and for the latest American Cinematographer content, please visit ascmag.com.
Shooting on the moonscape was further complicated by the fact that the visors on the astronauts' helmets reflected 270 degrees in every direction. "Those helmets see everything," says Tattersall. "But because they act like a fish-eye lens, the things they see are reduced to a very small size. Everything that is about 25 or 30 feet away disappears." A nearby tripod or dolly would have been reflected, but a remote head on a Technocrane provided the perfect solution.
The Technocrane is unique among cranes in that it has a telescoping arm which can retract or extend; without pushing the base anywhere, the arm can move 12 feet. The crane was placed on a special platform atop a Chapman Supernova (a more heavy-duty version of the Chapman Titan), which was parked some 30 or 40' away from the performers so it wouldn't be picked up in the astronauts' visors. "That combination gave us a reach of something like 45 or 50 feet," notes Tattersall. "As a result, we could bring the camera in close to the astronauts but have the support structure set way back, so it didn't break the horizon reflection. At other times, we could get the camera in by hiding it in the reflection of something like the lunar module, where it just blended in with the metal work. Or if the camera was against the blackness of the sky, we covered it in black cloth."
Tattersall expresses lavish praise for Technocrane operator Simon Jeyes, who sat away from the set with a video monitor and controlled the camera with remote pan and tilt wheels. The cinematographer also lauds the work of first camera assistant Mike Klimchak: "He's an extraordinary focus puller. we were often shooting at T2 or T2.5 on the moon set, and there wasn't a shot that wasn't sharp. Mike couldn't be on the set or he'd have been reflected in the helmet visors, so he was 40 feet away, judging a couple of inches." Other crew members singled out by the director of photography include key grip Tom Lowry, Steadicam operator Neal Norton, second assistant Warner Wacha, digital artist Laurent Ben Mimoun, special effects supervisor James L. Roberts, and video consultant Brenton Fletcher.
To simulate the effect which the moon's weak gravity had on the astronauts as they moved and walked, Tattersall proposed attaching large helium balloons to the actors' backpacks. The balloons had to be tall and thin so they wouldn't collide with one another when the actors tried to stand together. They wound up being 56' high and 10' in diameter, and even then they constantly threatened to push the performers apart. The wires attaching the actors to their respective balloons were later removed digitally.
Tattersall felt it was important for viewers to see the mens' faces, but astronauts rarely lift their protective helmet visors because of the intense sunlight found on the airless moon. "The only way I could justify being so close to them was to be, in effect, inside their helmets," the cinematographer explains. "To create that effect, we first made a visor without the front screen. We then took a borescope, which is basically an 18''-long black tube, about 11/2'' in diameter, and we screwed a tiny 35mm lens onto its end. That allowed us to be physically close enough to the actors. We used it as a floating device, usually on a dolly.
"I fought to avoid showing more than their eyes; if we wanted to see their mouths, we'd tilt down. We couldn't show their eyes and mouths in one shot because the only way of doing that would be to use such a wide-angle lens that it would make the person look distorted. And if you showed them together without the distortion, it would immediately feel fake, as though you were outside the helmet."
From the moment he came aboard the project, Tattersall knew that, given the massive amount of material involved and the tight schedule, compromises would be inevitable. "I think one of the important things I did was to define, with the directors, which scenes were important photographically and which ones were basically just information exchange — and to cut my cloth accordingly," he notes.
One of the most cinematic sequences in the series is a re-creation of the filming of the famous 1902 Georges Méliès short Le Voyage Dans La Lune (A Trip to the Moon) in episode 12. This final segment — which also details the Apollo 17 mission — was written by Tom Hanks, who also served as the series' executive producer, and directed by Jonathan Mostow (who helmed last summer's action hit Breakdown). Essentially, the re-creation provides a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the classic French film. In the edited piece, authentic 1902 footage is intercut with the "making of" material shot by Tattersall.
Adapted from a story by Jules Verne, the Méliès film concerns a group of astronomers who travel to the moon in a large, hollow bullet fired from a cannon. A professional magician before he turned to filmmaking, Méliès filled his movie with wondrous visual effects.
An exact replica of Star Studios, the Parisian facility where Méliès worked, was built on a soundstage at Orlando's Disney-MGM Studios. "Production designer Richard Toyon did such a beautiful job," raves Tattersall. "He was able to re-create the studio almost object by object."
In the early days of the motion picture industry, when film stocks were extremely slow and powerful artificial lights had yet to be invented, sets were built with glass roofs and walls and the sun served as the primary light source. Resembling giant greenhouses, the structures were covered with large panels of silk material; by controlling louvers (similar to Venetian blinds), filmmakers could regulate the amount of light hitting the set.
The Orlando set consisted of the entire "greenhouse," not just an interior. "It was like working inside a giant silk box," enthuses director Mostow. "There was no waiting for lighting [setups] because everything is lit."
The opening shot starts high above the roof with a view of the Parisian skyline. "The camera is sitting on a crane, looking out at the skyline [which was matted in later] and then tilts down to show Méliès' studio from a great height," explains Tattersall. "As the camera moves in toward the roof, you get a view of a man working a pulley and you see a blind rising up towards you. Just as the camera gets to the glass, the blind closes, obscuring the view. You are just in whiteness.
"We then took the camera inside the building, attached it to the Steadicam operator, put him on another crane and craned down from the blind into the studio, starting the shot with the white blind just sweeping past the lens. That provided a transition of maybe six frames which, hopefully, fools the audience into thinking it is one continuous movement through the glass roof. When the crane reached ground level, the Steadicam operator stepped off and into the scene, revealing Georges Méliès (played by French actor Tcheky Karyo) shouting at people as production assistants run around, getting ready for the Trip to the Moon shoot. The whole thing was about a two-minute take."
To find a period camera to use in the sequence, property master John Harrington turned to History for Hire, a North Hollywood rental house that specializes in vintage props. There, he found a 1902 Pathé camera. Intrigued, first assistant Klimchak tinkered with it and got it running. Tattersall loaded it with Ilford FP4, a British-made black-and-white stock, and actually ended up shooting some of the episode with the prop camera.
The cinematographer chose Ilford because of its silvery look and beautiful grain structure. "I follow all the stills magazines and many of the most beautiful black-and-white stills I have ever seen were shot with this stock. It looks metallic and silvery and is very sharp. We pushed it a stop to give it [even] more contrast." With a laugh he adds, "The film comes in cardboard cartons and looks very homemade. I kept telling everybody that it was perforated by fisherwomen on the east coast of England."
[ continued on page 3 ]