A Ballet of Violence
With this Eastern aesthetic in mind, the Wachowskis hired renowned Hong Kong director/stunt choreographer Yuen Wo Ping to coordinate all of the elaborate fight sequences in The Matrix, and also to serve as the personal martial-arts trainer for the four principal cast members. "In order to pull off these very elaborate fight scenes," states Larry, "we had to take four Western actors and teach them kung fu for four months before we started shooting. In Hong Kong, Wo Ping usually directs his action scenes and picks all of the camera angles. For our fights, we talked to him about what the actual storyline of the fight was, and he would then go off and choreograph it. Once he had the whole 'dance' of the fight, we'd ask what he would recommend for every shot. We'd then add whatever flourishes, camera moves or other angles we wanted on top of that."
An integral part of Wo Ping's fight choreography is his legendary use of wire-harness stuntwork. Truly an awe-inspiring feat of visual trickery, the technique allows actors to seemingly defy the laws of physics as they leap, fly and twirl around their opponents in battle. "Wo Ping's wire-work is the best," Larry attests. "Using the wire system, you can improvise very easily. They can put a wire anywhere and hook somebody up to it at any moment. They don't need a big rig — just a bunch of guys who grab hold of it and say, 'Let's go!' It's very fast, fluid and safe. In Hong Kong kung fu films, they basically put people on wires for everything, from jumping to standing up or even running. It makes all of the movement look very graceful and kind of surreal. We thought that was perfect for The Matrix.
"We also tried to detail the action in a way that isn't really done in Hollywood anymore," Larry continues. "There are many incredible and beautiful images in violence, and I think violence can be a great storytelling tool. [Filmmakers] have come up with an incredible language for violence. For example, what John Woo [The Killer, Face/Off] does with his sort of hyper-violence is brilliant. He pushes violent imagery to another level. We tried to do that with The Matrix as well. "
Imagining the Future
With the complex requirements of the film's serpentine narrative and the grandiose environments and events the Wachowskis had envisioned, the producers decided to shoot the entire film in Sydney, Australia. Utilizing virtually every stage in the city — including all of Fox's stages at their new studio facility, as well as several converted warehouses — the production quickly became a formidable presence. Among the hundreds of Australian crewmembers on the show were production designer Owen Paterson, costume designer Kym Barrett, gaffer Reg Garside, rigging gaffer Craig Bryant, key grip Ray Brown, camera operator David Williamson, focus-pullers David Elmes and Adrien Seffrrin, clapper/loader Jason Binnie and loader Jodi Smith, as well as second-unit director of photography Ross Emery and underwater cameraman Roger Buckingham, ACS.
"My prep for The Matrix consisted of two months of scheduling and rescheduling," Pope recounts. "The Wachowskis were swamped with many concerns because of the film's level of complexity. Everything had to be preconceived and explained. Larry and Andy are naturally reticent people, so that was hard for them. They usually don't want to tell you anything unless they're forced to. During my prep for Bound, for instance, I asked them to sit down with me and go through each scene. In the beginning, they'd try to shrug off my questions by saying things like, 'Well the scene is just two guys sitting there talking.' Then I'd ask how they planned on covering it. They'd say, 'Oh� conventionally.' I'd then have to say, 'Okay, let's backtrack� what's the first shot?' Finally, they'd say, 'Well, we'll start on one guy's boot, go up his body, end up on his face in extreme close-up and then whip-pan over to the other person.' Now we laugh whenever we say 'conventional' coverage. Ultimately, we went through all of Bound shot by shot. On The Matrix, however, the brothers were so busy during prep that that type of meeting never happened."
Because the entire film was meticulously storyboarded in color, though, Pope did have an understanding of the visual style that the directors wanted to create. "Larry and Andy wanted The Matrix to have two distinct worlds," says the cinematographer. "There is the world in the 2197 future — in which we have the pods made by the computers — and then there's the present-day Matrix world, which was designed to be a slightly unappealing reality.
"The future world is cold, dark and riddled with lightning, so we left the lighting a bit bluer and made it dark as hell. Also, the future reality is very grimy because there's no reason to clean it — only the pods need to be sterile. Because humans haven't actually manufactured anything for a hundred years, anything that had been manufactured is now old and rusty.
"We didn't necessarily want the Matrix world to resemble our present world," adds Pope. "We didn't want any cheery blue skies. In Australia, the sky is a brilliant blue virtually all the time, but we wanted bald, white skies. All of our TransLight backings [for the stage work] were altered to have white skies, and on actual exterior shots in which we see a lot of sky, we digitally enhanced the skies to make them white. Additionally, since we wanted the Matrix reality to be unappealing, we asked ourselves, 'What is the most unappealing color?' I think we all agreed on green, so for those scenes, we sometimes used green filters, and I'd add a little bit of green in the color timing."
Pope photographed The Matrix using Panavision Platinum cameras and Primo prime lenses, which he brought with him from Woodland Hills, California. (At the time of production, Samuelson Film Services in Sydney had only recently been acquired by Panavision, and couldn't meet the film's demands.) The cinematographer shot in the Super 35 2.35:1 aspect ratio, utilizing Kodak's Vision 500T 5279 and 200T 5274 stocks. "We shot all of the day exteriors and effects shots on 5274, and used 5279 for all the interiors. I like the look of 79, and I like to see a little grain. I shot in Super 35 partially because I had too many cameras to come up with enough anamorphic lenses, and also because of the sheer size of the sets. I felt that I might have had a little trouble lighting the sets to get the stop we'd need for anamorphic. Regardless, I do like Super 35; I also shot Fire in the Sky in that format."
An additional critical factor in the film's lighting approach was dictated by a special photographic technique that the Wachowskis were determined to integrate into the filming. This approach was inspired by Neo's newfound mastery of virtual time and space. Explains Larry, "We wanted to shoot much of the action in super-slow-motion — up to 300 fps. For certain shots, we wanted to shoot high-speed while keeping the apparent movement of the camera at regular speed, which is basically impossible. In preproduction, we looked into the idea of a rocket camera, which we were going to shoot across the set at something like 100 mph while filming at 150 fps, but [visual effects supervisor] John Gaeta came up with a different process that became the basis for these sequences."
(This extreme slow-mo photography, dubbed "bullet time" by the Wachowskis, is detailed in the accompanying visual effects story. also online in this issue)
Lighting for Speed
"The sets for The Matrix were immense — the biggest I personally have ever seen," says Pope. "We had two camera units working all the time. The first unit shot for 118 days, and the second unit shot for 90. The first 40 days were spent shooting on rooftops in downtown Sydney, where, because of safety issues, we really couldn't put up elaborate lighting or anything that flew. There, I basically used some negative fill, and that was about it — which was fine, because I like to work in a naturalistic way. In general, we'd use lights only for matching purposes, because the weather in Sydney changes rapidly and often."
Australian gaffer Reg Garside expands, "These exteriors were all about logistical problems. We were shooting in the middle of Sydney, which is where all of the city's work gets done. We had to crane generators halfway up the sides of buildings, because we needed 200 or 300 amps of phase power on some of the rooftops. Not only did we have to cater to the lighting, but we also had to provide power for the special effects people, who had these big smoke machines as well."
Moving indoors, Pope and Garside confronted the massive undertaking of lighting the immense sets to allow for the Wachowski's desired 300 fps frame rate for extreme slow-motion shots. Notes Garside, "The high-speed lighting requirements were a big concern, because on the big sets — such as the subway and the government building exterior and lobby — we needed a massive amount of light to be able to shoot between Bill's T2.8 base and the T16 needed for high-speed filming. On some stages, in fact, we had to rig more than 1,000 Par cans in the permanents [to produce the needed levels of light]. I used Par cans a lot, because I could easily control the ambience from T2.8 to T16 just by turning additional units on and off. Also, Par cans are much cheaper than Maxi-Brutes, and although they use the same sort of bulb [a Par 64], I've found that I can rig them in much more weird or difficult places than I can put a Maxi. Having 1,000 Par cans is actually like having 80 Maxis, but we don't even have 80 Maxi-Brutes in Australia!
[ continued on page 3 ] © 1999 ASC