The production used a range of Primo anamorphic primes, and at Bay’s request, Panavision also created an Angenieux 24-240mm anamorphic zoom and special adapters that would convert spherical 21mm and 17.5mm close-focus lenses into anamorphic lenses. “I’ve always felt anamorphic is not good for shooting inserts — when you want to get right in on something, you have to step back and use a long lens, and the result can be very flat and boring,” says Bay. “With these adapters, we could focus about 2 inches from the lens, and that helped give the inserts a little style.”

For some unusual shots during surgery scenes, the filmmakers used the Kenworthy Snorkel Lens System and the Frazier Lens, but Bay notes the results yielded by the latter were disappointing. “The Frazier Lens in the anamorphic format was a big problem,” he says. “We found that the f-stop they rate it at wasn’t accurate. We used it on some very complicated shots. For instance, I had the crew practice for a full day for a surgery scene where the camera goes in close and pulls away as Starkweather [Michael Clarke Duncan] is being operated on by remote robotic arms. The shots starts out coming through a light from 15 feet up, then it passes close to the tools going right in front of the lens, and then on to a saw that’s going into his chest. The robotics were difficult to rig and we had it all timed out, but when we saw the shot, the sides [of the frame] dropped off so dramatically that it created a lot of grain. Fortunately, ILM has a process that fills in parts of a shot that have excessive grain. It saved the shot.”

Fiore and Bauman worked to light the massive spaces inside the institute in ways that would be suitably institutional, yet also visually interesting. “This whole job was about experimenting with alternative light sources,” notes Bauman. All of the institute sets were built at Downey Studios, a Southern California production facility that formerly housed Boeing aircraft. The spacious stages were needed to show large masses of “products,” or clones, marching through their dull lives.

When clones are created, they are sent to the creepy Foundation Room to be programmed. A sequence in The Island depicts 80 newly formed clones lying in a state of suspended animation as their minds are programmed with off-the-shelf life stories; this is accomplished with a constant stream of images sent over small screens positioned in front of their faces. “That was a wild set,” recalls Bauman. “It had 80 tables, and each table had four lights. We also had to create a flickery sort of television light on the clones’ faces. Michael wanted to be able to shoot in any direction as quickly as possible, so the first concept for lighting it went through the roof in terms of cost. We considered running a bunch of real monitors to the tables, but then water got added to the mix.”

The water effect was generated by overhead sprinklers that were ostensibly used to keep the clones’ skin moist and supple. In practical filmmaking terms, the sprinklers helped give the scene atmosphere, but they also created some serious logistical problems. “Water changes everything,” explains Bauman. “Of course, everything has to be completely watertight. And if Mike says you’re going to have a little water, you’d better prepare for a lot of water!”

Bauman’s crew positioned two HydroFlex HydroFlo underwater fluorescent tubes under each table; these units illuminated the lower half of the clone’s body and the ground beneath the table. In the set’s ceiling, 80 Source Four Lekos with 5-degree barrels were aimed straight down at the clones. With the addition of rain and smoke, the Source Fours helped create the effect of 80 shafts of light, leading viewers’ eyes to the tables.

To achieve the flickering effect created by the monitors, Fiore and Bauman turned to LED panels, which have become popular for stage and fixed-display work. The units consume little power and generate no heat, and some can be adjusted through a dimmer board to emit different colors or intensities — perfect for creating a flicker effect. The filmmakers used 12"-long panels from Color Kinetics, and Bauman says they provided more than enough light when wrapped snugly in Ziploc bags and placed 1' away from the actors’ faces. “To generate the flicker effect, we worked mostly in the blue spectrum, and the dimmer-board operator worked out an algorithm mixing the different color channels,” the gaffer explains. “We built eight different flicker gags and then assigned them to different areas of the set.”

LED panels also provided the solution for another scene, which features mechanical arms that emit a thin wall of light that appears to be created by lasers. “They wanted to have a very hot, thin sheet of light coming out of the arm and covering the bodies strewn around it,” says Bauman. “We asked Light Panels to design very narrow 6-degree LEDs. Each was 1 watt, which is pretty bright for LEDs, and we lined up 200 of them inside each mechanical arm. That created a line of light that could just swing around the set.”

To light the institute’s massive common spaces, Fiore’s crew placed a great many Par cans and Source Four Lekos softened with diffusion above the set, and they also asked the art department to build a large number of Kino Flo tubes into the set design. “At one point, the guys from Kino Flo called and asked, ‘What the hell are you guys doing down there?’” Bauman recalls with a laugh. “At the beginning of the shoot, we’d purchased a big Kino package because it made more sense than renting one. We had about 300 Image 80s, which on a large movie isn’t that big a deal, but what we were really consuming was individual fixtures. We had more than a thousand Kino Flo tubes built into one set, the Department of Operations. It’s full of underlit tables, underlit floors, backlit glass panels, and just a ton of other surfaces that had to look lit from within.”

In the Department of Operations, clones like Lincoln spend their days filling tubes with odd-looking fluids, which are then sucked up through a series of clear pipes to the Foundation Room, where the newest clones are nourished by the formula as their minds are programmed. In determining how to light the fluids going through those clear pipes, Fiore’s crew experimented with Electric Tape from the Talking Laser Company. Bauman explains, “It looks like a roll of tape, but when you attach the tape to a transformer, it glows different colors. We could put that on materials that were impossible to backlight, like those pipes. When the material flows by, it creates separation and [the illusion of] backlight.”