The search
Following the frenetic chaos of the D-Day sequence, the film takes a breather to develop the characters and establish the squad’s mission to find Private Ryan. Kaminski explains, "During the scenes where the characters are not in combat, the camera is more at rest and on a dolly more often. We sometimes used a special ’switcher track’ designed by Jim Kwiatkowski, which allowed us to dolly in one direction and then come to a junction and dolly 90 degrees in another direction [see full details in New Products, page 99]. We also paid more attention to the lighting in those sequences. I wouldn’t introduce sunlight into a scene that was overcast, but with the ENR process, we had to light the actors because the image could get too contrasty, especially under the helmets, and we would start losing their faces. Sometimes we’d just fill them in with showcards, or sometimes we’d use 12K or 18K HMIs bounced from Griffolyns set far away."
Devlin recalls, "There’s a scene in which Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore are driving in a jeep and talking. I was busy lighting the jeep. It was a simple setup using a 4K Par through two layers of diffusion to provide an overall base to fill in their eyes as they rode in a jeep, which was on a Shotmaker-type camera car. I really didn’t think about what was going to be in the background. When we finally went to shoot that shot, however, I realized that there were literally hundreds of the Irish Army extras marching in the background while the scene went on for something like four minutes. The power of having all of these men and machinery in the background as they drove along was really incredible."
Kaminski was also able to modify the sunlight to his liking for some shots by utilizing Rosco #3004 Half Soft Frost diffusion in place of an overhead silk. "For some of the exteriors, we chose to use Half Soft because it allows the light to have some direction while still softening it," Devlin explains. "Whereas with a silk, you create an overall soft ambiance, but you then have to compete with the much-brighter backgrounds. A lot of times there’s really no difference between having a silk or a solid up. One nice thing about Half Soft Frost is that it allows the sun to have a strong direction, and yet the light will wrap enough to fill people’s eyes."
As the soldiers continue their quest for Private Ryan, they take shelter for the night in a bombed-out church. Illuminated by candlelight, the "soldiers are sitting and analyzing what has happened and what is ahead of them," Kaminski notes. "It’s a very beautiful, underlit scene about three stops underexposed that has a painterly feel, as if it was lit only by the candles. There’s a very nice section of dialogue between Tom Sizemore and Tom Hanks. I wanted to create the sense that the light was coming from the candles below them, but I didn’t want to get big shadows. I ended up lighting them with China balls fitted with 1/2 CTO and 1/2 CTS. I then used a flag just outside of frame to take a little of that soft light off Sizemore, so his face was a little brighter on the bottom and then dropped off. I don’t like candle flicker effects very much, so the key was a normal [non-flickering] light, but I did have a little flicker on the fill to give it some movement.
"I’d tested China balls in the past and never liked their effect, but I’m learning more about how to use them now. The key is to underexpose by 11/2 stops. You also have to keep them just outside of frame but away from the walls, so you get that nice falloff in the light. Philippe Rousselot [AFC] has been using them for years, but if you look at his films, you’ll notice that the people are always positioned away from any walls. He may have a very soft China ball a few feet away from the actors, but everything falls dark behind them. Because there no other light reference in the frame, their faces still glow even if the shot is 11/2 to 21/2 stops underexposed."
Home of the brave
Although shot entirely in England and Ireland, there are a few scenes in Saving Private Ryan that ostensibly take place in the United States. The first occurs just after the D-Day invasion, and establishes the premise that three of Private Ryan’s brothers have been killed in the war. "There’s a scene in which we see this huge room filled with secretaries writing death notices to the families of all of the deceased soldiers," reveals Kaminski. "We shot that in an existing location in England that used to be an airplane manufacturing facility. For all of the scenes set in America, I wanted to introduce a bit more color and create more of a sense of sunlight as a relief from the muted tones of the rest of the film. I therefore had 18Ks pumping in the windows."
"For the scene in question, we had eighteen 18Ks outside this band of windows that were mounted on a construction trussing and fitted with 1/4 CTO and CTS," expands Devlin. "A problem that I’m sure everyone has struggled with is that even though you may put an 18K outside a window, it’s never bright enough; the background still blows out. In this circumstance, we didn’t want to deal with that. It was a big shot, so it meant a lot for us to nail it. At first, we wanted to put dichroic Dino lights up to create this big wash of light so the audience would really feel the heat of the sun. But because they really don’t use dichroic Dinos in England, we ended up using the 18Ks, which I put as close together as possible. Since there were so many of them, we really didn’t see multiple shadows.
"Because the windows’ mullions were made of 8’-wide I-beams, we certainly couldn’t hide lights behind them. If we’d put up only two or three 18Ks, we’d have wound up fighting the mullions creating crisscross shadows, which would have forced us to put up flags. But once you start putting up flags, the light becomes defined and it no longer looks like one source anymore; it’s just terrible! But [using an array of] 18Ks worked out quite well. It was kind of like having our own sun. We could say, ’We want the sun to be three stops over,’ and we didn’t have to fight to control the ambiance in order to expose it."
[ continued on page 6 ]