In addition to Barnes’ lighting diagrams and Buckley’s oversight, Lubezki communicated with the other cinematographers by way of a home-spun preview system devised by Buckley. It comprised a basic Nikon D100 digital camera, a laptop, Adobe Photoshop software, and an image-cataloging database interface. Lubezki explains, “I can shoot something and then dial in some color corrections to make the image look fairly close to what I want. This system is very simple to use and not as cumbersome and slow as others I’ve used.” Instead of using color printouts, Lubezki simply used a calibrated monitor. “For what I need to communicate, it’s enough — and it’s fast. Before long, everyone else bought his or her own cameras to use with it! Sometimes I’d be on a set and a PA would hand me a camera so I could see an image taken on another set and make sure it looked right. You could never judge highlights or deep shadows this way, but it was fine for a general look.”

Cordoned off by a huge, painted-sky backdrop, the cornfield set — where Vincent was filming on the day of AC’s set visit — is the venue for one of Snicket’s many unfortunate events: Count Olaf’s car stalls on a set of train tracks just as a locomotive approaches. Though a forced-perspective miniature, the circular faux field was still quite large, some 50 yards in diameter and configured to be shot in 360 degrees. Overhead, dozens of space lights hung closely together offered even illumination, with an underlying cover of full gridcloth further smoothing out the light to create the illusion of a bright overcast sky. This effect blended smoothly with the ceiling-hung cyc. “We overexposed it to get a totally white sky,” Lubezki says. “I’m not yet sure whether it will be left that way, or whether some digital clouds will be added. We tried to do most of those kinds of effects in camera, though there were some exceptions, such as a hurricane sequence that we shot against bluescreen. But until the film is totally finished, I can’t say what will be replaced. Some of the backings were very hard to light evenly. We lit from above in part because there was so little floor space between the sets and the backings, and also to retain the feeling that the sky is its own illumination.”

“Our toplight from the space lights gave us an overall ambience of about T5.6,” says Buckley. “Then we’d add our accents, usually with backlight.” Of course, it wasn’t that simple — not only did Downey require major structural work to simply support the overhead lighting, but once it was in place, “fire was a chief concern,” Buckley explains. “We had more than 1,800 space lights and a big silk under the whole thing. A lot of the lamps were specially made for us, and during the manufacturing process there was a problem with the pin tolerances — there was no heat shielding over the solder connecting the pins together, so when heat built up, the solder came apart and the lights shorted out. We were having full-blown fires, and it was a problem we actually started having at Paramount. Because of the silk, we couldn’t see the fires right away, so we put video cameras up there so we could monitor everything. The camera feeds all ran down to Scott Barnes, so he could alert us. Luckily, we didn’t have any major fires, but we lost 60 or 70 of the space lights before the problem was fixed.”

Lubezki says the fairly shallow depth of field allowed by his lighting helped sell the miniature field, but “it didn’t really need much help because it was so beautifully made. Cinematography is so much about what you’re shooting — great sets and wardrobe give you a head start on the camerawork, because you’re not fighting what’s in front of the camera.”

Other scenes are set in a seaside cave, a set fashioned from blocks of polystyrene foam that were carved, texture-coated and then finished in dark earth tones. “Mike Gunderson had to create all kinds of platforms to light from,” recalls Lubezki. “We couldn’t maintain our look by lighting from shore, so we had to bring our sources out onto the water. The cave was the one set we didn’t have a chance to prep, so I had some worry going into it. I was afraid of it, and I just never figured out a way to make it look as good as it could have. There’s a difference between lighting and illuminating something, and I think I just illuminated that set.”

Part of the dilemma of such a set is that one can “get trapped by your own lighting, in that you’re trying to justify the light. I had leeway in terms of the lighting motivations because this is not a realistic film; when you’re doing something stylized, there are no limitations, but I always create limitations in my mind. I create this little dogma about how I’m doing something, and if I don’t break the rules of this dogma, then the movie won’t look out of control or overly stylized. If you have no limitations, the movie just looks overcooked and nothing looks interesting anymore. But if you have some restraint, you can simply add a tiny, bright ray of light cutting across a face to create something extra.”

Buckley elaborates, “We tried a lot of things to find the right look for the cave, and one idea, which also served to color up the scene, was to have a piece of warm sunlight come through from the side, raking across the side. Brad had always envisioned the scene as having sunlight coming in from the top, though, so we rigged a strong toplight source with water streaming down from above. It turned out quite beautifully. There was a bit of ambient smoke in the scene, but the water carried the light. Caves just aren’t that interesting unless you go very stylized with the lighting. Trying to find the balance was the key.”