The massive set for the native village, as well as a large part of the wall that protects the village from Kong, were built at Mount Crawford, a short distance from the Stone Street Studios in downtown Wellington. Covering 48,000 square feet, the famous wall was 50' high. Lesnie describes the set as “incredibly vast, with broken rocky plateaus and deep crevasses, some of which were 20 feet deep, all through it. The gate was 30 feet high, and the constructed part of the wall was also that high, with more added digitally. The winds are particularly horrendous on Mount Crawford, so we constructed platforms of steel scaffold to run our 18Ks from; we also had two 70-ton cranes, each with a SoftSun mounted on it.”

One of the cornerstone sequences in King Kong is the Skull Island natives’ sacrificial offering of Ann to the giant ape. In this sequence, which takes place at night, the natives use burning oil running down channels in the rock to attract Kong, and the entire village is lit up with the flames from the burning oil. To achieve this, the crew constructed a gantry around the wall, upon which Lesnie positioned 12 Dinos gelled with a combination of yellow, apricot, amber and orange gels on chasers. “The Dinos threw a huge firelight out across the entire set, and around the gate area I used Par cans gelled with Chrome Orange or Golden Amber, all on chasers.”

Lesnie says that this sequence, as well as the practicals of the New York set, provided a good test of how bright a light source in frame can be before flaring becomes a problem. “I sometimes had Dinos aiming straight into the lens during the night scenes in the native village, and in New York, the practicals were the strongest light in the frame,” he says. “I conducted flare tests in prep and found that the Zeiss Ultra Primes held up amazingly well.”

After Kong departs with Ann in tow, a rescue expedition, which includes Driscoll, Denham, Herb the cameraman (John Sumner), and a large number of the ship’s crew, is organized. The group stumbles across a herd of grazing brontosaurs that panic and run into a long, narrow ravine, forcing the crew to flee in front of them. “This sequence had been previsualized,” says Lesnie, “so I had a good idea what we were in for.” The exterior sets were built on the aptly named Windy Point, and the 25' high ravine set was quite exposed to the elements. “On Kong we tended to shoot with two or three cameras simultaneously, and once we got started, Pete liked to keep going,” says Lesnie. “Not wanting to compromise our expansive coverage, I stopped worrying about controlling the variations in weather and began embracing the fact I would be stretching the digital-grading technology to its limit!”

Flying textiles in windy conditions was not an option, so Lesnie used Condors with 18Ks and 12K Pars to maintain some modeling in cloudy conditions. “New Zealand’s sunlight is notoriously high-contrast, and at that time of the year it’s high overhead,” he recalls. “Frequently, the best we could do was use some handheld bounce boards or, conversely, create some shade using what we dubbed ‘skygardens,’ camo-netted Condor buckets filled with potted palms that we positioned overhead.”

Filmed in all kinds of weather, the sequence has come together in the DI suite at Weta Digital, Lesnie says. “I’ve been reminded of a very valuable lesson. In our studio-controlled jungle sets, I frequently designed lighting that ‘broke’ the dynamic range of the stock and used other flaws, such as lens flares, to create a believable reality. The Windy Point scenario was the reverse; we were dealing with a situation that was essentially out of control. The failure to deliver classically beautiful images actually served this part of the story.” Somewhat ruefully, he adds, “Herb the cameraman doesn’t survive the experience, and I always felt a little sad filming this sequence.”

The actual stampede was filmed on an adjacent set consisting of paving stones and a bluescreen wall. This set was approximately 300' long and ran downhill at a slight gradient and was purpose-built to film the rescue expedition on the run. Dolly tracks were constructed running the set’s entire length. “It took two grips to push off and five grips to stop the dolly! We also needed to accomplish shots with the camera positioned directly in front and then behind the running crew. Key grip Tony ‘Spotty’ Keddy built a cable rig that ran along two lines attached to two Condors; the rig consisted of a lightweight H-frame supporting an inverted dolly riser holding a Scorpio [remote] head. Spotty ran with the rig and had no trouble keeping up with the cast.”

Lesnie pauses to point out that the cable rig and the “skygarden” exemplified the New Zealand crew’s ingenuity. The main crew consisted of second-unit cinematographer Richard Bluck; camera operators Simon Harding, Cameron McLean, Rhys Duncan and John Cavill; and camera assistants Colin Deane, Dean McCarroll, Sean Kelly and Andrew Stroud. The cinematographer also cites the excellent work done by fellow ASC members Funke and David Nowell (who shot the ship aerials).

Based on his experiences with recording lighting setups, Lesnie was keen to use a comprehensive digital-data collection system on King Kong. “In the past, this type of information was always recorded on vast reams of paper or in little notebooks,” he explains. “What I wanted to implement on Kong was an extremely thorough system that other departments could access. So we used a secure Web site with production-design floor plans to diagrammatically record each of the lighting setups for each take, lens and stop data for each camera, gel packs, measurements for each light and so forth.”

The system was designed and run by gaffer Ants Farrell. Working with an on-set laptop, Farrell created the lighting diagrams using Microsoft Visio and ultimately produced PDF files of each setup that contained all of the relevant information as well as digital reference stills. The system was accessed by second-unit and miniatures crews as well as artists at Weta Digital, and was used extensively during pickups.