For closer shots during numbers that required fill, Beebe used 2K soft sources mounted near practical footlights in a trough cut into the stage. "We also had a lot of film light in the wings," he adds. "We used a lot of Chimeras on 5Ks and 10Ks, and we worked out color matches with gels so we could just bring up one of the Chimeras to supplement when necessary."

Period authenticity was also a concern, because whirling, servo-mounted luminaires might look a bit out of place in a vaudeville-era theater. "We tried to have no modern fixtures in the frame," says Fisher. "Dion made some imitation strip lights, and we hung those as if they were behind every border of scenery so that whenever the camera shot toward the ceiling, it saw those old-fashioned fixtures. Hidden behind the borders were our own modern units."

Beebe wasn’t able to bring on his usual crew, but the collaborators he found in Toronto were up to the show’s considerable demands. Gaffer Franco Tata and key grip Mark Manchester spearheaded the Onyx’s rigging, a task that, according to Beebe, required 30,000' of cable running through two separate mixing desks. One console governed the film lighting while another, operated by Vari-Lite programmer Matt Hudson, stored thousands of live cues that Beebe designed with Fisher and Eisenhauer. "Peggy was just a genius at managing this two-headed beast of lighting," Beebe attests.

The majority of Beebe’s work with Eisenhauer and Fisher occurred during the lengthy tech rehearsals that the team conducted to polish the vaudeville lighting routines. However, that process couldn’t begin until a number was already choreographed, and 10 weeks of prep had passed before that work began. "It was quite an undertaking," says Beebe. "Nobody had anticipated the complexity of teching these numbers. Often there were hundreds of cues in a number, with scenics being flown up and down and curtains being parted, and all of it was happening live. Within those 12 weeks, we only got four numbers teched; we ended up doing the rest primarily on weekends before shooting the following day. We were working six- and seven-day weeks throughout the production."

Adding to the pressure was the filmmakers’ free-form working method, which made it perfectly acceptable to tear down an entire number halfway through teching and reconceive it from scratch, as was the case with the number "Cell Block Tango." During Roxie’s first night in prison, she enters into a reverie that was to feature neon jail bars rising from the stage floor as the female inmates begin their sultry routine. Beebe recalls the logistics: "We’d selected the color of the neon and built the hydraulics to bring the bars out of the floor, and when we got into the tech Rob and I decided we hated it! It was very hard to see past the glowing neon to focus on the women. After trying to light the women behind the bars several different ways, we decided to ditch the idea altogether. There was a constant dialogue between the four of us to find a better way, and Peggy and Jules were invaluable in that process."

Of course, not every phase of Chicago’s preproduction was so unusual, and Beebe worked out the usual details – color palette, film stocks and coverage style – with Marshall in the same way he would with any other director. "Film isn’t [Rob’s] first language, but it wasn’t important that he master a film language in order to communicate," Beebe says. "He understands storytelling and putting on a show; he doesn’t need to say, ‘Let’s do this scene on a 50mm lens.’ He knows what he wants."

The key to devising the film’s look lay in creating a visual demarcation between the Onyx numbers and the so-called "book scenes," or narrative segments. Marshall, Beebe and Myhre decided that the former would be staged in saturated colors, whereas the latter would be rendered in muted blues and grays. "Rob loves deep, primary colors, and in those discussions I pulled a lot of references from music videos with very contemporary palettes," Beebe recalls. "As we discussed each number, I could pull out a clip and say, ‘Is it this deep purple that we want to wash the stage with, or is it this amber?’ We were dealing with very saturated colors, and we wanted to be careful not to fall into a repetitive pattern with them." For the book scenes, the cinematographer used the work of 19th-century Danish painter Wilhelm Hammershoi as inspiration for a muted period look.

Because of the Vari-Lites’ output, Beebe was limited to using Kodak Vision 500T 5279 500T to film the musical numbers. "I was underrating it if I could," he says. "On the bigger numbers, I often shot with a 45-degree shutter angle, which sucks up two stops immediately, and with the locked-in theatrical lighting we found ourselves shooting wide open quite a lot. The focus pullers [Mark Cyre and Evon Collins] had their work cut out for them."

The book scenes were shot on Kodak Vision 200T 5274, which Beebe chose for its impressive latitude – an attribute that was especially helpful during Toronto’s short winter days. "We’d inevitably be supplementing [the light] at the end of day, pushing a stop or pulling filters, and I found the stock to be really flexible," Beebe says. "I pushed it often. I don’t hesitate to do so with that stock because you can’t see the difference."

Because the dance numbers drive the film, it was important to conceive a compositional style that complemented Marshall’s choreography. Beebe began by using a video camera to visually "sketch" coverage ideas while Marshall rehearsed the dancers. Beebe says Marshall even incorporated the camera movement into his choreography. "Because of his great musical sense, and because he knew more than anyone else what each dancer was doing at any given moment, Rob could change something on the spot if we were stuck. If the camera couldn’t get through, he would just say to the dancers, ‘You, you and you, open up on the third beat for the camera,’ and the dancers would make it happen.

"As a choreographer, Rob wants to see what the dancers are doing. We didn’t stay wide with head-to-toe framing all the time, but he likes to establish and hold the geography of the number. He was also able to be very specific; we could really dissect the dance. For example, when a hand clasps Velma’s wrist, Rob might say he wants an insert at that beat. He had a strong sense of the rhythm of the beats, and through our discussions we would make those exclamations in close-ups."

Although the numbers were always choreographed with the camera in mind, Beebe notes that Marshall wasn’t interested in highlighting them with speed changes or digital effects. In fact, the director preferred to run a number almost in its entirety for each shot. Add the presence of three other cameras shooting simultaneously – as was often the case – and it just wasn’t feasible to indulge in any "cinematic" flourishes. "Rob was very clear about preserving the integrity of the dance – he wasn’t trying to trick it up," Beebe confirms. "Renée, Catherine and Richard were all doing their own dancing. When they got thrown through the air, they really got thrown. Rob hated digital effects – the few times we shot greenscreen material just frustrated the hell out of him. I used a 45-degree shutter on the more dynamic numbers – like ‘Cell Block Tango,’ which has a staccato element in the movement – but we didn’t really do things like ramping or slo-mo."

The blocking process soon made it clear that a widescreen frame would not be appropriate for Marshall’s "compressed choreographic style," according to Beebe. The cameraman was also drawing compositional inspiration from the Thalia Theatre, an avant-garde German company, in order to "get a sense of working within the proscenium arch and what you can do with that space." After much discussion, Beebe decided to shoot in the standard 1.85:1 aspect ratio, and he selected Arricam ST and LT bodies and Cooke S4 lenses.

"We knew we needed a lightweight camera that could move through the dances in combination with Hotwheels and Steadicam," Beebe explains. "I also considered the fact that we were going to have a lot of flare, with spotlights pointing at the camera. I tested the Cookes for that and they handled it very well. I filtered with Schneider’s Classic Soft system, primarily for close-ups, and I didn’t use anything heavier than an eighth or a quarter. I don’t like too much diffusion, and I use it sparingly. We shot for a contrasty feel, particularly onstage. It’s hard to say you have grit in a musical, but we tried!"