Whereas most films featuring such difficult-to-replicate action would generally be shot with many cameras running simultaneously from various angles, Pau carried only two units on Crouching Tiger: a Moviecam Compact as his A-camera and an Arri 435ES for high-speed and visual-effects work, both fitted with Zeiss prime lenses.
This two-camera limit was imposed as much for budgetary reasons as it was for the choreography, which was generally designed to work from only one angle. In addition, Lee’s quest to place the camera within the action often negated the possibility of using multiple units, while demanding complex interaction between the camera and the performers. This compelled Pau to cover much of his action with his Power Pod rig, because "handheld work wasn’t steady enough. This film is about gracefulness, so we instead worked out this sort of tai chi dance between the camera and the actors, allowing us to move around them and search for details within the fights."
While no dedicated lighting was used to highlight the bladed weapons used throughout the scene, Pau notes that "the big soft sources we were using worked well to create dramatic reflections; if we hit the angle of the source and kicked it into the lens, the entire blade would shine. I had used this technique a lot on The Bride With White Hair to enhance the sword fights in that film."
The lessons that the crew learned while filming the graveyard battle were put to the test during production of the film’s first jaw-dropping action sequence, in which Yu Shu Lien attempts to chase down the thief who has stolen the Green Destiny. Beginning in the streets and alleys outside the Forbidden City, the moonlit pursuit suddenly takes a turn into the fantastic when the thief defies gravity and leaps up to run across a building’s rooftop. Yu Shu Lien follows, and the adversaries are soon springing from roof to roof, with their feet covering yards with each step. Throughout much of the chase, the camera seemingly flies over the action, trailing the two figures from above as they bound across the city. "Ang explained that he wanted a poetic, balletic tone for that scene," Pau recalls. "He had a dream of the camera flying over the action, seeing the two people like fish swimming through water."
The extraordinary chase was done entirely with wires after digital techniques proved too expensive. The camera was flown very close to the two performers with the use of a 34’ crane/Power Pod combination mounted atop a 10’ platform, which gave Pau exceptional flexibility to float over the 12’-high rooftops and still give the actors plenty of clearance under the lens. The duo were then suspended from a much taller construction crane that "flew" the pair over the cityscape in a wide arc while Pau and his camera gave chase.
"To shoot the sequence, we had to light up almost one square mile of the city," Pau reports, smiling with disbelief. "We had two industrial cranes, each supporting two 18Ks, and another crane equipped with a 12K. Our lighting had to allow us to backlight the action from two directions because we didn’t know exactly where we’d be going. It was such a large area to cover, especially with a single-source moonlight effect. We could only pre-plan very small sections of the action, one day at a time. It was frustrating!"
Undercranking the camera in such scenes was important not only to add apparent speed, but also extra drama. "My experience with action movies told me that we not only had to cover scenes at various speeds, but [we also had] to do speed changes within certain shots to accentuate the emotion of specific movements," Pau offers. "Human beings cannot make the kinds of movements that would often look best. In this scene, for example, the two performers were trying to make long strides across the rooftops, but they could not physically make the steps fast enough. Therefore, we often did manual speed changes between each step to quicken their movements, enhancing the action without it feeling obvious."
For these types of scenes, Pau also experimented with digital speed changes in post. After dropping frames, he created mini-morphs between the remaining images to alleviate any resulting jerkiness. "That adds just a bit of motion blur, which makes the effect work. But if you are designing a shot for a digital speed change, it’s also important to shoot it at the slowest frame rate at which your subject should appear 50 fps, 100 fps, whatever is necessary. You can always speed the action by skipping whatever you do not want, but it’s difficult to slow action down without extensive effects work." Because of Pau’s need to employ alternating camera speeds, the use of flicker-free lighting was essential. He also needed the ability to easily augment his lighting to work at anywhere from 21 fps to 100 fps.
Some of the film’s most lyrical action occurs within the bamboo forest or, more accurately, on the very tips of the bamboo trees. As the drama unfolds, Li Mu Bai challenges Jen Yu to give up her illegitimate ways and become his pupil, while chasing her into the towering forest. Finally, the pair face off and trade blows while balancing on a bowed bamboo stalk some 100’ off the ground. Lee wanted the scene to have a cloudy, mystical feel, but the production encountered varying weather cloudy, sunny and rainy throughout this 12-day portion of the shoot. Shooting proceeded, with Chow and Ziyi securely wired to help them perform their high-flying feats, while Pau and his crew again relied on their crane/Power Pod assembly, this time with the rig mounted to the top of an industrial crane.
"Ang explained this scene in terms of the relationship growing between Li Mu Bai and Jen," Pau says. "He has feelings for the girl but is holding them back. He chases her into the bamboo, hiding within the leaves and then revealing himself. At the same time, she is confused because she cannot decide if she trusts him.
"Well, this theory of the drama was interesting, but we then had to figure out what we were going to shoot for the next 12 days!" Pau continues. "There was no description of the action in the script! As we shot, though, the scene became something else: a demonstration of Mu Bai’s composure, his coolness as the girl tries to fight him. That quality comes through very well in the finished sequence. This approach was to Ang’s credit, because while Chow is not an expert swordsman, he is very good at being cool. This sense of composure allows him to defeat the girl easily and convincingly [without needing to demonstrate any technical expertise]."
Though some of the scene’s close-ups could be accomplished under more controlled circumstances, atop a special platform dressed with bamboo, the changing weather caused the contrast levels to fluctuate wildly from shot to shot. This required Pau to spend extensive time on the sequence at Asia Cine Digital, doing shot-by-shot digital color timing and contrast correction. "Success does not come from heaven," he offers. "You have to struggle in order to be good."
The final two months of the Crouching Tiger shoot took place at the Beijing Film Studios, where all interiors and some exteriors were handled. One of Pau’s subtlest lighting efforts there was the creation of a stately home and courtyard, where Li Mu Bai and Yu Shu Lien meet after the theft of the Green Destiny. As they obliquely discuss their feelings for each other, a strong sense of unrequited love bubbles to the surface. To begin creating the daylight look needed for the scene, Pau had the crew hang 80 custom 5K lanterns evenly over the set to provide an overall ambience. (He had originally built the lanterns, each of which contains 10 500-watt bulbs, while shooting Warriors of Virtue at the studio in 1996.) The cinematographer then used a total of 20 10Ks and 5Ks for interior fill within the massive estate, and employed two 16K Maxi-Brute-type fixtures fitted with narrow-spot bulbs to create punchy daylight shafts. This gave Pau his desired stop of T4 while using 5277 rated at 250 ASA.
"The framing of these dramatic scenes and others is quite different from the action scenes," Pau points out. "We use a lot of negative space, which relates back to the Chinese-watercolor look we sought. We also use long takes shot with a static camera, which allows the audience to focus on the dialogue and the subtle emotions of the characters and also to rest a bit after the martial-arts scenes! The lighting went along with this idea, in that we didn’t want to use too many sources or to make it too complex. [We wanted the lighting to] be pleasing to the eye and almost relaxing, which makes those scenes unlike any others I’ve done."
In order to meet last year’s deadline for Cannes, Pau and Lee had to curtail their timing sessions at Technicolor New York, and neither filmmaker was happy with the result though the film was a tremendous success with audiences. Another person unhappy with the Cannes print was Tom Bernard, the president of Sony Pictures Classics (SPC), which is the film’s U.S. distributor. According to Pau, SPC insisted that the film should be completely retimed, and worked to involve Pau in that process. Toward that end, the Crouching Tiger anamorphic internegative created at CFI was sent to Deluxe Laboratories in Toronto, where Pau was finishing Dracula 2000. "I was happy with what Deluxe was doing for me there, and my color timer, Leslie D’Brass, and I spent two weeks working on [Crouching Tiger] to improve the color and the black densities," Pau relates. "When we were on our fifth print, Tom Bernard arrived to see for himself what we had accomplished, and he was happy. I’m just thankful that we had this second chance to work on the film."
Pau adds that because the blowup done at CFI left the blacks a bit thin, his timing was optimized to be printed on Kodak’s Vision Premiere stock. "That held the blacks very well," the cinematographer says. "It’s a clean black, and you can still see details. Because this film will only be on about 800 screens, Sony is trying to have every print made on that stock. They want the picture to look good, and I certainly appreciate that."