Spacebound
Prior to the beginning of the show's principal photography, Schwartzman set out to shoot a daytime shuttle launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Accompanied by his crew, he brought along 13 cameras to cover the April 1997 event. That alone was a complex task, but NASA's protocol added an extra degree of difficulty. "After they fill the shuttle's tanks [with liquid oxygen and hydrogen], there's a 24-hour lockdown period when nobody is allowed within almost four miles of the launch pad," Schwartzman details. "But we had cameras within 150 feet of the pad, so we had to figure out a way to set these cameras up, let them sit for two days in the Florida heat and humidity, and have them operate perfectly."
Because NASA rules prohibited the filmmakers from using their own camera-activation system (which could have interfered with the space agency's finely tuned electronics), a special code was added to the computer launch sequence to trigger Schwartzman's array 45 seconds before main-engine ignition. "Organizing that was easy," the cinematographer maintains. "The difficult part was explaining to Panavision that we had to leave these cameras including Panastar IIs rolling at 120 fps out in the middle of this sweltering swamp for a couple of days. I had to know that these cameras loaded and ready to roll would work."
Toward that end, camera assistant Richard Mosier conducted a series of tests and made special preparations. Two 65mm camera power supplies were linked together to ensure that each camera's batteries would operate for at least 48 hours. To prevent condensation from forming on the lenses, each was rigged with a ring of 25-watt bulbs that would cause any ambient moisture to evaporate. Finally, blast-proof bunkers were built for each camera. "It all worked perfectly," Schwartzman confirms. "The footage is spectacular."
However, Bay later had a sudden inspiration that would send Schwartzman back to the Kennedy Space Center six weeks later. As the director tells it, he was in a NASA bathroom when he happened to look up and see a large poster of a shuttle blasting off into space at night. Taken with the image, Bay changed the film's script to include a night launch. "We used both of the launches we filmed in the picture," Schwartzman says. "But from a photographic standpoint, the night launch may have been the most challenging part of the movie."
As the shuttle sits on the pad at night, it is lit by 40 10K Xenon lamps, bathing the enormous vehicle and towering gantry structure with some 200 footcandles of light. "That gave us a decent stop," Schwartzman begins, "but as soon as the solid rocket boosters ignited, we'd suddenly be up to 16,000 footcandles in about 11/2 seconds. We could have used some sort of photocell with an auto-iris controller, but I didn't want to have a dynamic exposure change affect the footage." The cameraman's alternate solution was to preset the exposure on each of his individual 15 cameras, determining his stop by calculating each unit's distance from the shuttle, the angle of the shot in relation to the launch sequence, and the orbiter's altitude as pictured in frame .
Determining these set exposures required some inventive research. "I contacted this wonderful guy named Red Huber, a still photographer from the Orlando Sentinel who has shot every single shuttle launch," Schwartzman explains. "Studying his photographs, I selected some specific shots and determined where he was set up to get each one. Red and I then went though each photo, and he told me which stock, the shutter speed, and f-stop he had used. From there, I figured out what the stop should be for each of my cameras, based upon the use of [Kodak's 100 ASA EXR] 5248 and my various frame rates which were anywhere from 24 to 120 fps. NASA had given me a bunch of information about the footcandles produced during the launch, but most of it turned out to be wrong, so I couldn't have done this scene without Red's help. Also, shooting the day launch told us which angles worked best with various frame rates and focal lengths." While all of the night launch footage turned out beautifully, the cameraman reports that an Eyemo camera fitted with a 40mm lens, placed some four miles away from the launch pad, may have produced the "hero" shot for the sequence.
On the rock
During a subsequent two-week "mini-shoot," the filmmakers traveled to Washington D.C., New York City and then Texas to film exterior establishing material and "Americana" footage that would give the picture's story a broader emotional scope. The production then moved on to the Badlands of South Dakota to begin shooting scenes set on the asteroid.
In the film, the shuttles Independence and Freedom crash-land on the stony juggernaut's jagged, storm-wracked surface. The landscape is violently active, with hot gases erupting though the crusty ground as the surfaces quakes with tremors. Towering crystalline formations stab upward, making the barren world appear even more aggressive and hostile.
Shaken after their hair-raising voyage through space, yet driven to succeed, the members of the Earth's demolition crew don their space suits and rev up a pair of six-wheeled all-terrain vehicles called "Armadillos." Protected by their artificial skins, the intrepid heroes begin searching for a prime drilling site. In these scenes, Armageddon's cinematography and production design mesh seamlessly to render a fantastic new world.
"Like every good movie, we started with some of the toughest stuff," Schwartzman says of the Badlands shoot. "On the first night, we were lighting up about five square miles of landscape."
"We had more trucks than I've ever seen in my entire life," Bay confirms. "John had two Major Muscos, an SMSNite Sun, and about 40 18Ks it was really unbelievable."
Given Bay's penchant for cool blue night exteriors, Schwartzman's fixtures were primarily uncorrected HMIs, which allowed him to get the most from his wattage. Roads were cut to create a "Musco Highway," allowing the cinematographer to position his immense fixtures, while seven miles of cable were run to provide power. Schwartzman recounts, "We also had a Night Sun and 27 6K Pars a lot of stuff just to light up this landscape. And it was beautiful." However, the illumination also attracted the attention of every flying insect within a 100-mile radius, causing huge clouds of the creatures to collect around the lights. Fortunately, the various fixtures served collectively as the world's biggest bug zapper. "The heat killed them all by the second night," the cameraman says.
Schwartzman credits gaffer Andy Ryan and rigging gaffer Jeff Soderberg with laying down the electrical infrastructure for the shoot over a period of two weeks before the main unit arrived. "To maximize the location, we were moving the Muscos two or three times a night, but because we were so organized, it happened without a problem."
The Badlands portion of the shoot was not without its mishaps, however. The first night's work consisted of a scene in which the members of one shuttle crew pull themselves from the remains of their wrecked ship. Bay details, "We'd created this amazing crash site, using airplane parts trucked in from Arizona, and the first setup was a massive wide shot. Unfortunately though, nothing was working that night. Our 100-mile-per-hour fans would start and stop, the steam machines would blow fuses everything had failed before we even broke for dinner."
The crew returned to again try to film the establishing wide shot. "We were so far back that the actors looked like little dots," Bay describes. "Ben Affleck was the first to be seen climbing out of the wreckage, but as he was walking out, he kept leaning down, as if he was trying to find something on the ground. I radioed to him, 'Ben, what are you doing?' There was no response, because his line was shorted out. He kept reaching out for something on the ground, and it turned out he was looking for a rock so he could smash his helmet's face plate he couldn't breathe! We had to work out all of these kinks in the suits before Bruce Willis came onto the show; the other actors were sort of like guinea pigs in that process!"
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