Deep in the Amazon
Not every set in the film was coated with ice. Prior to her transformation into Poison Ivy, Uma Thurman's character works as an assistant to a mad scientist (John Glover) in a tented lab deep in the Amazonian jungle. "The lab set was more conventionally lit," says Goldblatt. "We used green-gelled 20Ks and a mixture of various Kino Flo tubes hidden everywhere. We also had other green- gelled fixtures set up outside the tent. It was pretty underexposed, but I'd get up to and over key when the lightning effects came on. We used Lightning Strikes units through heavy green gels. We also used a lot of Steadicam on that set, moving through all of these tiny little corridors between various exhibits."
One of those corridors leads to a stony temple known as "Gilgamesh," where the scientist is conducting Frankenstein-like experiments in his attempt to transform a scrawny little man into the ultimate fighting machine. This setpiece served as a showcase for a powerful device known as a YAG Laser, which was beamed down onto the hapless guinea pig as he lay strapped to a large rectangular platform.
"We used Tesla coils and everything else you normally see in a mad scientist's lab," notes Goldblatt with a chuckle. "But the YAG Laser was really amazing. Normally when you're using a laser, everything else has got to be turned off so it will show up. But that wasn't the case with this unit it's very strong. The set was lit very low-key, at about a T2.5 or 2.8, but the YAG was popping out at T4 easily. The laser was fired up into a mirror and then came down over this little guy on the table in a wide, serrated green sheet.
"The rest of the set was lit in a very Gothic style, with lots of uplighting along the walls from standard 1K and 2K units," he continues. "We also hid a lot of fluorescent tubes. I even used a lighting balloon for the first time. I don't like using balloons outside, because they blow around in the wind. But on the Gilgamesh set, I needed some general fill, so we just floated a tungsten balloon up high and turned it on to create a beautiful, soft, non-directional light. The balloon was helium-filled and had two banks of quartz bulbs inside. I normally just turned on one bank. We used the same balloon for a few other scenes in the film, and we also had another HMI balloon from Lee Lighting. I found the balloons to be very useful on large interior sets, when I needed just a kiss of fill."
Hot and Cold Hideout
The disparate looks dictated by the film's villains were combined in the evil pair's shared crime lair, located within the abandoned site of a Turkish bathhouse. After invading the space and renovating it, Ivy is kind enough to sub-let an area to Mr. Freeze. "Within the same set, we had these two very exotic and different areas," says Goldblatt. "I tried to give Poison Ivy's area a sexy feel, with lots of pinks and greens. We put colored patterns on the various flowers and orchids to enhance the mood. The color pattern was basically magenta, red, green and pink, with some touches of yellow and other colors.
"Ivy's area includes her 'throne room,' where she seduces Robin. There's a big pool in the middle with lily pads that Robin walks across. I took great liberties in that particular sequence, using more and more color scrollers and patterns everywhere. From up high, I was using 2K Xenons for moonlight. We also had a rock 'n' roll truss up overhead for the color units magenta Cyberlights aimed at Ivy's throne, and Universal Projectors with patterns running through them. I also added some conventional units to backlight the throne. Beneath the water, we used 1K Xenons to highlight the greenery, and we hid a lot of Cyberlights in the foliage.
"In Mr. Freeze's area, we naturally went more towards a blue look with our scroller and projectors. We also used a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen to create vapors that come down from the ceiling, and then backlit them with blue light and projectors."
These individual looks were also reflected in Goldblatt's approach to the lighting of the villains themselves. "I basically used old-fashioned glamour techniques on Poison Ivy, but Uma Thurman requires different lighting than, say, Nicole Kidman [the heroine of Batman Forever]," he says. "Nicole, with her tiny little nose and ivory skin, could be lit with a soft sidelight, while Uma's features and complexion, although exotic and beautiful in the extreme, require a flatter angle for the light, with a more traditional shadow below the chin. The action in these films is so large that these characters have got to stand out; you don't have much time to squint for their expressions. On this film, even more than the last one, we had to get the point quickly, so perhaps the lighting is a bit less subtle on the characters.
"The elaborate suit that Mr. Freeze wears is certainly not understated," he adds with a laugh. "Arnold was initially going to have a costume that was self-lit with fiber optics. I was very dubious about whether that would work, and it turned out that it wouldn't. Three to six miles of fiber optics per costume is prohibitively expensive, and the areas where the joints occurred had to be impossibly precise. There was also the weight of the batteries and the projector that fires the light through the fiber optics. It became very impractical.
"Fortunately, these blue LEDs have been developed over the past year or so, and those were put into his costumes instead. We used hundreds of them; they were low-power, and fairly reliable. Those served as the main light sources on Mr. Freeze. Arnold also agreed to wear metallic contact lenses the slightest white reflectors, which didn't change the look of the set at all and gave his eyes this incredible metallic flare. He wore illuminated dental pieces so that his teeth would glow as well. We also put some white lighting in the suit, off the same battery packs, so there would be some uplighting around his neck and into his face. I lit him in addition to that, but he often didn't need that much extra.
"Of course, Batman needs a lot of light, which makes things a bit difficult during the scenes in which Freeze and Batman fight each other. The metallic highlights on Batman's battle costume at the end of the film made it easier to light, because it wasn't dead black. All of Batman's costumes had beautiful highlights and metallic powder embedded in the rubber material."
Goldblatt used either NATs, 10Ks or 5Ks to provide two 3/4 backlights on the characters, and he always used an eyelight to bring out Clooney's eyes, lest he lose his star's pupils behind Batman's cowl. "Chimera's new diffusers were just a joy to me for that purpose," he enthuses. "They're devices that you put in front of conventional hard lights, and they make the light soft while preventing it from spreading. Basically, these new Chimeras enable you to control soft light, which is what cinematographers have been dreaming about for years. I'd often have my wonderful gaffer, Les Kovacs, walk beside the camera and keep a soft Chimera eyelight on Batman. Instead of being all over the set, the light was just on his eyes, which was fabulous.
"Essentially, we used rock 'n' roll lighting on the characters for medium and wide shots, but we went to pretty traditional techniques on close-ups, because they look best."
Camp Schumacher
According to director Schumacher, Batman and Robin proved once again that amicable teamwork can work wonders, even on a project that defies normal logistical limits. His philosophies about on-the-set interaction are refreshingly upbeat, and seem to produce contagious optimism among his collaborators. "If you don't use the people around you on a film, you are ignoring your greatest asset," he maintains. "People always start out a movie wanting to do it well; nobody ever started out wanting to make a bad movie. But I've been on crews that have been discouraged or demoralized, and in that kind of situation you finally just say, 'The hell with it. The director doesn't care.' It's the same in every workplace in the world. Nobody wants to go to work and feel as if they're ignored and have no contribution to make. Whenever you work with people who treat you well, you work harder, because you're happy to be respected and thought of as a responsible person who can do the job.
"The first time you work with a group of people, you're sort of thrown together, and if you don't like the experience, you know you're never going to have to work with those people again," he notes. "But when you come back to work with people, it's because you really loved the experience and you've chosen to do it again."
This enthusiastic and open-minded work ethos served Schumacher well when he began reassembling his key collaborators. He illustrates the point with an appropriate anecdote: "About a week before I started to shoot A Time to Kill, in August of 1995, [Warner Bros. heads] Bob Daly and Terry Semel called and asked me if I'd do another Batman movie. It's a big, wild pop opera that you get to play with, and I'd enjoyed directing the first one, so I agreed. One of the first people I called was Barbara Ling. She had been exhausted after the experience of Batman Forever, and I thought she would say no to working on the new one. I said, 'Barb, are you up for another Batman?' And she replied, 'Oh, we haven't even scratched the surface.' That really became our motto on the show."
