To give the impression that the saloon interior was primarily lit by a central chandelier, a cluster of 4’ Chinese lanterns was hung in the center of the main room. Further diffused with light grid cloth, the spherical fixtures’ individual 10K bulbs offered plenty of soft illumination, which was warmed with judicious dimming.
Taking a Western cliché to an extreme for a humorous effect, the prop chandelier was designed as 7’ x 6’ array of deer antlers festooned with lights. "That thing was so huge that it actually blocked the light it was motivating," Tynes says, "so we’d have to lift it up out of the way whenever it wasn’t in the shot; otherwise, we’d somehow cheat light around it. We didn’t wire the chandelier with too many lights, because it wasn’t affecting the backgrounds.
"We had over 300 practicals on that set, and because Michael was shooting with stocks rated at 200 ASA, they would burn out if we let them play naturally. To correct that, we’d dim the practicals down to where they looked pleasing to the eye and then add a 100- or 250-watt gag light on a dimmer behind them. It was a fairly dimmer-intensive show.
"Early on, we got together with our set decorator, Cheryl Carasik. She’s brilliant, and her choices of practicals were really beautiful, eclectic, and accurate to the period. However, when you have so many practicals, you start to get diminishing returns because of the amount of work it takes to wire them all and then hide those wires. It gets to be a very elaborate process, and you can simply run out of time."
Additional lighting for both the saloon interior and exterior was done from large scaffolding trusses riding on traveling tracks built outside the set. Designed by key grip Patrick Daily and rigger Mike McGuire, the trusses could be raised and lowered by chain motors, allowing them to move in close to the action or pull back for wide-angle shots. "Another truss lowered through the center of the saloon, so we had a platform to light from when we were on the ground floor," Tynes says. "We mostly used 5Ks coming through Chimeras for a directional softlight, and then Leikos for the dance number that takes place on the stage. That setup gave us the opportunity to create a lot of different looks in there."
West and Gordon narrowly escape death when Fat Can’s joint detonates in grandiose gouts of flame—a true feat of filmmaking expertise, considering that the structure was enclosed on a stage. Ballhaus’s basic stop of T2.8 to T4 ensured that the pyrotechnics would be rendered on film as orange blossoms instead of burning out white. "That worked fine," the cameraman says, "but the effects people also kept the explosions down a bit and under control because of our situation. In a contemporary film, explosions are usually created with a lot of gasoline, but we certainly couldn’t do that inside a stage."
West’s Wild Ride
The Wanderer, James West’s plush rail-car headquarters— ostensibly outfitted by Artemus Gordon with all manner of scientific devices, weapons and secret compartments—was constructed with flyaway walls and a removable ceiling to allow complete access for the filmmakers’ cameras. However, Ballhaus generally dislikes working outside a set’s proscribed parameters. "Once you put the camera outside the room, you change the feeling of the scene," the cinematographer elaborates, noting that this artificiality could undermine his generally naturalistic photographic approach. "We did fly a few walls when absolutely necessary due to space restrictions, but not often."
A variety of methods were used to create the sense that the Wanderer was indeed in transit, including moving lights, poor man’s process and bluescreen work. "When a train is moving, the light coming through the windows is constantly changing," Ballhaus says, "so Patrick Daily devised a set of tracks that ran on both sides of the rail-car set. He and fabricator Chaz Norcross then built little cars mounted with cuculorises that could fly by the lights to simulate motion. If sound was a problem—these cars did make some noise—Pat instead used a system of rotating flags or flags held by hand to create moving shadows."
The task of lighting the Wanderer’s interior was hampered by both the cramped working conditions and the set’s small side windows. "Fortunately, most of the film takes place late in the day— apparently a very long day!" Ballhaus says with a laugh. "This allowed us to make the best use possible of the car’s windows. For the key light, we would use Dinos outside with 1/2 CTO, while our fill light then came from the ceiling of the car, or from some big bounces."
Tynes expands, "There was a lot of lighting crammed into that very small space. In addition, the original plan for lighting through the lower windows didn’t carry the light to the top of the set the way we needed it to, so we added some overhead skylights to the train. During an overnight rigging session, we then added cyc strips down the entire length of the car to add ambiance from the top of the train. Those provided our base light. The skylights were very small—it wasn’t an open ceiling—but by pounding them with the cyc strips we could bring out a lot of that dark wood interior."
The detailed Wanderer set had obviously been built with West sequels in mind, because it was constructed with mahogany and expensive brass fixtures. Attention had to be given to the set’s metal finishes, since they could potentially reflect the bluescreens set up outside the windows, but dulling spray in shades of black and gray quickly remedied any problems.
Desert Hideaway
Built on the high-ceilinged Stage 16 at Warner Bros., Loveless’s secret lair is a cavernous, greenhouse-like structure hidden in a deep desert canyon. Recalling the MIB headquarters that Bo Welch designed for Men in Black, it features translucent walls that allowed plenty of possibilities for illumination. "That was our biggest set," Ballhaus says, "and we ended up rigging 1.4 million watts of light in it, including 144 space lights hung from the ceiling. We hung a huge silk below the space lights to create a very soft ambiance. Again, the scenes in there were set late in the day, so the sun was supposed to be just peeking over the rim of the canyon, with its rays coming through the glass. To create that effect, we used eight Dinos gelled with 1/2—CTO for that late-day warmth. Those served to produce our key light. The color difference between the Dinos and the space lights was about 800°K, and that worked quite well."
Despite the size of the set, "using our wide-angle lenses made it quite difficult to bring in the Dinos," Ballhaus says. "With a 14mm lens, you can see everything! Our toplight rigging was not a problem, but the sidelight was sometimes difficult."
The curved greenhouse-style walls were made of Plexiglas painted by the set dressers with a wash to resemble frosted glass. Beyond that was a 360-degree desert-landscape cyclorama. "We used 10 Moleenos and lots and lots of 20Ks in there," Tynes says. "The frosted glass helped, because doing our sun effect with Dinos could have resulted in a multiple shadows; the diffusion blended the light together to make it seem as if it was coming from one large source."
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