Effects Roundup
Making a final bid to rule the Old West, Loveless utilizes his walking Tarantula assault vehicle to destroy the frontier town of Silverado. West and Gordon attempt to thwart Loveless’s plans by boarding the Tarantula via Gordon’s rocket-powered glider, the Wasp.
While both contraptions were primarily rendered as CG models by Industrial Light & Magic (see story on page 48), these mechanical marvels were also built full-scale in whole or part and filmed on the Warner Bros. stages. The wonders visible onscreen include the Tarantula’s open-air bridge, from which Loveless and his cohorts operate the multi-limbed device, and a complete version of the Wasp. Extensive bluescreen and poor man’s process work was used to achieve the required shots, all of which were carefully storyboarded or rendered as video animatics when precise timing was necessary.
"Our effects supervisor was Eric Brevig, who is excellent," Ballhaus attests. "He and Barry had worked together on Men in Black, so Eric knew that Barry’s goal was to achieve technical perfection. This meant that we wanted to give ILM material that would not require a lot of manipulation in order for it to work. If, for instance, a bluescreen element is shot incorrectly, it takes a lot of extra work later to correct it in post. As a result, the visual effects department had much more influence over the process of shooting than I had experienced on Outbreak or even Air Force One."
ILM’s technical requirements had a direct impact on Ballhaus’s choice of film stocks. He explains, "I like Kodak’s Vision 320T, which I used quite a bit in the film and exposed at 200 ASA, but for the bluescreen work, ILM asked me to use 5248, which has less grain and a better blue layer. I rated it normally at 100 ASA, and because it’s more contrasty, I had to use a bit more fill. I also used some 5293, because its blue layer is also better than in the 320T, and I sometimes needed a stock faster than 48. I rated the 93 normally at 200 ASA. However, since all of the effects shots were to be digitized and manipulated, ILM said they would work it out so the contrast in those shots would match the footage shot on the 320T, and they have done a pretty good job with that.
"I like the 320T because it has a wide range of exposure, about 6 or 8 stops, and it’s almost impossible to overexpose it, which is great. Also, you can play with it; the more you expose, the more contrast you get. If you read it at 320 ASA, it’s very flat, but at 200 ASA it has good contrast. At 125 ASA, it has even more."
Asked if the higher built-in contrast of Kodak’s Vision print stocks influenced his photographic approach, Ballhaus advises, "It all depends on how you expose things. If I were shooting the whole film with 48 and 93, it could be too contrasty if I did not properly expose and add more fill than I would ordinarily use." The cameraman additionally notes that Technicolor handled all of his dailies processing.
"ILM was very meticulous about the bluescreen shots," Ballhaus adds, "which meant they would very precisely measure the brightness of every square foot of the screens. They generally kept the bluescreens about a half-stop under the stop we were shooting at. That was good, because it left the foreground elements unaffected by any spill light coming from the screens. That’s usually a problem because it can soften the edges of the subject, making it harder to create a good matte." ILM also wanted the bluescreens lit with blue fluorescents, prompting Tynes to use both Kino Flos and Mole Flos.
During the creation of shots involving the Wasp, the full-scale prop was usually mounted on a hydraulic motion base. "Shooting Will Smith and Kevin Kline flying on the Wasp was tough for a couple of reasons," Ballhaus explains. "The glider was always moving, so we had to keep our lights moving as well. The camera was on one crane, and a Dino on another. It wasn’t easy to choreograph the cranes in order to prevent the wings of the Wasp from casting shadows on the actors."
Much of the visual effects photography was done with ILM’s VistaVision units, fitted with Zeiss lenses. Asked if he was worried about any color or contrast discrepancies that might be apparent between this footage and that shot with his Variable Primes, Ballhaus replies, "Not really, because all lenses are quite good nowadays. I prefer Zeiss lenses, but Panavision’s Primos and the new Cookes are also good. The differences begin to stand out when you are shooting wide-open, but if you’re at a T4, as we were most of the time, the differences are not so evident."
Motion control was used extensively throughout the film, primarily on the many scenes involving Loveless, a double amputee who scurries about in a steam-powered wheelchair. "Whenever we were wide enough to see below his waist, we’d bring in the motion-control rig," Ballhaus says. "Those shots required at least two takes: one for the performance by Kenneth Branagh, and then a clean pass for the background so that ILM could remove his legs, which could otherwise be seen beneath the wheelchair.
"One of the most complicated of those shots shows Loveless sprouting mechanical legs—like those on the Tarantula—after his wheelchair gets jammed," Ballhaus recounts. "We had animatics to guide us through that scene, because the timing of the action was difficult." With full-scale mock-ups of the legs in place next to Branagh, Ballhaus also shot reference footage to show ILM’s animators how his lighting would play on the metallic limbs; the effects artists would later have to attach CG versions of the articulated appendages to Loveless’s torso, and carefully match the cameraman’s illumination.
Into the Sunset
The release-print work on Wild Wild West was done at Technicolor, where Dale Grahn and Ballhaus supervised the color timing. The cameraman notes, "We’ve done a couple of movies together, and Dale also supervised our dailies. I have a special deal with Technicolor so that the person who oversees the answer print will always be whoever was in charge of the dailies. That helps a lot, because it ensures that he will know as much as possible about the film, and follow through on things we were trying to do during production."
Asked what he learned while making Wild Wild West, Ballhaus replies, "Prior to this film, I had never thought of myself as having a particular photographic style. I felt that all of my previous films looked a bit different, and that the look was suggested more by the material than my own work. But with Barry, I learned that I do have a style—one based on my preferences for doing things in certain ways. On this film, I learned some different techniques for doing things—such as using very wide lenses, which I enjoyed.
"Films like this are like an enormous puzzle, and because of the mixture of motion control, CGI work and so forth, no one person is in total control. I’d have to say that Wild Wild West was the most technically demanding film I have made."
Ballhaus recently started work on What Planet Are You From?, a comedy directed by Mike Nichols. "It’s a science-fiction story about people from another planet who want to take over the Earth," Ballhaus explains with a smile. "Their plan is to get a human woman pregnant with an alien baby, but that means one of them has to learn how to romance her. It’s a very funny idea."