Attack!
Extensive preproduction tests were done in order to practically plan Godzilla's lengthy nighttime location work in Manhattan, as well as to lock down the methodology by which the digital G could be added to live-action 35mm footage. "The first test was an actual scene from the movie," Steiger says. "It included Godzilla walking through New York while looting is going on. We shot it in downtown Los Angeles and went through every level of production, including how to dress and light the streets, and how to work with the city to get our equipment in and out for a nighttime shoot. That test came off so well that it will be in the finished film. We also shot two teaser trailers. The first involved a group of students touring a museum to see the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex, which is then crushed by Godzilla's giant foot coming through the ceiling. The second involved an old fisherman, Godzilla rising out of the water, and a pier being destroyed; this involved model work, a greenscreen shoot, and location work done at Falls Lake at Universal Studios.
"These shoots allowed us to go through every step of the production process to a final print. This helped from a budgeting standpoint, as it showed what the scope of the production would be in terms of lighting and grip work. What does it mean to be lighting up five city blocks every night for weeks at a time? What will we need and what will it cost? This was especially important since we would never be able to pre-rig anything in Manhattan with the exception of some cabling. Most of our equipment had to be set up each night and cleared out by daybreak. Also, we were going to be shooting over the summer with short nights beginning at 9 p.m. and ending at 5 a.m. in order to meet our release date. All of these things were addressed during the tests."
One key to the success of these trials was Steiger's crew. "An important thing for me was getting Jim Grce aboard as my gaffer," the cinematographer says. "We have worked together many times before, and prior to Godzilla he had done Starship Troopers, Heat and Showgirls. It helped that he'd had experience on big shows. He had also worked with Sony Pictures Studios before and had a good relationship with them, which was great because Sony supplied us with most of our lighting equipment [in both New York and Los Angeles].
"My key grip was Tony Marra, with whom I had worked a bit on Independence Day. He and Jim had worked together before and were the foundation for a good crew. This film was a real collaboration from all departments." Steiger's team also included camera operator Nathaniel Goodman, first assistant Joe Sanchez, second assistant Gary Camp, and B-camera/Steadicam operator Stephen St. John.
The production's early test shoots also suggested an overall photographic approach to the film, as well as the manner in which G would be presented. As Steiger explains, "We have this massive creature, and the less you see the more powerful it is. And while the creature is a CG creation, the surroundings for it had to be photographed correctly so that the elements would fit together. To accomplish that, we ended up shooting mostly at night and creating a lot of atmosphere with smoke, rain and fog effects. It's raining through the whole film, which of course made it much more difficult to shoot. Not only is everything going to be wet, but when you have wide shots, the rain and smoke have to be lit correctly in order for them to read right on the film. The whole film should look rough and dark."
To that end, Steiger is using Technicolor's ENR process at the internegative stage to "dramatically deepen the blacks and desaturate the colors," as well as their new dye-transfer printing process on the final prints, which "allows you to control and deepen specific colors without affecting the blacks." However, of the 6,200 prints of Godzilla the lab is making, only 1,000 will benefit from the dye-transfer process. (This new printing methodology will be covered in an upcoming issue of AC.)
Given the vertical nature of Godzilla's primarily urban milieu and irradiated star, Steiger determined that a combination of a widescreen frame, extreme high and low angles, and wide lenses suited the picture best.
Both Emmerich and Steiger are believers in using widescreen to convey emotional impact and scale, and the director of photography utilized the Super 35 process to achieve his 2.35:1 compositions. "I've shot other films in anamorphic, but I'm not a purist," he submits. "Since James Cameron started using Super 35 and all of his films look fantastic I've been convinced that the format is great; nobody can really tell the difference between Super 35 and anamorphic, and it's so much easier to use. Plus, on Godzilla, we often had so many cameras running on the principal units as well as the effects units that it would have been impossible to shoot the film in anamorphic. Sometimes we had as many as 15 cameras rolling, including Panavisions, Fries Mitchells for motion-control work, and others.
"Of course, you do have a bigger negative in 'Scope there's a whole argument one can make on that point and Super 35 is a compromise, but you have to look at your situation and make a decision based on what's most important for the movie, rather than thinking from a 'purist' mentality or from the perspective of what will look good on my reel. The advantages are very clear to me: lighter cameras, being able to throw a still-photo lens on an Eyemo set up somewhere, and using the Steadicam more freely. On Godzilla, we wanted to be alive, mobile and gritty, so the choice was obvious.
"Additionally, a large number of our main-unit shots are actually digital effects shots. Since we use only half the exposed negative area in the final Super 35 print, the frame could be easily repositioned and adjusted vertically for the creature."
Steiger used Kodak's Vision 500T 5279 for night exteriors and interiors, and Vision 200T 5274 for day exteriors. "I'd used the 500T before on a commercial, but we were one of the first features to get the 200T stock," he says. "I didn't get a chance to test it, and while I trust Kodak, it took a bit of tweaking to learn how to use the new stock, but the results were worth it. The grain structure on these films is amazingly sharp, and of course I didn't use any lens diffusion at all because of the Super 35. Our rain and smoke softened things a bit, but we got on film what we could see."
Steiger notes that he and Emmerich are both "big fans of using wide lenses and clearly showing the audience what's going on. I hate the long-lens look that is so popular in commercials, and if you have a huge creature walking through a city, you want to be wide, you want to see what's happening and where you are. On Godzilla, we often didn't even shoot tight close-ups because we knew they wouldn't be used. Like me, Roland sometimes likes to do a whole scene in a single shot. That might take a while to set up, but if it works, you can save time."
When it came to optics, Steiger relied heavily on Panavision's 5:1 and 11:1 Primo zooms. "Other people will disagree with this, but I just love zooms and prefer them to primes at almost every level," he attests. "That doesn't mean you have to be zooming in and out all the time although I do love to sometimes zoom within a shot but using one allows you to have all the focal lengths in the world on your camera at once. You can create the exact frame you need, show it to the director, and then shoot. The 5:1 and 11:1 Primos are fast enough [T2.3 and T2.8, respectively] I don't like shooting wide open anyway so I used them for most of my night exteriors, and hardly ever used primes.
"Of course, you have to understand the zoom lens to use it properly. For example, you can't become lazy and not move the camera simply because you can zoom in. If you're doing matching reverses with a 24mm lens, you still might have to move a wall because you can't get the camera in behind one of the actors with the 24mm. You can't just creep out on the lens instead, because that's changing the perspective. You have to know what a 24mm focal length will do and how it will compare to the tighter focal length you might use for your close-ups."
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