One spectacular sequence follows the monastery explosion, which sends Wayne and Ducard hurtling down an icy slope toward a massive chasm. Ducard actually slides over the edge but is saved by Wayne, who grabs his arm at the last second. “Chris wanted to shoot that sequence as practically as possible, and he put the onus on Paul Jennings, the English stunt coordinator, and Chris Corbould, our special-effects coordinator,” says Pfister. “He wanted to know if we could have two stuntmen slide down to the edge of the cliff, which had a 300-foot drop at the end of it. Chris also asked me to take the camera out over the edge with them as they slipped over it. He wanted to go from looking horizontally to looking straight down into the abyss.”

Stuntmen Buster Reeves and Mark Mottram (doubling for Bale and Neeson, respectively) performed this death-defying feat after being attached to safety cables connected to various pick-points on the slope. The sequence was ultimately assembled in several sections, however. Shots of the two men heading toward and off the cliff edge were captured in a wide shot made from a dolly and a telescoping shot made with a 30' Technocrane. The crew then filmed some medium shots of Bale and Neeson sliding down a safer slope. Finally, close-up work of the stars was shot on a fake partial slope that ran about 60' and ended with a greenscreen that would allow a shot of the abyss to be composited in during post. “By combining all of this footage, I think we managed to create a slide and fall that looks a lot more credible than the typical greenscreen stuff you usually see with such a stunt,” Pfister maintains. “We did two key shots for real that will help sell it for the audience: the side-angle profile of our two stuntmen going off the cliff, and the Technocrane shot that follows them right over the lip. The stuntmen had to shield their faces from the camera, but we were right with them as they went over.”

Gotham City, From the Ground Up

After Wayne survives his Himalayan trials, he returns to Gotham City as a hardened fighting machine bent on restoring a semblance of order. In describing the look he sought for Wayne’s hometown, Nolan says, “Gotham was about creating a sort of ‘New York on steroids,’ but we also incorporated elements of other major international cities — elevated freeways from Tokyo, slums from Hong Kong, and underground streets from Chicago. [One of our influences] was the extremity of the architectural repurposing that had once gone on in Kowloon [Hong Kong]. We had great photographic references of amazing, covered-in alleyways with pipes running up and down. Essentially, Gotham is a mix of all of the most interesting, oppressive and divisive architectural elements from the great modern cities.”

In building Gotham within the Cardington blimp hangar, Crowley and his crew incorporated some of the facility’s existing features, which included three buildings and an array of metal support beams. Pfister contributed ideas at the design phase so he could take full advantage of the space. “Very early on, Nathan built paper models of the city, and we sat there moving them around to figure out the ideal arrangement. I might say, ‘Moving these buildings a little bit that way will give us a long, clear line of sight all the way down the street; I can put some light in the background and we’ll have the most depth possible.’ We also discussed what I needed inside the buildings. At first, the production didn’t want to make some of the buildings structural because it was very expensive, but I really argued for it because we had to get electricians inside and on top of them. The studio eventually bit the bullet and paid to make those structures completely accessible. Nathan is a fantastic artist and a generous collaborator; he really helped us fight for what we needed to create a flexible lighting environment.”

To make Gotham appear more realistic, Pfister lit all of its buildings from within. “Ninety percent of city lighting is about the lighting within buildings rather than exterior light, so we placed a variety of lights in all of our Gotham structures.” (See diagram.) Installing these units was a task that fell to Evans and his crew. “We used a mix of fixtures behind windows: 2Ks, Blondes, Pups, Redheads and 650s,” the gaffer details. “Some of the units were clean, but Wally also picked out three or four different gel colors to use: soft yellow, CTO, CTB and 1⁄4 or 1⁄2 Plus Greens.” On the roofs of each building, Evans also stored larger units — 5Ks, 10Ks, Maxi-Brutes and others — that could be called into service at a moment’s notice. Two 200' cranes equipped with Wendy Lights were positioned at ground level, but limited floor access meant that the filmmakers had to find another way to create most of their foundational lighting.

The solution was the construction of the aforementioned 130'-high catwalks, which ran the length of the hangar on both sides and allowed the crew to install two rows of large, varied sources. The catwalks were an expensive undertaking, but Pfister and Evans agree that they increased efficiency dramatically. Evans explains, “We alternated different sources along each side of the hangar: quarter Wendys for ambience, half Dinos to pick out certain architectural highlights, and 20K Fresnels. Here and there we substituted Maxis for some of the half Dinos. We had at least 10 of each type of light up there. The whole setup was powered by four megawatt generators, and we ran 40 miles of cable.” Adds Pfister, “Once the foundational sources were in place, we also positioned some lights on the ground. To add fill to the actors’ faces, I might aim a 2K Zip light through a frame of 216 diffusion. My approach was simple: light the background to create the overall environment, and then go in with a small light to pick up the faces. Many scenes worked that way.

“My goal at Cardington was to create an interesting mix of colors that would be true to a real urban environment,” he adds. “It was a matter of choosing the two primary urban colors: an orange, sodium-vapor look and a blue-green, mercury-vapor look. If you fly over any major city, those are the two defining colors in the streetlights below you. They complement each other, and they allowed me to add some fun, interesting hues that were well grounded in reality. We used 1⁄2 Straw gels for our orange-yellow foundation, and 1⁄4 Blue and 1⁄2 Green gels for the blue-green look. We even assembled about 400 practical street fixtures and put them up all over the hangar.”

Pfister also addressed one of Nolan’s primary concerns by changing up the look of different streets if they had to be reused. “We wanted to avoid anything that would make the audience think ‘Backlot!’ Chris was very keen to make sure we didn’t photograph the same areas over and over again, because there’s a sort of subliminal recognition on the viewer’s part that can serve to shrink the picture’s scale. We made certain set details stand out, but we were very careful to disguise things if we did reuse a specific area. For example, if we used one street for a given scene, we’d make it look completely different for another scene by changing a bunch of the neon signs.”

Another major Gotham setting, of course, is the Batcave. In Batman Begins, we see Wayne’s famous underground hideout during its formative phase, before it becomes fully equipped with sophisticated equipment. The cavernous space consists mainly of sloping rock walls, a river and two waterfalls, all located beneath the visible foundation of Wayne Manor. Crowley and his crew built the massive set on Shepperton’s largest soundstage. According to Evans, “The only sources of light in the Batcave were the cracks in the ground above it and the openings behind the waterfalls. We lit the set with a variety of units:space lights hung from an overhead grid; 10Ks and 20Ks that were also rigged in the gantry; a row of 2K Blondes positioned at floor level near the lift shaft; and several 20Ks that we used to backlight the waterfalls, including a Molebeam behind the one at the cave’s main entrance. On the ground, Wally kept things very low-key, right at the bottom end of the exposure meter — I thought his approach was very ballsy!” (Pfister responds with a laugh, “When things get that dark, I tap on my light meter and look at it as if it’s broken.”)