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The plane interior was a 44,000-pound, four-walled set with a hard ceiling. The structure was mounted on computerized gimbals so that it could simulate in-flight movement. "Because it was an enclosed tube, we had to design the lighting into the ceiling structure, Tattersall explains. "We hung 150 nook lights from a rig welded to the roof of the set. These lights shone through the 'practical' light portals that were built into the set. For the window illumination, we had 10 Maxi-Brutes going through a 50-foot diffusion screen. We also had a 20K on a crane, which we could move to add to the sensation that the plane was rolling."
The dark, dank plane interiors are contrasted with the exteriors, which the cinematographer describes as "expansive, like you see in wide-screen epics. These are men trying to break out of imprisonment to freedom, and we wanted a very clear delineation between where they were and where they're trying to go."
After the prison plane is commandeered, the action shifts to two different airports. "Because we have the plane taking off from one airport and then landing at two others, Simon felt it was important to make the airports all look very different," says Tattersall. "The prisoners are boarded onto the plane at the Oakland, California, airport, a high-security situation which we shot in a regimented, disciplined way to echo that tightly controlled feeling. It was almost clinical, with very formal compositions and restrained, militaristic blues, greys and browns."
A gigantic dust storm sequence was devised for the first landing sequence, which occurs in Carson City, Nevada. This blustering effect, however, proved difficult to control. "We had eight six-foot ritter fans, and at each one we had two to three effects operators feeding in Fuller's Earth and smoke. It was very easy to overdo or underdo it. With 24 people adding in smoke and earth all at once, it was pretty tricky; if a few of them put in too much, we'd have a stretch of film where you couldn't see anything, and if they put in too little, we'd have a clear day!"
The next landing takes place at a small, atmospheric airstrip on the Salt Flats of Utah, where a skirmish erupts between the criminals and the Special Forces Army Team. During the production's 15 shooting days, the temperature averaged 120°F. As a result, only interiors and/or shaded close-ups could be filmed during prime daylight hours; the bulk of shooting had to take place either early or late in the day. But the glaring lumination of the white flats allowed West to indulge in a highly regimented approach to color.
Notes the director, "The buildings there are made of this bleached wood, so they are kind of a gray-white. We had the white salt-flat floor, gray-white buildings, the stripped-down silver plane and these steely blue skies. That was all very carefully planned and art-directed."
The cinematographer concurs, "The Salt Flats were such a pure white that it was almost like a Fargo situation. We wanted to emphasize the blue sky against the white Salt Flats, so we used heavy polarization on the lens."
As can be imagined, the flatlands' innate reflectivity posed specific lighting problems. "We had so much natural bounce from the strong sun on the Salt Flats floor that we needed a very large soft light just to match it, either as our key light, or for fill when working with the natural light," says Tattersall.
To meet that challenge, a 15-foot scissorlift was rigged with three 12K HMIs and a 10' x 20' diffusion panel to create a "huge moving soft light that we could drive around quickly once the action was choreographed," Tattersall explains.
The combination of the white landscape, the strong desert light and the huge 36K moving soft light allowed Tattersall to shoot the Salt Flats sequence with 50 ASA 5245. "I liked working with the 45; it resulted in a very sharp, fine grain and colorful image, just as one would expect," he says.
Throughout the Salt Flat sequences, Tattersall managed to maintain an aperture between f5.6 and f11 even though he was using such a slow stock. "We wanted a fair amount of depth of field throughout," he notes. "We also wanted a very clear, clean look. We rarely used filters, and that desire for a clean look is also a main reason we shot in anamorphic instead of with Super 35 — so we could avoid the added optical step and grainier image."
In terms of the lenses outfitted on the production's multiple Platinum Panavision cameras, Con Air was often a study in contradictions. "Throughout most of the picture we used wide lenses, especially Panavision's 28mm E-series T2.3," but extremely elongated lenses were the rule on the Salt Flats exteriors. "We had a lot of space, and we wanted to use it all. So we used the 1200mm T6 Canon lens that Panavision rents, and the incredible 3:1 270mm-840mm T4.5 Panavision Primo zoom, which is wonderful, but so big that the crew called it 'the Hubble.' Actually, we often used the 3:1 at the long end."
The older Panavision E-Series Auto Panatar lenses were used for most of Con Air, primarily because "it was a very busy summer and there weren't many Primos available," says Tattersall with a chuckle. "The E lenses worked well for us, though. The Primos tend to be kind of heavy and bulky, and we were constantly putting cameras up on Titan cranes and on rigs like the Cable Cam; we ran cameras almost a mile down the Las Vegas Strip, sometimes on a remote head, traveling at 60 miles an hour for a scene in which the plane crash-lands in the middle of the street. Those types of shots were a little less taxing with the lighter lenses."
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