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"But Barry's an ex-cameraman, so we can get into all of that. I get along really well with him personally, I know his style now, and I think his approach has been the right one on all three pictures we've done together. Each is kind of bizarre and throws its comedy right in your face."
During AC's visit to Stage 15 on the Sony Pictures lot, it quickly becomes apparent that something funny (as in peculiar) is going on. Constructed within is the centerpiece of the film, the MIB headquarters — a retro-futuristic, airport-like customs area with one long curved wall consisting primarily of brightly backlit material. Dominated at one end by a huge, Jetsonsesque oval viewscreen, the immense oblong room is filled with decidedly unearthly things. Strange, chrome-plated instruments and weapons line special cubicles; one corner is filled with a voluminous glass container holding an overgrown brain floating passively in green-tinted fluid; on the far side, a pair of multi-limbed octopoid creatures operate twin control consoles.
Fortunately, Peterman soon arrives to make sense of it all. "A lot of our prep period consisted of meetings on the rigging for this and our other two main sets," he says, leading the way out and around the structure. This stroll reveals an elaborate latticework of pipe scaffolding and 20K fixtures behind the room's translucent wall, which essentially makes the MIB complex a giant softbox. "We have 300 lights on this set alone, because we lit it for Kodak's 5248 stock. There are a lot of digital effects that will be added later, but with that stock, we could shoot in 4-perf with our Panavision cameras for most of the work in here instead of going to VistaVision." Both the Panaflex and Beaumont Vista- Vision cameras were operated by Stephen St. John, who also served as Steadicam operator on the show.
"Because of the depth of the headquarters set, we needed at least a T2.8 1/2 so the background detail wouldn't go mushy," Peterman adds. "Shooting with 100 ASA stock, which I was rating at 80, I spent a lot of time with my gaffer, Jeff Murrell, and the electricians figuring out how to use enough light to get that stop without burning the place up." This requirement, coupled with Sonnenfeld's penchant for both wide lenses and a 1.85:1 frame, also led the cameraman to integrate lighting into the set whenever possible.
The MIB headquarters was contrived by production designer Bo Welch, whose credits include Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters II, Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns and Wolf. "The script had some background about the Men in Black organization, which was supposedly formed in the 1960s," says Welch, who has since moved on to design the political satire Primary Colors. "I suggested to Barry that their headquarters should be sort of an Ellis Island for aliens, as designed by a prominent architect — who then had his memory conveniently erased."
Toward that end, Welch studied the work of Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, the designer of TWA's terminal at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport. "The vocabulary of shapes and materials that Saarinen used evoke a sense of space travel and an unbridled optimism about the future," Welch offers. "It would have been too obvious and clichéd to make the set shadowy and dark. I saw the Men in Black headquarters as a central, bureaucratic office; all of the government offices I've ever been in are places where you can see things. People work there. So my first idea was to create a sterile, clutter-free space and integrate this enormous lightwall into the design. Both people and the aliens would stand out well against that kind of background. It was also interesting to have a set that was nearly prelit with the flick of a switch."
Home to the cynical, cloistered MIB, Welch's open, almost playful design also adds yet another touch of ironic humor to the picture. Peterman explains, "We covered the lightwall with 1000H tracing paper, which is pretty thick, but the light coming through is a lot softer. I didn't want any shadows on the wall. I wanted it to burn out, so when people walked in front of it they'd become silhouettes. So while I used fill and other lighting effects in different parts of the set, the whole room was basically lit through this one wall."
Due to the intensity of the light coming through the paper, however, additional steps had to be taken while shooting with the wall behind the camera in order to avoid any flattening. Explains Peterman, "I usually backlit the actors to create a rim on them, cut the front down, and then cheated them a little bit so they wouldn't be so flat. That was the biggest obstacle. I also had trouble with the big pieces of stainless steel and chrome detail built into the set. They kept flaring out, so we had to do a lot of dodging with black 12' x 12's to dull them down and keep the light from blasting back into the lens."
This overall lighting approach also generated a substantial amount of heat on the set. As Peterman relates, "We had about 40 20Ks hitting that paper on the wall, which can get us up to about 160°F in the ceiling area. That caused the sprinklers to go off once when we were pre-lighting, but it wasn't a disaster. We ended up putting some fans up there. The only other problem we had was that Bo made the framework for the wall with this plastic tubing, which we put our paper over. Well, the heat can cause the tubes to warp a bit, but we were able to fix that at night when necessary.
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