During their prep discussions, Howard and Peterman decided to add some extra eccentricity to the images by using dutch angles in combination with side-to-side camera movement. "Ron wanted those moves countering each other," Peterman explains. "In other words, the camera would be dutched to the right and panned left. It worked, because everything’s off-center in Whoville: the buildings and streets are all crooked. All through prep, Ron kept harping on the fact that he did not want this picture to look stagebound, which is why we also shot at a couple of exterior locations."
One strategy that kept Whoville from looking too stagey was the use of realistic computer-generated skies created by Digital Domain’s Kurt Williams and Kevin Mack and their staff. "Those are just tremendous," Peterman says. "The morning clouds are pink on the bottom and they move very slowly and realistically. That’s why we had a huge bluescreen all the way around the sets." The bluescreen was lit with pre-hung DMX Image 80 Kino Flos, banks of eight "super blue" tubes that produce light at 420 nanometers. All of the bluescreens could be lit to various levels in seconds by board operator David Slodki.
The Grinch was shot in the spherical 1.85:1 format. Almost all of the picture, including bluescreen sequences, was shot on Kodak EXR 5293 film stock rated at ASA 200. (Eastman’s SFX 200T was used for some bluescreen work as well.) The dark, spooky Grinch cave was filmed with Kodak Vision 500T 5279. Peterman’s camera package consisted of two Panaflex Platinums and a Panaflex Lightweight II, the latter of which was used on the Steadicam by Greg Smith, assisted by Paul Plannette. The A-camera operator was Ray de la Motte, assisted by Brad Peterman. Don Peterman notes that his team also used a Libra head mounted on a Super Technocrane, which allowed them to get very dynamic shots anywhere on the sets, and to maintain a Seussian look.
"We used close-focus Panavision Primo lenses 6mm, 10mm, 14mm, 21mm, 27mm and 35mm sometimes just eight to 10 inches from the actors, which is good for comedy," the director of photography says. "All of the Steadicam footage was shot with the same Primos we used on the Platinum cameras. Generally, we used Tiffen Black ProMist filters [#1, #2 and #3] for diffusion. The wide lenses really worked with the giant sets, especially [those depicting] Whoville. Those sets were so big you had the feeling you were outside all the time, even without the CG skies!"
Peterman says he also prefers wide lenses because he feels that they create more dynamic close-ups. "I used to be a little leery of that, but I learned the value of wide lenses for close-ups from [director and former cinematographer] Barry Sonnenfeld, for whom I photographed Addams Family Values, Get Shorty and Men in Black," he recalls. "When you shoot somebody with a wide-angle lens, their face registers with the audience right away. Plus, lenses today hardly distort at all. "
Lighting the wide-open spaces of Whoville called for practically every chicken-coop light in Hollywood (see diagram labeled "Coop Layout"). "We used almost 130 coop lights," Peterman details. "On a set like that, I wouldn’t even try to use lots of lights to give the impression of single-source sunlight. If I did, all I’d get would be a bunch of phony shadows coming from different directions, and the scenes would look stagebound. I decided to use coops to create an ambience of soft, overcast sunlight rather than bright sunlight. The chicken coops were hung as high above the perms as we could get them, and they were skirted with Duvetyn to protect the bluescreen from light contamination. We also put tracing paper a few feet beneath the coops, which softened the light and evened it out.
"We had night as well as day scenes in Whoville, so we slid an aluminum divider into each coop and gelled each side differently. One side of each coop had four 1,000-watt globes gelled 1/2 blue, suggesting an overcast day, and the other side had two 1,000-watt globes gelled 3/4 blue, suggesting a winter night. We could throw a switch and light up only the day side, and throw another switch to light up only the night side. The night lighting was supplemented by 34,000 feet of Christmas decorations strung all over Whoville. We had to do the chicken coops the way we did to save money; if we’d put them on dimmers, it would have cost another $250,000. But the Whoville practicals were all on dimmers so we could set [and gel] them any way we wanted."
For some of the film’s early-morning scenes, Peterman used 20Ks gelled with full CTO to create the impression of sunlight breaking over distant mountains. "When actors walked through that light, they would warm up for just a couple of seconds," he says. "I’d hit parts of the Whoville buildings with 20Ks gelled with full CTO, and it looked like real morning light. I used Tiffen Black ProMist #2 filters just about all the time on all the cameras, even on the Steadicam, to keep the colors from oversaturating."
On a catwalk below the perms, Peterman set up a thicket of stronger lights to augment the soft ambience of the chicken coops (see diagram labeled "High Lamp Placement"). A combination of 10Ks, 5Ks, 2Ks, 8K soft lights, Maxis and Pars was used to cover Whoville and backlight the actors. "We gelled most of those with red, green, blue, yellow or whatever we wanted," he details. "They were backlights, but we also used them whenever we needed some source light for the night scenes in Whoville. We also had a few Lekos up there to project patterns that could also be used for backlights in a pinch."
A light mist was smoked onto the sets to make them look as much like real exteriors as possible. "The mist helped the background fall off into the distance," the cinematographer says. "Using Tiffen Black ProMist filters all the time helped create that impression, too. Mechanical and digital effects were sometimes used together. There’s a snowstorm scene on a mountain where The Grinch lives [that features] fake snow, diffusion on the camera, mist-smoke on the set and a stormy CGI sky. However, when you see closer shots of The Grinch in a blizzard, that’s all CGI snow, because the snow-foam really irritated Jim’s contact lenses."
Due to the size of the production, The Grinch required two units working simultaneously. The second-unit director was the film’s executive producer, Todd Hallowell, and his director of photography was Keith Peterman, who also did second-unit cinematography on Planes, Trains and Automobiles; Men in Black; Addams Family Values; and Mighty Joe Young. "Keith can match my footage exactly," Peterman notes, "so Ron knew that his images would look just like mine. This wasn’t like a regular first and second unit, really; it was more like two first units. Keith did practically all of the bluescreen work, which took about a month, as well as our two exterior locations."
"There was no way to get this show done with a single unit," Keith Peterman agrees. "There were dozens of makeup people, all these actors in prosthetics, children [and even] a dog. It was just endless!"
Each unit was able to watch what the other was filming on monitors connected to the camera video-assist systems. "They had to run a lot of cable between the sets to do that, but it saved lots of time," Keith Peterman explains. "It meant that Ron could call us and ask us to shoot something differently, and we could take care of it right away."
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