The Limey trails Wilson though a spectrum of Southern California milieus, from the barrios of East L.A. and faceless suburbs of the San Fernando Valley to opulent mansions atop the smog-enshrouded Hollywood Hills and the majestic seaside cliffs of Big Sur. "Almost the entire film was shot on location," notes Lachman, who adds that this approach directly influenced both his lighting plans and execution. "We weren't trying to control the exteriors as much as I usually would, and we'd always try to continue with whatever lighting we found on the locations. For instance, in a fluorescent situation, we'd just light with fluorescents, and sometimes even add Plus Green or Full Green gel to them to make sure they looked like fluorescents."
In one extended nighttime exterior scene, Wilson pays a call on his daughter's friend Ed (Luis Guzman), who had notified him of Jennifer's death. Seeking answers, Wilson also gains Ed's confidence, and the unlikely pair begin their investigation. "In that scene, there's this particular two-shot in which you can see the entire downtown cityscape of Los Angeles lit up in the background," Lachman says. "When you work off of whatever light exists—and we were shooting wide open at T1.4—you can get an interesting sense of depth, because sources far in the distance aren't being overpowered. If you start shooting at T2.8 or a 4, you lose those backgrounds, so I always tried to light off of what I found on the location, so our perceived set would be much greater than what I could actually light. I know that cameramen like John Seale [ASC, ACS] and Chris Menges [BSC] sometimes do that as well. You can get a very different look when you light that way, and it's not just in terms of depth of field. You pick up ambient light, color temperatures and subtleties in the shadows that you wouldn't get if you tried to light the entire scene yourself."
Aiding Lachman on this and other nighttime scenes was Kodak's Vision 800T 5289 film stock, which had just been introduced before he began shooting. "I'd done some tests with the 89 and the Vision Premier 2393 print film, and I thought the combination was sensational. It was my standard test, just using a face against a neutral-gray backdrop and bracketing exposures in half-stop increments. And while the 89 is slightly grainier than Vision [500T] 5279, it didn't bother me.
"A lot of people have been questioning the Vision print stocks because they think they're too contrasty, but I think it's just how you use them. I generally light with big, soft sources, so I welcome the contrast, but I suppose it would be more unforgiving for anyone who uses harder light.
"For another scene in which Wilson takes a nighttime cab ride, we literally shot without even being able read my meter because there was so little light. Just before we started shooting, an inverter went out, so we lost the supplemental lighting we'd set up in the cab, but we just decided to go for it. I told Steven, 'Either this will be a reshoot, or it'll look great.' And it did look great. Terence Stamp was in the back seat and I could just barely make out his shape through the viewfinder, but the footage turned out remarkably. I couldn't believe how much information the stock held. Also, where you would normally lose your blacks, because the curve is going into underexposure, the Vision Premier really brought them back.
"In that cab scene, I pushed the 5289 by one stop, but the Vision Premier held the blacks," Lachman adds. "I always underrate my stocks while shooting, though, which helped the grain." The cinematographer estimates that he used the 89 on about 20 percent of the film, employing 5279 for interiors and EXR5293 for daylight exteriors.
Addressing the lab work done on the picture, Lachman details, "Our lab was CFI, my lab of preference, and we worked with Art Tostado and Ron Scott over there. They have good, consistent dailies, and they aren't afraid to reprint something if they feel it doesn't look right. Because of the expense, some other labs won't do that, and they'll send something on even if one roll doesn't match the previous one because the printer lights have somehow been changed. All of the labs are technically about equal, so what it comes down to is customer service.
"Unfortunately, on both The Limey and my previous picture, The Virgin Suicides, which was directed by Sofia Coppola, we only printed selected takes or rolls in order to save money. I can't stress enough that I feel it's a false 'savings.' Some people think its a luxury or reward for a cameraman to see dailies on film—and maybe there is a secondary sense of pleasure about it—but if you're having any technical problems, you're not going to see it in video dailies. I have yet to be on a film where a lens didn't perform improperly at some point, or a light didn't have an inadvertent change in color temperature that affected a shot. On The Limey, we caught a lens that went out on us. The act of moving around day in and day out can damage or affect the cameras and lenses, and those nuances can't be seen on video dailies—the sharpness, contrast or even steadiness of the image. If you're spending $2 million—or even $50 million on a picture, you can't find yourself in postproduction with shots that are ruined by technical problems. It's much more expensive to go back and reshoot rather than have projected dailies and make sure that any problems are corrected during principal photography. It's a ludicrous attempt to save money, and I've talked to a number of cameramen who have had major photographic problems on their films but only found out about them after the fact. All cinematographers—and producers and directors—should address this issue. Everyone's concerned about the need for film preservation, but let's get things on film correctly first, and then preserve it."
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