The premise of the new Universal Studios’ film Cowboys & Aliens is that aliens have arrived to take over the world, only they arrive in the Wild West circa 1873. Director Jon Favreau and cinematographer Matthew Libatique, ASC also bring to the Old West the very latest in automated lighting technology.
Favreau prefers to create as many effects live on the set, known in the industry as “in camera,” rather than rely solely on computer-generated visuals. That’s also a sentiment shared by DP Libatique, who favors interactive lighting, the use of lighting and/or media server driven content that literally interacts with the actors and the set to add depth and reality to the scene as it is actually filmed — a method the two also used when working together on both Iron Man & Iron Man 2.
Though the use of moving lights in film is not unprecedented, it is not necessarily as widespread as you might expect. However, today’s filmmakers, such as Libatique, are changing that while also making more innovative use of the technology, with out-of-this-world results.
Stepping Into the Light
While working on Iron Man 2, Libatique and gaffer Mike Bauman used the then-brand-new PRG Bad Boy luminaires to great effect on a number of sequences, which got them to talking about the possibilities of using moving lights to create the spaceships during their upcoming Cowboys & Aliens shoot. The alien attack of the western town sequence in the film is a great example of how the team took full advantage of the advances in automated lighting using the speed, brightness, and range of effects available.
With an eye on the demands of the upcoming Santa Fe outdoor night shoots, knowing long throws would be essential as well as reliability and repeatability, Bauman set up a pre-production test of a number of different possible fixtures to simulate an alien spaceship. “We particularly wanted to try the Bad Boy CMY units,” points out Bauman. “We needed to have units that could give us sweeping effects that were repeatable; could rotate; could do color shifting; and beam effects, which I knew the Bad Boys would give us. Not to mention firepower — Bad Boy is very bright over a very long throw, and that was critical on this movie, along with the fact that the light is incredibly fast for its size.”
Bauman was also impressed by Clay Paky fixtures. “Clay Paky’s Alpha Beams and Profiles really stood out in our tests. The Alpha Beam 1500s are fast and very bright; also, one of the big advantages of the Clay Paky units was that they are such lightweight instruments; that was a huge factor. The weight-to-watt ratio was great. From the testing, our main units on the show became the Bad Boys and the Clay Paky movers.”
Adding More Motion
The next challenge to building a spaceship out of lights was that the moving lights had to literally fly through the sky. Over two nights, the filmmakers tested methods of rigging, flying and controlling the lights at Mystery Mesa north of Los Angeles. On the first night, Bauman oversaw mounting a truss with two PRG Bad Boys and two Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500s provided by Chaos Visual Productions and a generator from a helicopter that could simulate the movement of a spaceship.
Lighting programmer Joshua Thatcher handled control during the test nights. “First, we had to figure out if I would control the lights from the ground or from inside the helicopter,” says Thatcher. “Ultimately, I decided that I had to control it from the inside. I had a weight limit of 250 lbs — that included me and my gear, so I had to do a whole scaled down system to fit in my lap in the cockpit of the helicopter and then programmed over a radio headset as we flew over.”
On the second night of testing, the team took the rig off the helicopter and, instead, mounted it to a Spydercam rig. Originally designed to move cameras on cables for the Spider-Man films, it’s a dual-cable system with a camera trolley riding the cables.
DMX Control
For the Spydercam rig, Thatcher controlled the lights via a W-DMX wireless DMX system. “I controlled it from the ground using my [HigEnd Systems] Hog III console,” explains Thatcher. “I really like the Hog PC client server software. It is pretty robust. My favorite thing about the Hog is how well it networks. I used a tablet remote that allowed me to program lighting looks walking up and down the route. It gave me the ability to move around the space more and focus. It becomes even more important when your actual element is moving 200 to 250 feet away from you at times.”
It was decided that the Spydercam allowed a lot more flexibility than the helicopter to the filmmakers. “For various reasons we decided to go with the Spydercam rig for the actual shoot, onto which we mounted two Bad Boys, a 26W laser from Lightwave International, two Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500s, cables and a generator,” Bauman notes. “Between the movement of the rigs and the movement of the lights themselves, it was very effective.”
The final weight limit for each of the three rigs used was 1,000 lbs., including the 500 lb. generator. The addition of the lasers to the rig gave Libatique the otherworldly element that completed the alien spaceship effect. Bauman comments, “Everyone loved the look of the lasers — they really made the rig look like a spacecraft. The lasers were a big visual statement.”
Western Crossroads
On location in Santa Fe, the set was arranged with a main North/South street and a crossing East/West street. The intersection of the two streets is the center of the town. “We had three Spydercam rigs running during the shoot,” describes Bauman. “The idea is that there are two spaceships that ran parallel down the main street, and then another one running perpendicular. The dual spaceship idea worked out really well. We could get different heights out of the two separate rigs; we could raise and lower the rigs; we could accelerate and decelerate. That was very effective.”
To extend the effect of the alien spaceships in the shot, a series of four Condor cranes, each mounted with two Bad Boys, two Clay Paky Alpha Beam 1500s and a 12W Lightwave laser were placed along the street, off-set. Scott Barnes, lighting programmer for the shoot, explains, “The lights on the crane provided sweeps of light through the town. They didn’t have the range of movement like the Spydercam rigs, but the cranes could be positioned where the light could sweep in, move through the town and then just go off. We then would reset them and do it again. Sometimes Matty wanted the lights to sweep down a street or across a building or an actor, which was a tricky thing. I had to find the mark of the actor and then figure out what direction the sweep was to come from to program it correctly.”
In addition to the four “alien ship” Condors, there were eight more Condors used for set lighting rigged with two T8 Technology Lumapanels and two Clay Paky Alpha Profile 1200s on each. Four of them also had a Vari*Lite VL1000 TSD with onboard dimming and framing shutters. Though the lights on the set cranes were not used as alien ships, Libatique did at times use the Bad Boys on the “alien ship” cranes as set lighting. “Matty did grab Bad Boys from the alien Condors to use it to light the actors,” Barnes says. “The Bad Boys are good for backlights, since they are bright and have such great zoom range.” Since the moving lights were such an essential element and they were shooting in the desert, Barnes worked closely with his moving light technician John Amorelli. “He had done a lot of rock ‘n’ roll and now does a lot of movies. He is really savvy with movers; he oversaw the rigging of the units and also put in the W-DMX system.”
Moving Targets
Bauman and Barnes talked a lot about how to communicate with all of the equipment. The runs with the Spydercam rigs were going to be well over 1,000 feet, moving at 30 to 40 mph, plus there were all of the Condor cranes that could be positioned anywhere around the set.
“The whole town was on dimmers as well, because we were doing a lot of flicker gags for the old time lanterns,” explains Barnes. “My console was running the whole town in addition to the moving lights and lasers on the Spydercam rig and in the Condor cranes. We ran all of the lights and lasers on the Spydercams and Condors with wireless W-DMX DMX.
“High End wrote a profile for the lasers for us,” Barnes continues. “I ran the show on the Hog III PC, which I use as a server in the backside of one of the buildings. I made that the main console, and then we ran Cat5 cables around the town in trenches creating places to tap in. The video guys were digging trenches for their cables, and we were able to throw in my Cat5 cables. It was important to bury any cables, since there were horse-drawn wagons and livestock on the set.”
A Clean Line of Sight
Having a line of sight was the biggest challenge to allow flexible programming and adjustments during filming. Barnes used a modified cable cart as a portable control location so he could set up anywhere on set, and move as necessary, at a moments notice. “I had to make sure that I was in a position where I could see the lights but not be on camera or in the camera’s way,” describes Barnes. “I might not have been able to see the Spydercam rig at its starting point, but as it got towards town, I saw it coming in. Plus, I had video assist, so I could see what the camera saw. None of the programming was about hitting an exact spot. It was more about a nice movement that repeated and being able to adjust on the fly as far as speed and direction of travel.”
On the rolling console cart, Barnes was running a Hog III and a Road Hog Playback Wing, giving him an extra touch screen in addition to having the extra faders. He also had room on the cart to put his remote tablet as well as a battery backup and a Wi-Fi router.
It took Libatique, Bauman and his team four days to set up the Spydercam rigs and get all the control in place, but the results were exactly what Favreau was hoping to capture. In fact, the team knew he was pleased with what was filmed in camera when a teaser trailer, released before the film had even wrapped shooting, showed the spaceships flying over the town, and the only visual effects corrections were to erase the truss from the image.
No doubt more and more filmmakers will continue to embrace moving lights, digital lighting technology and media servers just as Libatique and Bauman have done for the last couple of years. Programmers Thatcher and Barnes also see growing demand for their programming services.
“Everyone is getting more confident in all that movers can be programmed to do, and now that the lights have gotten quieter and brighter, I think that there’s going to be a lot more of them popping up on movies.”
