Creating Reality within a Fantasy World This article originally appeared in ICG Magazine in July 2001 An old film motion picture industry rule of thumb is that children and animals can be very difficult as subjects. If that's the case, cinematographer Daryn Okada had his work cut out for him on Dr. Dolittle 2. The film features Eddie Murphy in the title role and dozens of furry and feathered creatures as the supporting cast.
In the story, Dr. Dolittle tries to take his family on a vacation to Europe, but finds himself drawn to the cause of a group of forest animals whose home is threatened by encroaching development. The director was Steve Carr, whose background is in graphic design and music videos.
Okada built his photographic approach to Dr. Dolittle 2 on a simple premise: the audience must connect on an emotional level with the animals. His task was complicated by the fact that 90 percent of the animal shots in the film were done with real critters.
"The film is fantasy-based to begin with," says Okada. "But you need to create a real emotional response by creating these characters. The animals are not just played for jokes. The point of the film was trying to save a forest and their home. Once you get to know that they are individuals, you're more likely to get involved in the story. So rather than taking a fantastical, unrealistic approach, we tried to concentrate on nature. One of our goals was to recreate some of nature's best moments and use that as a strong visual identity for the film."
Okada worked closely with production designer William Sandell to make sure there was maximum depth in the sets.
"No inch was wasted on any of our sets," says Okada. "We kept mental notes of how we could get different looks by featuring different angles on the same terrain. Stages 15 and 16 at Fox Studios had to accommodate a cabin, meadow, river, and cliffs, among other the exterior sets."
Because animals can be difficult, Okada needed tight control over all the other aspects of the shoot. That's why almost all the exteriors were shot on stages. Animatronic creatures were only used for reverses and shots where they might be out of focus or in the background. The number of takes necessary for each shot varied widely.
Okada says that a shot involving Murphy and one animal was relatively simple, but some shots involved Murphy and eight animals — some of which were inclined to eat each other. In many cases these shots were accomplished one or two animals at a time on the same set. Later these elements were combined using compositing techniques.
"Sometimes we would get lucky and get it right away," says Okada. "When there was more complicated action like when an animal would have to hit several marks or several eyelines, we knew the chances of our being there for a little bit were greater. Being on stage also helped us sustain the lighting for an animal over time, and to sustain it for several different animals in shots that might be destined for compositing. We could maintain that sun position and that mood, sometimes for days, until we finished all the animal passes for a particular shot or scene."
Some shots required as many as 150 passes. One motion control shot started on several small animals, then tracked back and craned up about 25 feet, revealing an entire meadow at sunset. At the end of the shot, Dr. Dolittle appears and gives the animals a rousing speech about the importance of standing up for themselves. The shot runs about three minutes. It includes approximately 30 species, including five different types of birds flying in and out of the frame. Okada says the first unit finished their work in about an hour, while the second unit, under the supervision of second unit director of photography Tony Cutrono, spent three days making subsequent passes.
Because much of the film takes place in a forest, many green elements are usually in the frame. After preproduction testing, Okada and visual effects supervisor Doug Smith (Flubber, Independence Day, True Lies) determined that shooting against blue screens was preferable to using green screens, partly for that reason. "Our main questions were what was going to happen with leaves and fur," says Okada. "We found that the Kodak Vision 5274 (200-speed) stock responded very well to the blue screens. It made our lives easier since that was the stock I was planning to use because of the Super 35 anamorphic blowup. It meant we didn't have to change stocks when a blue screen shot came up."
Okada says that shooting blue screen for composite isn't as difficult as it once was. "Proper exposure is still critical with blue screen, but it's not as much as it used to be," he says. "But there is a definite advantage to having that photochemical background," he says. "The rules are basically the same. With digital, you can save something that isn't perfect. It will take some extra work, and sometimes that extra work in post production will lead to time away from making the cinematographer's look be what it's supposed to be. You're trying to solve a problem digitally instead of being creative. So having the background helps a lot. They can spend less time pulling mattes and handling the technicalities and more time being creative with the shot."
Dr. Dolittle 2 did have some shots that were done off the soundstage. The first unit had about two weeks in various interior locations around Los Angeles, and five days in a meadow above Big Bear Lake in California. That meant Okada had to match lighting on shots filmed on the stage with those shot in the real meadow.
"We wanted the audience to believe that they were actually in a forest," he says. " I went up to Big Bear (in California) and sat in the forest for a few days and watched the light. I knew the light that came from the sky was bluer in color and the daylight had a warmer color temperature. The skylight is probably 2000K-3000K bluer than direct daylight would be because of the atmosphere. But that was just one aspect of it. There have been a lot of people who have gone on stage and created overhead sources with coops and gelled them with blue and then augmented them with direct light that isn't gelled."
But Okada felt that the equation was missing something — namely ambient light from the sky and reflecting from the ground and whatever was on it, for example pine needles, green foliage, and dirt.
"While studying the light in Big Bear I saw if you were in a more open area, like near the lake, that ambient level and color come in different ratios," he says. "I made notes of all that. The readings I took were to the sun, to the sky, to the ground, straight towards the camera without any skylight hitting the meters — basically every direction I could think of that would affect the subject. I made a note of the intensity and the color of the light for each case. That way, when we started planning the light for the stage, we kept that kind of color combination and those differences, the same ratio between light and dark, between colors, and between the skylight or ambient light and whatever we used for daylight."
In the mountains near Big Bear, Okada shot tests to determine the best approach. He used the Kodak PreView system to try out various combinations of stock, exposure and filtration.
“When I've shot in the mountains before, I have found that there are two extremes," he says. "Either it gets too contrasty — and that's not necessarily because of the quantity of the light but rather the quality — or it's hazy. Over the years I've deduced why that big jump seems to happen there and not at other elevations. My belief is that it's because there is a higher UV spectrum. It either acts as a sort of fogging factor to the film, depending on what your atmospheric conditions are, or it forces the film to overexpose the blue more, in a way you can't see but that makes it a lot snappier.
"I needed to control those elements and to take that sort of relationship between the whitest whites and the blackest blacks and the curve that follows, and make it follow into how the film would react on stage," he says.
"I thought if I could bring the wavelengths into the same kind of relationship on the stage, I could make those pieces intercut more smoothly. The first place I looked at was the ultraviolet side. I shot tests using the PreView system, using various filter combinations. I looked at the printouts, which are the ultimate guide, and translated the results on the stages."
For most day exterior location shots, Okada shot with Tiffen Chocolate 1 filters and Tiffen 1/4 Warm Black ProMist to deal with the excessive UV. Some of the wider shots were left clean to maintain sharpness for the eventual Super 35 blowup.
On the stages, Okada found that traditional fill light also took away from the natural feel. In some situations, key grip Mike Hodges handled onstage exteriors with the same methods they might use in real exteriors — by using grip equipment, like a 12x12 muslin to catch direct and ambient light and throw light back onto the subject. "Sometimes it seemed that if you went by your first instinct, which would be to set up a separate source to take care of a separate situation, you seemed to start to destroy that natural credibility," says the cinematographer.
Often the light was broken up to render the impression it was filtering down through trees. In nature, this would add a green cast to the light and cause concerns about skin tones. Okada applied some warming filters to the camera, sometimes a Tiffen 812, or a light 1/8 Coral. The rest was taken care of in the lab. Okada wanted to maintain flexibility because, he points out, inconsistent green content in the light is part of what makes the color mixture realistic.
Okada and gaffer Kal Manning used a variety of lighting gear, including two 20K beam projectors made for the production by Mole-Richardson. There were also traditional 20K Fresnel lamps, and custom arrays built by Hollywood Rental of Par 64s in six, 16 and 24, which were globed narrow or medium, depending on the situation. Okada made the inverse square law work in his favor by working with large sources set far back, in imitation of the sun's light. The cameras were a Panavision Millennium and a Panaflex Gold II for B Camera provided by Panavision-Hollywood. Cogswell video provided a non-linear edit system and did rough composites of visual effects shots from the video tap feed. Lenses were Panavision Primo primes and the 4:1 and 11:1 zooms.
Dr. Dolittle 2 was photographed in the Super 35 (2.35:1 aspect ratio) format. "The biggest fear, I think, was having it feel claustrophobic," says Okada. "Having a 2.35 frame gave it more scope. It wasn't that important to me that it be anamorphic. I just felt we needed that aspect ratio for the audience to feel comfortable."
Super 35 was also chosen partly because of the close focus work with the animals, as well as extensive visual effects, which was handled by Rhythm and Hues under Smith.
"Working with Doug could not have been better," says Okada. "We both found ways to blend the visual effects shots seamlessly into the reality of the film. It was a pleasure working with someone of his experience and caliber who really cared that the photographic qualities of the effects shots remained consistent with the entire look of the film. The entire effects crew at Rhythm and Hues always made me feel comfortable and welcomed my input. I think this makes for a truly creative collaboration and helps keep unity in all our work."
Part of Okada's responsibility was to make sure that the elaborate exteriors could be recreated on stage in an economical manner. He compares a lighting job of this magnitude to constructing a bridge. "If you mess up the foundation, there's no way you're going to keep that bridge standing and you're always going to be patching it up.
"One problem was the tremendous amount of power necessary. To light two stages for an exterior day, you could spend millions of dollars," he says. "But we couldn't do that. We had to light very efficiently because, for instance, if you determined you wanted the ambient level on the entire stage a quarter of a stop brighter, then you're talking 24 percent more wattage, more amps, more cable, which also affects air conditioning which was really important because of the animals. The stages could easily get to 100 140 degrees without adequate air conditioning. All those considerations had to fit in with our lighting design.
"The biggest single element was how to create this ambient sky light first, before we even did the sunlight," he says. "We knew the sunlight would come directly from large placed instruments. But the ambient light had to be built in as part of the set. I determined that the minimum level we needed from that sky was going to be T-2.8 and a half, using the (Kodak Vision) 5274, with over 250 spacelights provided by Hollywood Rental and Fox set lighting and custom light boxes built by Show Rig gelled with 1/2 and 3/4 Rosco CTB. Exteriors were shot at a T-4 and stage exteriors were done at T2.8 2/3 so there would not be a drop off of apparent depth of field when cutting between the two."
Since the human eye adapts very quickly, Okada had to be careful not to trust his eyes in that all-encompassing environment. "You couldn't tell with your eye exactly what was going on," he says. "There is nothing visible outside of the set to reference your eye back to what the look is. Executive Producer Neil Maclis and Co-Producer Michelle Imperato allowed us to have the PreView system around all during prep which enabled us to go in at any moment, take stills, with subjects in them, and print those out. That way, you can really take a step back and see how it all looks."
Okada also used the Kodak PreView system to communicate with his collaborators. "At a time when you've estimated hundreds of man hours and thousands of dollars worth of equipment all going into a stage based on your experience, it's good to be able to show anybody any aspect of your plan. You don't want to wait until the first day's tests to do it. The PreView system gave us that flexibility – to see what these combinations would look like and to start putting these looks up on a wall. We were able to show the director, the producers and the studio what we were aiming for and it instantly gave them even more enthusiasm and reinforced their support. They could see we were on the right track."
Okada says that working with director Steve Carr was a pleasure. "Steve is visually driven and he has a love of movies," says Okada. "I felt he captured an emotional response to the past work he created with music videos and he has a great sense of humor. He wanted to be as adventurous in the look as I did. This mutual understanding gave me a lot of freedom to create.
“My long time camera crew — operator Casey Hotchkiss composed shots and 1 st assistant cameraman John Boccaccio set focus — imagining where certain elements would be in the frame,” he continues. “This took a lot of creativity on their part. Second assistant cameraman Bret Gates made sure we had all the equipment for any special shots. "In the case of a comedy like Dr. Dolittle2, creating a mood that works means that the humor can be felt more deeply in the subconscious of the audience," he says. "The challenge was to create a look with depth and emotional warmth that hopefully the audience would accept as reality." |
