Birth of the Bat

It began with a phone call from director Chris Nolan, who told Pfister about his intentions for Batman Begins and asked him to shoot it. Pfister said yes without reading the script or treatment. He explains that there is a trust factor that binds him and Nolan since they collaborated on Memento in 2000 and Insomnia two years later.

"I wasn't sure that I was ready to take on another big action film, but I knew that I could trust Chris's judgment," Pfister explains. "He explained that it's a story about the origins of Batman, a normal person who masks his identity and becomes a crime fighter. Batman is the dark knight. He hides under the cover of darkness. It's darker than the previous Batman movies, but the look is natural and sets the proper mood for the story."

As a boy, Pfister was a big fan of the Batman television series. He owned a Batman utility belt and projector that threw a shadowy, bat-like image on his bedroom wall. His grandfather was the city editor and a cartoonist for a small town newspaper. Pfister still has some of his grandfather's Batman drawings.

After completing principal cinematography for Slow Burn, Pfister flew to England, where he met with Nolan in November 2003, several months after their first conversation. He read the script in his hotel room before conferring with Nolan at the director's London home. The story is set in fictional Gotham City in contemporary times. The city is on the verge of collapse. It's a dark place in the grasp of organized crime and government corruption. Christian Bale portrays Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, Batman.

"Chris wanted to shoot Batman Begins without relying on visual effects or digital intermediate technologies," Pfister says. "He wanted it to look and feel natural."

The other main characters include Wayne's butler, Alfred (Michael Caine), Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), a technology wizard who builds the Batmobile, Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman), Batman's ally in a corrupt police department, Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), a childhood friend who works in the district attorney's office, mobster boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson) and Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson).

In an early flashback to Wayne's boyhood, he witnesses the brutal murder of his parents. After a futile attempt at revenge, Wayne travels to Asia, where he is mentored by Ra's Al Ghul, a ninja cult leader played by Ken Watanabe.

"When you go deep into the layers of the story, it's about an individual who got tired of watching society fall apart," Pfister says. "It's a very subtle message. There are problems destroying the urban environment that he loved as a child. Wayne Enterprises has been run by a very greedy man since his father was killed, the city has been deteriorating, and the police force and courts are corrupt. Bruce Wayne believes in his heart that he can make a difference, and he finds a way to do it as the dark knight."

Pfister and Nolan were of a single mind about filming Batman Begins in anamorphic format and composing the images in 2.4:1 aspect ratio. They intuitively felt the story called for cinematic scope and richly nuanced images.

"On my second reading of the script, I started writing notes, little things like 'low angle,' 'very dark and moody,' 'mixed, warm, cool light or patterned light,'" Pfister recalls.

That was the beginning of a visual roadmap. He dedicated 16 weeks to preproduction, including meetings with Nolan and production designer Nathan Crowley about the design and construction of sets. Pfister had worked with Crowley on Insomnia. "Nathan had been working for months, putting together the groundwork for production design," Pfister says. "He had built scale models of all of Gotham City. It's sort of a mixture of Manhattan and Chicago with a little bit of London and Hong Kong. Chris wanted to get an image of the city in his mind, so we could create environments.

"I was as unobtrusive as possible, not interfering with the production designer's vision or his collaboration with Chris," Pfister says. "My main involvement was how the Gotham set affected lighting and lines of sight on the city streets. I suggested moving some buildings around, so we would have more depth down the streets. When you look at a cityscape at night, it's mainly lit from within the buildings. I wanted lights inside every window, using green, blue and amber gels to create a color palette. We were going to light a massive space, so I needed room for big lamps on cherry pickers or condors."

Nolan wanted both the car and Batman's costume to be non-reflective, matte black, so they could be concealed in shadows. He frequently used the word "stealthy" while describing his intentions to Pfister, Crowley and costume designer Lindy Hemming.

"Lindy created the new look that Chris wanted for Batman's costume with a matte black finish and a different shape for the cowl," Pfister says. "Chris was involved in every detail including the shapes of the nose, forehead and ears. I took still photographs of Christian in the costume and made prints. Later, I filmed tests with him."

Pfister shot tests for about three weeks, choosing film stocks, exposure levels, lenses and printer lights at Technicolor Labs. He also tested different cape and cowl materials with Bale and found several ways to light them.

"We would light Batman and create some separation when he was against a dark background or dark sky," he says. "Sometimes, we used a very small, thin layer of smoke to help separate the matte black uniform. Other times, I put a backlight on him, or we had city lights in the background. We used just enough light to see his eyes without over lighting the costume. I lit by eye during production based on the tests. I found that it looked best having the key light on Batman about one stop underexposed."

Pfister selected a modest film palette consisting of Kodak Vision2 500T 5218 negative for night, interior and other darker scenes, and Kodak Vision 250D 5246 negative for daylight exteriors. Basically, he wanted to record grainless images with bright highlights, true black tones and a wide range of nuanced contrast between.

Pfister also shot tests with a camera rigged to a cable tracking with a stuntman doubling for Bale as Batman flying through the city at night. He explains that Batman doesn't possess superhuman powers, but he is a well-trained and athletic crime fighter who can jump off a 20-story building and use his cape to glide gracefully to the ground.

"Chris wanted to film those sequences as live-action shots, rather than filming Batman against a green or blue screen and compositing that with background plates," Pfister says. "We believe the audience can feel, if not see, the difference."

The Batmobile was designed and built from the ground up. It could accelerate from zero to 60 miles an hour in six seconds. It has 44-inch Humvee tires at the rear, and the front is covered with jagged plates of armor. Pfister wasn't able to shoot any tests, because the Batmobile wasn't completed until just before they began production.

The Gotham city set was built inside the Admiralty hangar, which was constructed for the Royal Air Force in Bedford, England, in 1917. The hangar is 800-feet long, 500-feet wide and 180-feet tall. It is large enough to contain 16 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Nolan wanted to film all night exteriors in the city during the day.

"We were shooting on a stage with functional city streets, cars driving, stop lights and the ability to fog the whole place," he says. "The lighting grid was 130 feet in the air with a massive amount of lamps. It was like shooting an old Hollywood studio movie."

Pfister filmed most of Batman Begins with a single Panaflex Platinum camera and a mix of Primo E-series and C-series prime lenses. The E- and C-series lenses were used for handheld and Steadicam shots, usually made with one or two Panaflex Millennium XLs.

"Chris and I both feel the camera only belongs in one place at any give time," he says. "Occasionally, we'd use a second camera when the angle was good for lighting on stunts if it looked right. Steve Adelson was usually operating a Steadicam with a 50mm lens on the camera. The second camera was handheld, often with a 100mm lens."

During the first six months, they shot at practical locations in Chicago, Iceland and England, including a warehouse where Lucius Fox built the Batmobile, a mansion that served as Wayne Manor, and at Shepperton Studios where bat cave sequences were filmed. The final eight weeks of production were filmed on the Gotham city set.

"The first shot of Batman in his costume, including cape and cowl, is on the docks where he takes on some 30 thugs and end ups confronting Falcone," Pfister comments. "We really never see Batman. There are just flashes of someone coming in and out of darkness, beating these guys up and disappearing. He isn't revealed until the end of the scene when Batman is standing on top of a car in his iconic pose. We wanted a low angle looking up at him from toes to head with a 40mm lens. I added just enough light to the dark environment to make sure the audience sees Batman."

There is another signature scene where thugs are going after Rachel, and Batman appears seemingly out of nowhere. She doesn't know who he is at that point and zaps him with a taser. They have a brief conversation, and he disappears into the night.

"Batman is a cloaked creature of the night," Pfister says. "You just see his mouth and eyes. There was some sheen on the cowl and the rest of the costume, but the cape was absolutely matte black. It was like lighting a piece of Duvatyne. I wanted a really good eyelight that brought some life to the person behind the mask. I experimented and decided to use a Kino Flo Kamio, a ring light designed to go around the lens. I didn't put it around the lens because it was too complicated with the matte box. Instead, I put it on an armature that was attached to the camera most of the time. If it was too bright, I put an ND 6 on the light and used quarter CTS to warm it up. It was soft enough that it didn't create shadows, and hard enough to put a nice ding in his eyes."

Pfister notes that the consistency of eye light is the link between Batman and Bruce Wayne. "They share the same soul reflected in their eyes," he says. "Christian Bale defined both characters. I kept the lighting on Batman consistent, depending on the physical environment and circumstances, with a low camera angle looking up at him.

"Chris and I would watch a rehearsal and intuitively know where to put the camera and whether or not to move it. It was the same with lighting. When I asked the actors to do something specifically for lighting, they knew there was a real reason. I wouldn't want to get in the way of their performances unless I thought that the lighting, camera movement or how the actor was photographed was important to the story.

"It was hot and claustrophobic for Christian Bale in that costume. We were conscious of that. The best way you can help an actor if you are a cinematographer, camera operator or anyone else on the set is to not distract them. They need to focus in a quiet environment. They are out on a very thin branch in a vulnerable place. An important part of my job is to make them feel comfortable while photographing them in a way that serves the story and their performance. It's a very careful balance."

Sets on stages at Shepperton Studios included a monastery and the bat cave, which Pfister describes as a dark, twisty place. He created artificial daylight that streaks into the cave through cracks in the ceiling to motivate the dim level of illumination.

"When Bruce Wayne first goes in there, it's a pretty dark environment," he says. "In reality, the audience doesn't question what the source is, or where it's coming from, because they are processing the environment. It's one of those unanswerable questions: how do you film someone who is alone in a dark closet with no source of light? The answer is that you find ways to justify source light. The interior of the cave is made of molded and carved plaster that absorbed paint. The artisans also did a lot of woodwork with plaster molds. You can stand six inches away and think it's real rock."

Nolan was steadfast about maintaining a 12-hour daily shooting schedule.

"Chris and I both believe that when you keep production to no more than 12 hours a day, you're going to increase efficiency by 20 percent," Pfister says.

"Huw Phillips was our dailies timer in England," he adds. "We'd watch dailies at dinner every night. It was generally Chris, producers Larry Franco and Emma Thomas, editor Lee Smith and myself, and sometimes my gaffer and camera assistant. We had a screening room on wheels on location. It was equipped with an ARRI LOCPRO 35mm projector that had about a 15-foot throw on a small screen. The trailer was soundproof and dark. It gave us a sense of how the anamorphic images were playing on film."

Nolan chose a two-mile stretch of North Wacker Drive in Chicago for the chase scene, where a half dozen police cars are in hot pursuit of the Batmobile. He liked the fact that it was an enclosed street with an elevated train overhead, because it made the location non-descript. The columns supporting the elevated train tracks would also enhance the perceived speed of the chase as the cars zipped by them at 90 miles per hour.

"Chris wanted to capture the dynamics of the excitement of the chase in as natural way as possible," Pfister says. "In our discussions, he referred to the modern day gold standard for chase scenes, The French Connection (Owen Roizman, ASC) and Bullitt (William Fraker, ASC). We didn't need to look at those films. The images were in our heads. Chris wanted the slickness of a superhero action movie using modern film technology and gritty camera action. He sent me to Chicago on a tech scout early in preproduction, and asked if it was practical to film the chase at night in natural light."

Pfister shot a couple of tests using fast lenses and overexposing the 5218 film by both a half and a full stop. Astro Lab in Chicago did the front-end lab work.

"The film looked fabulous," he says. "My gaffer, Cory Geryak, walked the whole two-mile route and selected places to set up around 100 PAR 64s, which are relatively small, parabolic lights from Mole-Richardson. We put different gels on the lights and splashed colored hot spots on the walls as the cars sped by. I told Chris that I was confident we could film the chase at night in natural light."

Hugh Whitaker at Panavision arranged to ship the lenses used in London to Chicago in time for first assistant cameraman David Morenz to check them out and make certain that no glitches occurred during transit. They shot the chase scene primarily with two moving cameras, often simultaneously, but sometimes with just one.

A Libra 4 gyro-stabilized head and an ARRI 435 camera were mounted on the sidecar of a motorcycle. The Libra head and camera were operated by radio control from a console along the side of the street. The other moving camera was on a gyro-stabilized Lev head rigged to an Ultimate Arm crane mounted on a fast, maneuverable Mercedes SL55 automobile. Pfister reports that the crane was "as steady as a rock." Camera operator Michael FitzMaurice was in the back seat.

"The crane was controlled with joysticks," Pfister says. "We could track in front of the Batmobile, behind it, crane down onto it, whip back and forth from the police cars to the Batmobile, while driving at speeds up to 90 miles an hour, and keep the camera perfectly steady. I had a fantastic assistant in Chicago, Mike Weldon, who had worked with me on The Italian Job. It was a difficult job, and his work was flawless. We were usually tracking shots with wide angle lenses, so the audience could see everything."

Pfister used a simple rig to film cut-aways of stunt drivers in the police cars. A Panaflex Platinum camera was hard-mounted on a "hostess tray" looking through a side window. A Mole-Richardson 1K Zip light was aimed at the opposite window. It provided edge light on the stunt player who was portraying a cop. This tactic enabled Pfister to film the driver without a tow rig. He also mounted an ARRI IIC camera on the front grill of the lead vehicle and used it to record breathtaking images by remote control when a police car crashes into a traffic median. A couple of Eyemo cameras were operated from inside police cars looking over stunt drivers' shoulders from a subjective perspective.

"We had the best stunt drivers in Hollywood, including Rick Avery and Paul Jennings, a fantastic stunt coordinator," he says. "Their work jibed perfectly with Chris Nolan's vision for making the action look and feel natural. We got some beautiful dynamic action with the Eyemo cameras, which are an integral part of the chase."

Pfister augmented natural light for several high-speed, intense action shots. In one of those shots, the Batmobile smashes through a barricade. In another, a police car crashes into another police car, slides off the wall and flips over. Pfister used an edge light that matched the color of the existing sodium vapor illumination light.

Several other sequences were filmed at Chicago locations, including a memorable night shot of Batman and police lieutenant Gordon on a rooftop with the skyline of Gotham City in the background. The pictures tell the story. The black knight and his ally are contemplating the future of their city. There are brighter days ahead.

[Editor's note: Read more about Wally Pfister in our Master Lighting Workshop article on page 56 of the June 2005 ICG Magazine.]