“When you sign on for a Tony Scott film, you know you are in for quite a ride,” says cinematographer Dan Mindel. Mindel, who counted his pairing with Scott for Spy Game (2001) and Enemy of the State (1998) a creative but anxiety-ridden adventure, was hesitant to repeat the experience when the producers of Domino (the almost true story of actor Laurence Harvey’s daughter Domino, who rejected the Beverly Hills lifestyle to become a bounty hunter) called him. However, assured that things were different and that Scott’s old crew was back, Mindel became excited about doing a third picture with him. “Tony was proud of what he did with Man on Fire (shot by Paul Cameron),” Mindel admits, “but he had more creativity to get out of his system. We’d started a whole cycle of experimentation years ago when we shot a United commercial using period hand crank cameras. It went on from there. Domino was going to be even more visually challenging. And that was interesting for me.”

One of the changes was to shoot Super 35mm and use digital dailies. Mindel, remembering “schlepping projectionists and film dailies with them for Spy Game,” was interested in the new approach. That, and the decision to do some hand crank work and use some cross process reversal stock made Domino even more creatively attractive. “Yes, we did talk about going HD as Michael Mann did with Collateral,” says Mindel. “We did experiment a little in our very short pre-production. However, we fell back on some of the ‘old’ style and decided to shoot 35mm because Tony could experiment a little bit more with tools that we were more familiar with.

“We conscripted the usual subjects in terms of camera and lenses,” continues Mindel, “and we started production rather conventionally. Within the first hour of the first day pandemonium hit in terms of shooting conventionally. Hand cranking became our primary focus, which became very interesting considering we were using converted Arriflex 2Cs, which are noisy to begin with. When we widened the handle, it made even more noise.”

“We worked with Panavision to convert the Arriflex 2C’s into crank cameras, making adaptors for their lenses, changing the flange to fit the lenses and putting in new brackets,” explains second assistant Steve Wolfe.

“We added a new person to the camera crew almost immediately,” Mindel continues. “A-camera best boy to work with first assistant John Connor. It’s something we felt we needed because of the amount of equipment coming in and going out on a daily basis. We had to have a person devoted to shipping the equipment to where we needed it and have it ready immediately.

“As with all Tony Scott films, we never shot with one camera. It was never less than three cameras at a time. At times, we had ten cameras for big chase and climax sequences and we never had any small camera set-ups at all. Nobody in the world can use multiple cameras like Tony Scott. He always has the sequence edited in his head before he starts. He would know that we were using one camera for a specific piece and wouldn’t mind that another camera would be in the way at a different time.

“That said, the camera package grew to include everything from the Viper FilmStream camera to the converted Arriflex 2Cs for hand crank work. At any given time, first assistant John Connor and camera best boy James Germayne had to have a wide range of cameras ready for work.”

“The package included two regular sound cameras, Panavision Platinum and XL, two Arriflex 435s, two Arriflex 2Cs, the Viper and a Nikon D-100 for digital stills,” explains John Connor. “With the Nikon D-100, we shot a burst of eight stills and then triple printed them and put them into the Telecine to meld with the film.

“And, you have to remember, we were always mixing formats. We’d do half a dozen takes with normal negative then stop and switch over to cross process reversal on the exact same shots. Then, Tony might decide to do them again, but this time hand cranked. That, in itself, meant having more crew to set up the hand crank and dial it in. Like Dan said, it was an adventure.” Of course, in addition to hand crank shooting, Scott and Mindel designed shots that were done off speed, under and over cranked or HD (using the Viper).

“I know, it sounds complicated and more,” admits Mindel, “but Tony is a very organized person. Everything he did was for a specific reason. It was important for him to involve the audience in this ride. That meant capturing things in a different way. He wanted to establish a point-of-view for each character. And, if that character was on mescaline (which was the case in much of the movie), then the camera (and the stock) was there for a reason.”

That is one of the reasons their film stock supply grew. Scott made Kodak extremely happy because he requested 5285, a stock that had been officially discontinued. In fact, cross processing this “retired” stock became the primary look for the film. In addition, Mindel used 5218 for nights as well as 5285 and 5212.

“The cross processing of the reversal stock was really interesting,” Mindel says enthusiastically. “The advantage of using the cross process look is that we gain so much texture and color before we even introduce lighting. The film reacts very differently to different sources, i.e., incandescent, HMI or fluorescent. We chose these sources carefully for their color temperature. The 85 is rated at 100 ASA, and that in itself provides another set of problems in terms of shooting at night or on set. It requires a good amount of fill, which is something that Tony does not really like.

“The night work was always pushed a stop,” he continues. “In daylight, the volatile nature of the pushed stock is a handful to control and we were consistently trying to stop the highlights blowing out since we where shooting in the dessert.

“Gaffer Bruce McCleery is one of the most organized people I know,” Mindel adds. “Fortunately, he is no stranger to a Tony Scott project, so our change of plans was expected. But, this much? As with all of us, he quickly learned to fly by the seat of his pants.”

“The toughest yet most exhilarating thing about working on Domino was working alongside Tony Scott,” McCleery admits. “The man is amazing—a powerhouse of energy, ideas and creativity—all of it emerging at full throttle all the time. While it is a great ride, you have to be on your toes for it. While we did a proper location scout with Tony leading us, as much as 30 or 40 percent of the locations changed completely due to creative or logistical reasons. Most of the new locations were basically unscouted because of timing. The grip and set lighting rigging teams, led by John Manochia and Jerry Sandeger and guided by the production designer Chris Seaghers, were totally flexible and with their vast experience and upbeat dispositions, rolled with everything thrown to them.”

“That’s what Tony likes,” agrees Mindel. “He loves deconstruction of the regular protocols and reconstruction in a chaotic style that allows us to improve with camera and lighting.”

“The biggest challenge in terms of lighting would be balancing a single lighting set-up to accommodate the different stocks and scenarios,” adds McCleery. “Usually, that involved having the cohones to trust that imperfections along the way would only add to the texture. Often, we’d find ourselves in a situation where we would have three or more cameras pointing simultaneously at the same action, often shooting across each other, just barely framing each other out. Frequently, this would be in some confined space with lots of loud gunfire, a camera and crew blocking every doorway.

“Dan and I were left with only two lighting options: strong toplight with no fill, or leave the lights in or almost in the shot, obscured by window dressing and set pieces,” McCleery explains. “We used both of these strategies frequently and somehow this tends to give the footage a harsh, blown-out, rich texture. It’s definitely not pretty, but on some level it can be truly beautiful.”

There were numerous sequences that really epitomized Tony Scott’s carefully “deconstructed and then reconstructed” shooting style. “Let’s start with the ‘not pretty but truly beautiful’ elements,” says McCleery. “We had a sequence in a ‘gangbangers’ kitchen where strong light from 18Ks and 7K Xenons are blasting through the windows and the dirty yellow window shades, which flared the swirling 360 degree camera as Domino (Keira Knightley) resorts to a lap dance to tame the gruesome, heavily armed thugs.

“Then there is a scene at the DMV where Dan wanted to put cool white Kino Flos on the top frame line, overexposed by two-and-a-half stops, no fill light, but just enough light dripping down to make out the details on the sweaty college kid waiting to set up his scam.”

Another sequence that comes to mind for this team is a frat house scene where coke-snorting frat boys are disrupted and chased through the house by bounty hunters. “We used a combination of cool white fluorescents in the hallways and screaming daylight units pounding through the windows obscured by brightly colored fabric and dirty visqueen to hide the lights that provided the illumination inside the rooms as the Steadicam raced from room to room,” explains McCleery.

“My visual favorite is an interview sequence between Lucy Liu and Keira Knightley,” says Mindel. “It is shot with the pair of them sitting at a table. The set is very dark. We shot it with reversal and cross-processed it.

“For lighting, we used different kinds of light sources that we knew the reversal would react to in specific ways in terms of color,” Mindel explains. “The color palette in the sequence is so completely opposite what cinematographers and technicians have been trained not to do. We usually think that green light is ugly because we don’t want people to look green on film. On this film, we did everything possible to ignore these conventions. We used industrial type lighting to affect the mood and we got the dark and atmospheric images we wanted because of what we could do with the film stock. We couldn’t have done it with regular emulsion.”

There were two sequences in Domino that had the team pulling their hair out (metaphorically), yet “grooving” to Scott’s creativity. One was a stunt chase sequence with a Winebago and the other was the exciting finale at the Stratosphere Restaurant, high above the Las Vegas strip. “The sequence was probably the toughest for Bruce and the grips,” says Mindel philosophically. “They had to have the equipment in the right place at the right time.

“One of the most interesting parts of the sequence was that it called for a day into night change,” Mindel continues, “as the protagonist goes up the elevator in the building [bottom in afternoon, top at night]. I suggested to Tony that we do a time-lapse shot in the restaurant as it revolved and the sun goes down. We would spin around a couple of revolutions and it would be night. We brought in a time-lapse camera; set it in place, shot the change, the opening part and the night.

“Tony also wanted to shoot 24p digital as they did in Collateral. He thought he could shoot with no light or just available light,” Mindel explains. “He thought we could see out the window and hold the background while seeing the strip. We asked for two Vipers, but only got one.

This climax sequence involved helicopter pilot Allan Poland and aerial photographer David Nowell, and three helicopters flying outside the restaurant at night. “The idea was to have helicopters flying around the restaurant, shooting (both picture and ammunition), with light pointing through the windows giving a moving light background,” Mindel explains. “The sequence involves a sniper on board one of the helicopters shooting through the window and starting a huge gunfight. Again, cross processed reversal for most of the sequence.”

“We established the scene on stage in Los Angeles where most of the gunfight and the fireball was staged for logistical reasons,” adds McCleery. “We used strong top light from PAR cans, blasting into the elevator lobby and the hallway leading up to the restaurant. The magic of strong over exposed lights is that with negative film, the residue usually provides the fill, bouncing around, catching happy accidents.

With reversal (which the team started to use in this sequence with the Las Vegas locations), it doesn’t work that way,” he continues, “because there is so much more contrast. It made us nutty while we were doing it, but the stark strange look of reversal with its susceptibility to weird colors, cool whites, yellows and blues turned out to be very exciting.

“The credit for all these visual innovations has to go to Tony,” McCleery adds, strongly. “While he doesn’t always understand the technical nuances or articulate the reasons for his methods, he trusts his aesthetic sensibilities and we do too. He has a way of leading everyone toward something that later you realize is actually groundbreaking in its presentation.”

When they reached The Stratosphere, the team found themselves trying to match what had been done on stage, but over 1000 feet in the air, with the lights of the strip looming below. On stage, they had accentuated the gunfire with Paparazzi lights from Lightning Strikes! and created a strong Xenon/helicopter effect with Xenons outside the windows. “The Xenons were impossible on location,” McCleery admits.

“The audience will never hold it against us if the shots don’t match, as long as we’ve captured their attention with something equally dazzling. In this case it was strong toplight again, as the characters in their stand off lead the deadly gunfight against the lights of the city below. The windows were at a 45-degree angle, directly reflecting the lights overhead. So we had to be careful about how they looked in reflection. The PAR cans worked well for this, but bigger broader sources did not. For accents and other sources, we put lights directly on the floor. Again, while it is a big challenge to light for different stocks and the HD footage simultaneously, given that the fill levels and the background changes, I really don’t think people will care as long as the images are strong enough to support their attention.”

Another big sequence for the camera was a stunt where a Winebago ends up crashing in a valley of fire. The Winnebago rolls sideways and then end over end. In order to shoot that, the team had to cover it with seven or eight cameras, all different film stocks and hand cranked.

“In true Tony Scott style, we waited for natural lighting in the dessert at the end of the day,” Mindel explains. “We waited until the sun was going down, using ‘ASA challenged’ fill and reversal. When you cross process the reversal it is so volatile it becomes uncontrollable. In the desert, highlights and lowlights are unpredictable to the extent that we were going to lose something somewhere. Frankly, I was scared, but in a good way. It was a great feeling knowing that we could push the edge here with Tony without the fear of messing up. These shots were some of the most intense and interesting we had.”

“My hat is off to the crew of this picture,” says Mindel, enthusiastically. “John Connor was often pulling focus while squashed into a motor home for hours on end, stepping on things and people, trying to make his marks. He often had to work off a monitor with no marks, just instinct.

“Steve St. John and the other members of the camera crew who did the hand crank work were amazing,” he continues. “Hand cranking is an art and they have perfected it.”
“Hand cranking for Tony has evolved to require very precise ingredients,” explains St. John. “Hand cranks were installed on the Panavision fronted Arriflex 2C cameras. The Panavision 11-1 zoom or the 3-1 ‘Hubble’ are the preferred lenses. While the basic ingredients maybe precisely defined, the resulting images certainly are not. These images, when successful, have a controlled sloppiness requiring happy accidents mixed with some knowledge applied.”

“We learned a lot about the process of filmmaking on this picture,” Mindel adds, “and a very important lesson about digital dailies as well. The digital dailies are a really good way of looking at dailies on a conventional movie or episodic when you are in town and have all the facilities around you. When you are working on a road movie that requires the transfer of people to keep up with you, it becomes an issue.

“We shot an enormous amount of film and it overwhelmed the transfer house. They simply couldn’t keep up with us. We moved the dailies to FotoKem. Mark van Horn did the reversal cross processing and supervised the dailies transfer to DVD for us. Because I trusted him so much and relied on him, I could give him verbal explanations of what was shot, as opposed to viewing the DVD and moving on.

“The danger of digital dailies is that the look you can get with the DVD color timed is not what you are shooting.

“We are in the middle of a turning point in the industry,” Mindel explains. “Contemporary directors are ready to embrace technology and move forward, but for the support people, it is an issue. Many feel technically insecure. Some are being ramroded into a future and a position that they don’t want to be in. Everyone is telling us how good the technology is, but as an old school guy, I haven’t seen anything that can out perform 2.35 anamorphic, using the whole frame. Nothing is better than keeping an interesting subject on the screen.”