“It’s about the choices we make in life,”says cinematographer Dante Spinotti, ASC (The Insider, L.A. Confidential, Heat) of his most recent pairing with director Brett Ratner (Red Dragon, The Family Man, Rush Hour). In After The Sunset, master thieves Max Burdett (Pierce Brosnan) and Lola Cirillo (Salma Hayek) have made their last big score. They’ve retired to a Caribbean island and are living the good life. That is until Max “gets the itch”when an exhibition of Napoleon’s diamonds appears at their doorstep.

 

“We had a short pre-production time and a challenging production schedule,”Spinotti says. “The Bahamas sequences had to be finished before Christmas and we started in late October. We chose to shoot the picture Super 35mm using Kodak’s 5218 and 5249 for day exteriors. One of the most interesting things about making this picture was that I knew we were doing a digital intermediate and I was able to simplify what we did on the island, knowing that I could correct it later in post. That’s how I was able to convince Brett to shoot Super 35mm. With the DI, we would skip the optical process and go directly to anamorphic negative.

 

“To me, not using the DI process is like shooting for an antique store,”adds Spinotti emphatically. “You can do everything from controlling the color and contrast to adding energy to the color radiance and more. For example, in the cruise ship sequences, I was able to shoot with available light on board, knowing that I could correct different color sources later.”

 

Spinotti also needed to find a way to get the shots as quickly as possible, without hampering the performances. They could use the cruise ship for only four days and that included a half-day exterior pre-light time for gaffer Jeff Peterson. Production designer Geoffrey Kirkland would then build some of the ship sets on stage, creating sources similar to the cruise design so they could maintain the light.

 

For Spinotti and crew, shooting this picture was a delicate balance––they wanted to keep the sense of reality that Ratner wanted, but at the same time use the glamour of the harbor, the cruise ship and the spectacular views as part of the story.

 

To make sure everything was as rich as possible, Spinotti chose to have digital dailies. This way he could make sure all the information available on the digital negative would be what they saw in film prints. In addition, he also had HD screenings on location, with the camera crew, to make sure the lenses stayed sharp.

 

The most interesting sequences for Spinotti and crew to shoot were the ship, the Burdett house and grounds, and a series of underwater caper elements. The main house set, created by Geoffrey Kirkland on the island, was a circular hut-like structure with a number of pillars and open windows. Spinotti and Peterson had hoped to bring light from the Musco equipment in from a barge out in the water. However, wind and choppy seas made the movement of the barge unsafe. The light was relegated to a spot on land, creating overall lighting for the exteriors, especially in the harbor around the cruise ship. They then chose to work from the opposite side of the house, using Condors, HMI lamps and HMI balloons.

 

“For me, one of the special sequences happens before an altercation between Pierce and Salma,”says Spinotti. “In separate cars, they arrive outside a covered path and gate behind the house. As the cars stop, they kick up a dust cloud. The combination of the overhead trees and the dust creates an eerie ambiance. In the garden, and in other situations, we under lit the green palm trees, adding spots of green behind Salma’s beautiful hair and wardrobe.”

 

For Duane Manwiller, the most memorable sequence in the film was a scene at the beginning, which shows the history Max, Lola, and Stan (Woody Harrelson) have together. “It was shot in Los Angeles, after we returned from the Bahamas,”Manwiller recalls. “We show Max and Lola setting up Stan to steal yet another Napoleon diamond. The heist ends up with Stan being locked in his own police vehicle and being driven around town by a remote device, controlled by Max.

 

“It’s a great scene,”Manwiller says enthusiastically. “When the doors lock and the car peels out, the action starts. I shot the second unit scene, which rips through the streets of Los Angeles, bouncing off cars, being chased by police, and eventually being t-boned by a semi truck (all part of Max and Lola’s plan).

 

“This was a full blown second unit with four full camera crews. Heading up the first assistants was Jim Apted, who was also the B-camera first on the main unit. He did an amazing job keeping it all together, making my life easy, so I could concentrate on getting Dante the goods.”

 

For Chris Moseley, who shot B-camera and served as second unit DP on several sequences, one of the most interesting shots was of Pierce Brosnan’s character as he steals the diamond. “He was up above the diamond in an air vent,”Moseley recalls. “There were a lot of insert shots of the gadgets he used for the theft. There was no light in the air vent, so we cheated a little bounce with Mini Flos to create just enough light to see what he was doing without making it look lit. Pierce pulls the diamond up from its case using fishing line. We used Dedo lights and Source 4s to get the beautiful light reflections from the diamond.”

 

To all concerned, some of the most difficult and interesting challenges were the underwater sequences that were partially Bahamas shots, but mostly matching the sequences in a tank in Los Angeles. The sequences begin from a Zodiac above the water and then move below.

 

“We decided that the night sequences in the Bahamas (above water) would be close to the underwater sequences (tank) if we kept the shots slightly on the blue side,”says Spinotti. “But I didn’t want to go with the stereotypical blue sky so we went with an almost neutral no color moonlight with the practical light on the Zodiac as the actors drop into the water. The original idea was to shoot the sequence in real water in the Bahamas. We then decided to shoot it against a green screen on stage, so that the Zodiac wouldn’t look like it was lit by theatrical spots. With the stage sequence, we could add CGI elements such as a lighthouse and distant light from the harbor.”

 

“The scene underwater was of two couples diving on a wreck at night,”explains underwater DP Pete Zuccarini. “The source of light in the story was moonlight and dive lights. Dante wanted to look at some tests of underwater practical dive lights at different times of day and night and at various ocean depths. He was interested in an ambience that would allow us to barely see the architecture of the ship while still relying on the practicals to reveal textures and colors. He responded to the ambience of the ship on the ocean floor half an hour before and after sunset. Being deep in the ocean at twilight is magical. Plankton rise to the surface softening the light. Fish become more active, and the background gradient is more pronounced, falling from light blue to black in just 100 feet. When the divers shine their lights on the shipwreck, the textures and brilliant colors of sponges, corals and fish are revealed against the soft blue background. The suspense of things being revealed by the divers’lights on a night dive is retained while still having the ominous presence of the hulking ship’s architecture looming in the background.”

 

With this combination, the look worked well, but the crew was stuck with only an hour at dawn and an hour at dusk for shooting. “We determined that if we worked a little deeper, we could extend our window of desired light levels,”Zuccarini adds. “At eighty to ninety feet, we could shoot for up to two hours with the look that Dante was going for. This doubled our light window, but complicated our dive profile. We had to adjust our plan to optimize our bottom times for these depths. In turn, we cast stunt players with technical diving expertise to allow for the possibility of extended decompression diving. Thank heaven for second unit director Conrad Palmisano, who has a background in stunt coordination.”

 

The tank shots in Los Angeles were another unique challenge. While location had the vast ocean as a platform, the stage work had a small tank that was practically overwhelmed by the “ship”dropped into the space. One of the first things the team needed to do was match the above water sequences at the tank against green screen.

 

For the tank work, Spinotti and operators Chris Moseley and Mike Thomas had to find a way to create a dusk for night look in the tank that matched the dusk for night footage in the ocean that Zuccarini shot. “We shot tests using hard light from above, but it caused too many shafts that looked like the sun streaming in from above,”says Moseley. “Then Dante and gaffer Jeff Peterson came up with the idea of a 60 by 40 foot silk over the tank for bounce. This gave us a nice soft ambient light. We then under exposed that light around a stop and a half to give us a good night look. We then added 2-foot handheld Hydro Flos for close-ups in the actors’faces.”

 

“Lighting underwater is one of life’s great pleasures,”adds Mike Thomas, who took over for Moseley when he had to leave the tank work to be with his wife when she delivered their second baby. “The challenge is to create contrast in an environment that does everything it can to flatten out the light! We were matching footage shot in relatively deep water at or near dusk––classic day-for-night. The cool highlights came from the diver/actor headlights.

 

“To create contrast, the one thing we had to do when working in water was to keep the water as clean as possible so as not to ‘fog’the water with particulate matter,”adds Thomas. “The large set took up a great deal of the tank. In order not to see the walls of the tank, we had to murk up the water a little bit. Dante’s overhead soft set up with mobile 18Ks to penetrate holes in the wreck set were needed. Underwater, Dante’s gaffer [Jeff Peterson] used 1.2Ks to blow through the side openings with a fair number of large and small Hydro Flos for fill. For the static close-ups, we used PARs through half or full grid, which worked better than bounce light in murky water. We didn’t want a large source when an actor is wearing a mask with a long ‘tunnel’effect. Reflections are just too difficult to handle when the clock is ticking and you just can’t get the light around any more. Handheld flashlights were also used to create the effect of divers lighting each other when in a group.

 

“Jeff Peterson was amazing underwater,”Thomas adds enthusiastically. “For the tracking shots of the actors, he would be handholding a four-bank two-foot Hydro Flo unit as my underwater grip Mike Guthrie pulled me backwards with a line. Two guys were also wrangling light and video assist cable and a few more were preventing us from crashing into the walls of the tank and/or set, all the while swimming backwards at the always fast-paced speed of the actors. No one should have this much fun!”

 

For Thomas, Moseley and the rest of the underwater team, communication was another challenge. Thomas likes to use pre-arranged hand signals and slates as much as possible because they are totally reliable. “Most of the communication systems that I’ve tried required me to wear a full-face mask which, in turn, made looking through the viewfinder very difficult,”Thomas explains. “Bearing in mind the size of the set, the time allotted to shoot the sequence, the ability to run ideas by Dante, as well as the fact that every one of the actors would be wearing the same system, we thought it was best to go with the flow this time.

 

“Matt O’Conner, our Diver Safety Specialist, provided a communication system that worked without a hitch. Ultimately, we still relied upon manual signals for setting lights, scrims, diffusion, colors, etc., but the ability to speak directly to Brett Ratner and Dante saved us a lot of swimming back to the side of the tank.”

 

“The underwater guys did an incredible job of matching and showing just enough of the actors’faces to allow the audience to recognize that it was really our ‘first team’in these tank water shots,”says Spinotti. “All we had to do was correct the densities to an ideal level with the DI, which is another major advantage of the system. We could also hide reflections and bring the water up as needed. To make sure we had everything before we left the tank, we chose to get the underwater dailies from Laser Pacific’s Ken Vincent. This was a delicate situation where density was important. I knew video DVD and 2K dailies wouldn’t carry the necessary contrast. So, we sent a few shots to Technicolor to make sure. The prints that came back were beautiful!

 

“The crew, coordinated brilliantly by 1st AD Jamie Frietag, did an incredible job on the water work,”says Spinotii enthusiastically. “It looks seamless even though we did it in bits and pieces. Chris’s pieces, Mike’s pieces, and the underwater work by Pete Zuccarini all fit together.

 

“Chris and Kyle Rudolph went out of their way to capture night sun backgrounds in the Bahamas for other shots as well,”he continues. “Their enthusiasm went a long way in giving us enough material to piece together real locations and plates seamlessly.”

 

“Dante is one of the best cinematographers in the business,”says Rudolph. “He’s a true gentleman and treats his crew well. It makes us want to give him 200 percent every time. I remember one shot that Dante did of the interior of a limousine. He wasn’t happy with the time of day. He wanted to see another sky, but knew that production wouldn’t give us another limousine.

 

“I really wanted to get the shot for him,”Rudolph continues, “and I realized we didn’t need a limo or even a window. While we were driving back to the hotel from some second unit shot, we tied the door to the van open, set the camera on a couple of ropes and created a shelf. We shot the kind of sky Dante wanted. It was easy for him to do the replacement in post and all it took was string, chewing gum and a little thinking ‘outside the box’to get it.”

 

“Despite the little pieces and because of our ability to help the picture along with the DI, After The Sunset has turned into a simple and fluid story that moves beautifully,”says Spinotti. “It was well performed by everyone in both cast and crew. It was a joy to see on the first cut.”