Indecent Exposure
Daniel Mindel Lights the Enemy from Within
By Pauline Rogers

“It is Will Smith as a labor relations lawyer and Gene Hackman as one of his sources, against a rogue security agent who is using the NSA for his own means,” says cinematographer Daniel Mindel (Dangerous Minds, G.I. Jane) of Enemy of the State, directed by Tony Scott (Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Revenge, Days of Thunder, Last Boy Scout, True Romance, Crimson Tide, and The Fan) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. In the story, a chance encounter with an old friend destroys attorney Robert Dean’s (Smith) well-ordered life and career. To create a scenario that will destroy the young attorney’s credibility, he is framed for murder by a corrupt intelligence official (Jon Voight), who uses the vast resources of the NSA to his advantage. Dean’s only hope is to prove his innocence, with the help of a mysterious underground information broker and ex-intelligence operative known as Brill (Gene Hackman).

“Enemy of the State is set on the east coast—Washington, to be exact. It has a French Connection-type atmosphere, only this is about the ability to eavesdrop. So, we wanted a very voyeuristic feel,” says Mindel. For Scott, who is not a gadget-oriented director, this meant a departure from his previous style. For this picture, he wanted to make use of many tools—still photographs, video cameras, even tiny surveillance cameras that could be clipped to a character’s or even cameraman’s shirt, to capture shots as he walks through a crowd.

When Scott’s regular cameraman Darius Wolski was unavailable for this action adventure’s shoot, the director turned to long-time commercial cameraman and friend Daniel Mindel. “Tony and I began to talk,” says Mindel. “We wanted to make a realistic movie that was classical in its style. We also wanted to focus on the story and not on the technical aspects.” The two looked at movies like Seven, as a starting point. Scott, however, wanted to go for harder, tougher, and colder.

Mindel, familiar with Scott’s visual interests, also knew that he would want to shoot most of the sequences with multiple cameras. “The challenge was then lighting for these kinds of shots,” he says. “Tony loves the lighting to be interesting. In order to do that with multiple cameras, we would have to be able to get the key light in such a place that it does its job. However, we would still have to allow the cameras to be wide and tight at the same time.”

There was little question that the project would be shot anamorphic—Scott’s format preference. “We both knew it would be the only way to service the story,” says Mindel. “But this meant we needed to find other ways to keep the pallet working for us. We watched many different movies besides Seven to find our starting point. Both of us liked the look of Nixon.”

To get that look, Mindel tested the bleach bypass process, as well as several other cinematic tricks. In the end, he decided to leave the film alone. “We decided on Kodak’s 5248 and 5279 stocks,” he says. “We were going to go with minimal grads or filters, but would rely on production design and costumes to support visual color choices. For example, since the story takes place around Christmas, we would use full color decorations and pull the wardrobe down to monochromatic colors whenever possible.”

Production design helped Mindel develop the look for Enemy of the State, and went farther by creating sets and servicing locations with areas to build lights in. This allowed Scott to move the camera in any direction he wanted.

“One of the most difficult lighting jobs was a simple-looking location in Georgetown,” Mindel recalls. “We had many establishing and moving shots on a narrow street where Will Smith’s character is supposed to live. The problem was that the street was so narrow we couldn’t bring in the usual large night lights. Instead, we had to construct our own platforms.

“We put a Condor on every corner, out of frame, instead of using the Musco,” he says. “We also installed 20Ks at each intersection, which we used for ambient light.”

Lighting a narrow street in Georgetown turned out to be a piece of cake for Mindel and crew, when it came to one of the key chase sequences in the film. “On one of our scouts, Tony found this tunnel that went under the Chesapeake Bay,” says Mindel. The location, just beneath the Ft. McHenry Tunnel, was a major thoroughfare in the heart of the city. “Tony decided that the ventilation tunnel that ran parallel to this would make a great location for a chase sequence.”

Smith was to escape his pursuers by entering the tunnel, which would be too narrow for the chase cars to follow. Unfortunately, Smith’s character is fleeing in shorts, a robe, and socks. It was a challenge for the actor, and a visually interesting sequence for the audience, as he slips, slides, and races through the underground area. “Of course, his pursuers find another entrance, and the chase is on,” says Mindel.

The problem to be factored in was that the shaft (which was about four or five stories below the ground) was about 25 feet wide, but not flat on the bottom. It had a half curve, like a gutter, with the center as the lowest point. “There was only one entrance into the tunnel,” Mindel explains. “It was around 36 inches wide. The only way to get the cars in was to completely disassemble them and bring them into the tunnel. They would then have to be reassembled, once all the parts were all in the tunnel area.”

This logistic was a challenge, but not as difficult as trying to get lighting into this deep hole, and still give Scott the ability to let the camera see anywhere he wanted. “We had to fix fluorescent lights to the ceiling and hide all the cables (at least a mile of them), from the camera,” he explains.

“We had twenty-four eight-foot output double KF55 fluorescent fixtures stretched along the mile run,” recalls gaffer Claudio Mirando. “The lights were mounted perpendicular to the tunnel. Each lamp was boxed off to give a more sectional feel. At the 3/4 mile mark, the tunnel veered off to the right. This was enough to hide the 18K at the mile mark. This was used to back light the scene.

“Tony then added 1000 gallons of water rushing down the mile long tunnel,” he continues. “The water splashed the cars top to bottom, and the cars careened off the walls, which made the logistics even more difficult. The cables had to be fed through vent holes every 200 feet, then adhered to the ceiling. Film lighting inside the cars had to have provisions for water. And, the 18K at the end had to be anchored against the rush of the water. Our rigging gaffer, Marty Bosworth, set the base lighting for the tunnel and dealt with the major lighting logistics like a pro.”

Mindel shot with two cameras. “Martin Sheer was on A-camera, doing the head- on shots of Will running away from the NSA cars. Scott Sakamoto was on Steadicam mounted on a Quadra track, giving us the ability to rack in front of Will and the chasing cars as they raced down the tunnel.”

“Fortunately,” explains Sakamoto, “we were shooting the cars coming at us or going away from us. Still, even with the 300mm lens, it was an interesting challenge.”

At the end of the sequence, Will escapes out of a manhole, located in one of the most used locations in Los Angeles—the 2nd Street tunnel. Explains Mindel, “The trick was to bring the ambience we had in the Washington tunnel to the Los Angeles tunnel. To do this, we lit the tunnel by amplifying the ambient light, and not changing the natural lighting effects that we found on location.”

“We bounced 6K PARs into the white ceiling, for ambient lighting,” says Mirando. “We had lights at the opening, to sheen/backlight the tunnel. But, we found that, by adding more cars, we had a more natural way to achieve the look.

“For background atmosphere, beyond the tunnel, we used two-three 18K Beebee Night Lights. This dealt with the intersection, and some of the background buildings.

“For one of Will Smith’s running shots, we wanted to simulate passing headlights,” Mirando continues. “We used ten Whirly Gags (spinning light gags), spread across 100 feet, set to strike Will’s face at various intervals.”

Mindel and crew were not only challenged to create underground shots like this, they were also faced with working enormous locations above the ground and in the air. For the first month of the picture, they were shooting in a coal field in Baltimore. “Yes, it was cold and claustrophobic in the ventilation shaft,” Mindel admits. “But it almost beat the extremely dirty and grimy coal fields. Here, we had several major shots, of Will and Gene Hackman trying to escape the NSA, who chase them in cars and helicopters. The difficulty here, was that the sun was low in the winter months, and the contrast was high (black coal).”

In addition to shooting the chases in these dark coal fields, Mindel and crew were charged with giving the illusion that these two prey were under satellite surveillance at all times. “The NSA is supposed to have the advanced ability to photograph small objects at a long distance,” says Mindel. “In the pre-production process, we discussed using a helicopter platform with a gyro-stabilized news gathering camera as our satellite point of view. The reason was that the magnification of the Zoom lens is a lot bigger on this than the standard anamorphic lenses. However, we wanted a slightly degraded picture—as if it had just been beamed by satellite down to the surveillance teams.

“In pre-production, we went to D.C. with a newsgathering helicopter that had a gyro-stabilized camera (of the type police use for surveillance). We hovered at various heights, up to 1100 feet, pointing the camera straight down. Tony loved the look, so we had David Nowell shoot a lot of video from the helicopter. This could be projected on monitors, or become cuts within the chase sequences.”

“Tony was sure where he would use our aerial footage,” adds Nowell. “He wasn’t sure what he would do with it in post, however. What he did was tell us to get the ‘traditional’ surveillance shots and then ‘do something wacky.’

“We would get our helicopter with the Gyrosphere up to 3500 feet, and with the 10 to 1 Zoom, cover something like six square blocks of Baltimore or Washington. We would then fly down to about 1000 feet, reconfigure the lens, and get a full size figure on top of a building or on the street.”

In addition to getting “straight” shots, Scott had Nowell experiment with different looks. “We might have shots that looked as if they were done in fast-forward,” Nowell explains. “We would ratchet the camera off to one side, come in to locate an object, find it, then shift and move. We even ran the camera at six frames and zoomed in so the image would be in one position, and the cars in the background would be going incredibly fast.”

Nowell shot both traditional film as well as video. “Because I would sometimes double for an NSA agent in a helicopter, I got some of my SAG hours in on this film,” Nowell laughs. “When I wasn’t shooting from the helicopter carrying the Gyro, I was in the second helicopter, providing the image of newsgathering or surveillance photographers. At times, these video shots became POVs from the satellite, or POVs from the surveillance helicopter that people were watching on the screens in the NSA office.”

“David’s biggest challenge was shooting action against the blackness of a coal field,” Mindel continues. “The levels of contrast were so high that the only way we could get interesting sequences was to make sure the cameras were situated in the right position to capture the back light. This would give us the separation required.”

Originally, Mindel looked at doing the surveillance shots, going from the video to film and then anamorphizing the shots. However, the loss of control of the contrast levels changed his mind. “We then decided to shoot the video off television monitors, allowing us to cope with all the issues of color, contrast, and definition.

“It worked great,” says Mindel. “Since Tony didn’t want all the NSA technology to work perfectly, we were able to make the shots ‘fail’ sometimes, by the way we projected or shot the elements. We even built in static and sought out the glitches.”

Many of these shots would be projected on the monitors and on the Jumbo Tron wall in the NSA’s massive headquarters. “The room was huge and full of the latest technology,” he says. “There were masses of television monitors and computers—at least four sets. The main room had a bullpen-type layout. It was painted battleship gray and extremely drab. One entire wall was filled with giant television and computer screens. We projected a lot of the satellite images and surveillance footage on these screens.

“In order to see the images, and provide some light for the room, we installed reflective surfaces, to give us depth. We also had some reflections off the main screens at one end of the room,” he adds.

“The other parts of the set all looked over or onto the main room. This gave us the problem of balancing our light to what was happening on the screens.”

“The computer room was originally built to house fluorescent lights in the ceiling,” says Mirando. “But, Tony and Danny wanted a hard feel. So, we went with 32 wide DecaPods from DecaSource. In the main room, we had four light boxes acting as key light. Each 48-foot long and three-foot wide unit had four 10-light cyc strips, with trace on the bottom.

“Key grip Michael Popovich and rigging grip Tommy Gibson put the boxes on chain motors, to make sure they were completely adjustable to frame. They were beautiful to have in the shot.

“Surrounding the main room, we had nineteen 10Ks through light grid,” Mirando continues. “This put a sheen on all the black equipment in the room and lifted the key on various shots. Everything from the light on the desk to 10Ks in the ceiling were put on dimmers.”

“It is a bureaucratic building that looks interesting instead of flat,” Mindel continues. “By lighting with Deca Pods from above we could use the narrow beam globes to give us an extremely hard look. Unfortunately, this also challenged us in terms of exposure. The payoff, however, was worth it. We got a very interesting, non-cosmetic look.”

Even though the DecaPods were built into the set, Mindel and crew had difficulties with the equipment. “Each unit had to be cooled, to avoid a fire hazard, since they were so close to the ceiling,” he explains. “And there was another set on top, so we also had to be careful of that ‘floor.’”

For Mindel and crew, the shaft and the computer room became a bit of a challenge. They had to be lit, and lit right, especially with Scott’s penchant for multi- camera shooting. But for Mindel, one of the most challenging shots was done in Baltimore, where they had to demolish a building that was Brill’s (Hackman) hideaway. His hideaway was discovered by the NSA agents. As Will and Gene make their escape, they destroy the building so well that their pursuers can not collect evidence, explains Mindel.

“It took weeks to prepare the building for the explosion,” he continues. “While this was being done, we shot the interiors of Gene Hackman’s hideaway. This was a giant copper wire cage, suspended from the ceiling and floor (called a Jar). The idea was that it was completely shielded from the outside and thus protected its occupants and all their electronic equipment from being eavesdropped upon.

“We wanted the Jar to be the focal point of the room. It was to have the feeling of a skylight above. To light the Jar, we had to cut a giant hole in the reinforced concrete ceiling above the set. It was approximately 24 feet long and 12 feet wide. On the next floor above the Jar suspended from a rig, we put approximately nine Maxi lights, pointing down. We protected them by a Plexiglas shield from the fire ball that would eventually rise toward the ceiling when the Jar was to be destroyed.

“After the interior work, we destroyed the Jar and covered the interior explosion from multiple angles. All those cameras had to be carefully protected from the heat of the explosion.

“We then moved outside to blow the building up. Here, the job of coverage was to be done by 13 cameras—ten on the ground and three in the air.”

In the scene, the two heroes drive out of the building while a train drives alongside them—still being chased by the NSA. At the right moment, the building was detonated.

Although shot with 13 cameras, and featuring a technically challenging “one time only” explosion sequence—the shot was “nothing that hasn’t been done before,” says Mindel. Even the fact that they were actually demolishing a cultural icon—the original Dr. Pepper plant, a small concrete building in an industrial area of town—didn’t phase Mindel. “It was exciting, yes. And it was challenging. But this was due to the logistics of the explosion.” For Mindel, it was still just an explosion. “You put as many cameras as you can in strategic positions, and hope you got what you needed for editing the piece together,” he says.

For Mindel, “the shots in the tunnel, in and around The Jar, and in NSA headquarters were more exciting.” Those are the sequences where he had to call on his library of cinematic tools and tricks. That’s where his creative juices really came into play.

“And,” he concludes, “that is where our department had to pull together to make Tony Scott’s vision of a Jerry Bruckheimer action adventure work.

For Mindel, the best experience of making Enemy of the State was being faced with seemingly impossible situations to light, under the influence of Scott’s direction, and “making it happen.”

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