Many people who are Unbreakable fail to notice the pattern of telling characteristics and signs within themselves. Some of these signs are subtle, others are dramatic. . . The truth they point to is often too mythological to believe.

So decrees the web site for Unbreakable, a Limited Edition Productions --Touchstone Pictures release that marks writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's first outing since his phenomenal success with last year's The Sixth Sense, a sleeper hit that grossed $600 million and earned Oscar nominations. Shyamalan's efforts at keeping audiences from learning that picture's surprise ending prior to its release have been largely duplicated for Unbreakable. Crewmembers are contractually obliged to remain mum on the key plot turns-and-twists, which revolve around the mysterious secret nature of one David Dunn (Bruce Willis).

After his promising career in football gets cut short-owing to a car crash he and his wife Megan (Robin Wright-Penn) experienced during his college days-Dunn's life has been in decline. As the picture opens, the emotionally closeted man is working security at a Philadelphia sports coliseum. Returning from a job interview in New York, David somehow manages to survive a nasty train wreck-the only person out of 132 people involved to do so-and emerges without so much as a scratch.

David eventually crosses paths with gallery owner Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson), a man who, after being born with shattered limbs, has lived his life in a near-constant state of pain and suffering due to the rare medical disorder of osteogenesis Imperfecta. Realizing David to be his physical opposite, Elijah comes to believe that David's supposed invulnerability makes them polar opposites on the evolutionary scale. Perhaps out of envy, Elijah works his way into David's life to help him develop his gift and discover its true purpose in the grand scheme of life. However, resolving true nature of these polar opposites requires that both spiritual and physical sacrifices be made.

Shyamalan, who co-produced the film with Barry Mendel and Sam Mercer, selected Eduardo Serra as his director of photography. Fans of world cinema first became acquainted with his photography through his collaborations with French director Patrice Leconte-on Tango, The Hairdresser's Husband and the upcoming The Widow of St. Pierre. While Serra has shot such comedies as Gross Fatigue and Funny Bones, it is his period pieces which are most lauded. On Michael Winterbottom's Jude, Serra scored the Jury and Public Awards at Madrid Imagen and the Silver Frog prize from the CamerImage Film Festival, while Wings of the Dove earned him a BAFTA Award and an Oscar nomination. Though Unbreakable is his first outing with Shyamalan, Serra mined metaphysical matters before on What Dreams May Come, a film on which his lush visuals served as the launching point from which three visual effects houses based their Academy-award winning work. "I don't know exactly why Night chose me," admits the Portugal-born cinematographer. "We had a very lengthy phone conversation that went very well, in which he made it clear he had seen a number of my earlier films before deciding on me."

The crucial meeting took place after Serra had first read the existential script for Unbreakable. "On the first pass, one isn't always able to get all the aspects of the story, so my initial response to Night was to question him and get clarification on a number of story points. To me, this was a reasonable way to proceed, since it let me get an idea about his ideas and intentions for the film. If I had ventured a lot of ideas for the visuals without getting all of his input, I don't think it would have worked as well. Letting my ideas emerge in response to his own made the whole process a more creative and flowing one. I explained to him how I might bring something to the project that would emphasize certain aspects of his story; he approved."

Part of this process related to the diverse yet complementary natures of the film's two principals. "The storylines for David and Elijah were running in parallel development," notes Serra, "and these lines eventually intersect, bringing the pair into some degree of conflict. Night and I worked up a kind of code for constructing separate moods for each man - one which we hope no one watching the movie will become conscious of, since if our plans were easily detectable I imagine viewers would soon become bored. The code related to opposition, and reflections, looking at things upside-down and, in a way, entering a world of mirage with reverse perspective. Both characters have arcs, but each is running somewhat in opposition to the other.

"David's dealings with the outside world do not result in a happy relationship," continues Serra, "so I used cooler lights and cold filtration to create a distancing mood. But David's life at home with Megan and their son Jeremy [Spencer Treat Clark], which comes to occupy more of the story as it continues, was created with soft light and nice flesh tones, so he is on a journey that takes him into warmer colors. On the other hand, Elijah, when first seen as a child, starts off with warm colors, but that look goes colder and colder as he ages."

The other visual arc designed to help realize David Dunn's spiritual odyssey related to an increasing level of spruced-up lighting to reflect the character becoming more attuned to his inner self. "David's everyday life is seen in an everyday kind of light," Serra states, "but as the story develops into something that might be considered 'bigger-than-life,' we changed the way things look. When possible, I went with a strongly black-and-white look in those later scenes, doing things with lighting and color that were extremely stylized, suggesting almost an old silent movie look, going way beyond what I would ever normally do on a feature. It was something that had to be done with the camera rather than the art direction, since this was mostly night exteriors on location, and we were able to selectively add spots of color in this largely-monochrome environment to highlight or emphasize key moments."

Serra and Shyamalan agreed to shoot the picture in anamorphic, using Panavision's Millennium and Millennium XL cameras fitted with Primo prime lenses, employing emulsions extremely suited to the muted, moody images. "I tend to work almost always with soft, fast stocks, but this time I used Kodak's 5279 [Vision 500T] for most of the film and the softer 5277 [Vision 320T] stock for David's family arena. I was usually between F2 and F2.8-if I go any further open than that, the focus puller becomes the star of our show. I try not to go too far up on stops, because my work always derives from what is already there in the way of natural sources and reality. By adding a lot of light, you lose the small reflections and all the nice things of life that make the image appealing in the first place. While I do use additional lighting to provide emphasis and enhance aspects, I find washing with light-while it works wonderfully for many people-does not help me achieve my goals. Whenever I get somewhere, my first question is not where can I put lights, but instead, it is do I need to put lights up? Can I do it with just one light?

Serra's less-is-more approach is especially evident when setting up illumination on nocturnal exterior shoots, fashioned typically as washes of black punctuated here-and-there by sporadic spots of brightness. "I almost never choose to create a big backlight," he elaborates, "so I instead just pick spots where I want light to fall. Anyway, I don't like to use big lights, or very many lights for that matter. On the night exteriors here, I did use some backlight, which is an unusual choice [for his style of lighting]. I achieved this by setting 2Ks to spill onto key areas of frame, which let everything else remain black instead of graying out."

Like Shyamalan's previous pictures The Sixth Sense and Wide Awake, Unbreakable takes place in the director's hometown of Philadelphia; but the earlier movies did not figure into this film's visual style. "Night never referenced The Sixth Sense," Serra recalls, "and that was good, since each project has its own separate aesthetic challenges. Our planning developed from the dramatic construction of the storyline, and though this is set in the same part of the country-mainly because he knows this area well - it didn't really relate to the other film at all. The events of the story could take place anywhere."

The director's penchant for exacting storyboarding did provide Serra with a very specific shooting pattern. Those diagrams were of extreme necessity because Shyamalan took the unusual practice of filming Unbreakable in continuity. "Night storyboards everything, from beginning to end," Serra acknowledges, "and when we shoot, we shoot those boards exactly, with no extra coverage. Night is very careful about this, because the only thing that matters to him in the making of a film is creating an emotional response in the viewer."

Part of Shyamalan's methodology in achieving this end involved skillful selection of moving camera options. Adding to his mandate of realism, the writer/director constructed most scenes as a single pass. The lack of traditional coverage allowed shots to unfold in a theatre-like fashion, necessitating fewer cuts. "The psychological effect of camera movement was always significant," says Serra, "and Night was always very specific about whether Steadicam, handheld, or dolly track would be used for any given move, because each technique brings different emotional connotations that can influence the audience. We didn't ever track on a particular line or on actor's movements, and instead we moved to follow or capture an emotion, or reveal or emphasize an emotional change. So framing was critical, especially on the lengthy takes that were sometimes used.

Likewise, David's fateful train ride-which omits the actual crash, instead showing what leads up to it and the aftermath-was again designed to focus on character and emotion as opposed to spectacle. "If we'd shown explosions or crashes, that would have taken away from the thrust of the narrative," Serra declares emphatically. "Night would not be interested in such a departure, neither would I." Shots of David on the train were done on a large stage-bound setup. "We created some real reflections on the window glass, and I kept lights moving slightly to suggest movement, but didn't want anything very obvious or obtrusive. Twice we had another train passing, which meant creating a big display of interactive lights, which was handled on a computer board, to create a flickering chase effect. Beyond that, the train window exteriors were achieved via bluescreen, so that visual effects could add the environment."

The Secret Lab (TSL), Disney's recently-formed digital production studio, combined the forces of the Dinosaur digital animation team from Walt Disney Feature Animation with that of Dream Quest Images, Disney's former feature film visual effects division. (Dream Quest had also provided visual effects for The Sixth Sense.) TSL visual effects supervisor Richard R. Hoover (Inspector Gadget, Armageddon) began his work on Unbreakable by making a study of real trains to get an idea of how exterior daylight spilled into compartments and colored the environment, using video references as well as personal observation. "We then went to Philadelphia to shoot plates off a train there, recording the surrounding landscape from a variety of angles," imparts Hoover. "The idea was to use this imagery as a basis for creating a virtual environment that would let the director shoot in any direction without regard for how the background might be married. There was no motion-control being used on the main unit, so it was all shot free. To allow even more flexibility, we shot the plates at different frame rates, so the tempo of the passing scenery could also be altered as needed. In one shot, as the camera pans around the stage train interior, different plate passes were combined to change the apparent velocity of the train."

Essentially, TSL's CG work on the train interior all proceeded from the plate imagery, which was projected onto a polygonal surface making up the virtual exterior environment. Digital supervisor Darin Hollings implemented the mapping of plate elements, which allowed them to be placed in the digital environment without unnatural distortion. "The view out of the windows was supposed to be a little blown-out," allows Hoover, "but even so, there was a good measure of visibility here, and it wasn't something we could cheat."

Next, TSL digitally modeled the interior train live-action environment in its entirety-both details of the train car and contours of the actor-passengers. This allowed accurate shadow and light effects cast from their virtual exterior to integrate in proper perspective with the live-action. Hoover's research into real-world light interplay paid off here, as he could introduce slight color changes into the train interiors, such as adding a measure of green when the car supposedly passed stretches of trees. "We also wound up altering the timing on the interactive element of passing trains that had been shot with chase lighting," explains Hoover, "stretching out the length of the other train's passage so that we'd get flickers of light coming in exactly on specific beats of dialogue." The Secret Lab's 2-D supervisor, Marlo Pabon, had the responsibility of preserving the natural reflection elements captured on the live-action windows during bluescreen photography. The only real hint of the looming disaster comes when the virtual horizon outside undergoes a change in orientation, which signals the train flipping-over. For a master view of the disaster's aftermath, The Secret Lab altered CNN aerial footage of a real train's derailment.

After the crash, David comes to in a hospital emergency room-a practical Philadelphia locale-and is examined by a doctor amazed to find not a bone broken and not one scratch on his flesh. "There were two principal areas used for the hospital," Serra states. "The emergency room was a small area that I lit very simply, with two KinoFlos-one for the foreground and another for the background. To maintain the color scheme for early scenes of David out in the world, I kept it very cool in color. Then we had the entrance hall, where many people are waiting. We revealed that with a big Steadicam move that begins by coming out of the elevator and goes through the chamber, looking in all directions and seeing absolutely everything. We relied on practical fluorescents already installed at the hospital, though most of them were way off colorwise. We couldn't replace them all, so it became a matter of filtering them to that could work for us." Relying on color temperature readings to determine the degree of filtration required Serra to rely less on his eye and instead make "a leap of faith. Once you accept that you must trust the reading and not your eye, the filtering-full minus green required full magenta for correction- takes everything toward pink, which is not a very comfortable feeling for the eye. In the end, I just had to look to my gaffer and trust his meter about the reading."

The film's other settings were almost equally divided between a "homemade" soundstage (built within the old Civic Center Building) and locations. "A lot of scenes were set in David's home, so production designer Larry Fulton [A Time to Kill, Hope Floats, Picture Perfect], who had worked on The Sixth Sense with Night, built that on stage," Serra relates. "But Elijah's gallery [Limited Edition] was found on a location scout. The interior ceiling there at the gallery was set up so we had the option to hang a few lights, but I didn't wind up using many, since my preference is always to bring light in through windows and let it drop off naturally further into the interior. But in this case, it was quite difficult because the gallery went back very deep, across a block of space. There were several different areas within the gallery: besides the exhibition hall, there was a small office, plus a private back room where Sam has his own personal secret life. The office was mainly lit by two overhead Wall-O-Lites; the comic book library by KinoFlos between the shelves; and the back room by daylight coming through frosted windows."

At one point, David flashes back to a memory of the car crash that seemed to change his and Megan's life so irrevocably. Although the incident ended his football career, it signaled the start of the personal epiphany that he's currently trying to unravel. "Again, since we are concerned with the effect this had on the people, we do not depict the accident, but instead show the aftermath, with the vehicle on fire," Serra states. "I used a few flame bars, and had a Chinese lantern on a dimmer that got moved around during the shot-which was done with a single three-and-a-half minute handheld move." His crew was made of personnel completely unfamiliar to him, so he was pleased to be able to achieve such delicate and elaborate setups given the lack of settling-in time afforded the group. "Four-minute handhelds were not at all uncommon on this film, but they were up to the challenge. I had a British operator who quite often works on the East Coast here, Gordon Hayman, and my gaffer was Steven Litecky. We were also blessed with an absolutely wonderful grip, Billy Miller

After having come to terms with his superhuman condition, a significant moment in David's life takes place at a train station. When surrounded by people, he finds that he can psychically sense the spiritual nature of those he happens to touch. He's now confronted with what to do with his sixth sense. "It is here that he realizes that he has to act in a way that will force him to go into an area he was very reluctant to enter," Serra explains. "The location selected for the train station was a converted building that used to be a bank. Larry Fulton's art director, Steve Arnold, and set decorator Gretchen Rau, did a lot of work to transform this locale, which was essential to convey the drama of the moment, since Night wanted a kind of cathedral look.

"We open with a move that revealed everything from ceiling to floor, so when I went there on my first scouting visit, I became quite worried about how this could be lit. After a time, my rigging gaffer Craig Ligget found some openings in the ceiling where we were able to hide Par 1200 lamps. They provided pretty much all of the light in the scene, as the bounce off the marble floor from the Pars was considerable; I had to add only the slightest amount of supplemental fill." To place emphasis on the narrow vertical beams of light, Serra added some smoke. "That was the only time in the film that I introduced atmosphere," he states, "and that was to emphasize the specific cathedral feeling that Night wanted. While I indulged for that one scene, I don't often use smoke; when it is in motion it looks pretty artificial, but the vertical shafts of light here were suited dramatically by this kind of emphasis. Also, just by not using them the rest of the time, bringing smoke into the scene here gives it that much more strength."

An unexpected by-product of all David's soul-searching is the bond he's formed once more with his estranged wife. As the film approaches its climax, David carries his wife out her room and up the stairs into their master bedroom. "We had a Steadicam move following and circling them as they go up into another area," Serra acknowledges. "Night wanted a floating impression, so Steadicam operator Kyle Rudolph circled around the couple during their ascent, and there was some wire work involved to enhance the sensation of weightlessness. It was an extremely cramped setup, since we had the Steadicam going round the actors and the wires on this staircase. We had to completely cheat the set to make room for the operator while still letting it look like a real staircase."

The staircase, while seen often during the film, required special visual treatment for this moment. "Something very special is happening at this point in the story. I wanted to emphasize that with very warm filtration. Since we were seeing in all directions, I just used three lights: a KinoFlo for the end plus two bounced Blondes - one at the base of the stairs and the other at the mid-ascent point. I also shot a few takes holding a Chinese lantern behind camera, but it actually looked better without it. As there was no room for crew on the stairs, Night and I had to sit and watch the monitor, and of course the Steadicam transmitter is not an ideal way to evaluate the image. So there was again some faith involved, but we were happy in the end, as the couple's ascension wound up being quite dramatic and beautiful."

The Secret Lab provided wire removal for the staircase ascent, though that was not their most trying rig removal assignment. David's hand-to-hand altercation with an assailant needed a little amping-up on its action quotient. "David gets picked up by an attacker and thrown through the air like a rag doll," states Hoover. "To suggest that free-floating aspect, they had Bruce Willis' stunt double on a wire for another of these incredibly lengthy takes-on the order of 5,000 frames-so we had to do a very elaborate wire removal there. Because the wire was seen occluding all different parts of the frame, this wasn't something that could be addressed as a simple patch-and-fill, so a ton of frame by frame paintwork was needed to provide the necessary subtle gradation. Any kind of effects shot on screen for a significant period of time runs the risk of betraying the illusion, and there was no place to hide and no sleight-of-hand to be applied on this, so we had to be perfect. The idea was that you should never even think that any of this involved effects, because it is just the slightest impression or suggestion that his motion is in the slightest defiance of gravity."

According to director of photography Eduardo Serra, the seamless aspect of visual effects enhancement to the on-screen imagery was a key ingredient of Unbreakable but not the focus. "While we do have bluescreen and wire removal, these tools are not used principally for dramatic elements, but instead to take advantage of possibilities that streamline production," he says. When asked about one of the digital video mindsets that suggests no supplemental lighting be used when shooting a scene, Serra disagrees. "Just because I prefer to use only a few lights doesn't mean I don't light at all. Also, the idea that lighting issues can be addressed in post is debatable; I don't think you can do anything too significant in post for lighting besides altering contrast and making the image brighter. After all, you can't add information [in terms of cinematography] to the image, which is something you are capturing on stage with your idea of how the scene must play."

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